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Sasha laughed. “Very droll,” she said. “Now listen, did you talk to my daughter at all?”
“I did,” said Bruce. “We got on rather well.”
Sasha frowned. “That surprises me,” she said. “She’s been so contrary recently.”
“I didn’t notice that,” said Bruce.
“Well, quite frankly, she worries me,” Sasha went on. “And I wondered if you had any suggestions. You’re in her age group.
You might see something I’m missing.”
Bruce scrutinised the menu. He was not sure whether he liked this line of conversation.
“Let me give you an example,” Sasha went on. “At the ball, Lizzie won dinner for two at the Prestonfield Hotel. Now any normal girl would ask a friend along to join her. Lizzie didn’t do that. No, she telephoned the hotel and asked them whether instead of a dinner for two she could have two separate dinners for one. Can you believe that?”
Bruce thought for a moment. “Perhaps she wasn’t in the mood for company,” he said. “We all feel like that sometimes.”
“But that’s how she seems to feel all the time,” said Sasha, showing some exasperation. “She seems to make no effort to get friends. Or a decent job, for that matter.”
“People are different,” said Bruce. “She’s not into drugs, I take it? She’s not running around with a Hell’s Angel, is she?
Well then, what have you got to complain about? What do you want her to do anyway?”
“I want her to find a circle of friends,” said Sasha. “Nice young people. I want her to have a good time. Maybe get a boyfriend. An outgoing type, who’d take her places. Give her some fun.”
Bruce looked down at the table and moved his fork slightly, to make it parallel with his knife, as an obsessive-compulsive might do. She means somebody like me, he thought. Well, if the point about all this is to see whether I’m available, the answer will have to be no. There are limits to what one should do in the line of duty.
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“She’ll meet somebody,” he said airily. “Give her the space.
Let her get on with it.”
“But she does nothing,” said Sasha. “How can she meet somebody suitable if she won’t go out with people? She needs to get into a group. You wouldn’t be able to introduce her . . .”
Bruce did not allow her to finish her sentence. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very much involved with an American girl at the moment.
I’m not really socialising in a crowd. I used to. But not now.”
For a few moments the disappointment registered on Sasha’s face, but she quickly recovered her composure. “Of course,” she said. “I hadn’t intended to ask you. I just wondered if you knew of anybody she might get to know. Parties, perhaps. That sort of thing.”
“Sorry,” said Bruce.
“Well, let’s not think about it any more. I’m sure you’re right.
She’ll sort herself out. Now, what are you going to have?
Remember this is on me!”
They ordered their lunch, and a bottle of Chardonnay. They talked, easily, and in a friendly way. Sasha told a most amusing story about a scandal at her tennis club, and Bruce passed on a piece of office gossip which Todd had not mentioned to her –
something about one of the secretaries. Then they talked about plans for the summer.
“Raeburn was thinking of going to Portugal,” said Sasha. “We have friends with a villa there. It has a tennis court too.”
“I like tennis,” said Bruce. “I used to play a lot.”
“I bet you were a strong player,” said Sasha. She pictured him for a moment in tennis whites. His arms would be strong; his service hard to return.
“Moderately,” said Bruce. “I need to work on my backhand.”
“Don’t we all!” said Sasha. “But look at your wrists. They’re ideal for tennis. Look.”
She reached out and took hold of his wrist playfully. “Yes,”
she said. “A real tennis player’s wrist. You should keep up your game.”
It was at that point that Todd came in. He had arranged to meet a colleague from another firm for lunch, to discuss,
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very tentatively, a possible merger. He did not see this colleague, who was late, but he did see his wife, sitting at a table in the window, holding hands with that young man from the office.
For a moment he did not move. Bruce looked up, and saw him, and pulled his wrist away from Sasha’s grasp. She looked round in astonishment and saw Todd, who was beckoning to Bruce.
Bruce stood up, shocked. ‘I’ll explain to him,” he mumbled.
Todd stared at Bruce as he came towards him. Very slowly, he lifted a hand and pointed directly at Bruce.
“You’re history,” he said quietly. “You’re history.”
“It’s not what you think,” said Bruce. “We were talking about tennis.”
Todd did not seem to hear this. “You have an hour to clear your desk,” hissed Todd. “You hear me? An hour.”
“You can’t dismiss people like that,” said Bruce, his voice faltering. “Not these days.”
“You listen to me,” said Todd. “Some time ago you did a survey of a flat and said that you had looked into the roof space.
Well, I went and checked – and you hadn’t. You lied. I’ve been keeping that up my sleeve. You’re history.”
Bruce stood quite still. It was a strange feeling, being history.
108. Action Is Taken
One of Matthew’s problems, thought Pat, was that he seemed unwilling to make decisions. The way he had behaved over the Peploe? – now the non-Peploe – was an example of his chronic lack of decisiveness. Had it not been for the fact that Big Lou had met Guy Peploe, with the result that Matthew had been pushed into action, it was doubtful whether they would have identified the painting as being by somebody other than Peploe.
Nor would they have discovered that it was probably an overpainting. That had been established by Guy Peploe himself, who had spotted the shape of an umbrella above a mountain.
Now that some progress had been made with the painting, the matter should be taken further. If it was indeed an overpainting, then what lay underneath could be of some interest
– although still probably no more than the work of some gauche amateur. Pat had asked Matthew whether he was planning to do anything about it, but he had simply shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I can’t think of who would paint an umbrella.”
“A French impressionist?” suggested Pat. “They were always painting people with umbrellas. There’s that famous one in the Art Institute of Chicago. I saw it when we went there with the Academy Art Department. They were very good, you know, the art people at the Academy. Mrs Hope. Mr Ellis. Remember them?
They took us to all sorts of places. They were inspirational. That’s where I learned to love art.”
She saw Matthew shift in his seat as she spoke. There was something funny about Matthew. He had got up to something at school – she was sure of it. But what? So many people had their secrets – secrets that we are destined never to find out.
People had a past – she had Australia, but the least said about that the better. It was not her fault – she had never thought that
– except for one or two people who had said that she should not have spoken to that person in the café and that she should have realised that the man with the eye-patch was not what he claimed to be. She reflected for a moment – now that she was home, it Action Is Taken
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did not seem quite so bad. Indeed, it had been something of an adventure. Perhaps she should tell Domenica about it one of these days. She liked stories like that.
Matthew had changed the subject and nothing more was said about the non-Peploe until that afternoon, when the doorbell rang and Angus Lordie came into the gallery, followed by Cyril.