The Charming Quirks of Others

“It’s almost indecent,” said Cat. “He has no sympathy for the pig.”

Isabel felt that she had to defend her son. “But it’s just sugar to him. It’s not a living pig.”

“Does he like bacon?” asked Eddie. “Would he eat it if he knew?”

Isabel sighed. It was the right question. If he knew that bacon had once been a pig, then he would probably not eat it. There were pigs in a book she read him; three of them, two feckless and one wise, and he clearly loved them. Yet how different were we humans from the wolf who persecuted the three pigs?

Pigs give us bacon. This was the way it had been put to her in a book she had herself possessed as a child: Farmer John. Farmer John, a bucolic character in blue overalls, took the reader round the farmyard and explained what was what. Hens give us eggs—we steal them, thought Isabel. Cows give us milk—ditto. And then, in an act of astonishing self-sacrifice, Pigs give us bacon.

Eddie was good with Charlie, and Charlie seemed fascinated with the young man, who lifted him high in the air and then pretended to drop him, to squeals of excitement. While this was going on, Cat made coffee for herself and Isabel and carried the cups across to one of the tables.

They talked briefly about the delicatessen. The mozzarella cheese was late, Cat complained; she was thinking of changing their supplier. And the Parmesan too, although that was never delayed for more than a few days. Isabel listened politely; she wanted to hear about Gordon. Had he heard anything further about the job? she wanted to ask, but it was difficult with Cat going on about mozzarella and Parmesan.

Cat paused, and Isabel seized her chance. “I like him a lot, you know.”

“Who?”

“Your new boyfriend, Gordon.”

Cat was cagey. “So do I.”

“But of course you do,” said Isabel quickly. “One would not dislike a boyfriend, surely.” As she spoke, she thought of Bruno, the stunt man with elevator shoes. Had Cat actually liked him, or had Bruno been more of a perverse fashion statement? A boyfriend or girlfriend could easily be thought of in those terms, she realised. Or Cat might be making another point altogether, showing that she was her own person; sometimes people needed to find somebody the diametrical opposite of their parents just to make a point about independence. That happened often. A boy with dreadlocks, or a hard rock musician, a member—in good standing—of a biker gang, perhaps; a girl with multiple piercings in the nose and tongue; how easy with such a choice to remind parents that one’s tastes, one’s attitude and one’s voting intentions were not to be taken for granted.

Cat tensed. “Of course not.” She hesitated, but then, relaxing, said, “Gordon is very popular.”

Isabel said that she was pleased to hear that. There was always some reason for popularity.

“Oh yes?”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “Have you ever met somebody who’s popular but unpleasant?”

Cat thought about this. “No, not really.”

“Well, there you are.” She took a sip of her coffee. “So he has no faults—as far as you know?”

Cat shrugged. “Everybody has faults.”

“So they do,” said Isabel. “We all have our quirks.”

Cat looked at her with interest. “And yours are? Your faults, I mean: What are they?”

“We don’t always see our own faults with crystal clarity,” said Isabel. “But since you put me on the spot, I suppose I would have to say that I tend to over-complicate matters—it’s my training. And I can be nosy—so Jamie tells me.” She noticed that Cat was nodding in agreement, and felt slightly irritated. What she wanted was for Cat to say, ‘You over-complicate things? You nosy? Surely not.’ ”

Isabel was about to ask Cat about her own faults, but Cat suddenly said, “He’s too generous with his time. That’s one of his faults. It can be misinterpreted.”

Isabel was careful not to appear too interested in this. “A nice fault to have,” she said. “And it’s better, surely, than being grudging with one’s time.”

“He’ll listen to anybody,” said Cat. “He lets them go on about things, and then they think that he’s more interested in them than he really is.”

Isabel said that she saw how this could be awkward: expectations could be raised, hopes dashed. While she said this, her heart sank. Gordon was not going to prove to be the flawless candidate she had hoped. Affairs: that was what Cat was alluding to.

“Tell me,” she said. “Was he … with somebody before you met him?”

Cat took the spoon from her saucer and retrieved a residue of milky foam from the bottom of her cup. “There was somebody.” She paused, as if uncertain whether to go on. “Not that it amounted to anything on his side. One of these one-sided things.”

Isabel looked out of the window. A one-sided thing. She saw a man waiting at the bus stop on the other side of the road; a young woman passed by and his head turned. She thought he said something; the woman stopped, half turned, and then walked on. A one-sided thing.

“You mean somebody fell for him, but not the other way round?”

Cat nodded.

“Well, that can be difficult,” said Isabel. “Yes, I see that. But all that needs to be done, presumably, is to indicate that it’s not on.”

“She was rather unstable,” said Cat. “And married.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not a big thing,” said Cat. “Women get infatuated. Remember what’s-her-name? Madame …”

“Bovary.” Isabel sighed. “Married. And there was a betrayed husband, I suppose.”

Cat’s answer was spirited. “It wasn’t his idea. I’ve been trying to tell you that. It was her.”

“How far did it go?” asked Isabel. The question seemed prurient and she was not sure whether she wanted to know; but it was too late now. Cat looked at her angrily. “It didn’t go anywhere. I told you that.”

Perhaps it was not as bad as Isabel had feared. “Well, so no harm was done.” She wanted to change the subject because she did not want Cat to begin to ask why she was so interested. She looked over to the other side of the room, where Eddie was feeding Charlie small pieces of black olive. “He must be the only child in Scotland who likes olives,” she said.

Cat rose from the table. “I must get on with things.”

Isabel reached out. “I meant what I said. I really like him.”

Cat softened. “Well, thank you. I’m glad about that.”

She wants to share him, thought Isabel. It was a lover’s pride. A lover wants others to see the beloved in exactly the same light as she does. And that was true of how Isabel felt about Jamie; she assumed that others would see him as she saw him. Yet she knew that this was an illusion: the light that surrounds the one we love is not always as bright to others. Indeed, they were often unaware that it was there at all.

ISABEL FINISHED THE LAST of her coffee and then crossed the room to relieve Eddie of Charlie. The marzipan pig, slightly bigger than usual this time, had been produced and was being flourished enthusiastically by Charlie. “Pig! Pig!” he shouted. And then, exactly as anticipated, he bit off its head.

Eddie laughed. “Olives and pigs. His two big things.”

“And the fox in our garden,” said Isabel. “He loves him.”

Eddie bent down and ruffled Charlie’s hair. “Their hair is always so soft,” he said. “Like an owl’s feathers. Have you ever felt an owl’s feathers, Isabel?”

Isabel said that she had not.

“I have,” said Eddie. “There was a guy who had a little barn owl on a sort of string. The string was tied around its leg. He was a falconer, and he brought it to the Meadows Festival.”

Isabel smiled encouragingly. Increasingly, Eddie spoke of things he remembered, whereas in the past he had been largely silent about his life outside the delicatessen. It seemed to her that he was reclaiming something, piece by piece, assembling a life.

“He let me stroke the feathers on the top of its head,” he continued. “I had never felt anything so soft. It was like … like Charlie’s hair. Even softer, maybe.”

Eddie touched Charlie’s hair again, and the little boy looked up appreciatively.

“He likes you,” said Isabel. “I think you’re one of his favourite people.”

The compliment had a marked effect, and it seemed to Isabel that Eddie grew in stature before her, swelling with pride. He straightened up; his head moved back. Like a soldier on parade, thought Isabel; but how strange that mere words should do that to people—inflate them, deflate them too.

Eddie looked at his watch. “I’d better get on with things,” he said. “I have to slice some Parma ham and people will be coming in soon. It’s always busy around lunchtime—as you know.”

Isabel picked up Charlie to put him back in his pushchair. “Of course. And Charlie will need his sleep, won’t you, darling?”

“Pig,” said Charlie, examining the marzipan animal.

“Insults won’t help,” said Isabel.

Eddie laughed. “He said pig and you thought …” He looked at his watch again. Then he seemed to remember something, and turned to Isabel. “Did you enjoy the film?”

Isabel looked blank. She had not been to the cinema in two months, and she could not remember what it was that she and Jamie had seen last—something at the Dominion, she thought. But what was it? It had not been memorable. “What film?”

“That Italian film,” said Eddie, reaching for a large Parma ham. “The Parma ham made me think of it. Remember that scene where …”

Isabel frowned. “Italian film?” She could not remember when she had last seen an Italian film.

“La Famiglia,” said Eddie. “Remember? Last Wednesday. I saw Jamie when I went out to get something to drink. Weren’t you there too?”

Isabel was fastening the straps that held Charlie in the pushchair. She did so very slowly, listening carefully to what Eddie was saying. His voice seemed to echo, for some reason. It was loud in her ears.

“Where was it?” she asked. “The Dominion?”

“Never go there,” said Eddie. “No, it was at the Filmhouse in Lothian Road. I love going there. My friend used to work there. He sometimes gave me tickets. Maybe he shouldn’t have—I don’t know.”

Isabel would normally have said that he should not, but her mind was preoccupied. Eddie had seen Jamie at the cinema. Jamie had not said anything about seeing a film. Why?

“Are you sure it was Jamie?”

