A Fool's Alphabet by Sebastian Faulks Page A

didn’t. I just said, ‘Good. Where are they?’ ‘Which ones do you mean?’ he said. ‘Which ones do
you
mean?’ I said. He was always playing silly games like this. ‘Well, there’s been three lots, haven’t there?’
    I took the lift up to the apartment and found my uncle in his dressing gown, walking up and down in the hall. He wasn’t supposed to be out of bed, and I told him he’d catch a chill. He was muttering about flowers. There were three bunches on the table in the hall.
    â€˜These ones came first,’ he said, picking up some yellow roses. ‘Then when I was going off to sleep again, the girl came up with this bunch of – whatever they are, irises. And then just before you got in, the bell rang and it was the boy from the florist’s shop who brought this huge bunch here. There was a note.’
    My uncle looked perturbed. He couldn’t make out what was going on. Often he could go for a month with no one ringing the bell at all. He looked at me over his glasses a bit crossly, and I told him to get back to bed. I pretended I was annoyed with him. I opened the note, which said: ‘I am sorry about last night. Please come down to the street at 9 p.m. I will ring the bell.’ The handwriting was rather spluttery. All three bunches were from Pietro.
    I didn’t want him to be too sorry. I went downstairs again to ask the girl if she would come and keep an eye on my uncle. I knew it would be all right with him, because he went to sleep straight after dinner, which he liked at about seven anyway. Then I thought about what I would wear. I supposed I should wear something very feminine, so it wouldn’t look as though I was just playing his game. So I looked through the clothes I had, and there was a black dress which I
could
wear. Then I thought maybe he would only take me to a bar for a drink and I would feel overdressed. I spent along time in my room. Perhaps I should continue the game and borrow one of my uncle’s tweed jackets. Then suddenly I wondered if it was wise to go out at all with this man I hardly knew. I went upstairs to speak to Wilfred, to ask him about his friend, but he wasn’t there. In the end I settled on a black skirt and a white top, with a spotted bow tie of my uncle’s. It was very loose, and I had to tie it myself, or try to.
    I went running down to the street when the bell rang. He was standing in the doorway, trying to keep out of the rain, with the collar of his mac turned up. He took my hand and said something about the bow tie, and I was glad because it showed he wasn’t going to spend the evening apologising. He rushed me over to a car on the other side of the streetand said he was going to take me to see the city. He sounded a bit unconvinced, as though he wasn’t sure that there was much of Ghent to see. But in Belgium there is always a square or two, and the façades of the big buildings are often gilded, which looks good in the rain. The city is built on various waterways with bridges. There is an old castle, a huge cathedral and some lovely guild houses. He pretended he was navigating, and I let him know where to go without puncturing that illusion. He was very kind. He laughed at his own driving, though not as much as he laughed at the Belgian driving.
    I loved showing him around. It made me look at the place properly and appreciate it. It also made me think about the life I lived there as I looked at it through his eyes. We got into a big brasserie in the end, with bright lights and wooden stalls. It was all right. He was drenched, because he’d held his mac up for me when we ran over from the car. He pushed his hand through his hair a lot to begin with, but then he seemed to give up. He offered me a cigarette and I began to look at him properly for the first time. I just liked his face. I don’t know why. You wouldn’t say Pietro’s really handsome, I suppose, but it