The coffee bar was empty when Matthew arrived–apart from the familiar figure of Big Lou, of course. The resourceful autodidact from Arbroath was standing behind the counter, a cloth on the polished surface to her left, a book open before her. As Matthew came in she looked up and smiled. She liked him, and being from a small town she had that natural courtesy which has in many larger places all but disappeared.
“Hello, Matthew,” she said. “You’re the first in today. Not a soul otherwise. Not even Angus and that dog of his.”
Matthew leaned against the bar and peered at Big Lou’s book. He reached out and flipped the book over to reveal its cover. “A Pattern Language: Towns, Building, Construction?” he said. “Interesting, Lou. You going to build something?”
Big Lou reclaimed her book. “You’ll lose my place, you great gowk,” she said affectionately. “It’s a gey good book. All about how we should design things. Buildings. Rooms. Public parks. Everything. It sets out all the rules.”
Matthew raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”
Big Lou turned to her coffee machine and extracted the cupped metal filter. Opening a battered white tin, she spooned coffee into the small metal cup and slotted it into place. “Such as always have two sources of light in a room,” she said. “This Professor Alexander–he’s the man who’s written this book–says that if you have a group of people and let them choose which of two rooms they’ll go into, they’ll always choose the room with two windows–with light coming from more than one source. That’s because they feel more comfortable in rooms like that.”
Matthew looked around him. There was only one window in Big Lou’s coffee bar, and a gloomy window at that. Did he feel uncomfortable as a result? Big Lou noticed his glance and frowned. “I know,” she said. “I’ve only got one window. But sometimes one has no choice. I didn’t design this place, you know.”
“And what else does he say?” asked Matthew.
“Always put your door at the corner of the room,” said Lou, leafing through the book to find the reference. “If you put the door in the middle, then he says that you divide the room into two.”
For a moment Matthew visualised his flat in India Street. Like most flats in the Georgian New Town, it was designed with attention to classical principles, and in particular with an eye to symmetry. Palladio had understood what proportions made people feel comfortable, and so had Robert Adam and Playfair. Matthew’s doors in India Street, he reflected, were all at the corner of a room, and the rooms certainly felt comfortable. This mention of doors made him remember the awkward event of earlier that morning. He would ask Big Lou about it, because it was just the sort of question which she relished and because he thought that in most matters she was intuitively right.
“Lou,” he began. “You know how one locks the bathroom door when one…er…has a bath or shower or whatever.”
Lou stared at him. “I believe I’ve heard of the custom,” she said.
“Well, of course,” said Matthew. “But the point is this, Lou. Do you have to lock it when you go in, or is it up to the person who is coming in to check and see if the bathroom’s occupied? To knock, if the door is closed, for instance?”
Big Lou busied herself with her coffee machine. “You don’t have to knock,” she said. “You can assume that if there’s somebody in there, then the door will be locked.”
“I see,” said Matthew. He paused. “But then why does the person who opens the door feel bad about it?”
The receptacle locked in place, Big Lou flicked a switch on her coffee machine. “Well now, Matthew,” she said. “That’s an interesting point. Why would that be? Is it because he–the person who’s opened the door–has caused embarrassment to the person inside? Is that it, do you think? He has the advantage–he has his clothes on and the other person doesn’t. And we don’t always bother to think whether a person who causes something is at fault, do we? We say: ‘You did it, you’re in the wrong.’ That’s what we say.”
The coffee machine hissed away while Matthew digested this observation. He had handled things badly, he thought. He should have stayed in the flat until Pat had come out of the bathroom and then he should have discussed it in a mature way. He should have said: “Look, Pat, I’m sorry. I totally forgot that you were there. That’s why I didn’t lock the door.” And Pat, being reasonable, would have accepted the explanation and have laughed the incident off. But he had not done that, and the whole business had been allowed to become awkward, with the issue of his Macgregor tartan undershorts complicating matters.
“Lou,” he said. “Here’s another thing. Do you think that you should be able to wear clothes in another person’s tartan? Do you really think it matters?”
Big Lou turned round with Matthew’s cup of coffee. “Don’t be so ridiculous,” she said. “Here’s your coffee. And anyway, here comes Eddie.”
68. The Rootsie-Tootsie Club
Matthew had spent only a very short time in the company of Big Lou’s fiancé, Eddie, but had decided that he did not like him. It was not one of those dislikes that develops with time, matures as more and more is learned of a person’s irritating habits and faults; it was, rather, a dislike based on an immediate assessment of character, made on first meeting and never thereafter doubted. We make such judgments all the time, often on the basis of appearance, bearing, and, most importantly, the look of the eyes. Matthew’s father had instilled this habit in his son and had defended it vigorously.
“Take a look at the eyes, Matt,” he had said. “The old adage that they are the windows of the soul is absolutely dead right. They tell the whole story.”
“But how can eyes, just bits of tissue after all…?”
Gordon had interrupted his son’s protest. “They can. They just do. Shifty eyes–shifty chap. I’ve found it time after time in my business career. All the human failings are there–and the good qualities, too. You only have to…sorry, this is unintentional, keep your eyes open to pick it up.”
