44 Scotland Street Episode 13 Schadenfreude

VOLUME 13 CHAPTER SEVEN

As Matthew crossed Dundas Street to Big Lou’s café, his thoughts were taken up with Pat, whom he had left in charge of the gallery while he took his customary, midmorning coffee break. Pat was still working for him part-time – an arrangement that suited both of them well. From Matthew’s point of view, it was useful to have somebody who knew what she was doing but who, at the same time, was flexible in her working hours. From Pat’s perspective, the job was ideal because she was now enrolled for a master’s degree at the university, and while that required she attend a certain number of seminars each week, it still left her time to earn some money. Working in a gallery, with a sympathetic employer like Matthew, was infinitely preferable to taking the sort of job that so many other students were obliged to make do with – working as a barista in a coffee bar, or, less glamorously, stacking shelves in a supermarket, both of which forms of employment tended to be paid at the minimum wage, or barely above it. Matthew paid more generously – in fact, he paid far too much, even in Pat’s opinion, although that was not a matter she planned to take up with him.

On that particular morning, Matthew had been troubled by Pat’s rather lacklustre greeting when she had arrived for work. Normally she smiled; normally she enquired after the latest doings of the boys, the triplets, Rognvald, Tobermory, and Fergus, whose exploits she had always followed with lively interest. But nothing was said about them that morning, and Pat simply nodded mutely when Matthew announced that he was going over the road to Big Lou’s.

He looked at her askance. “Is everything all right?”

She stared back at him, answering flatly, “Yes. Fine. Everything’s fine.”

It isn’t, thought Matthew, as he crossed Dundas Street. He had seen this before, and it had always been to do with boyfriends. She needs somebody, he said to himself. She’s fed up with being by herself. She needs a proper, decent boyfriend this time. Somebody who would be permanent, or at least semi-permanent. He paused. The opposite of Bruce .Thatwas the answer. And she also needed to have a sense of where she was going, which at the moment seemed to be nowhere. You’re going nowhere, he thought. That’s what he should say to her: You’re going nowhere. But that, of course, was not the sort of thing people liked to say to other people. As a general rule, those who were going nowhere did not appreciate being informed of the fact; and those who saw others going nowhere usually felt uncomfortable about pointing out another’s lack of direction.

Big Lou greeted him warmly as he entered the café. She was fond of Matthew, for all his faults, which were, in her view – the view from Arbroath, essentially – typical of the faults of Edinburgh people in general: a certain satisfaction with the way things were in Edinburgh; a tendency to believe that things in Glasgow were, at best, all right (if that was the sort of thing one liked); an attachment to a number of holy places (Murrayfield and Myreside rugby stadiums, Charlotte Square, et cetera); and a quaint theology that dictated that those who lived in places like London only did so because their karma, negatively influenced by failures in past lives, so dictated. Big Lou did not believe that it was a misfortune to be English, but she knew that many in Edinburgh flirted with that view, even if they were hesitant to express it in public. Matthew, she knew, was not like that, even if others were.

“So, Matthew,” she said as she ground the beans for his coffee. “What’s going on?”

“Not much, Lou,” he replied. And then he immediately qualified his response. “Actually, I’m a bit worried about Pat.”

Big Lou damped down the grounds with the small, plug-shaped instrument that Matthew calledher “coffee-packing-thingy”. “Oh, yes?” she said .“what’ s wrong with her?”

“I think she doesn’t know where she’s going.”

Big Lou raised an eyebrow. “Who does?”

“She barely said a word to me today,” Matthew continued. “She normally asks after the boys. Nothing.”

Big Lou shrugged. “People have their off-days, Matthew.”

“I know that,” he said. “But I think her situation is a bit grim. I was round at her flat last week – dropping in copy for a catalogue she’s been working on. And I met her flatmates. They’re seriously depressing, Lou.”

“Oh, well.”

“And I also think she doesn’t like being by herself. I think she’d like to have a boyfriend.”

Big Lou sighed. “Who wouldn’t?” “And I feel that she still has a bit of a thing for Bruce.”

Big Lou shook her head. “Bad mistake,” she said.

Matthew agreed. “Sometimes people just don’t learn. We repeat our mistakes, don’t we?”

Matthew’s coffee was now ready and Big Lou passed him the steaming latte. “One consolation of being over forty,” she said, “is that you have the pleasure of seeing people under forty fail to grasp things that you know they’ll grasp when they’re over forty.” And then she added, “If you see what I mean.”

Matthew took a sip of his coffee.

“Schadenfreude,” he said. “Which means …”

Big Lou cut him short. “Oh, I ken all aboot your actual Schadenfreude, Matthew. Don’t think I don’t know about that.”

Matthew was apologetic. “Sorry, Lou. I didn’t mean to be …”

“Condescending,” supplied Big Lou. “No, but as it happens I’ve read all about

Schadenfreude.” She paused. “Pleasure in the discomfort of others. It’s strange, isn’t it?”

“Something to do with envy?” asked Matthew.

“Aye, envy’s a gey powerful emotion, Matthew. Lots of folk want what others have.”

Matthew sighed. “I know all about that, Lou. I suppose I’m pretty lucky …”

Big Lou nodded. “Aye, you are. And do you find that other people envy you? Do you notice it?”

Matthew did. He had much to be grateful for, and he was very much aware that those who have much to be grateful for must be tactful in their enjoyment of their good fortune. He had Elspeth and the triplets; he had his gallery, with his desk and the chair that gave such good lumbar support; he had … Oh, one could spend a long time enumerating the things he had, and yet there was poor Pat, who had such an appealing manner and was so well-informed on twentiethcentury Scottish art, and she had nobody to go home to in the evening apart other than those dreadful flatmates.

“Big Lou,” he said, “we must do something for Pat. We have to find somebody for her. A boyfriend.”

Big Lou looked dubious. “Tricky,” she said. “Match-making, Matthew, almost always ends in disaster.”

“Nonsense,” said Matthew. “Not true.”

‘We must do something for Pat. We have to find somebody for her. A boyfriend.’ Big Lou looked dubious. ‘Tricky,’ she said. ‘Match-making, Matthew, almost always ends in disaster’