1. Stuff Happens
Pat stood before the door at the bottom of the stair,
reading the names underneath the buttons. Syme, Macdonald,
Pollock, and then the name she was looking for: Anderson.
That would be Bruce Anderson, the surveyor, the person to
whom she had spoken on the telephone. He was the one who
collected the rent, he said, and paid the bills. He was
the one who had said that she could come and take a look
at the place and see whether she wanted to live there.
"And we'll take a look at you," he had added. "If you
don't mind."
So now, she thought, she would be under inspection,
assessed for suitability for a shared flat, weighed up to
see whether she was likely to play music too loudly or
have friends who would damage the furniture. Or, she
supposed, whether she would jar on anybody's nerves.
She pressed the bell and waited. After a few moments
something buzzed and she pushed open the large black door
with its numerals, 44, its lion's head knocker, and its
tarnished brass plate above the handle. The door was
somewhat shabby, needing a coat of paint to cover the
places where the paintwork had been scratched or chipped
away. Well, this was Scotland Street, not Moray Place or
Doune Terrace; not even Drummond Place, the handsome
square from which Scotland Street descended in a steep
slope. This street was on the edge of the Bohemian part of
the Edinburgh New Town, the part where lawyers and
accountants were outnumbered -- just -- by others.
She climbed up four flights of stairs to reach the top
landing. Two flats led off this, one with a dark green
door and no nameplate in sight, and another, painted blue,
with a piece of paper on which threenames had been written
in large lettering. As she stepped onto the landing, the
blue door was opened and she found herself face-to-face
with a tall young man, probably three or four years older
than herself, his dark hair en brosse and wearing a rugby
jersey. Triple Crown, she read. Next year. And after that,
in parenthesis, the word: Maybe.
"I'm Bruce," he said. "And I take it you're Pat."
He smiled at her, and gestured for her to come into the
flat.
"I like the street," she said. "I like this part of town."
He nodded. "So do I. I lived up in Marchmont until a year
ago and now I'm over here. It's central. It's quiet.
Marchmont got a bit too studenty."
She followed him into a living room, a large room with a
black marble fireplace on one side and a rickety bookcase
against the facing wall.
"This is the sitting room," he said. "It's nothing great,
but it gets the sun."
She glanced at the sofa, which was covered with a faded
chintzy material stained in one or two places with spills
of tea or coffee. It was typical of the sofas which one
found in shared flats as a student; sofas that had been
battered and humiliated, slept on by drunken and sober
friends alike, and which would, on cleaning, disgorge
copious sums in change, and ballpoint pens, and other bits
and pieces dropped from generations of pockets.
She looked at Bruce. He was good-looking in a way which
one might describe as . . . well, how might one describe
it? Fresh-faced? Open? Of course, the rugby shirt gave it
away: he was the sort that one saw by the hundred, by the
thousand, streaming out of Murrayfield after a rugby
international. Wholesome was the word which her mother
would have used, and which Pat would have derided. But it
was a useful word when it came to describe Bruce.
Wholesome.
Bruce was returning her gaze. Twenty, he thought. Quite
expensively dressed. Tanned in a way which suggested
outside pursuits. Average height. Attractive enough, in a
rather willowy way. Not my type (this last conclusion,
with a slight tinge of regret).
"What do you do?" he asked. Occasions like this, he
thought, were times for bluntness. One might as well find
out as much as one could before deciding to take her, and
it was he who would have to make the decision because Ian
and Sarah were off travelling for a few months and they
were relying on him to find someone.
Pat looked up at the cornice. "I'm on a gap year," she
said, and added, because truth required it after
all: "It's my second gap year, actually."
Bruce stared at her, and then burst out laughing. "Your
second gap year?"
Pat nodded. She felt miserable. Everybody said that.
Everybody said that because they had no idea of what had
happened.
"My first one was a disaster," she said. "So I started
again."
Bruce picked up a matchbox and rattled it absent-mindedly.
"What went wrong?" he asked.
"Do you mind if I don't tell you? Or just not yet."
He shrugged. "Stuff happens," he said. "It really does."
