Read 44 Scotland Street for Free Online Page A

boss.”
    Pat smiled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just wanted you to know that I think I’ll be all right.”
    “Of course, you will,” said Matthew. “I can tell you’re going to be a great success. I can tell these things.” He touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Smart girl.”
    Pat said nothing. She was used to condescension from a certain sort of man, and although she did not like it, it was better than what she had experienced on her gap year – her first gap year.
    Alone in the gallery, Pat seated herself at Matthew’s desk and looked out onto the street. She watched Matthew cross the road and disappear into The Morning After. She would make herself a cup of coffee in a few minutes, she thought. She rationed herself to three cups a day, and eagerly looked forward to the first cup of the morning.
    Matthew had left his newspaper on the desk, and she picked it up. The front page was filled with political news, which she skipped over, in favour of an article on an inside page about a new film which everybody was talking about but which nobody, apparently, had seen. The violence in this film, it was said, was particularly graphic. There were severed heads, and limbs, and the breaking of bones. This, the writer said, was all very exciting. But why was it exciting, to see others harmed in this way? Were we addicted to fear, or dread? Pat was reflecting on this when she heard the muted note of the bell which announced that somebody had entered the gallery. She looked up and saw a man of about forty, wearing corduroy trousers and a green sweater. He was not dressed for the office, and had the air of a person with no pressing engagements.
    “May I?” he said, gesturing at the paintings.
    “Of course,” said Pat. “If there’s anything you want to know …” She left the sentence unfinished. If there was something he wanted to know it was unlikely that she would be able to give him any information. She could call Matthew, of course, but then he appeared to know nothing as well.
    The man smiled, looking about him as if deciding where to start. After a few moments he went up to a small still-life, a Glasgow jug into which a bunch of flowers had been stuffed at a drunken angle.
    “Not the way to arrange flowers,” he said, and then added: “Nor to paint them …”
    Pat said nothing. It was an unpleasant, amateurish painting; he was quite right. But she said nothing; she felt vaguely protective of Matthew’s paintings, and it was not for customers to come in and criticise them, even if the criticism was deserved.
    The man moved over to the painting which looked like a Peploe; school of Peploe perhaps. He stood in front of it for a few moments and then turned to address Pat.
    “Very nice,” he said. “In a derivative sort of way. Peaceful. Shore of Mull from Iona, or shore of Iona from Mull?”
    Pat picked up the list from her desk and walked over to join him. “According to this, it’s Mull,” she said. “Mull, near Tobermory, by, and then there’s a question mark.”

    “It’s not a Peploe,” the man said. “That’s pretty obvious. But it has its points. Look over there, that nice shading. Confident brush strokes.”
    Pat looked. How can he be so sure it’s not a Peploe, she wondered. Particularly since there were the initials SP painted in the bottom right-hand corner. Then it occurred to her: SP – School of Peploe.

 
     
     
     
    10. The Road from Arbroath
     
    Matthew felt that he was the discoverer of Big Lou’s coffee bar, although, like everything that is discovered (America or Lake Victoria being examples), it had always been there; or at least it had been there for the last three years or so. Before that it had been a second-hand bookshop, noted for its jumbled stock, that observed no known principle in the shelving of its collection. Topography rubbed shoulders with poetry; books on fishing and country pursuits stood side-by-side with Hegel and Habermas; and nothing was