But I do not want him, she told herself; I do not want this. I do not.
On impulse, she left the kitchen and walked into the hall and opened the cupboard to retrieve the ironing board. She had some clothes to iron. It was a task that she never enjoyed, but it was domestic and mindless and it would take her mind off him.
She flicked the switch inside the cupboard. There was the ironing board and there, of course, would be the painting, the Peploe? that she was looking after. But it was not, of course, and she gasped at the discovery.
“Something wrong?”
He was standing immediately behind her, and she was aware of the freshly-applied hair gel.
“There was something I was looking after.” Her voice faltered.
“A painting . . .”
Bruce laughed. “Oh that. Well, I’m very sorry, I got rid of that. I didn’t know it was yours. I thought . . .”
The Turning to Dust of Human Beauty 189
She turned to him aghast. Now he became defensive. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “If you leave things lying about in that cupboard they’re fair game. Rules of the flat. Always have been.”
69. The Turning to Dust of Human Beauty Domenica opened the door of her flat to a neighbour clearly in distress. Wordlessly, she ushered Pat in.
“I feel that I don’t even have to ask you,” she said as she led Pat into her study. “It’s him, isn’t it? Bruce.”
Pat nodded. She had fought back her tears while Bruce explained to her what had happened to the painting, but now they came, a cathartic flood. He had been unapologetic. “How was I to know?” he asked. “There are all sorts of things in there.”
“Can you get it back? You must know who has it.”
Bruce shrugged. “Some old couple won it. Ramsey something or other, and his gas-bag wife. I don’t know anything about them.
Sorry.”
Pat felt outraged. “You could ask,” she shouted. “That’s the least you could do.”
Bruce drew back, shaking a finger at her. “Temper! Temper!”
He had done this to her before, after the incident with the hair gel, and the effect had been the same: the provoking of a seething anger. But she had said nothing more; she felt too weak, too raw to do anything, but the exchange had ended with a weak promise from Bruce to ask Todd for the Dunbarton telephone number. A few minutes later she had heard the front door close as he left the flat, and she sat in her room, her head in her hands. How was she to tell Matthew, as she would have to do?
It occurred to her that she might lose the job at the gallery, and while she would be able to find something else, there was the ignominy of dismissal.
190
The Turning to Dust of Human Beauty Telling Domenica helped.
“It’s not the end of the world,” she said, when Pat had finished.
“You should be able to get it back. After all, these people who won it have no right to keep it. It was not Bruce’s to give in the first place, and that means that they can’t acquire any right to it.
It’s that simple.”
This had encouraged Pat, although doubts remained. “Are you absolutely sure about that?”
“Of course,” said Domenica. “Bruce effectively stole it from you. It’s stolen property. And stolen property is stolen property.”
Pat wiped at her eyes. “I feel so stupid,” she said. “Coming in here and burdening you with all this.”
Domenica reached out and laid a hand on her forearm. “You shouldn’t feel that. I’m very happy to help. And anyway, we all feel weak and sniffly from time to time.” She paused. “Of course, there is something else, isn’t there?”
Pat looked at her. Domenica could tell, she knew, but she was not at all sure if she wanted to speak about that.
Domenica smiled. “He’s got under your skin, hasn’t he?”
Pat did not answer. She stared down at the floor. She was thinking of her anger, her irritation with Bruce, but then the image came back to her of him standing there before the window, his shirt off. She looked up. Domenica was watching her.
“I thought that it might happen,” said Domenica. “I thought that it might happen in spite of everything. If one puts two people together and one of them is a young man like that, well . . .”
“I don’t like him,” said Pat. “You should hear what he says.”
“Oh, I know what Bruce is like,” said Domenica. “Remember that I’ve been his neighbour for some time. I know perfectly well what he’s like.”
“Well, why has this . . . why has this happened?”
Domenica sighed. “It’s happened for a very simple reason,”
she said. “It’s a matter of human reaction to the beautiful. It’s a matter of aesthetics.”
“I feel this way about Bruce because he’s . . .” It was difficult for her to say it, but the word was there in the air between them.
“Precisely,” said Domenica. “And that’s nothing new, is it?
The Turning to Dust of Human Beauty 191
That’s how people react to beauty, in a person or an object. We become intoxicated with it. We want to be with it. We want to possess it. And when that happens, we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised, although we often are.
“It’s an age-old issue,” she went on. “Our reaction to the beautiful occurs in the face of every single one of our intellectual pretensions. We may be very well aware that the call of beauty is a siren-call, but that doesn’t stop it from arresting us, seizing us, rendering us helpless. A soul-beguiling face will make anybody stop in their tracks, in spite of themselves.”
Pat listened in silence. Domenica was right, of course. Had Bruce not looked the way he looked, then she would have been either indifferent to him or actively hostile. He had done enough to earn her distaste, if not her enmity, with his condescension and his assumptions, and if it had not been for this aesthetic reaction, as Domenica called it, he would have been unable to affect her in this way. But the reality was that he had, and even now she cherished that moment of bizarre shared intimacy in his room, when he had removed his shirt and she had looked upon him.
“So,” said Domenica briskly. “Do you want my advice? Or my sympathy? Which is it to be?”
Pat thought for a moment. She had not expected these alternatives. She had expected, at the most, that Domenica would listen sympathetically and make a few general remarks, instead of which she had provided what seemed to be a complete diagnosis and was now offering something more.
“Your advice, I suppose.” She realised sounded grudging, which was not her intention, but her tone seemed not to disconcert Domenica.
“Well,” said Domenica. “It would seem to me that you have a clear choice. You can move out of the flat straightaway and endeavour never to see him again. That would be clean and quick, and, I suspect, rather painful. Or you can continue to live there and allow yourself to feel what you feel, but do it on your own terms.”
“And what would that mean – on my own terms?”
192
An Evening with Bruce
Domenica laughed. “Enjoy it,” she said. “Let yourself feel whatever it is that you feel, but just remember that at the end of the day he’s not for you and that you will have to get rid of him. And there’s another way in which this would be highly satisfactory.”
“Which is?”
“You might have the additional satisfaction of teaching him a lesson. He’s played with the affections of numerous young women
– that’s the type of boy he is. Teach him a lesson. Help him to moral maturity.”
“But what if I still feel something for him?”
“You won’t,” said Domenica. “Believe me, there’s nothing more brittle than human beauty. Encounter it. Savour it, by all means.
Then watch how it turns to dust.”