“Yes. Of course. It’s not as if I don’t know Jamie.” He paused. “We said hello. He said ‘Hello, Eddie’ and then he went back in.”

“Oh … Oh. Well.”

She finished securing Charlie and turned to go. She said goodbye to Eddie, and he made a cheerful remark about keeping another marzipan pig for Charlie. “It’s not that I want to ruin his teeth. It’s just that …”

Isabel did not hear the rest of the remark. She had pushed Charlie out on to the pavement and now, for a moment, she had no idea which way to turn. Was she going to walk back to the house—in which case she would turn left—or was she going to go back into Bruntsfield—in which case she would turn right? She felt completely lost. She felt empty, scoured out; as if somebody had taken a great knife and hollowed her.

She turned left, and began to walk back along Merchiston Crescent. A woman was approaching her on the pavement, going the other way. It was a woman she recognised but did not know—one of those nodding acquaintances that one builds up in a city even if in many cases one never finds out who they are or where they live. She was a small, bird-like woman who wore a scarf over her head, like an old-fashioned French farmer’s wife. Isabel did know a little bit about her. She lived in a flat in Merchiston Crescent and Grace, who knew her too, had been told that she was a singing teacher. “I saw somebody going to her place,” Grace once said. “He was standing outside her front door, about to ring the bell. A very round man with slicked-down hair and highly polished shoes. He must be learning to sing.”

The singing teacher drew level with Isabel and, seeing Charlie, slowed her pace.

“Such a beautiful little boy,” she said. “Do you mind my asking: what’s he called?”

This was the first time that Isabel had heard her voice; it was high, with a West Highland lilt to it.

“Charlie.”

“Bonnie Charlie,” said the woman, bending down to examine Charlie more closely.

Isabel took a deep breath. I am not going to cry, she told herself. I am not. But when the woman looked up, she saw the tears in Isabel’s eyes.

“My dear …”

Isabel reached in her pocket for a handkerchief. “It’s nothing. I’m all right.” She realised, as she spoke, how trite the words were. People said things like that without thinking, but it helped neither them nor the people trying to comfort them.

The woman placed a hand on Isabel’s arm. “It’s hard being a mother, isn’t it? There are so many things.”

Isabel nodded. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“If I can do anything to help?”

Isabel shook her head. “Thanks. I’ll be all right. I must get Charlie back for his sleep.”

They parted, although the singing teacher looked over her shoulder a few yards on. She saw Isabel continue her journey, walking more swiftly now, head down, as if to fight a wind that was not there, on this calm day, with its clear sky and darting birds.

CHAPTER NINE

THERE HAD BEEN PAINFUL DAYS in Isabel’s life, as there are in the lives of all of us. There had been days during her brief marriage to John Liamor when she had felt a blanket of despair about her—a dark, enveloping blanket that prevented her from doing anything, from thinking about anything other than her distress. And it brought with it self-pity, for which she had a particular distaste when she saw it in others, but which she nevertheless understood perfectly well. I shall not, she said to herself as she returned to the house. I shall not. No. But what was it that she would not do? Think Jamie capable of deception, of …? She could hardly bring herself to think the word, let alone mutter it to herself; but now she said it, the word escaping her lips in an almost inaudible whisper: Unfaithfulness. And then, the word still hanging in the air, she muttered: Affair.

She passed the photograph of her sainted American mother in its place on the hall table; her sainted American mother who, as she had subsequently discovered, had had an affair. She had learned this from a conversation with her mother’s cousin, Mimi McKnight, who had tried to protect her from the knowledge but who had had it drawn out of her. Mimi had put it as tactfully as she could, and had wanted Isabel to forgive her mother, which she had done, of course; forgiveness, Mimi pointed out, can be as powerful when it is posthumous as when it is given in life; perhaps even more so. This had intrigued Isabel, and she had realised that it was quite true: forgiveness of others allows us to adjust our feelings towards the past, assuages our anger. Our parents may disappoint us in so many ways: they could have done more, they made us neurotic, they should have insisted we learn the piano—and now it is too late; they were too strict, in big things or small; they were too poor, too ignorant, too rich and possessive. There are so many grudges we can hold against the past and for the love and approval that we did not get from it. But if we forgive, then the past can lose its power to hurt.

She looked at her mother. The photograph had been taken on a trip that she had made to Venice with a college friend whose name Isabel had now forgotten. The friend was in the background, clutching at a straw hat she was wearing; there was a breeze and there were flags fluttering in the background; St. Mark’s Square, and the outside of the Caffè Florian, which had been such a favourite with Proust, and had been portrayed in a glorious Scottish Colourist painting. She looked at her mother’s face; she was smiling, and now it seemed to Isabel that the smile meant, My dear, life is like this; there are so many disappointments; so many …

Isabel turned away. Charlie, whom she had taken out of his pushchair in the outer hall, was niggling. He was tired and would settle quickly, but now nothing would satisfy him. She picked him up as Grace came out of the kitchen, a tea towel in her hand.

“I heard you come in. I’ve just made tea. Would you like a cup?”

“He’s so tired,” said Isabel. “Tea? No thank you.”

Grace approached Charlie and picked him up. “Little darling. Tired? Tired now and ready for a nap?”

Charlie made a fist and struck Grace across the chin.

“No!” Isabel’s voice was harsh, and Charlie looked at her in wide-eyed astonishment.

“That’s all right,” said Grace. “Didn’t hurt.”

“It’s not all right,” said Isabel testily. “Don’t tell him it’s all right to hit people. Just don’t!”

Grace looked at Isabel, registering much the same surprise as did Charlie. “He didn’t mean it.”

Isabel half turned away. “He did. He hit you.” She turned back and looked at Charlie. “You mustn’t hit people, Charlie. Wrong. Bad.” She thought, inconsequentially and absurdly: I speak as the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, not just as your mother. Wrong. Bad.

Grace was stroking Charlie’s cheek, and the little boy was smiling in response. “Grace put you to bed?” said Grace. “Grace tuck you up?” She looked to Isabel for confirmation.

“Yes,” said Isabel. “If you wouldn’t mind. I have …” She gestured towards the study door. “I have work to do … Or rather, I have to …”

“If you need to go out,” said Grace, “I’ll look after our wee friend here. I’ve done all the ironing—it’s all stacked away. I could take him to Blackford Pond later on.”

“Ducks,” shouted Charlie.

“You see,” exclaimed Grace. “Clever boy. Clever, clever boy! There are indeed ducks in Blackford Pond.”

“On it,” muttered Isabel.

“What?”

“On the pond. There are ducks on the pond. There are fish in it.” Even as she spoke, Isabel had no idea why she was being so pedantic, and she looked at Grace apologetically. But Grace, perhaps not noticing the correction, in her turn simply corrected Isabel. “There are no fish left,” she said. “The ducks have eaten them all.”

“I don’t think ducks eat fish,” said Isabel, her testiness returning. “They eat weed and things like that. Bits of … of sludge.”

Grace was tight-lipped. “I’ll take him upstairs.”

“Thank you,” said Isabel. “And look, I’m sorry. I’m upset about something.”

Grace looked at her with concern. “Is everything …”

“It’s fine,” said Isabel. “I’m just trying to deal with something that’s worrying me.”

“What is it?”

Isabel shook her head. “A private thing. You know how we all have worries—silly things. But they worry us.”

“And they usually are silly,” said Grace. “Aren’t they?”

Isabel nodded silently. Not this one, she thought. This is not silly.

“Go shopping,” said Grace. “Treat yourself. Go to Jenners. Buy something.”

Isabel smiled weakly. “Retail therapy?”

“Precisely. It always works.”

Isabel shook her head. “Not for me. It makes me feel guilty.”

Grace started to leave the room, carrying Charlie, who was waving a small hand at his mother. “You feel guilty about far too much,” came her parting shot. “It’s all that philosophy. How guilty they must all have felt, those people. Plato. Old what’s-his-name. And the other one, the one who couldn’t.”

She left. Isabel pondered: Which was the one who couldn’t? It occurred to her a few moments later. Kant. But she could not smile at the thought, as she normally would have done. She couldn’t.

THE GATE OF WEST GRANGE HOUSE was open. Isabel, who had walked over from her house, looked up the gravelled drive and saw that Peter Stevenson’s car was parked at the front door. But as she began to walk up the drive, Susie came out of the house holding a plastic shopping bag. She had clearly not been expecting a visitor, and gave a momentary start before she recognised Isabel.

“You’re going out,” said Isabel. “Sorry—I should have phoned.”

Susie went forward to meet her. “Not at all. I was just nipping out to the supermarket and I can do that any time. No, I mean it. Come in.”

Reassured, Isabel followed her back into the house. Susie said that she would make coffee and they should both go into the kitchen. “Peter’s in there. He’ll be pleased to see you.”

“I’m sure you’ve both got things to do,” said Isabel.

“We haven’t.” They were making their way down the corridor that led to the kitchen, and Susie suddenly stopped. Lowering her voice, she asked Isabel if everything was all right. “Is there anything …”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “There is.”

“I could tell,” said Susie. “There was something in the way you looked.” She gestured towards the door that led into the drawing room. “Would you prefer to be in there?”

