Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [77]
“This isn’t a mess,” said Pat. “Bruce – my flatmate – has a far messier room.”
Peter shrugged. “Every so often I have a blitz on it. But the vacuum cleaner’s bust and it’s difficult.”
“You could borrow ours,” said Pat. She spoke quickly, and immediately wondered whether this was the right thing to say. It was as if she was offering to clean up for him, which was not what she intended.
“We’re all right,” said Peter, pointing to one of the chairs and inviting her to sit down. “We get by.”
Pat sat down and looked at the walls. There could be clues there, just to confirm. A picture of . . . who were the appropriate icons? She realised that she was not sure. There was a poster above the bed, a film poster of some sort; but it was for a Japanese film and she had no idea what that signified. 160 Private Papers
And above her head, behind the chair, was a framed print of American Gothic, the Midwest farmer, pitchfork in hand, and his wife, standing grimly in front of a barn. Again, that conveyed nothing, except some sense of irony perhaps. Peter rubbed his hands together. “I’ll go and make coffee,”
he said. “How do you like it?”
Pat told him, and he went off to the kitchen, leaving her alone in his room. Once he had gone, she looked at his desk. There was a pile of books – a Jane Austen novel, a book of critical essays, the Notebooks of Robert Lowell, a dictionary. Behind the books was an open file into which what looked like lecture notes had been inserted. She rose to her feet and went over to the desk. Yes, they were his lecture notes. He had written the title of a lecture at the top: Social expectations and artistic freedom in Austen’s England: Tuesday. There was a pile of papers on the edge of the desk – a couple of opened letters and what looked like an electricity bill.
She moved the letters slightly; of course she would not read them, she was just looking; a foreign stamp: Germany. And underneath the letters, two or three photographs, turned face downwards. She hesitated. She should mind her own business; one did not go into another person’s room and look at his photographs. But at least she could examine the writing on the back of one of them, the photograph on top of the pile. It was not very distinct, as the ink had smudged, but she could just make it out. Skinny-dipping, Greece, with T.
Pat looked over her shoulder. She should not look at his private papers – they were nothing to do with her. But then, he had invited her into his room and the photographs were lying around and how could anybody resist the temptation to look at a photograph with that inscription written on the back?
If you left photographs lying about then you were more or less giving permission for people to look at them. It was the same as sending postcards: the postman was entitled to read them. And Pat was human. So she turned the photograph over and looked.
Chapter title
161
49. Australian Memories
Holding two cups of steaming coffee, Peter came back into his room. “I don’t have anything else to offer you,” he said. “Not even a biscuit. We often run out of food altogether. And I find that when I buy some, Joe and Fergus eat it. I’m not sure if they know what they’re doing. They just eat it.”
Pat was not hungry, and did not mind. Peter had made real coffee, she noticed, and it smelled good, like strong . . . strong what? Coffee was complicated now, with all those americanos and mochas and double skinny lattes with vanilla. This was a bitter coffee, which Pat liked, and made for herself in the flat, although Bruce always turned his nose up