The World According to Bertie - Alexander Hanchett Smith [70]
They were outside the byre now. It had been converted, and appeared to be used as some sort of office. A French window, framed by creepers, was open, and they could see into the room on the other side of the window.
‘Come,’ said Matthew. ‘Come on, I don’t think they’ll mind.’
They pushed open one of the French windows and stepped inside the room. Through a large window in the roof there was enough light coming in from outside, from the glow that spilled out from the main house, from the light of the sky itself, to reveal a cluttered desk, a wall of bookshelves and a sofa. In the far corner of the room, a squat, dark shape revealed the presence of a wood-burning stove. There was, about the room, an air of wood-smoke that had settled, a reassuring, comfortable smell that had also been present in the house, with its open fires.
‘This looks like his study,’ said Matthew. His voice was lowered, almost to a sepulchral whisper, although there was nobody about.
‘It’s so quiet after the din back there,’ Pat said.
They sat down on the sofa. Matthew felt his heart beating within him and knew that even if he had not made up his mind in a conscious sense, at the level of the subconscious there was certainty.
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he whispered. ‘Just us. Without anybody else around. I wanted to ask you . . . to ask you whether you thought that we could . . . well, whether we could get engaged.’
He had said it, but he had said it in such a clumsy fashion. Nobody said that any more, he said to himself; nobody asks anybody else if they would like to be engaged. Like everything I do, he thought, it sounds awkward and old-fashioned.
For a few moments, Pat said nothing, and Matthew wondered if she had heard him. They were seated so close together that she must have been able to sense the agitated beating of his heart, and must have known. At least she knew her presence excited him, made him catch his breath, made his heart go like that; one could not fake those symptoms of affection.
Then a square of light fell onto the driveway and lighted, too, the byre’s interior. The front door had been opened and somebody came out; footfall upon gravel.
She said: ‘Somebody’s coming.’
The steps came nearer and reached the French windows, a figure moving in the darkness, a shadow. Matthew wanted her only to answer his question – gauche though it may have been, it expressed everything that he now felt. Because I’m fed up, he thought, with being lonely, and out of place, and seeing everybody else in the company of somebody they love. That was why he wanted an answer to his question.
‘Please tell me,’ he said. ‘Please just think about it.’
She did not have the time to answer, or if she answered he could not hear. Young East Lothian, his pipes under his arm, was inflating the bag, his drones were beginning to wail; that protest of the pipes before they wrought their magic. He had gone out there to warm up, and now he began to play.
‘“Mist-covered Mountains”,’ said Matthew. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Yes,’ said Pat. And then: ‘That question you just asked . . .’
‘You don’t have to answer,’ said Matthew. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘But I want to . . .’ she said, and his heart gave a great leap; then descent: ‘I want to think about it. Give me . . . give me a few weeks.’
‘Of course.’
Outside, the ‘Mist-covered Mountains’ continued; such a tune, expressing all the longing, the love, that we feel for country and place, and for people.
47. Stuart Reflects
Stuart Pollock, statistician in the Scottish Executive (with special responsibility for the adjustment of forecasts), husband of Irene Pollock, father of Bertie (6) and Ulysses (4 months); co-proprietor of the second flat (right) in 44 Scotland Street, Edinburgh; all of this is what Stuart was, and all of these descriptors he now mulled over as he walked