Isabel hesitated. It was, in a sense, woman’s business, but she wanted to talk to Peter too. She shook her head. “Both of you,” she said. “I wanted to talk to both of you. Do you mind?”

“Of course not.” She took Isabel’s arm, gently. “Come on.”

Peter was surprised to see her, but immediately realised from Susie’s manner that something was wrong. He had been sitting at the kitchen table filling in a form of some sort, and he rose to his feet as Susie and Isabel entered. “An unexpected pleasure,” he said, folding the form and slipping it into a plain manila file on the table. “Bureaucracy. Forms. There are forms for absolutely everything these days. Permission-to-breathe forms.”

“Don’t jest,” said Susie. “There’s probably some official drafting one right now.”

Isabel made an effort to smile. “I suppose that having so many bureaucrats, we need to find something for them to do.”

Peter agreed. “Work expands to fill the time of the people you employ to do it. It’s ever thus. Coffee, Isabel?”

Isabel sat down at the table. She was aware that both Peter and Susie were looking at her in a solicitous manner. For a few moments, nothing was said. Susie took the kettle and filled it under the tap; Peter moved the file on the table so that it lined up with a crack between two planks.

It was Peter who broke the silence, clearing his throat and then, hesitantly, asking whether there was anything wrong. He did not want to pry, but he wondered …

Isabel looked down at her hands. “Yes, I’m afraid there is.” She looked up and felt a sudden flood of gratitude to her two friends. In the lives of most of us there are a few people to whom one can go at any time, in any state of mind, and expect complete, unconditional sympathy. Peter and Susie were such for her.

She started to tell them. She explained how Eddie had made the comment in an offhand, incidental way. “He was absolutely certain that it was Jamie,” she said. “And I’m equally certain that Jamie said that he was rehearsing that night. I remember it very clearly because I asked him what they were playing and he said it was a dreadful programme that he couldn’t stand and he didn’t want to be there.”

Peter listened carefully. In the background, Susie measured coffee grounds into the pot, her head half turned from her task in order to catch what Isabel was saying.

“So you’re saying that he said that he would be at a rehearsal and wasn’t. Is that all?”

Isabel frowned. “All? He was at the cinema with somebody …”

Peter held up a hand. “Hold on. Hold on. All you know is that he was at Filmhouse, or wherever, and that he saw an Italian film. That’s all that Eddie said.”

Isabel replied that people did not go to the cinema by themselves—or not very often. “Why would he? And if he did—if for some reason he decided on impulse to go—then surely he’d tell me. And he didn’t.”

Susie, pouring boiling water into the pot, spoke over her shoulder. “Not necessarily. Married couples—and you’re virtually that—don’t give each other every detail of their day-to-day lives. Didn’t you tell me once—I’m sure you did—that you and Jamie both give each other room for a personal life? You did say something like that, didn’t you?”

Isabel had, and she admitted it. “But not something like this. I wouldn’t go off to a film with somebody and not tell Jamie.”

“With somebody?” interjected Peter. “You don’t know that, Isabel. You don’t know for sure that he was with somebody else.

“And what if it was just a friend—a male friend? Somebody from the orchestra.”

“Men don’t do that,” said Isabel flatly. “They don’t go off to the cinema with their male friends. Women do. Men don’t.”

Peter did not contradict her. She was right, he thought. But it seemed to him that this was a misunderstanding rather than a deception, and he put this to Isabel. She listened, but as he spoke she started to shake her head.

“I just have a feeling about this,” she said. “I just feel that there’s something wrong.”

“Then talk to him,” said Peter flatly. “Ask him.”

She shook her head. It would not be possible; she simply could not do it. What would it be, anyway? An accusation. Where were you last Wednesday? Somebody saw you, you know!

Peter listened. When Isabel stopped, they looked at one another across a gulf of disagreement. Peter glanced at Susie, exchanging a look that Isabel knew meant that they had discussed something before. They must have talked about me, she thought; about my problems.

Peter shifted in his seat. “Come on, Isabel. This could just be a simple misunderstanding. The rehearsal might have been cancelled, and Jamie might well have gone to the cinema on his own or with an orchestra friend, although it is a little odd he didn’t tell you afterwards.”

She listened, but as he went on she started to shake her head. “I just have a feeling about this,” she said. “I just feel that there’s something wrong.”

“Then talk to him,” Peter repeated quietly. “Say that you heard from Eddie that they had met at the cinema, and let the facts unfold gently. There may well be a simple and unexciting explanation.”

Again she shook her head. No. She could not talk to him about it.

Peter seemed to hesitate, and Isabel could see that he was considering carefully what to say next “Listen,” he said. “This isn’t perhaps about something completely different, is it?”

Isabel stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we like Jamie very much and we think it’s wonderful that you are so happy together … but we have asked ourselves occasionally …” He looked at her cautiously, gauging her reaction. “Occasionally we’ve asked ourselves if the real threat to your relationship might not be Jamie falling for a younger woman, but your finding out that aside from physical attraction, Jamie did not bring enough to the relationship to keep you interested.” He paused. “Is that what this is really about? Are you finding yourself drifting apart from Jamie?”

She felt herself blushing. He was wrong, and he should not have said it; there were boundaries in friendship and one of those, she felt, had just been crossed. “No, not at all,” she said. “And, frankly, that’s not what one expects even a close friend to say.”

“Close friends,” replied Peter, “are there to risk saying these things, if only to get them out of the way. So you’re quite clear you want your relationship with Jamie to continue? You definitely want to marry him?”

“Yes, of course I do. Jamie and Charlie are … well, everything, as far as I’m concerned.”

Peter nodded. “All right, but let’s get our feet firmly back on the ground. You firstly have to find a way of speaking to Jamie about the visit to the cinema. You can’t let it fester in your mind. If he is having an affair, which I think unlikely, you and Jamie need to discuss what it says about Jamie’s feelings for you, and what Jamie is going to do about it.”

She started to speak, but he continued. “Then, if you establish that it is the misunderstanding I suspect it is, you really are going to have to try to be more at ease with the relationship which you have with Jamie. How often have we talked about this?”

He answered his own question. “You’ve constantly spoken and agonised about the age gap, haven’t you? And what has everybody said to you—us included? Don’t make such a big thing of it. Relax and enjoy your good fortune.”

He glanced at Susie for confirmation, and she nodded. “But it’s continued to eat away at you. And you’ll remember that on many occasions I’ve told you to loosen up, and to stop thinking about it so much. But you’ve gone on seeing yourself as a foolish older woman who has taken up with a toy boy. You’re going to have to come to terms with fact that it’s an unusual relationship, but one which seems to work.”

He stopped and looked at her, as if assessing whether she could take any more. He decided she could. “I’m sure there’ll be stresses and strains as you both get older. It could be that his youthfulness will become an issue—I don’t know. It might not. But you’ll manage, I think.”

Susie pointed to Isabel’s cup. “More?”

Isabel shook her head. She looked out of the window. Halfway across the lawn a large cedar tree bore its spreading branches with dignity. The morning light on the foliage revealed green beyond green. She had heard from her friends exactly what she imagined she would hear, and what they said was, of course, completely right. We need others to say what we really think. We need them to do that, she thought, because we often cannot utter the words that in their blindingly obvious nature do just that: blind us.

PETER OFFERED TO DRIVE HER back to the house, but she said no, she wanted to walk. She chose her route back along Church Hill, past the furniture shop and the shop where the photographer used to have his premises. J. Wilson Groat, the business used to be called; and she remembered having her first passport photograph taken there, by Mr. J. Wilson Groat himself, who had peered from behind a cumbersome-looking camera and enquired after the teachers at her school, whom he had photographed, he explained, over the years, going back … oh, a long time, of course, when Edinburgh had so many photographers to make a record of the life of the city. J. Wilson Groat was such a marvellous name, Isabel thought, not unlike the name of the fish merchant who used to call at her parents’ house in his van with a picture of fish on the side and his name in large letters: J. Croan Bee. The slogan beneath the name had been simple and memorable: From the sea to your tea, with J. Croan Bee.

She thought about this as she crossed the road and made her way up Albert Terrace, on the brow of the hill that fell away sharply to the south, down into deep Morningside, with the Pentlands beyond, veiled now in a drifting mist that had not yet quite reached Edinburgh itself. It was a terrace of well-set Victorian houses, on the roof of which, at either end, a large stone heron was perched. She and Jamie used to walk that way when they took Charlie to the supermarket, and she used to point out the herons to Charlie, who looked up but saw only clouds, she suspected … She stopped. She felt too raw to think about that. Used to; what if that became the tenor of all her memories of Jamie, as it must do to all who have been deserted by somebody? Used to. I used to be happy, she thought. I used to have a lover who was mine and mine alone. I used to think that … Unbidden, the line of Auden returned to her. It was from “Funeral Blues,” that poem of his that had become so well known after being declaimed in a popular film: I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

CHAPTER TEN

GRACE MET HER at the front door. “He’s fast asleep,” she said, nodding in the direction of upstairs. “Exhausted. Out for the count.” She rolled her eyes heavenwards. “I wish I could sleep like that. The benefits of a clear conscience, perhaps.”

“Or no conscience,” said Isabel.

Grace, who had started to go back into the kitchen, stopped sharply and turned round to face Isabel. “Why do you say that?”