“Give me some examples,” said Matthew.
His father thought for a moment. “All right. Richard Nixon. President of the United States for a good long time. If the voters had looked at his eyes, they would have realised. Scheming. Untruthful.”
“But that’s because you knew what he was like,” said Matthew. “If Nixon had been a saint, you would have thought his eyes looked saintly.” He paused. “You’ve heard of phrenology, have you, Dad?”
Gordon frowned. “It sounds familiar, but…”
Matthew was accustomed to filling in the gaps in his father’s knowledge. “They were the people who looked at the head. At the bumps. At the face, too.” Gordon looked interested. “Well? What’s wrong with that?”
“Because the shape of your head has nothing to do with what you’re like inside,” said Matthew. “Character comes from…” He hesitated. Where did character come from? The way you were brought up? Genes? Or a bit of both? “From the mind,” he said. “That’s where character comes from.”
Gordon nodded. “And the mind shows itself physically, doesn’t it? Well, don’t shake your head like that–which, incidentally, proves my point. Your shaking head shows a state of mind within you. Yes, it does. It does.”
Matthew sighed. “Nobody believes in phrenology any more, Dad. It’s so…so nineteenth century.”
“Oh is it?” challenged Gordon. “And you think they knew nothing in the nineteenth century? Is that what you’re saying? Well, I’m telling you this: I judge a man by the cut of his jib. I can tell.”
The argument had fizzled out, and later that day Matthew had stolen a glance at himself in the mirror, at his eyes. They had flecks of grey, of course, a feature which some girls had found interesting, and attractive, but which now seemed to Matthew to say something about his personality: he was a grey-flecked person. He knew that phrenology was nonsense, and yet, years later, he found himself making judgments similar to those made by his father; slippery people looked slippery; they really did. And how we become
like our parents! How their scorned advice–based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom–how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!
Had the scorned phrenologists got their hands on Eddie, they would have reached much the same conclusion as had Matthew. Eddie had a thin face–not in itself a matter for judgment–but a thin face combined with shifty, darting eyes and topped with greasy, unwashed hair conveyed an impression of seediness. It was, quite simply, not the face of an honest person–or so Matthew had concluded on first encountering Eddie.
And combined with this impression of unreliability–backed up, of course, by Matthew’s knowledge of Eddie’s past–was the conviction that Eddie was planning to take advantage of Big Lou by getting her to back his restaurant endeavour. Matthew had been horrified to discover that Big Lou was proposing to lend Eddie the money to buy a restaurant without anybody even looking at the accounts. Matthew may not have been a conspicuously successful businessman in the past, but his gallery now turned a profit and he knew the importance of keeping a good set of books.
When Eddie entered the coffee bar, Matthew was carrying his cup back from the counter to his accustomed seat by the wall.
“Good morning, Eddie,” Matthew said politely.
Eddie nodded, but did not return the greeting. “Lou, doll,” he said. “Big news!”
Big Lou leaned over the counter to plant a kiss on Eddie’s sallow cheek. He smelled of tobacco and cooking oil and…She drew back. There had been another smell–that cheap, cloying perfume that teenage girls like to use. That was there too. “What’s the news, Eddie?” she asked.
“We’re going to be a club,” Eddie announced. “Not a restaurant after all. This boy came round–this boy I know from the old days–and he’s putting in a bit of money too, on top of what you’re subbing me, and we’re going to make it a club.”
Big Lou was silent. A club for whom? she wondered.
“There’s money in clubs,” Eddie went on. “And it’s less work just serving drinks. Less overheads. Although you have to pay the waitresses and the dancers.”
Big Lou’s voice was faint. “Dancers?”
Eddie reached for a stool and drew it up to the counter. Matthew, who had been listening while pretending to read the newspaper, glanced at him as he sat down. He’s a funny shape, he thought.
“Aye,” said Eddie. “Pole dancers. Not every day, but maybe once or twice a week. There’s lassies very keen to develop a career as a pole dancer. We’ll give them their chance.”
Big Lou picked up her towel. “Well, that’s nice for you, Eddie,” she said. There was a sadness in her voice, a resignation, which Matthew picked up and which tugged at his heart. She does not deserve this, he thought. She does not deserve this man.
“What will you call the club, Eddie?” she asked.
“The Rootsie-Tootsie Club,” said Eddie. “How’s that for a name, Lou, hen? See yourself there?”
69. An Unfortunate Incident
Waking in her bungalow in the pirate settlement overlooking the Straits of Malacca, Domenica looked out at the world through the white folds of her mosquito net. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was almost seven o’clock; the dawn had come some time earlier and already the sun was over the top of the trees around the village clearing.
Pushing aside the net, Domenica rose from her bed and stretched. The air was warm, but not excessively so. In fact, the temperature, she thought, was just perfect, although she knew that this would not last. If she felt fresh and exhilarated now, by the end of the day she would be feeling washed out, drained of all energy by the heat. So if anything had to be done, it would be best to do it in the first few hours before the sun made everything impossible and nobody could venture outside. That was the folk wisdom so neatly encapsulated by Noel Coward in ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ they were the only ones to be seen out in the midday sun. Well, Domenica knew better than to do that sort of thing.
