Scotsmen don’t cry (much)
Pat offered to work her notice. “I don’t want to leave you in the lurch,” she said. “You’ve been so good to me, Matthew.”
Matthew said nothing. Like all truly good people, he was unaware of his goodness. He was not a moral philosopher, with a theory as to why we should act in one way rather than another; he simply acted in the way he did in order to avoid pain in others. That, of course, might be called a moral theory, but it did not answer the more difficult question as to why it was wrong, rather than merely uncomfortable, to inflict pain on others.
Now Pat was staring at him. Had he looked at her more closely, he might have noticed that she was close to tears; but he was not looking at her at all. He was staring out of the window, engaged in a private emotional battle of his own. Matthew, at heart, did not want the world to change. He liked things to remain the same, for people to continue to do what they had always done, for the world about him to look more or less the way it had always looked – or at least the way it had looked to him over the past few years; for newspapers and clothing and what came out of the radio to be recognisable and not too surprising; for continuity to be the prevailing note in human affairs. That was not to say that he was insensitive to that which was wrong in the world about us – he was well enough aware of that, and had a stronger dislike of injustice and suffering than many others who wore their hearts more conspicuously on their sleeves; it was just that he wished such things would go away without disturbing everything else. The radical, the iconoclast, knew in his stomach that this would not happen, that only by upheaval would the wrongs of the world be rooted out, and would mock Matthew’s naivety in these matters. And yet Matthew, when it came to the minor decisions of his personal world, probably acted more kindly than many of those who loudly professed a reformist role. The loudly good are often not the best of people; the intuitively good, to whom it may not occur ever to discuss what they do, let alone why they do it, may be morally unsung, but are heroes nonetheless.
And now, consistent with that disposition, he said to Pat, “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to work your notice because …” He turned to her and smiled. “Because I have no idea what your notice should be. How do you work that out with a part-time job like yours?”
She started to protest, but he cut her short. “No, you don’t have to worry, Pat. You can go whenever you like. This afternoon, if you like. I’ll give you …” He hesitated before deciding. The gallery barely made a profit, but that was not the point. Matthew had funds behind him, and he had always been generous with these. It was that generosity that had led him to invest heavily in Big Lou’s business, and now it manifested itself again. “I’ll give you three months’ pay. As a sort of thank you present.” He rapidly changed that. “No, I shouldn’t call it a present – it’s not. It’s something you’re entitled to.”
Pat shook her head vigorously. “I can’t accept that, Matthew. That’s really kind, but … But you don’t have to.”
He brushed her objections aside.
“Please, let’s not argue.” He paused. “And I really don’t mind if you finish right now. Today. It’s not that I want to get rid of you – I don’t. I just don’t want to hold you up.” “Oh, Matthew …”
“No, I’m serious. When did they want you to start at the Gargantuan?”
Pat looked embarrassed. “They did mention next week … I told them, though, that I had this job and …”
“No, that’s fine by me. Really.” He smiled. “Imagine, Pat – just imagine. Working in the Gargantuan … in Paris. Mixing with people who really know what they’re talking about.”
Pat laughed. “But I’ve been working with somebody like that for years now. You.”
Matthew blushed. “Not me. No, you don’t mean me.”
“I do,” said Pat. “Maybe at the beginning you didn’t, but then nobody knows what they’re doing when they first do it, do they? The important thing in the art world is to have an eye. And you, Matthew, have that.”
He blushed more deeply, and shook his head. “I don’t – not really.”
Pat opened the top drawer of her desk and gazed at the contents. “I don’t want to leave a mess. I should sort this out.”
Matthew said that he would do that. “And it isn’t a mess, anyway. You’ve always been tidy.” He paused. “Where will you live in Paris?”
“I have a friend,” Pat answered. “She and I were at school together. She was half-french and she went to university there. She works for UNESCO. She arranges exhibitions. Her Italian flatmate is going back to Rome.” “Convenient.”
“Yes. It’s a fabulous flat. It belonged to her grandmother, who died. She left it to Angie – that’s my friend – and her sister. The sister lives in Lyons. She’s older than Angie and she’s married to a surgeon. He’s Congolese. Angie wants to buy them out of the flat if she can. She’s looking into ways of doing that.”
Matthew nodded. “It’s simpler that way. Having two people owning the same place never works …”
“Except sometimes.”
He laughed. “I suppose so. People can share. It shouldn’t be that hard.” He looked at his watch. “I was thinking of closing. I should help with bath-time back at home.”
Pat smiled at the thought of bathing three boys as active as the triplets were. “That’ll be splashy,” she said.
“It always is.”
And then Matthew took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. And Pat knew that he was actually crying, and she rose to her feet, crossed the room, and put her arm about him.
“Matthew, I don’t have to take this job. I don’t have to go to Paris.”
He shook his head. “Don’t talk nonsense. Of course you do. It’s just that … It’s just that I’m thinking of how much I’ve liked having you … in my life, I sup - pose. Yes, I have. I’ve liked having you in my life.”
She comforted him. “I’ve liked having you in mine.”
“It’s odd,” he said. “It’s odd, isn’t it? We hardly ever say that sort of thing to peo - ple. We hardly ever tell them that.” “Well, we should,” she said.
“Of course, we should. But we don’t because we’re …” He struggled to think of how he might put it.
“Because we’re Scottish? Is that it?” He nodded, mutely. His tears were flowing freely now.
“And Scottish men have to be tough, don’t they?” Pat continued. “They have to pretend not to have feelings. They have the whole football-culture, macho, hardman rubbishy face to put on, while inside they’re wanting to be something else altogether.”
Matthew nodded again.
“We have to rewrite our myths,” muttered Pat.
‘Matthew took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. And Pat knew that he was actually crying, and she rose to her feet, crossed the room, and put her arm about him’