After her meeting with Bruce, Pat returned to her parents'
house on the south side of Edinburgh. She found her father
in his study, a disorganised room stacked with back copies
of the Journal of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She
told him of the meeting with Bruce.
"It didn't last long," she said. "I had expected a whole
lot of them. But there was only him. The others were away
somewhere or other."
Her father raised an eyebrow. In his day, young people had
shared flats with others of the same sex. There were some
mixed flats, of course, but these were regarded as being a
bit - how should one put it? -- adventurous. He had shared
a flat in Argyle Place, in the shadow of the Sick Kids'
Hospital, with three other male medical students. They had
lived there for years, right up to the time of graduation,
and even after that one of them had kept it on while he
was doing his houseman's year. Girlfriends had come for
weekends now and then, but that had been the exception.
Now, men and women lived together in total innocence
(sometimes) as if in Eden.
"It's not just him?" he asked. "There are others?"
"Yes," she said. "Or at least I think so. There were four
rooms. Don't worry."
"I'm not worrying."
"You are."
He pursed his lips. "You could always stay at home, you
know. We wouldn't interfere."
She looked at him, and he shook his head. "No," he went
on. "I understand. You have to lead your own life. We know
that. That's what gap years are for."
"Exactly," said Pat. "A gap year is . . ."
She faltered. She was not at all sure what a gap year was
really for, and this was her second. Was it a time in
which to grow up? Was it an expensive indulgence, a rite
de passage for the offspring of wealthy parents? In many
cases, she thought, it was an expensive holiday: a spell
in South America imposing yourself on a puzzled community
somewhere, teaching them English and painting the local
school. There were all sorts of organisations that
arranged these things. There might even be one called
Paint Aid, for all she knew -- an organisation which went
out and painted places that looked in need of a coat of
paint. She herself had painted half a school in Ecuador
before somebody stole the remaining supplies of paint and
they had been obliged to stop.
Her father waited for her to finish the sentence, but she
did not. So he changed the subject and asked her when she
was going to move in. He would transport everything, as he
always did; the bundles of clothing, the bedside lamp, the
suitcases, the kettle. And he would not complain.
"And work?" he asked. "When do you start at the gallery?"
"Tuesday," said Pat. "They're closed on Mondays. Tuesday's
my first day."
"You must be pleased about that," said her
father. "Working in a gallery. Isn't that what most of you
people want to do?"
"Not in particular," said Pat, somewhat irritated. Her
father used the expression you people indiscriminately to
encompass Pat, her age group, and her circle of friends.
Some people wanted to work in a gallery, and perhaps there
were a lot of those, but it was hardly a universal desire.
There were presumably some people who wanted to work in
bars, to work with beer, so to speak; and there were
people, plenty of people, who would find themselves quite
uncomfortable in a gallery. Bruce, for instance, with his
rugby shirt and his en brosse haircut. He was not gallery
material.
That had been another interview altogether. She had seen
the discreet, hand-written notice in the window of the
gallery a few streets away. A bit of help wanted.
Reception. Answering the phone -- that sort of thing. The
wording had been diffident, as if it was almost indecent
to suggest that anybody who read it might actually be
looking for something to do. But when she had gone in and
found the tall, slightly lost-looking young man sitting at
his desk -- the wording had seemed perfect.
"It's not much of a job," he had said. "You won't have to
sell any paintings, I expect. You'll just be providing
cover for me. And you'll have to do the occasional other
thing. This and that. You know."
She did not know, but did not ask. It looked as if he
might have found it tedious to give the details of the
job. And he certainly asked her nothing about herself, not
even her name, before he sat back in his chair, folded his
arms, and said: "The job's yours if you want it. Want it?"
2. A Room with a Smell
Bruce had shown Pat the vacant room in the flat and this
had brought home to him what a complete slut Anna had
been. He had asked her to clean the room before she left --
he had asked her at least twice -- and she had assured
him, twice, that it would be done. But he should have
known that she did not mean it, and now, looking at the
room with a visitor's eyes, he saw what she had done. The
middle of the carpet had been vacuumed, and looked clean
enough, but everywhere else looked dirty and neglected.
