It may be that Big Lou would have urged Matthew to reveal his feelings to Pat – that would have been in keeping with her general tendency to speak directly – but if that is what she had been on the verge of doing, she was prevented from saying anything by the arrival of Eddie. Big Lou was now engaged to Eddie, the chef who had returned from Mobile, Alabama, with the intention of persuading Big Lou to marry him. She had readily agreed, as she loved Eddie, for all his inconsiderate treatment of her in the past, and an engagement notice had duly appeared in the personal columns of both The Scotsman, for the information of the general public, and The Courier, for the infor-No Flowers Please
45
mation of those who lived in Arbroath. The wording of this notice had been unfortunate, as Eddie had chosen it without consulting Big Lou. Both families are relieved to announce, it read, the engagement of Miss Lou Brown to Mr Edward McDougall. No flowers please.
When she had seen the notice, Big Lou’s hand had shot to her mouth in a gesture of shock. She was aghast, and she had telephoned Eddie immediately, her fingers shaking as she dialled his number. Before he answered, though, she replaced the handset in its cradle. Eddie was not good with words, and he had probably not realised how ridiculous the notice sounded.
And very few people read such notices, in Edinburgh at least; it was different, of course, in Arbroath, where the personal columns were scoured for social detail by virtually everybody.
Matthew, of course, had read it and had hooted with laughter.
Relieved? Were they serious? And as for the no flowers please, perhaps that was a typographical migration from the neighbouring deaths column. Even so, it made for a wonderful engagement notice. Poor Big Lou! She deserved something better, Matthew thought; something better than this rather greasy chef.
And now here was Eddie coming in for his morning coffee, his lanky hair hanging about his collar, which was none too clean as far as Matthew could make out. Eddie nodded in the direction of Matthew before he crossed the floor to speak to Lou.
“Well,” he announced proudly, “it’s mine.”
Big Lou looked at him uncomprehendingly and then burst into a broad smile. “The restaurant?”
“Aye,” said Eddie. “As from the end of the month. A year’s lease – and quite a bit cheaper than I had thought. They were keen to get me to take it. They lowered the price.”
Matthew raised an eyebrow. When people were keen to sell things and get other people to take things, there was usually a reason. Eddie might think that he had found a bargain, but there could be a serious snag lurking in the small print.
“Where is this place, Eddie?” Matthew asked.
“Stockbridge,” said Eddie. “Very close to Henderson Row.”
Matthew nodded. Stockbridge was a popular place for cafés 46
No Flowers Please
and restaurants. But why had the owners been so keen to get Eddie to take the lease? “That’s a good place to be,” he said.
“Was it a restaurant before?”
It was, Eddie said. He had spoken to the owner, who was retiring and going back to Sicily. He had been there for five years, he said, and was reluctant to leave.
“Have you looked at the books?” asked Matthew.
Eddie hesitated. “Books?”
Matthew glanced at Big Lou, who had picked up a cloth and had started to wipe the top of the bar, somewhat thoughtfully, Matthew felt.
“The accounts,” said Matthew quietly. “They show how a business has been doing. You know, profit and loss.”
Eddie turned to Big Lou, as if for support. She put down her cloth. “Eddie knows about restaurants, Matthew,” she said. “He kens fine.”
“But you should take a look at the books,” Matthew insisted.
“Before you put your money into anything, Eddie, you should ask to see the books. Just in case.”
Big Lou turned round and slid the coffee drawer out of the large Italian coffee machine. Noisily, she banged the tray on the side of a bin to loosen the used grounds. “It’s not Eddie’s money,” she said quietly. “It’s mine. I’m subbing Eddie on this one.”
Matthew glanced at Eddie, who was smiling encouragingly at Big Lou. “Well, you should look at the books, Lou,” he said.
“It’s basic . . .”
“Basic nothing,” said Big Lou firmly. “The real question is whether you know what you’re doing. It’s the same as farming.
