Espresso Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

must have intuitively worked out that there was potential in that casual encounter and had acted with swiftness and ingenuity. She had set up a meeting which would enable nature to take its course–if that was the course that nature intended to take. They would meet for dinner at Domenica’s flat and if the look were given again, then they could take it further. No doubt Domenica would ease the way, perhaps by suggesting that they go out after dinner to the Cumberland Bar and then she would herself decline on the grounds of tiredness, leaving the field open for the two of them.
    I should be grateful to her, Pat thought, and now, back in her flat, she realised that she had been churlish. She wondered whether to cross the landing and apologise there and then, but she decided against that. An apology would lead to a conversation and she did not feel in the mood for further discussions. She felt slightly light-headed, in fact, as if she had drunk a glass of champagne on an empty stomach. She went through to her bedroom, lay down on her bed, and closed her eyes, imagining herself back in the café with Peter standing beside the table, staring at her. She remembered the way he stooped–like the other tall employees–and he put the coffee down in front of her and then looked up. What had he been wearing? She had hardly noticed, but it was a white shirt, was it not? And jeans, like everybody else. If one could not remember somebody’s trousers, then jeans were the safe default. Indeed, “defaults” was a good name for jeans. I put on my
defaults.
It sounded quite right.
    She got up off her bed and picked up her key from the table. Bruce was in the flat–she had noticed that his door was closed, which inevitably meant that he was in–but she had no desire to talk to him. Bruce was history in every sense of the word. He was history at the firm of Macauley Holmes Richardson Black, where he had lost his job as a surveyor after being found having an intimate lunch in the Café St Honoré with the wife of his boss–an intimate
and
innocent lunch, but not so to the outside observer, unfortunately in this case his boss himself.
    And he was history in Pat’s eyes, too, as she had quite recovered from her brief infatuation with him. How could I? she had asked herself, in agonising self-reproach. To which a Latinist, if there were one about, might have answered
amor furor brevis est
–love (like anger) is a brief madness. The most prosaic of observations, but, like many such observations, acutely true. And one might add: if love is a brief madness, then it is often also sadness, and sometimes, alas, badness.
    She left the flat and walked down to Henderson Row, where she bought a small bunch of flowers. This she subsequently placed outside Domenica’s door, where she might pick it up when next she opened it.

8. An Exchange of Cruel Insults
    It was not that there was an atmosphere between Bruce and Pat; relations, in fact, were quite cordial. Bruce was indifferent to the fact that she had rejected his advances (“her loss,” he told himself, “silly girl”). He knew, of course, that she had been besotted by him–any man would have realised that–and for Bruce it was nothing in the least unusual for a woman to feel like that about him. Indeed, it was the normal way of things, and Bruce would have been surprised if Pat had not found herself in this position, sharing the flat, as they did, when she had every opportunity to be in close proximity to him. Poor girl! It must have been hard for her, he thought; rather like living with a full fridge or store-cupboard when one is on a strict diet. One may look, but not touch. What a pity!
    There had been a brief period during which Pat had seemed to avoid him–and he had noticed that. However, he had been tolerant. If it helped her to stay out of his way for a few days, then that was her way of dealing with the situation