Isabel did not feel like engaging in a discussion; she felt weary and defeated. But she had to explain herself, and so she told Grace that in her view Charlie did not yet understand right and wrong, and that she very much doubted whether he would be plagued by conscience, were he to do something wrong. “Or not just yet,” she added. “A child that small doesn’t really understand the feelings of others. Charlie can’t see the world from our point of view.”

Grace listened with what seemed to be growing impatience as Isabel trailed off with a half-hearted reference to the Swiss psychologist Piaget and his theories of moral development in children.

“Charlie understands more than you think,” she said grimly.

Isabel shrugged. “It’s not really about understanding things. It’s about empathy.”

Grace was not to be put off. “I’ll give you an example,” she said. “When I took him to see the ducks at Blackford Pond once, there was a horrible little boy there. He was five or so; bigger than Charlie. A horrible, vulgar little boy. And he picked up a rock and threw it at one of the ducks. Do you know what Charlie did?”

Isabel noted the use of the word vulgar. Grace could get away with saying such things; she could not. She shook her head. “What did he do?”

“He screamed with rage and then …” Grace paused. “And then he shouted Mine, mine!”

“Well …,” Isabel began.

“So he was cross because that other boy had done something to his duck. Charlie knew it was wrong, you see, and he protested.”

Isabel was lost in thought. She thought of Jamie, and then she dragged herself back to where she was: standing in the hall discussing ducks and conscience with Grace.

“I’m not sure if he knew that it was wrong,” she said. “Charlie shouts Mine! when other children touch his toys. I think he was cross because the other child was doing what he would have liked to do, had it occurred to him.” She looked at Grace half apologetically, aware of how disloyal it must sound to be attributing to her own son so base a motive. “I’m afraid that Charlie would love to throw a stone at a duck.”

There was an audible intake of breath from Grace. “No. You’re wrong.”

Isabel shrugged. “I don’t think we need to get ourselves all het up over it. All I’m saying is that very small children don’t really know what’s right or wrong. He’ll learn, but not just yet.”

Grace moved off towards the kitchen. “And by the way, ducks do eat fish. I looked it up on the Internet. It said that the diet of ducks includes weed and fish.”

JAMIE RETURNED to the house shortly after one, carrying his bassoon case. Isabel was in her study when she heard the front door open, and the sound made her heart lurch. She rose to her feet, and then sat down again. She had tried to work since she had returned from her visit to Peter and Susie, but she realised that she had done very little other than read through a few pages of the proofs of the new issue of the Review. She kept losing her place as her mind wandered, and had read and re-read the same bit of text several times. It was not an interesting article, she decided, and she wondered why she had accepted it for publication. “Citizenship and the Duty to Vote”: Should criminal law be used to ensure that everybody who could vote did in fact do so? It was a potentially interesting subject, but the author, she felt, rendered it ineffably dull: Rights, as the classic Hohfeldian analysis of jurisprudence reminds us, exist in a close relationship with corresponding duties, one of which is to do that which gives the right its basis … She had checked up the spelling of Hohfeld; did it have a second h? And did the author need quite so large a footnote—twelve lines—to explain who Hohfeld was when his relevance to the main thrust of the paper was so tangential? And what exactly was the main thrust of the paper, anyway? That you should vote and could be obliged to do so? But was that not intolerant of those who might not like the choice available at a particular election? Should the ballot paper provide None of the Above as an option for the reluctant voter?

She pushed the proofs to one side and waited. She could hear Jamie outside in the hall, and then the door of her study opened and he came in. She held her breath. She suddenly felt that she hated him; she hated this man coming into her study. It was so easy, so very easy.

He smiled at her. “Busy?”

How dare you smile? she thought. How dare you? She looked away.

“Isabel?” He sounded anxious.

“Yes.”

He immediately picked up the coldness of her tone. “Is something wrong?”

She opened her mouth intending to say that nothing was wrong, but that was not what came out. Instead, she said, “Did you enjoy that film?”

He looked puzzled. “What film?”

“That Italian film.” Her voice faltered.

The effect was immediate, and dramatic. “Oh God …” He moved quickly towards her, and then stopped. He had been carrying an envelope that he had picked up off the hall table, and now he dropped it. He did not bend down to pick it up. He said, “Oh God …”

He was now standing close to her. He reached out, but she avoided his touch.

“Eddie told you,” he said simply.

She looked up at him. It was true; there was no innocent explanation. If there had been one, he would not look like this: drained, guilty. The onset of conscience, she thought. Throwing a stone at a duck.

“I didn’t want you to know,” he admitted.

She turned on him angrily. “Evidently not.”

“Because I felt so awkward about the whole thing.”

Awkward? She shook her head in disbelief. “As one might,” she said. And then, almost under her breath, but audible none the less, she continued: “I hate you, you know.” The words were flat, were ugly, and she regretted saying them the moment she uttered them; she did not hate Jamie, she loved him, but she hated him too, wanted to harm him, to strike him, push him away from her. She closed her eyes. This isn’t happening. I don’t know what I’m thinking or doing. Go away.

Her eyes were still closed, but she felt his hands upon her shoulders. She tensed: it was not a lover’s touch, would never again be such.

“Isabel,” he whispered. “It’s not what you think. It really isn’t. Prue invited me there. The rehearsal finished early and she asked me to go to the cinema with her.” He paused. She heard his breathing; she felt his breath against her cheek. “What could I do? You know about her. She’s the one who’s ill. Dying.”

She opened her eyes. She looked at him; there were the beginnings of tears in his eyes.

“I only went with her because … because I couldn’t say no. She has nobody.”

She reached out and took his hand. Her relief made her feel almost dizzy. “Oh, Jamie …”

“And there’s something more,” said Jamie. “I wanted to talk to you about it, but I didn’t know how to.”

“I’m sorry,” said Isabel. “I thought …” She did not know how to say what she had thought. How could she tell him that she had not trusted him?

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t blame you for feeling as you did.”

She shook her head. “What’s this other thing?”

He looked away. “It’s very difficult to know how to put it. Prue asked me to go back to her flat with her after the film.”

Isabel was quite still. She felt her hand in his, but she did not press it as she normally would. “And?”

“Well, of course I said no. But I didn’t say to her what I should have said.”

“Which was?”

“That I can’t. She knows about you, but she behaves as if it makes no difference. She’s pretending that you don’t exist.”

Isabel tried to smile. “I do.”

“I don’t want to hurt her. She’s only got a few months to live.”

“Of course you mustn’t hurt her. Of course not.”

She felt a sudden tenderness; a return of tenderness really. He was so kind; he could never hurt anybody, even a persistent girl who needed, however gently, to be told that what she wanted could not be.

Jamie seemed to be preparing to say something more. Was there anything more? Suddenly it occurred to her that he might already have been unfaithful, and that the cinema outing was nothing important; a sequel rather than a prequel to something else. She felt herself tensing again.

“She said something to me,” said Jamie, his voice lowered. “She said that she had never had a proper boyfriend. Then she said that she did not want to die without ever having had a lover. That’s what she said. The implication was … well, I could hardly misread it.”

Isabel drew in her breath. “Oh …”

“What could I say? So I didn’t say anything. I called her a taxi and came home. But I felt … well, so awful about it.”

Isabel rose to her feet. Now she felt angry. “I don’t know what to say either. What can one say? This is … well, it’s blackmail, moral blackmail—if there’s such a thing. It’s terrible. She’s trying to get you to sleep with her because you feel sorry for her—and who wouldn’t feel sorry for somebody in her position. But it’s an awful thing to do to anybody.”

Jamie nodded his head miserably. “Yes, it is. I should have felt angry with her, but …” He shrugged. “How could I? How can you feel angry with somebody in her position.”

Isabel looked out of the window. What Jamie said was right: you could not be—should not be—angry with somebody who was dying; or … or could you? The fact that somebody was suffering from an incurable disease did not give them licence to behave as they wished; that was absurd. And presumably there were people who knew that they were dying who did things for which they could quite properly be censured. One might feel sympathy for them; one might exempt them from punishment; but one could still be angry with them and tell them that their actions were unacceptable.

She turned round to face Jamie again. He was sitting on the edge of her desk now, looking at his hands. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to talk to her.”

He answered bluntly, “What should I say?”

She felt slightly irritated that he had asked this question. Everybody should know how to let a would-be lover down gently. Did she have to spell it out for him?

“Say that your relationship can be a friendship, but nothing more. Tell her that you’re fond of her, but that’s as far as it can go.”

He nodded. “Yes, you’re right.”

“So when will you do it?”

He looked away. “Sometime. I don’t know.”

“But you will do it?”

He looked hounded. “It’s not going to be easy …”

She felt a growing sense of frustration. “Of course not. But life isn’t necessarily easy, Jamie. It’s messy.” A further possibility occurred to her; not an obvious one, and she barely thought about it before she expressed it. “Unless I do it myself.”

He did not think this a good idea. “You can’t do that,” he protested. “I don’t want her to know that I’ve spoken to you about this. And anyway, why should you do my dirty work for me?”

