Temptation

somehow forgotten to soften and corrode.

They mounted the bikes. Pat wobbled for a few moments, and James, solicitous, asked, “Are you all right?” She had not answered before he said, “Of course you are.”

“I can’t remember when I last rode a bike,” said Pat. “Before I went to university, I think.”

She immediately regretted that mention of university, because he had yet to embark on his university career, and it underlined the difference between their ages. Five years? Something like that. Was that too much? And then she thought: but I’m being ridiculous. He’s just a friend, a young friend; nothing more than that. And he seemed so much more mature than the average eighteenyear-old, or whatever he was. That sometimes happened – there were people who

“I don’t know. Maybe they do. Remember, I was about fifteen at the time.” He paused. “What about you? What do girls fantasise about?”

“Oh, dreamy things. Having dinner with some guy who gives you a bunch of roses and then takes you for a ride in an open-top sports car along that road that goes around Arthur’s Seat. And you stop and look down at the city and the lights and he says ‘I really like your hair, you know’ …”

James smiled. “Or he says, ‘Where have you been all my life?’”

“Yes, that would do. Mind you, I don’t think anybody says that any more – or if they ever said it at all. Nobody’s said it to me.”

James looked straight ahead. “Where have you been all my life?” he muttered.

She concentrated on keeping her bicycle on a straight path. But she thought: in the fields on either side of the track; the thin line of cloud in the otherwise empty sky.

“Can you smell the gorse?” she shouted. “Can you smell it?”

“Yes,” he shouted back. “It makes me think of …”

“Of coconut.”

“Yes, that’s it. Of coconut.”

All too soon they had reached the farm where they would leave the bikes.

“I know these people,” said James. “The farmer here is a friend of my uncle’s.” “Of the Duke?”

“Yes. My uncle lets out some fields to him for his cattle. He has Aberdeen Angus. My uncle needs the money, as he’s not really very well off. He’s got a bit of money, I suppose, but he’s not rolling in it.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Pat. “You don’t need much money to be happy.”

“You know that he’s not a real duke? You know that?”

Pat nodded. “I’ve heard that. Somebody said it was the government’s fault. They broke a promise.”

“I think he has more fun being a bogus duke,” said James. “He has a terrific time. If he were a real duke he’d have to worry about all sorts of things.”

With the bicycles propped up against the wall of a sheep fank, they set off down the narrow footpath that James said would lead to Single Malt House. Pat did not want the walk to end. She wanted to be here, with this young man, on this blissful summer evening; she wanted their conversation, so easy, so relaxed, to continue. She wanted night to come upon them and for them to watch the sky darken together, and they would see the lights come up in the towns below them – and in the old mining villages, in Musselburgh, Prestonpans, and out at sea, where the ships cut through the Forth like tiny ploughs.