The Onion Memory
it there, at the back of her mind – one of those doubts which could be profoundly disturbing if it were allowed to come to the fore.
Reaching the door, Matthew turned back and looked in her direction. She caught his eye, and smiled at him, and he did return the smile as he disappeared through the doorway into the night. Pat stared at the doorway and was still staring when Bruce came in, together with Sally, laughing at some private joke. She had her arms about his shoulders and was whispering into his ear.
87. The Onion Memory
“Know them?” asked Angus Lordie, noticing the direction of Pat’s stare.
For a moment Pat said nothing, and she watched Bruce and Sally squeeze past the knot of people at the doorway and go over to the bar. This manoeuvre brought them closer to the table at which she was sitting with Angus Lordie, and so she averted her gaze. She did not want Bruce to see her, and any meeting with that American girl would be awkward – after the incident with the dressing gown.
“Do I know them?” she muttered, and then, turning back to face Angus Lordie, she replied: “Yes, I do. He’s my flatmate. He’s called Bruce Anderson.”
“Terrific name,” said Angus Lordie. “You might play rugby for Scotland with a name like that. Cyril’s name – Cyril Lordie
– would be useless for rugby, wouldn’t it? The selectors would choke on it and pass you by! You just can’t play rugby if you’re called Cyril, and that’s all there is to it. It’s got nothing to do with being a dog.”
Pat said nothing to this. Of course Bruce’s name was wonderfuclass="underline" Bruce – a strong, virile, confident name. Bruce and Pat. Pat and Bruce. Yes. But then cruel reality intruded: Bruce and Sally.
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Pat looked at Angus, who smiled at her. His conversation was extraordinary. Many of the things he said seemed to come from nowhere, and seemed so eccentric; it appeared that he looked at things from an entirely different angle, which was fun, and exhilarating. He was the opposite of boring, the opposite of poor Matthew. And that, she thought, was why Matthew had felt obliged to leave. This man made him feel dull, which Matthew was, of course.
Angus Lordie was looking towards the bar, where Bruce and Sally were standing, Bruce in the process of ordering drinks.
“That girl,” he said. “His girlfriend, I take it? You know her?”
Pat cast a glance at Bruce and Sally, and then looked quickly away. “Not very well,” she said. “In fact, I’ve only met her once.
She’s American.”
“American? Interesting.” Angus Lordie paused. “What do you think she sees in him?”
He waited for Pat to answer, and when she did not, he answered his own question. “He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?
With that hair of his. He’s got something on it, hasn’t he? Yes.
Well, I suppose that if I looked like that I’d have American girls hanging on my arm too.”
Pat looked at Angus Lordie. Did he really still think like that
– at the age of fifty, or whatever he was? It was sad to think that he still wanted to be in the company of girls like Sally because that would doom him to a life of yearning after people who inevitably would be interested in younger men and not in him.
Mind you, he was good-looking himself, and if one did not know his real age he could pass for rather younger – forty perhaps.
She suddenly stopped herself. It had occurred to her that Angus Lordie might actually be interested in her. He had smiled when he had seen her, and had made his way straight to their table. Did this mean that he . . . that he had designs on her, as her mother would put it? In her mother’s view of the world, men had designs, and it was the responsibility of women to detect these designs and, in most cases, to thwart them. It was different, of course, if designs were honourable; in that case, they ceased to be designs sensu stricto.
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Angus Lordie had stopped looking at Bruce and Sally. He sighed. “I knew an American girl once,” he said. “A lovely girl.
It was rather a long time ago, when I lived up in Perthshire. I had left the Art College and had moved into an old mill house in our glen – yes, we had half a glen in those days – my father, I may as well tell you, was one of those Perthshire pocket lairds
– and there I was, twenty whatever, thinking that the London galleries would come knocking at my door at any moment. I lived la vie bohème, Perthshire version, but in great comfort actually. I used to get up at eleven and paint until three or so. Then I’d go for a walk and have people round for dinner in the evening. Life was pretty good.
“Then this American girl turned up. She was staying with some people in Comrie, wandering around Europe in general and had ended up there. She used to come over and see me and we would sit and talk for hours at the kitchen table. I made her mugs of tea in some wonderful old Sutherlandware mugs I had, beautiful things. And the air outside smelled of coconut from the broom in blossom and there were those long evenings when the light went on forever. And, I tell you, I could have conquered the world, conquered the world . . .”
He broke off, looking up to the ceiling. His glass of whisky, half empty now, was in his hand. Pat was silent, and indeed it was as if the whole bar was silent, although it was not.
After a moment, Angus Lordie looked at Pat. She noticed that his eyes were watery, as if he were on the verge of tears.
“It is the onion memory that makes me cry,” he said quietly.
“Do you know that line?”
Pat replied gently. “No. But it’s a lovely image. The onion memory.”
“Yes,” said Angus Lordie. “It is, isn’t it? I think it comes from a poem by Craig Raine. A fine poet. He talks about a love that was not to last, and thinking about it makes him cry. Such a good thing to do, you know – to cry. But forgive me, I shouldn’t talk like this. You have everything before you. There’s no reason for you to feel sad.”
Pat hesitated. There was something about Angus Lordie that
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invited confidence; there was an intimacy in his manner that made one want to speak about things which mattered.
“I do feel a bit sad,” she said, toying with her glass as she spoke. “I feel sad because that boy over there, Bruce . . . he’s with another girl, and . . .”
Angus Lordie reached out and patted her on the arm. “My dear, you need say no more. I understand.” He glanced over at Bruce and Sally. “This must be very painful for you.”
“It is.”
“Of course it is.” He picked up his glass and downed the last of his whisky. “Let us leave this place. Let us leave this place and visit our dear friend, Domenica Macdonald. She is most hospitable and she is always, always, very good at driving away regrets of every sort. Cyril can wait outside, tied to a railing. He loves Scotland Street. It’s the smells, I think. So much smellier than Drummond Place.”
88. Big Lou Receives a Phone Call
As Angus Lordie was proposing to Pat that they leave the comfortable purlieus provided by the Cumberland Bar, Big Lou, coffee bar proprietrix and auto-didact, was standing in her flat in Canonmills, looking out of the window. She normally ate early, but that evening she had not felt hungry and was only now beginning to think of dinner. She had been reading, as she usually did when she returned from work, and was still immersed in Proust.