“Because I’m not sure that you’re going to do it,” Isabel challenged. She did not see why Prue should not know that they had discussed what had happened. Engaged people shared secrets with their fiancés; did Prue not know that? Perhaps not: Jamie had said that she had never had a proper boyfriend, and it could be that she simply did not understand the emotional intimacy of such relationships.

“I suppose I’m just putting it off,” said Jamie.

He was, she thought, but only because he had no desire to hurt. “Kindness is holding you back. You don’t want to hurt her, but I’m afraid she has to be hurt here—even if only a little.” She paused. Perhaps it was not such a bad idea for her to take this matter in hand. “And it might be easier if I were to do it, rather than you. That way she may still be able to idealise you—she won’t blame you; she won’t think that you’ve turned against her.”

It was not his fault. Some people attracted others to them through flirtation, implying availability even when they were not. She had encountered that type before, and they were dangerous. There had been somebody like that in her undergraduate philosophy class, a girl who timed her entrances into the lecture theatre with calculated precision, so that the men were already mostly seated and she could brush past them on her way to her place, smiling coyly, invitingly. And there was another such person she had met in Cambridge, a good-looking young man from Yorkshire, avowedly heterosexual, who had nevertheless picked up at his expensive boys’ boarding school the habit of fluttering his eyelids at other males without understanding the confusion that this could cause. These people asked for a particular sort of attention—and got it. Jamie, with his matinée-idol looks, turned eyes—and heads—but did not contrive to do that and never encouraged it. No, it was not his fault that this unfortunate girl had been drawn to him, moth-like; and while a flirt who got what he asked for might reasonably be expected to dig himself out of a self-created hole, that did not apply to an innocent victim like Jamie.

She seemed to be convincing herself, even if Jamie’s expression betrayed his continued doubts. If she spoke to Prue—gently, of course—she could make it quite clear to her that Jamie was unavailable. Not only that; she could go further and tell her that she, Isabel, had asked Jamie not to see her, other than in a professional context. Isabel would come across as the ogress, the possessive woman, and the poor girl could continue to harbour whatever romantic notions she liked of Jamie, keeping him unsullied. And that, thought Isabel, was surely kinder. Prue would spend her last days in the knowledge that there had been somebody, and he had been fond of her, but another woman prevented him from showing just how fond he was. It was an easier version of the truth; a better conclusion to a life.

They left it unresolved between them, although in Isabel’s mind, at least, it was clear that she would save Jamie the discomfort of a showdown with Prue. What was an awkward half hour or so tactfully explaining to a much younger woman the boundaries over which she should not cross? Nothing; and she would do it soon.

But first she had to make it up to Jamie. She had said that she had hated him, and while it did not seem to her that he was taking her words seriously, they had to be withdrawn.

She put her arms about him. “I didn’t mean what I said.” She kissed him. “I wasn’t thinking.”

He smiled at her, touching her cheek gently. He had a way of doing that, as if he was confirming the reality of something he could not quite believe. It was a flattering gesture, and one that made her weak with pleasure. “I didn’t hear you,” he said. “What did you say?”

She thought quickly. An apology for something forgotten or not heard was not always helpful. “Oh, I said something silly.”

He smiled again. “You? Something silly? I don’t believe that. Anyway, what was it?”

“I was cross with you. It made me …”

“I know you were cross. But I wasn’t listening. You didn’t say that you hated me or anything like that?” He laughed: the very thought.

“You did hear,” said Isabel reproachfully.

Her hands on his shoulders, she felt him stiffen. It was almost imperceptible, but he had reacted.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she continued. “I was all over the place, and I feel awful that I could even have thought that you would allow somebody to come between us.”

He was gentle. “Let’s not give it any more attention. It’s over. Remember: we’re going to get married soon. Just think of that.”

She hugged him to her. “I know. I know.” They had not talked about it much since that evening when the decision had been taken. There were dates to discuss. Was one month too short a period for preparations? What exactly had to be prepared if one was going to have a small, virtually private wedding? And there was the next issue of the Review of Applied Ethics to consider; or should one not take notice of such things when one was getting ready to be married?

“Misunderstandings occur,” said Jamie.

She moved her hands up to the back of his neck; his skin was so smooth, like a piece of silk. “They do, don’t they?”

“And then they go away. Just like that. And the sun comes out again.”

She smiled at the words. “That sounds very poetic.”

He slipped a hand round the back of her blouse, the inside. “Do you remember that funny little poem you made up about the tattooed man? Remember it?”

She did—even if she had not given it a second thought after the telling of it. Something about a tattooed man who had a tattooed wife and was proud of his child, the tattooed baby; it was a snippet of nonsense; a haiku-like bit of nothing. It was surprising that he remembered it, she thought, but he sometimes tucked her words away and came up with them later.

“Make up something about the sun coming out again.”

“Do you really want me to?”

He said that he did. “It will show that you forgive me.”

She thought for a moment. Then she whispered to him, “Gentle as love itself is Scottish rain / Before the healing sun will shine again.”

Jamie said nothing at first, and then asked why the rain was gentle as love.

“It just is,” Isabel said.

They stood together, arms about one another, quite still. She wondered, What do I have to forgive him for? For being too kind? Or for something else? Undisclosed failings, she thought; that great weight we all carry around with us, some of us for all our lives, unable to speak about them, unable—involuntary Atlases all—to share the burden.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IT WAS A RAW FEELING—that feeling of emptiness, of bruising, that sometimes descends after the witnessing of an act of human cruelty or folly. But even if Isabel felt this way after confronting Jamie, it was not to last: a vacuum in the soul, like an area of low pressure on the weather map, attracts repairing winds: and these came.

They made it up, in the way in which a couple may make it up: tenderness, expressions of concern for the feelings of the other, solicitude, acts of gentle touching. If unforgivable things had been said, then these words seemed soon to be forgotten. Charlie distracted them, of course, and reminded them that they were bound together not just by love and affection but also by the life of this small boy. So Isabel tried to put out of her mind what she had said, even if she could not help but ask herself how she could have said it. And what, she wondered, if Jamie had taken her seriously: Would he have repaid her with the same coin? The tendons of love could snap very easily, and when they did, they frequently failed to heal. Falling out of love, after all, was just that: a fall.

It would not happen again, thought Isabel; she would never again distrust Jamie. And even thinking this made her blush with shame that she could have suspected him of an affair, like some insecure teenager worrying about an errant boyfriend. That would not happen again—ever.

They were both busy: Isabel continued with the final preparations of the next issue of the Review and with sending out the piles of books that publishers hoped would be mentioned in the Books Received column. There were reviewers to be contacted, some of whom required something perilously close to flattery, or even cajoling, before they agreed to write the reviews. There were ambitions and enmities to be considered: she had once sent a book out to a reviewer in Australia who had rapidly accepted the commission—too rapidly, perhaps, as she later discovered that the author under review had seduced the reviewer’s wife, a scandal that was well known in Australian philosophical circles; the seduction had taken place at a weekend conference of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, on, as it happened, loyalty—but there was no way in which she could have been aware of that. The reviewer, now spending a lonely retirement in an echoing house in the Blue Mountains, must have fallen upon her request to write a review as one coming upon manna in the desert. “I shall be delighted to do this for you,” he wrote back. “Do not bother to send the book: I have recently purchased the work and will work with my own copy, so I can start immediately. Thank you again.”

She should have been warned by the effusiveness of the response, but she was not. And when the review came in—there was nothing to make her suspicious, except perhaps the final sentence. This read: The author needs to reflect on what he has done. The general tone of the review was highly critical, with reference being made to “egregious errors” and “sloppy scholarship.” But such remarks, although discourteous, were within the range of what might be expected in the cut and thrust of academic debate. A few weeks after publication, though, when the background was pointed out to Isabel, she had read the final sentence, and indeed the entire review, in a very different light. It was an act of revenge.

While Isabel worked on the Review, Jamie had a week of rehearsals in Glasgow; he was standing in for a woman bassoonist who had gone off to have twins and would be away for at least six months. It was regular work and he liked the conductor; he was happy. He knew most of the orchestral players already and he enjoyed playing for opera, especially for the Italian repertoire that Scottish Opera was working on. “It always makes me want to cry,” he said. “ ‘Una furtiva lagrima,’ in fact. Donizetti does that to me. Brings out the furtive tears.”

“But of course music should do that,” she said. “I’m never dry-eyed when I hear ‘Soave sia il vento.’ I can’t help myself.”

“Mimi’s death did it for me,” said Jamie. “I first saw Bohème when I was thirteen. We went to the Theatre Royal in Glasgow, with the school, and her death scene had me in floods. I didn’t want the other boys to see, and so I looked down at the floor, which meant that I really didn’t see much of her actual demise. But I think the others noticed and one of them kicked me on the shin.”

“Boys,” said Isabel. They were always hitting each other, kicking things; that lay ahead with Charlie, who was gentle, like his father, but who would no doubt go through the phase of testing the fragility of the world. Yesterday he had thrown a toy wooden train at a door and been thrilled by the experience; there would be more to come.