She crossed the room to where her clothes were draped over a chair. She donned her blouse and her light-fitting white cotton trousers, and then, picking up her shoes–a pair of light moccasins which could be worn without socks–she slipped first her right foot in and then the left, and then…And then she screamed, as the sharp jab of pain shot into the toes of her left foot. Instinctively and violently, she tore the shoe off her foot and dashed it onto the floor. Out of it, half crushed and limping from the encounter, a dark black scorpion emerged and began to drag itself away across the boards.
Domenica stared in fascination at the creature that had stung her. It was so small by comparison with her foot; not much bigger than her large toe, and yet it had caused such pain. As it scuttled away, its curved stinging tail held up like a little question-mark, she felt an urge to throw a shoe at it, to crush it and destroy it, and she bent down to retrieve a shoe to do this. But then she stopped, shoe in hand. The scorpion, exhausted perhaps by its own injuries, had paused, and had turned round in a circle. Now it faced her, as if to stand up to the threatened onslaught, although it could not possibly have seen her with its tiny eyes. If it had, she must have been a mountain to it, the backdrop to its minute, floor-level world.
She watched as it turned again and continued its limping escape. She did not have the heart to kill this little thing, this scrap of creation, which was, after all, no more predatory than anything else and considerably less so, when one thought about it, than we were ourselves. We, as homo sapiens, packed a mighty sting; a sting capable of blasting the miniature world of such arachnids into nothingness. And all it had done was to try to defend itself in its recently-discovered home against a great threatening toe. That was all.
And suddenly she remembered the lines of D.H. Lawrence about his encounter with a snake. A snake came to his water trough, a visitor, he said, from the bowels of the earth somewhere, and he threw a stone at it. Afterwards, he felt guilty, sensed that he had committed a pettiness. That was what she would feel if she crushed this small creature. She would feel petty.
She watched as the scorpion completed its retreat and disappeared over the edge of the veranda. That would have been a terrible tumble for it, falling three feet or so to the ground below, but arachnids did not seem to be injured by great falls. That was because they were so light; whereas, we, great leaden creatures, fell so heavily.
She looked down at her foot. The place where the scorpion had stung her was now inflamed and, she thought, had begun to swell. And it was painful too, the stinging having been augmented by a throbbing sensation. She bent down and felt that place. It was hot to the touch, the surface with that parchment-feel of damaged skin.
She stood up and gathered her thoughts. She had been stung by a scorpion once before, in Africa, but it had been a very small one and it had not been much worse than a bee sting. This had provoked a reaction of a completely different nature and it occurred to her that she might even need medical treatment. She remembered reading somewhere that scorpions’ stings could be fatal, or could lead to the loss of a limb. Where had that been, and what sort of scorpions had they been talking about?
Domenica suddenly felt afraid. She was normally courageous, and accepted the risks of living and working in the field, but now she was frightened. It would take hours to get to a doctor, possibly a whole day, and how would she be able to walk up that path to the other village if she lost the use of her left leg?
Very tentatively, she put her weight on the affected foot. It was sore, but she could still stand, and now she walked slowly out onto the veranda. She would have to find Ling and get his help.
There was very little happening in the village. A few children were playing under a tree and a woman was washing clothes in a small plastic bucket outside her house. Domenica decided to walk over towards the woman. If she spoke English, then she c
ould explain to her what had happened. If not, she could ask for Ling.
The woman watched Domenica approaching. As she got closer, she noticed that her visitor was limping, and she immediately dropped the clothes back into the bucket and ran over to Domenica’s side.
“What’s wrong?” she asked in English. “What’s happened to you?”
“I’ve been stung by a scorpion,” said Domenica. “Look.”
The woman’s eyes widened as Domenica pointed out the angry bite. “That is very sore,” she said. “But you will not die. Don’t worry. I was stung by one three weeks ago, and look, I am still alive.”
She touched Domenica lightly on the shoulder, in a gesture of reassurance. “Come inside,” she said. “You must not stand in the sun. Come inside and I will give you an antihistamine.”
70. Mrs Choo’s Tale
The woman to whom Domenica had gone in her pain and distress introduced herself as Rebecca Choo. Putting her arm around Domenica to help her limping neighbour up the steps, she led her into the front room of her house. There, Domenica lowered herself into the chair indicated by Mrs Choo and looked about her as her hostess went off into another room to find the promised antihistamine. The pain from the scorpion sting seemed to have abated somewhat, and when she looked down at her left foot she saw that the swelling also seemed to have subsided. She felt a strong surge of relief at this; obviously the scorpion was not too toxic, and she was not going to die, as she had feared earlier on.
The room in which she found herself sitting was plainly furnished and there was nothing on the walls–no pictures, no photographs, no religious symbols.
Domenica was still looking about her when Mrs Choo returned with a glass of water and a small white pill.
“This is an antihistamine,” she said, dropping the pill into Domenica’s outstretched hand. “It helps with stings and bites.”