The bed, pulled halfway away from the wall, had large
balls of dust under it, as well as a collapsed stack of
magazines. A glass of water, with lipstick stains on the
rim, had been left on the bedside table. She had moved out
a week ago and he should have checked, but he had always
hated going into the room while she was there and her
presence somehow lingered. So he had left the door closed
and tried to forget that she had ever lived there.
Pat stood still for a moment. There was a musty odour to
the room; a smell of unwashed sheets and clothes.
"It's got a great view," said Bruce, striding across to
draw the curtains, which had been left half-
closed. "Look," he said. "That's the back of that street
over there and that's the green. Look at the pigeons."
"It's big enough," said Pat, uncertainly.
"It's not just big, it's huge," said Bruce. "Huge."
Pat moved over towards the wardrobe, a rickety old oak
wardrobe with half-hearted art nouveau designs carved up
each side. She reached out to open it. Bruce drew his
breath. That slut Anna, that slut, had probably left the
cupboard full of her dirty washing. That was just the sort
of thing she would do; like a child, really, leaving
clothes on the floor for the adults to pick up.
"That's a wardrobe," he said, hoping that she would not
try to open it. "I'll clean it out for you. It might have
some of her stuff still in it."
Pat hesitated. Was the smell any stronger near the
wardrobe? She was unsure.
"She didn't keep the place very clean, did she?" she said.
Bruce laughed. "You're right. She was a real slut, that
girl. We were all pleased when she decided to go over to
Glasgow. I encouraged her. I said that the job she had
been offered sounded just fine. A real opportunity."
"And was it?"
Bruce shrugged. "She fancied herself getting into
television journalism. She had been offered a job making
tea for some producer over there. Great job. Great tea
possibilities."
Pat moved towards the desk. One of the drawers was half-
open and she could see papers inside.
"It almost looks as if she's planning to come back," she
said. "Maybe she hasn't moved out altogether."
Bruce glanced at the drawer. He would throw all this out
as soon as Pat went. And he would stop forwarding her mail
too.
"If there's any danger of her coming back," he said,
smiling, "we'll change the locks."
Later, when Pat had left, he went back to the room and
opened the window. Then he crossed the room to the
wardrobe and looked inside. The right-hand side was empty,
but on the left, in the hanging section, there was a large
plastic bag, stuffed full of clothes. This was the source
of the musty odour, and, handling it gingerly, he took it
out. Underneath the bag was a pair of abandoned shoes, the
soles curling off. He picked these up, looked at them with
disgust, and dropped them into the open mouth of the
plastic bag.
He moved over to the desk. The top drawer looked as if it
had been cleared out, apart from a few paper clips and a
chipped plastic ruler. The drawer beneath that, half-open,
had papers in it. He picked up the paper on the top and
looked at it. It was a letter from a political party
asking for a donation to a fighting fund. A smiling
politician beamed out from a photograph. I know you care,
said the politician, in bold type, I know you care enough
to help me care for our common future. Bruce grimaced,
crumpled up the letter, and tossed it into the black
plastic bag. He picked up the next piece of paper and
began to read it. It was handwritten, the second or
subsequent page of a letter as it began halfway through a
sentence: which was not very clever of me! Still, I wasn't
going to see them again and so I suppose it made no
difference. And what about you? I don't know how you put
up with those people you live with. Come through to
Glasgow. I know somebody who's got a spare room in her
flat and who's looking for somebody. That guy Bruce sounds
a creep. I couldn't believe it when you said that you
thought he read your letters. You reading this one, Bruce?
It was settled. Pat had agreed to move in, and would pay
rent from the following Monday. The room was not cheap, in
spite of the musty smell (which Bruce pointed out was
temporary) and the general dinginess of the decor (which
Bruce had ignored). After all, as he pointed out to Pat,
she was staying in the New Town, and the New Town was
expensive whether you lived in a basement in East
Claremont Street (barely New Town, Bruce said) or in a
drawing-room flat in Heriot Row. And he should know, he
said. He was a surveyor.