Jamie inclined his head in agreement. “Yes, boys. But then years later I saw Bohème done in a modern setting—an artist’s warehouse in New York rather than a garret in Paris. Everything on the stage was very minimalist: acres of white, even minimalist white, if that’s a colour. Mimi was still dying of consumption, though, and it suddenly occurred to me that there was a real problem here. If it was meant to be contemporary New York, then Mimi wouldn’t have died. She would have been given antibiotics …”

Isabel burst out laughing. “I’m not sure that antibiotics help opera,” she said. “They could change so much.”

“And they would have meant so much more Mozart,” mused Jamie, for whom the death of Mozart had been the big tragedy. He had once said to Isabel: “Mozart’s dying so young, Isabel: was that, do you think, a bigger loss for the world than the wiping out of the dinosaurs?” She had been about to say “A silly question, Jamie,” but had realised that it was not so silly at all; in fact it was profound, whichever way one looked at it. Was a refined statement of truth and beauty—some great artistic creation, perhaps—better in its essence than a destructive and brutish life-form? Better for whom? And if the dinosaurs had continued to exist, would we—or Mozart—have come into existence? Perhaps we had progressed enough in our understanding of the world to abandon our claims to being that special. If the choice were between dinosaurs and Homo sapiens, then did it really matter one way or the other, except to the species involved? Ultimately, of course, if we were the ones passing the judgement, then it was infinitely better that it was people rather than dinosaurs. But that was a conclusion simply begging for objections because it meant that we could despoil the world at will, as long as we judged what we did to be in our best interests. The dinosaurs had gone: next might be the tigers, if we wanted their forests or if we thought that they might eat a few too many of us; or the whales, if we wanted to eat them, or make them into watch oil or some other product. No, the moment one began to deny any value other than that conferred by humans, the moral game was up. There could be no morality beyond the limited world of what we did to each other.

But now Jamie continued: “Just think, if Mozart had been given another thirty-five years. Just imagine.”

Isabel wondered whether the composer had said everything he wanted to say by the time he died, as had happened with Auden, who had said less and less in his later years, and much of it rather cantankerous. Perhaps there was a time for an artist to die, or at least to become silent, before he said something that contradicted everything he had said before. She had thought this recently when a distinguished philosopher—a long-professed atheist—began in his final years to write articles that took a different view. Those who had applauded his earlier works were dismayed and put the change of view down to senility. She had mentioned this to Jamie—read it out from a letter published in the newspaper—and he had said, “Yes, but he still believed what he said when he wrote those articles. He may have been losing the place, but he still believed what he said.”

“Undoubtedly. But the belief might have been based on a physical change in the brain.”

Jamie looked unimpressed. “But still his brain.”

“His brain at … whatever age he was. Let’s say eighty-something.”

“But a man aged twenty is the same person as the same man at eighty-something, isn’t he?”

She said that the answer to this was yes and no. “The same physical person, yes, but we can be quite different persons in other respects.” She looked at him thoughtfully. How would he change? she wondered. “And perhaps we shouldn’t judge people in the same way throughout their lifetimes. We can become different people, don’t you think?”

He looked doubtful, and so she carried on: “All we need to do is to make it clear that we’re talking about people at a particular point in their lives. Look at those people who were communists in the thirties and then changed their minds when they saw what communism could do. What do we say of them when we sum them up at the end of their lives? That they were communists? That they condoned the Gulag?”

Jamie shook his head. “No. We look at what they became. That’s their …” He paused, searching for the right expression.

“Their final position?”

“Yes. That’s what counts.”

She considered this charitable—and she approved of that. There was not enough charity. There was plenty of readiness to blame and to punish; there was never enough generosity of spirit.

She thought: We do not need to look for reasons for love—it is simply there; it comes upon us without invitation, without reason sometimes; it surprises us when we are least expecting it, when we think that our hearts are closed or that we are not ready, or we imagine it will never happen to us because it has not happened before. But if I were to ask myself why I love you, or perhaps try to find what is the main cause of my being in love with you, perhaps it is because you are generous of spirit. It is not because you are beautiful; not because I see perfection in your features, in your smile, in your litheness—all of which I do, of course I do, and have done since the moment I first met you. It is because you are generous in spirit; and may I be like that; may I become like you—which unrealistic wish, to become the other, is such a true and revealing symptom of love, its most obvious clue, its unmistakable calling card.

THE ENERGETIC SUBSTITUTION of one task for another, more awkward task may make one forget for a while, but only for a while. Isabel knew that, and even as she buried herself over the next few days in performing the admittedly pressing work of putting the Review to bed—delicious term, she thought—at the back of her mind was the knowledge that there were other things she should be doing: thinking of how to deal with Professor Lettuce and his unsolicited review; speaking to Prue; finding out more about the candidates for the principal’s post; and, of course, getting married. That made her smile; an impending marriage should occupy one’s mind almost entirely, but here she was merely adding it to a list of things to do. There were people, she knew, who simply never got round to getting married; they might have decided to marry, but for some reason the timing might never seem quite right, or sheer inertia might take over. She had read of one engagement in the Highlands of Scotland that had lasted for twenty-eight years before the couple got round to holding a wedding. The groom had bought a wedding suit that had remained in the cupboard during all that time, as had the bride’s dress; the spread of middle age had made both too small.

Of course Isabel knew that things moved more slowly in the remote communities of the Scottish Highlands, where there is no need to rush things; and as she thought this, she remembered that suits became too small there for other reasons. In her student days, on a camping trip with friends, Isabel had passed a small farmhouse—a croft—in Wester Ross and seen a man’s suit hanging out to dry on a line. People did not wash men’s suits, but they did here, where there was no alternative; and there it was, hanging on the line, dark against the green grass, gesticulating in gusts that came in from the sea, arms filled with wind. The picture remained in her mind, so vivid after all these years that she could smell again the grass and the iodine scent of the drying kelp on the seashore and the wind that came in from the rolling Atlantic.

They would talk about marriage again, and soon. She would suggest that they give themselves a little more time—a few months—to make their plans. If they were to go away on honeymoon, then there would be the Review to think about: one could not simply leave a philosophical journal to look after itself. And there were Jamie’s commitments to consider: his programme of rehearsals and short-notice session work meant that he would have to make arrangements too. And then there was Charlie: he would come with them, of course, but that would rule out some of the places that Jamie had said he would like to visit. One could not easily take a small child to uninhabited islands off the coast of Scotland, for example.

Isabel had agreed to a Scottish honeymoon, but, had she been given a completely free choice, she would have chosen something like trekking in the Himalayas. But such a choice was definitely not a good one for a child under two. Himalayan tracks were steep enough for an adult; for a toddler they might as well be vertical, unless, of course, Charlie were to be carried all the way, perhaps by one of the Sherpas who hired themselves out as porters. Charlie could be well wrapped up and strapped to one of those impossibly large packs of luggage the Sherpas shouldered; but what fun would such a honeymoon be for him? And there were those narrow mountain paths where one false step might send one sliding hundreds of feet down a side of scree or over some dizzy precipice. No, a better honeymoon from Charlie’s point of view would be somewhere with a beach and a friendly, barely tidal sea at just the right temperature. That sort of place was, of course, hardly romantic, but then a honeymoon with a small child could not be expected to be a conventional honeymoon.

She would sit Jamie down and talk to him about all this. They would identify a date and plan accordingly, but for now they would get on with the immediate tasks of life, one of which, for Isabel, was to attend a dinner party. She would be going by herself, as Jamie was playing in a concert in Dundee that night; and her attendance would bring back into focus at least one of the matters that she had been shelving: the shortlist.

“PEOPLE IN EDINBURGH forget about us,” said Jillian Mackinlay, as they looked out over the lawns at Abbotsford.

Isabel took the glass of wine that a young man offered her on a small silver tray. He was dressed in the uniform of a waiter or steward—black trousers and white shirt—but she could tell from his hands that he was really a gardener, or tractor man perhaps, inveigled into household duties. She thanked him, and he broke into a broad smile. “You work here?” she asked.

“No. I’m a shepherd.” He nodded towards a man standing at the other end of the room. “His shepherd.”

Isabel took a sip of her wine as the young man moved away. “An Ettrick shepherd,” she muttered.

Jillian looked puzzled.

“James Hogg,” said Isabel. “The Ettrick Shepherd. The essayist.”

Jillian looked flustered. “Of course.”

“You were saying that people in Edinburgh forget something …”

Jillian returned to her theme. “Us. They forget us. They think everything of any consequence happens in Edinburgh. They think that nothing happens down here, out in the country. They really do. Take this place. They forget that this is the greatest literary shrine in Scotland—Sir Walter Scott’s house, no less, and we’ve had terrible trouble interesting them in it.”

“Oh, but I think they are interested,” said Isabel. “I am. I love Scott. And I think he’s still pretty widely read, isn’t he?”

“I’m not sure how many people still read him,” Jillian said. “Rob Roy, perhaps, but beyond that, well …”

Isabel thought that the problem was time. Who had time for the great historical novels? “Some of it might seem a little … heavy these days. People have so many claims on their time.”

“Well, they’ll come in their droves once the trustees sort this place out,” said Jillian, looking up at the ceiling. “This gorgeous ceiling, for example, and all this … all this stuff.” She gestured at the collection of ancient weapons adorning the wall. It was a romantic’s dream.

