Espresso Tales Read Free Page A

going to Australia.
    â€œMatthew says that I can continue to work part-time at his gallery,” Pat went on. “I can do some mornings for him and Saturdays too. He says…” She paused. Modesty might have prevented her from continuing, but she wanted to share with her father the compliment that Matthew had passed. “I hope you don’t think I’m boasting, but Matthew says that I have an eye for art and that the only way in which he thinks he can keep the gallery going is by having me there.”
    â€œThat’s good of him,” said her father, thinking, but not saying, dependence: weak male, looking for somebody to look after him. “Mind you, I’m not surprised. You’ve always been good at art. You’re good at everything, you know.”
    She glanced at him sideways, reproving him for the compliment, which had been overheard at a neighbouring table and had led to suppressed smiles. “And I think that I’ll stay in Scotland Street,” she went on. “It’s an exciting place, you know. There are all sorts of interesting people who live down there. I like it.”
    â€œAnd you can put up with Bruce?”
    â€œI can put up with him. He keeps to himself these days. He lost his job, you know, and he wants to do something else. He spends a lot of his time reading up about wine. I think he fancies himself as a wine merchant–or something of the sort.”
    Dr Macgregor nodded. He had not met Bruce, and had no real interest in meeting him. He was accustomed to psychopaths, to those whose selfishness was so profound that they tipped over into a clinical category; he was patient with neurotics and depressives and those with schizoid disorders; but he could not abide narcissists. From what his daughter had told him of Bruce, he was a classic narcissist: the looking in mirrors, the preening, the delight in hair gel–all of this was pure narcissism. And the problem was that there was a positive epidemic of narcissism, encouraged by commercial manipulation and by the shallow values of Hollywood films. And interestingly enough, the real growth area was male narcissism. Young men were encouraged to dwell on themselves; to gaze at photographs of other young men, looking back at them as from the mirror. They loved this. Edinburgh was full of them.
    Hundreds of them, thousands, attended to by an army of hair-stylists, and outfitters. Yes, it was a profound social pathology. Reality television, which turned its eye on people who were doing nothing but being themselves, was the perfect expression of this trend. Let’s look at ourselves, it said. Aren’t we fascinating?
    Dr Macgregor found himself thinking these thoughts, but stopped himself. It was true, of course, there was an abnormal level of narcissism in our society, but it did not do, he told himself, to spend too much time going on about it. Society changed. Narcissism was about love, ultimately, even if only love of self. And that was better than hate. By and large, Hate, of all the tempting gods, was the unhappiest today. He had his recruits, naturally, but they were relatively few, and vilified. Did it matter if young men thought of fashion and hair gel when, not all that many years ago, their thoughts had tended to turn to war and flags and the grim partisanship of the football terrace?

4. On the Way Back to Scotland Street
    Pat left the Canny Man’s and walked back up Morningside Road. She was accompanied, as far as Church Hill Place, by her father, who said goodbye to her and turned off for home, elated by the news she had given him. She toyed with the idea of a bus, but it was a fine, late August afternoon and she decided to walk all the way back to Scotland Street. She was in no hurry to be anywhere. In fact it occurred to her that between then–Saturday afternoon–and the coming Monday morning, when she was due at the gallery, it made no difference at all where she was. She had