You can’t teach somebody to be a farmer. You either know how to farm or you don’t. You understand restaurants, don’t you, Eddie?”
Eddie nodded gravely. “I do, Lou, doll.”
Big Lou looked at Matthew. “See, Matthew?”
Matthew was not one to be defeated so easily. He winced when Eddie called Big Lou “doll”. It was so condescending, so demeaning. And Big Lou was not doll-like; she was a large-How To Let Down the Opposite Sex Gently 47
boned woman, larger than Matthew, larger than Eddie himself, in fact. To call her “doll” was a travesty of the truth. And the thought that Eddie was going to take her money for his ill-advised restaurant venture was unbearable. Matthew knew that Big Lou had been exploited all her life. She had told him about how she had looked after that uncle in Arbroath and how she had worked all the hours of creation in that nursing home in Aberdeen. There had been no joy, no light in her life – only drudgery and service to others. And now here was Eddie about to take her money.
Matthew was on the point of saying something, but Eddie now addressed Big Lou. “And here’s another thing,” he said.
“I’ve negotiated with the waitresses. They’re going to stay on and work for me. Braw wee lassies.”
Big Lou paused. Then she picked up a spoon and began to ladle coffee into the small metal container. “Oh yes?” She sounded nonchalant, as if inquiring about a minor detail. But it was not minor. “What age are they?”
Eddie looked down at the ground. “One’s seventeen,” he said.
“Nice girl, called Annie.”
Big Lou’s tone was level. “Oh yes. And the other?”
“She’s sixteen, I think,” said Eddie.
Matthew watched Big Lou’s expression carefully. He knew, as did Lou, that Matthew’s bride in Mobile, Alabama – the one who had run away from him – had been sixteen. He would do anything to protect Big Lou from disappointment and sorrow.
But there was a certain measure of these things from which we cannot be protected, no matter what the hopes and intentions of our friends may be.
16. How To Let Down the Opposite Sex Gently While Matthew was at Big Lou’s, Pat remained in the gallery.
She regretted misleading Matthew about Wolf. It had been a lie, no matter how she might try to clothe it in the garb of 48
How To Let Down the Opposite Sex Gently kindness. There was something shoddy about lying, even if the motive for lying was concern for the feelings of another. She had wanted to protect Matthew from the disappointment of rebuff, but there was something else which had prompted her to lie, something else not so altruistic. Pat wanted to spare herself the embarrassment of telling Mathew that she did not want a deeper involvement with him. That was nothing to do with Matthew’s susceptibilities; that was to do with her own feelings.
She watched Matthew cross the road to Big Lou’s coffee bar.
He had been so chirpy in his new distressed-oatmeal sweater, and now he walked with his head down, staring at the ground in front of him. He looked disconsolate, and no doubt was. And yet, did she really owe Matthew anything? One could not pretend to have feelings that one did not really have. That, surely, was unkinder stilclass="underline" lying about an imaginary boyfriend might be considered cruel, but a precautionary let-down was surely less hurtful than a let-down after one has been allowed to cherish hopes.
Friendship, thought Pat, was for the most part straightforward, but the moment that friendship was complicated by sex, then its course became beset by dangers. One did not have to see every member of the opposite sex in a sexual light; quite the opposite, in fact: she had plenty of friends of the opposite sex with whom her relationship was entirely platonic. Such friendships, which rather surprised people of her father’s generation, were relaxed enough to allow sharing of tents on holiday or sleeping in the same room – on the sofa or the floor – without any suggestion of intimacy. That used not to be possible other than in exceptional conditions. She had heard from an aunt about the ethos of the Scottish mountaineering clubs in the past, when a form of purity allowed mixed bathing in Highland rivers without any suggestion of anything else. And she had read, too, that in Cambridge young men used to bathe in the river, naked, even when women passed sedately by in punts. Perhaps there was something about rivers that promoted this sense of purity; she was not sure.