Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

know plenty of people who would love to find a man, but can’t find one. We don’t know where they’ve gone. Disappeared.”
    Matthew thought: you could look under your nose, you know. What about me? But said nothing. Somehow, he suspected, he did not count in this particular reckoning.
    â€œWhy is it?” he said. “What’s happened?”
    Pat thought that he must know; but Matthew had always struck her as being unworldly. Perhaps he was unaware.

    â€œSome men aren’t interested, Matthew,” she said. “You do realise that, don’t you?”
    â€œOh, I know about all that,” said Matthew. “But how many men are like that?”
    Pat looked out of the window, as if to assess the passers-by. “Quite a lot,” she said. “It depends where you are, of course. Edinburgh’s more like that than Auchtermuchty, you know. And San Francisco is more like that than Kansas City. Ten per cent?”
    â€œWell, that leaves ninety per cent.”
    Pat shook her head. There had been a major change in social possibilities for men. They had been trapped, too, by the very structures that had trapped women, and now they had been freed of those and were enjoying that freedom. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Of those ninety per cent, a very large percentage now aren’t interested not because they’re not interested–so to speak–but because they’re perfectly happy by themselves. Women clutter their lives. They don’t need women any more. There are maybe…” She plucked a figure out of the air…“Twenty per cent of men who think that they’re better off by themselves. So if you add the ten per cent who aren’t available anyway, that means thirty per cent who are out of it, so to speak.”
    Matthew thought about this. “But surely there will be the same number of women who drop out too? There’ll be women who don’t like men and women who may like men but who don’t want any involvement with them. So surely these two cancel one another out, and you end up with two equal groups?”
    Pat was sure that this was wrong. The objection to Matthew’s theory, at least from her point of view, was that she had not met many women who would prefer to be by themselves rather than with a man, if a suitable man came along. But that, of course, meant nothing–and she was intelligent enough to see it. One should not generalise from one’s own experience, because one’s own experience was coloured by one’s own initial assumptions and perspective. If you like men, then you’ll end up in the company of those who like men too, and then you reach the conclusion that the whole world likes men. And that clearly was not true.
    She sat down, facing Matthew. She was puzzled. “Why are you asking about all this?”
    â€œIt’s because my father seems to have found a girlfriend,” he said glumly. “And I don’t know what she sees in him.”
    Pat had met Matthew’s father on a previous visit he had paid to the gallery. “But your father’s very nice,” she said. She paused, before adding: “And tremendously rich.”

22. Chow
    â€œNow tell me, Bertie,” said Dr Fairbairn, straightening the crease of his trousers as he crossed his knees. “Tell me: have you written your dreams down in that little notebook I gave you?” Bertie did not cross his legs. He was unsure about Dr Fairbairn, and he wanted to be ready to leap to his feet if the psychotherapist became more than usually bizarre in his statements. The best escape route, Bertie had decided, would be to dart round the side of his desk, leap over the psychotherapist’s leather-padded couch, and burst through the door that led into the waiting room. From there he could launch himself down the stairs, sliding down the banister, if need be, and run out into the safety of the street. No