“Scott must have been a bit of a magpie,” said Isabel. “So many things.”

“He was fascinated by the past. His life was a great big jumble of romantic history. Mists, glens, castles and so on. He suited his time absolutely perfectly. And just think—this is where he actually lived, where he wrote. We can take a look at his writing room after dinner. His desk is still there.”

The dinner at Abbotsford was Jillian’s husband’s idea. As a supporter of the project to restore Scott’s house, he had invited a group of likely donors for dinner and Jillian had suggested that Isabel join them. “I’d like you to meet Alex,” she explained. “And we’re not asking you for money. You’re here as …”

Isabel waited.

“As a friend,” Jillian continued. “And you’ll have the chance to meet Harold and Christine. He’s the outgoing head of Bishop Forbes. I wanted you to meet them socially rather than formally.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “He doesn’t know that you’re looking into this whole thing for us. But it could be useful for you to meet them.”

Isabel wondered why. The outgoing principal, she had been told, had nothing to do with the appointment of his successor, and so it was difficult to see what difference it could make for her to meet him. But she was keen to see Abbotsford again after so many years, having visited it last as a schoolgirl when the sisters were still in residence. These sisters, direct descendants of Scott, had kept the house going as best they could, but a roof so large and walls so rambling had eventually defeated their resources. Living in Scotland was like that: a battle against the elements; against the rain that would eventually wash away even the hardest stone; against wind that could lift the heaviest slate and curl the thickest roofing lead; against cold that would shrink the snuggest mortar.

Jillian now led Isabel to the other side of the room. Her husband, a tall man with aquiline features, emanated an energy that impressed itself immediately. Committee man, thought Isabel; a natural chairman.

Alex met her gaze as they shook hands. She noticed his eyes, which were pale blue, filled, it seemed, with an intense light. It was curious how it happened, and she had sometimes wondered about it: some eyes appeared to have the light within them rather than without. And yet eyes should reflect rather than emit light.

He drew her aside, leading her to one of the large windows that looked out over Scott’s grounds.

“We obviously won’t have the opportunity to talk very much,” he said quietly. “Not with this mob.”

A mob of donors, she thought. That could be the collective noun. Or should it be a prospect of donors? Or a wealth of donors? The latter—clearly.

“Jillian has filled me in,” he continued. “So I understand you—how shall I put it?—look into certain matters for people. Delicate matters. Jillian has convinced us that one of those firms, you know, who look into fraud and such things, would be less discreet, and all this could somehow get out.” He paused. “So we need somebody tactful. Like you.”

She looked down at her glass. He saw her do this.

“That sounds a bit like parody,” he said. “Sorry. But then parody often makes exactly the point one wants to make.”

She realised that she had misjudged him. Alex Mackinlay was not a typical bluff businessman, full of clichés and superficialities; there was a subtle intelligence at play.

“I understand,” she said. “And I’m happy to help.”

He looked at her appreciatively. “I’m very grateful. Although I must say that it crossed my mind to ask you why.”

It was a well-tried technique. If there was something that one wanted to know but did not want to ask directly, then the simplest thing was to announce that this was a question that one had no intention of asking. It always paid off; just as it worked when politicians said that the one thing they were not going to raise about a candidate was his past. That put everybody on notice to look for scandal.

“I do this sort of thing because I can’t find it in myself to refuse,” said Isabel. “That is my weakness. I freely admit it.”

Alex smiled. “Well, at least that’s honest. I’m not sure I would own up to my weaknesses quite so freely.”

Isabel raised an eyebrow. “Really? Of course I shall resist the temptation to ask you what those weaknesses are.” It was his service returned.

He did not answer. “Those three names,” he said. “As Jillian will have told you, we fear that one of them is not quite what he claims to be. Or is otherwise unsuitable for appointment. But we don’t know which one it is.”

Isabel thought about this. If he was as shrewd as she thought he was, then surely he would have his views on who the rotten apple might be. If the apple was rotten, of course.

She asked him directly. “Who do you think it is? You must have your suspicions.”

He thought for a moment. “I’m very reluctant to say.”

“Because you’re unsure?”

He nodded. “Yes. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have a view, but I’m afraid I’ve learned not to trust my own judgement when it comes to people.”

This surprised her. “But how can you not? You’re a businessman, I believe; you must have to form an opinion of people every day of the week. You must trust your own judgement.”

He was adamant. “Not people. Facts and figures—yes, especially balance sheets. But when it comes to people—I’m just not sure. I used to think I could tell, but not any more.”

“You’ll have to tell me why,” Isabel said. “You can’t leave it at that.”

He hesitated, but then he decided. “All right. I’ll tell you. I used to be chairman of a company based in Glasgow. We had a problem with embezzlement—money went missing. We didn’t want to get the police involved, and so we tried to sort it out ourselves. I asked the manager to give me his views on who was doing it. I had a high opinion of him and I thought that he would probably have a fairly good idea of his staff and what was going on. So he gave me a name, and I called this chap in. I looked at him and I decided that he looked dishonest. So I asked him outright if he knew anything at all about the missing funds. He was all over the place. He mumbled. He looked up at the ceiling. He avoided eye contact.”

“You decided it was him?”

“Yes. I did.”

“So what did you do?”

Alex looked down at the floor. He was himself avoiding eye contact, thought Isabel. “I had no proof, and so I just warned him and said we were watching him. I didn’t say anything more than that—I couldn’t, and so I left it there. He left the room, and that was it.”

“And?” asked Isabel.

“And he went away that night and threw himself off the Erskine Bridge. That was it. Left three children, and one on the way.”

Isabel winced. “These tragedies happen,” she said. “Guilt can be very powerful.”

“Except he wasn’t guilty,” said Alex, looking back at her again. There was no light in his eyes now. “He was completely innocent. I’d made a huge error of judgement, hadn’t even realised that he was suffering from very serious depression. I mishandled it totally. A few weeks later the manager was caught more or less red-handed. I’d misjudged him too—as well as that poor man who jumped off the bridge.” He paused. “There you have it.”

She was silent for a while. It was an appalling story, and she could not ask him again to give his views. But now he did. “Tom Simpson,” he said. “The third name on that list of yours. There’s something about him that makes me suspicious.”

Isabel thought: A guilty look? Wrong colour of tie?

“Stupid,” said Alex. “He’s stupid, that man. Nobody else at the interview thought so—nor did his referees. But I think he’s not very bright.”

“But he could be a good administrator,” suggested Isabel. Did principals of schools have to be intellectuals? Surely what counted was the ability to motivate staff and students—and keep the parents happy. None of that relied entirely on intellectual ability.

Alex smiled. “Yes. They used to have school heads like that, but not any more. It’s changed a lot since our day. No, what worries me is that he claims to have a first-class honours degree—and a master’s with distinction. I somehow feel that’s just not possible.”

“You could check,” said Isabel. It would be a simple business to get in touch with the universities in question and ask.

“I have,” said Alex. “I took it upon myself to contact the registry of the University of Bristol. They said that he’d been there, but they wouldn’t reveal the class of his degree—something to do with data protection. You know how people won’t tell you what time of day it is because of data protection.”

Isabel laughed. “I heard of somebody who refused to give his name when asked. He said it was on the grounds of privacy.”

“Some people are strange,” said Alex.

“Very.” She paused. “And the others? Gordon Leafers and John Fraser?”

Alex shrugged. “I met them at the interview. John Fraser I knew slightly anyway. We had a couple of mutual friends.”

“That’s useful, isn’t it?” said Isabel. “What do they say about him?”

“They admire him. But they say that he’s rather gloomy. That was the word they used: gloomy.”

As well he might be, thought Isabel; with the life of that other climber on his conscience, he might well be gloomy.

“And Gordon?”

Alex’s answer came quickly. Gordon, in his view, was above reproach. “Everybody likes him,” he said. “An immensely attractive character.”

Yes, thought Isabel. Too attractive, perhaps? Or too attractive to married women?

A woman came into the room from a side door and signalled to Alex. “That’s dinner ready,” he said. “I believe Jillian has put you next to the current head. Harold Slade. You’ll like him.”

THEY FILED THROUGH to the dining room and took their places. When everybody was seated, Alex tapped his knife against a wine glass and stood up to speak. He was grateful to them all for coming, he said, and he hoped they would enjoy what they saw of Abbotsford. Scott would come back into fashion, he thought, and claim the imagination of a new generation. He was pleased to play a small part in this, and they could too.

Isabel frowned involuntarily; would an electronic generation, brought up on a diet of quick-fire humour and pyrotechnic cinematic effects, embrace somebody like Scott, whose stories could be weighed in pounds? And yet writers who wrote long books still survived: people still read Dickens and Stevenson; they still read Proust, for that matter, or claimed that they did.

“As long as people are interested in Scottish history,” said Alex, staring down the table as if to challenge those who were not, “then Scott will have his public.”

