Bruce ran a hand through his hair; cloves released. “Two jobs, actually. I left the first one after a week. The second one was more . . . how should I put it? More to my taste.”
She was interested in this. Bruce would never admit to being fired, but if he left the job after a week, then that must have been what happened. “Oh. What went wrong?” she asked.
Bruce began to smile. “You really want to know?”
Pat nodded. She did want to know.
“All right,” said Bruce. “I went for an interview for a job handling the commissioning of a portfolio of service flats. Not just any service flats – these were high-end places, Bayswater and so on. Diplomats – ones from serious countries, not Tonga, you know. Saudi, Brunei, places like that. Big Arabs. Fancy Japs.
Eurotrash. Serious money.
“This firm was doing the decorating, installing the bits and pieces – everything, really. And money was going to be no object.
Persian rugs – large ones – all the stuff you put in these places, you know – busts of Roman emperors, Hockney drawings, and so on. We were going to do the whole thing.”
Pat raised an eyebrow. “But you’re not a decorator, Bruce.
You’re . . .”
He did not let her finish. “Questioning my versatility, Patsy-girl? I’ve got an eye, you know.”
Pat shrugged. Bruce had known nothing about wine, but that seemed not to have stopped him being a success in the wine business. So perhaps it was confidence that counted, and he was definitely not short of that.
Bruce sat down on Pat’s desk. He adjusted the crease in his trousers. Chinos, Pat thought.
“So anyway,” he continued, “I went for the interview with 62
Bruce Enjoys Telling His London Story this guy. You should have seen him. Mr Colour Co-ordination himself. He knew how to match his trousers with his jacket. He was very nice. He asked me how I thought I could contribute, and I told him that I had managed properties in Edinburgh.
Then he showed me a picture of an empty room and asked me what I’d put into it. He fished out this catalogue full of antiques and said I should pick something from there. I did, but I had a feeling there was something else going on. He was looking at me, you see. Like this.”
Bruce turned sideways to Pat, glanced at her with widened eyes, and then looked away.
“Oh,” said Pat.
Bruce smiled. “See what I mean? What do you think a look like that means? Well, you’ll find out. The next thing he says is this: ‘Let me guess, Bruce – you’re Aries, aren’t you?’ Just like that. Coming on hard.”
Pat thought for a moment. She remembered Bruce’s birthday, and it was true. He was an Aries.
“He got it right,” she said.
“Yes. He got it right. But then he said: ‘Do you like cooking?’
Cooking! And that made it even clearer. So you know what I did? I knew that there were three or four people after this job – I’d seen them outside – and so I decided that I’d play along with all this. If that’s what it took to get the job, I was ready.
So I said: ‘Cooking? I adore it!’ Yes, I did! And he brightened up and said: ‘That’s great, just great. I love being in the kitchen.’
Or something like that. Then he looked at his watch and said:
‘If you want the job, Bruce, it’s yours.’ And so we got it all tied up there and then and I started at the beginning of the following week.”
Pat looked down. She did not like this, and she did not want to hear anymore. But Bruce continued.
“It was a great job. I was meant to source the things we needed for the flats and to chase up the painters and plumbers and whatnot. I made up the spreadsheets for the projects with time-lines and completion dates and stuff like that. It was great. But Bruce Enjoys Telling His London Story 63
then Rick – that was his name – invited me to a dinner party at his place. Boy! You should have seen it. Furniture to die for.
Big paintings – none of this Victorian junk you sell here. Big splashes of colour. And there was Rick in a caftan. Yes! I look around and think: where are the other guests? Surprise, surprise!
No other guests.
“‘Unfortunately, the others cancelled,’ said Rick. ‘So inconsiderate of them!’ He turns on the music.”
Pat listened to Bruce with growing horror. I can’t stand him, she thought. I can’t stand him. He led that poor man on just to get the job. I can’t stand him.
Bruce grinned. “So you know what I did? I said: ‘Rick, I’m terribly sorry. I’m just developing this terrible headache. Really bad.’ And I started to leave. So he says: ‘But Bruce, you haven’t had a thing to eat, not a thing! I can’t let you set off with a headache and an empty stomach.’ So I said that I wasn’t really hungry and that maybe another day, and so he says: ‘Tomorrow, Bruce? Same time?’ And that was it, really. I phoned him at the office next day and left a message that I wouldn’t be coming back. So that was the end of the job.”
Pat looked away. There was nothing worse, in her view, than talking about something like that, a private encounter in which one person misunderstands another and is made to look pathetic.
And Bruce was responsible for the whole misunderstanding by pretending to be gay. She turned back to him. “That’s really horrible,” she said. “Really horrible.”
“I know,” said Bruce, smiling broadly. “But I don’t hold it against him. Not really.”
Pat drew in her breath. It seemed impossible to dent his self-satisfaction, his utter self-assuredness. She wanted to hit him, because that, she thought, might be the only way of telling him what she felt. But she would not have had the chance, even if she had summoned up the courage, as Bruce now slid off the desk, patted her on the arm, and moved towards the door.
“À bientôt,” he said. “Which, translated into the patois of these parts, means: see yous!”
20. Miss Harmony Has News for the Children
“Now listen, everybody,” said Miss Harmony, clapping her hands to get attention. “We have some very interesting news.” She looked out over the class, seated in a circle round the room.
They were always somewhat excited at the beginning of a new term and usually took a few days to settle down, especially if there were any new members. As it happened, there were not, and indeed the class was one member down with the departure of Merlin. He had been withdrawn by his parents, who had decided to homeschool him for a trial period. Miss Harmony had not thought that a good idea, as she believed in the social-isation value of the classroom experience, particularly when the parents themselves were so odd. And she had the gravest doubts as to what Merlin’s mother could actually teach her son. There was something very disconcerting about that woman, Miss Harmony thought, her vague, mystical pronouncements, her interest in crystals, and her slightly fey appearance did not inspire confidence. But it was her choice, and it would be respected, although when she thought about it hard enough, she wondered exactly why one should respect the choices of others when those choices were so patently bad ones. That would require further thought, she decided.
Looking around the class, there were various other pupils whom she would quite happily have seen withdrawn for homeschooling. Larch was one, with his aggressive outlook and his
. . . well, she did not like to blame a child for his appearance, but there was no escaping the fact that Larch looked like a pugilist on day-release from Polmont Young Offenders’
Institution. He was rather frightening, actually, and he really did spoil the class photographs.
These thoughts, though, were not really very charitable and Miss Harmony accepted that she should put them firmly from her mind, but not before she had allowed herself a final reflection on how Hiawatha, too, might also benefit from homeschooling, which would remove the constant problem of his Miss Harmony Has News for the Children 65