The World According to Bertie - Alexander Hanchett Smith [69]
Matthew looked at the cheque. The Duke’s handwriting was firm and clear – strong, masculine down-strokes. Three hundred and twenty pounds.
Matthew’s expression gave it away.
‘Something wrong?’ asked the Duke. There was concern in his voice.
‘I . . .’ Matthew began.
Pat took the cheque from him and glanced at it. ‘Actually, the painting was thirty-two thousand pounds,’ she said.
‘Good heavens!’ said the Duke. ‘I thought . . . Well I must have assumed that there was a decimal point before the last two zeros. Thirty-two thousand pounds! Sorry. The exchequer can’t rise to that.’
‘This’ll do,’ said Pat firmly. ‘Our mistake. This’ll do fine, won’t it, Matthew?’
Matthew glanced at Humphrey, who was smiling benignly. Elsewhere in the room, there was silence, as other guests had realised what was going on. It was easy to imagine a mistake of this nature being made. And three hundred and twenty pounds was quite enough for that particular painting; far too much, really.
‘I shall be more careful in my labelling in future,’ Matthew said magnanimously. ‘Of course that’s all right.’
The tension which had suffused the room now dissipated. People began to talk again freely, and the Duke reached for a bottle of wine to refill glasses.
‘That was good of you,’ murmured Humphrey.
‘It was nothing,’ said Matthew. ‘It really was.’
‘But it wasn’t,’ protested Humphrey.
‘I meant the painting was nothing,’ said Matthew; which was true.
46. Mist-covered Mountains
Later in the evening, Matthew, wanting, he said, to get some air, suggested that they go out into the garden. Pat nodded, and followed him out through the hall. She had gone out into gardens with boys before this and knew what it meant. Boys were usually not very interested in gardens, except at night, when their interest sharpened. Outside, the evening was unusually warm for the time of the year, almost balmy; the air was still, the branches of the oak trees further up the steeply sloping garden were motionless.
For a few moments, they stood on the driveway. Matthew reached for Pat’s hand. ‘Look at that,’ he said, gesturing up at the sky. ‘We don’t often see that in town, do we? All that?’
The sky was a dark, black velvet, rich and deep, studded here and there with small points of starlight, one or two of which seemed to burn with great intensity.
‘No,’ she said. ‘All those yellow streetlights. Light pollution.’
Matthew squeezed her hand. This time, she returned the pressure; did not let go of his hand.
‘Whenever I look up there,’ he said, ‘I think the same thing. I think of how small we are and how all our concerns, our anxieties and all the rest of it, are so irrelevant, so tiny. Not that we think they are – but they are, aren’t they?’
She looked at him. ‘I suppose they are.’
‘And I also think of how we make one another miserable by worrying about these small things, when we should really just hug one another and say thank you to somebody, to something, for the great privilege of being alive – when everything up there’ – he nodded in the direction of the sky – ‘when everything up there is cold and dead. Dead stars. Collapsing stars. Suns that are going out, dying.’
She was silent. She wanted to say to him: ‘I think so too.’ But she did not.
He began to walk over towards the byre, leading her gently by the hand. ‘You know, a long time ago, when I had just left school, I had a friendship with another boy. It was the most intense friendship I ever had. I really loved my friend. And why not? It was pure– it really was. Nothing happened. It was completely innocent. Do you understand about that?’
‘Of course I do,’ she replied. ‘Women are much easier about loving their friends. It’s only men who have difficulty with that.’
‘Yes. Anyway, we were in Perthshire once, fishing, and we sat down on the rocks beside the river and I looked up at the sky, which was completely empty, and