There were nods of agreement, and Isabel found herself joining in. The year before, there had been a gathering of the clans in Scotland and people had flocked from every corner of the globe to join in. These were people who lived in distant modern cities, in the Cincinnatis and the Canberras of this world, but who felt the pull of Scottish ancestry, even now; they had come to Edinburgh and watched Highland dancing and displays of every sort of Scotticism, lapping up the riot of tartan. And why not? People felt the need to come from somewhere, even if it was a long time ago and they were not sure exactly where it was and when. Blood links, she thought; that was what it was about. However tenuous such links were, people regarded them as standing between themselves and the void of human impermanence. For ultimately we were all insignificant tenants of this earth, temporary bearers of a genetic message that could so easily disappear. We had not always been here, and there was no reason to suppose that we always would be. And yet we found such thoughts uncomfortable, and did not like to think them. So we clung to the straws of identity; these, at least, made us feel a little more permanent.

Scott was part of that; this wonderful house, with all its reminders of the Scottish past, was part of it. Keep me from the pain of nothingness. The words came to her mind from somewhere, but she was not sure where: Timor nihil conturbat me, a play on that line of William Dunbar’s. It was not becoming nothing—death—that we must fear but being nothing.

This line of thought distracted her, and she did not hear Alex’s final observations before he sat down. Something further about Scott, and his feeling for Abbotsford. The speech over, in the outbreak of conversation that followed she turned to Harold Slade, seated beside her. They shook hands, and he announced that she had been pointed out to him by Alex Mackinlay as somebody who might come to the school one day and talk to the boys about doing a degree in philosophy. “If you think that’s a good idea, of course,” he said. “One of the interesting things that I have found in the past is that people don’t necessarily believe in what they do.”

Isabel laughed. “Oh, I believe in philosophy, Mr. Slade.”

“Harry, please.”

“Philosophy is something that you have to believe in,” she continued. “The moment you begin to think, you engage with it.” She paused. She was sounding pedantic, and did not want to. “I’d be happy to talk to the boys, Harry.”

He inclined his head. “Thank you. Perhaps you could manage it before I hand over. I’m going, you see.”

“I’d heard that. Singapore, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

She looked at him, taking in the details: the lines around the eyes, the strong chin, the slight fraying of what must be a favourite, over-used shirt. He was an imposing-looking man, and she could imagine him encouraging the rugby team on the touchline; there was a certain unabashed masculinity, a simplicity of spirit, that one found in people who spent their lives in boys’ schools. But that apparent simplicity, she thought, was probably misleading. His charm, she suddenly decided, was dangerous.

“And are you looking forward to the change?”

“I shall be doing much the same thing, I imagine. But in a rather different place.” He smiled at her. “I like Singapore. It’s very well-ordered. We’re becoming so slipshod and chaotic here; they aren’t.”

She agreed that there was something to be said for social order. “Who amongst us likes nastiness, brutality and shortness?” she said.

“Indeed.” He paused for a moment, breaking a small bread roll that had been placed on his side plate. “They’re very well-mannered in Singapore, you know. Courteous. You never see public drunkenness or fighting.”

They were, she said, but she wondered whether the atmosphere could become a bit … Order could be taken too far perhaps … She did not finish what she was saying. “My wife thinks that,” he said, looking down the table. “She’s not too keen to go, I’m afraid. But I’ve persuaded her to give it a try. We’re prepared to run separate establishments for a few years if push comes to shove. She could stay back here.”

“People do that,” said Isabel.

“It must be said that she’s not keen, though,” he said. “I feel a bit bad about it.”

He looked down the table again. Following his gaze, Isabel glanced at the thin, rather bony-looking woman who was sitting several places away from her. The woman looked up and, as their eyes met, Isabel saw something unsettling: jealousy. For a few moments she was uncertain what to make of it. What woman would resent her husband sitting next to another woman at a dinner? Only one who felt insecure in the man’s affections. A possessive wife, Isabel thought. But then she stopped. I know nothing about her, she said to herself. All that I know is that she does not want to leave Scotland; that she wants to stay where she is. But then she realised: with that small bit of information, I know everything.

She looked down the table again. Christine Slade was staring into the bowl of soup that had been placed in front of her by the same young man who had served drinks before dinner, the shepherd. She looked miserable, and Isabel felt a sudden surge of sympathy for her. How many wives were there, she wondered, whose lives were ruined by the career ambitions of their husbands? Who lived in their shadows and never complained? Who endured the loss of friends and family because they were obliged to move from pillar to post? And might one say the same thing about husbands in a similar position, who sacrificed themselves to their wives’ careers? One might, except for one major difference: one did not have to say it very often because there were so few of them.

She turned to Harold. “Perhaps you should think of staying in Scotland if your wife is so unhappy about moving.”

He looked at her in surprise. “But she’ll get used to it,” he said. “I’m not worried about her.” And then he added, “People adjust, you know. They get used to anything.”

Isabel mulled over his words. I’m not worried about her. No, she thought, you aren’t; you take her for granted. And then she thought: This is a ladies’ man, used to the affection and interest of women.

She looked across the table. Jillian, who was seated directly opposite, was staring at Harold. Isabel saw the other woman’s lips move, mouthing a word. She snatched a glance at Harold; he had intercepted the unspoken word and was smiling back at Jillian. Isabel felt uncomfortable, as an unwitting stranger must feel on stumbling upon something, some intimate exchange between friends.

After dinner they drank coffee in the drawing room, and Isabel was able to make her way over to where she saw Christine Slade standing. She reached her just as she was about to strike up a conversation with a man who was paying close attention to a painting on the wall. Isabel introduced herself. “I enjoyed your husband’s company at dinner,” she said. “He was telling me about Singapore.”

The woman smiled, but her smile seemed weary. Her eyes moved over Isabel without interest. “Yes,” she said. “Singapore.”

Isabel sipped at her coffee. It was cold. “These international schools must be fascinating,” she said. “All those different nationalities.”

“This one is very British. Cricket. Prefects. All that.”

Christine’s tone bordered on the dismissive: there were ways of pronouncing cricket that indicated disapproval.

Isabel smiled. “Such an odd game. Moments of great excitement and then hours in which nothing happens. Like life, perhaps.”

Christine looked at her vaguely, as if conscious of the fact that something witty had been said, but not quite sure what it was. “Maybe.”

Isabel searched for something to say. “Will you live in a house or a flat?” Even as she asked the question, its dullness struck her. What earthly interest did she have in knowing whether these people, whom she had just met, would live in a house or a flat? Most people in Singapore lived in flats, she imagined, although some would live in houses. But what did it matter?

The question, though, seemed to spark some interest. “A house. There’s one that goes with the job. A house with a maid.”

“Ah.” Isabel racked her brains for something else to say. What would the maid be like? Would there be a drive to the house; somewhere to park the car? Would there be a car?

“It gets very hot,” said Christine suddenly. “It’s more or less the same temperature most of the year, but that’s quite hot.”

Isabel nodded. It was hot in Singapore. Yes, she had heard that.

“You’re not keen to go?” It was a direct question, but she wanted to get the conversation past its abysmal small-talk stage.

Christine threw a glance across the room to where her husband was standing, deep in conversation with Alex and another man. “I don’t mind,” she said flatly. “It’s what Harry wants. That’s the important thing.”

Isabel said nothing. It occurred to her now that the situation was not quite as simple as she had imagined. Harry wanted to go to Singapore because of the job. That was clear, but … but what if he wanted to go to Singapore because his wife, this rather dull woman, did not want to go there? If one wanted to get away from one’s wife, then it made perfect sense to go to a place to which she would be reluctant to follow one. So that ruled out places like Paris or Melbourne or Vancouver, where it was no great burden to live, and ruled in certain places were nobody would like to go. Singapore, of course, was not on that list, being a rather attractive place where people led comfortable, secure lives. But some people might not like the heat or the distance from home, and, like Christine, might not wish to follow.

Now, if Harry had decided to go somewhere far away to escape what must be a very dull home life, then he would obviously not wish Christine to accompany him. But he would have to be circumspect about it. If he made it clear that he did not want her to come with him, then that would only persuade her that she must at all costs accompany him in order to prevent his going off with somebody else.

Of course she could be dissembling. She might secretly be rather keen to live in Singapore but not wish to give that impression. It might suit her very well for her husband to go off to Singapore and leave her in Scotland … with her lover … The new young sports teacher, perhaps. Isabel stopped herself. This was absurd. The situation had no such complexities: this was a straightforward case of a man taking a job in a place where his wife did not wish to live because she was set in her ways and happy where she was. However, she would follow him, and life for them would go on very much as it went on back in Scotland. There was nothing under the surface here; what you saw was what there was. Nothing more than that.

Isabel, who had momentarily turned away, turned round again and saw that Christine was moving off towards other guests. She thinks I am boring, thought Isabel. But then she had every right to reach this conclusion after that conversation; every right. Isabel finished the last of her cold coffee and put the cup down on a table. Harry and Christine depressed her. There was no happiness there.

She looked at her watch. She was driving back to Edinburgh and she made a quick calculation. She had had one glass of wine before dinner and half a glass during the meal. That quantity, spread over three hours, made it quite safe for her to drive. If she left now, she would be home in not much more than an hour, and Jamie would not be much later. Grace was babysitting and would stay the night.

A few minutes later she was in her green Swedish car and heading back along the road to Edinburgh. The Border countryside could just be made out under a three-quarters moon: wide fields punctuated by dark woods; rolling hills, silhouetted against the night sky; crouching shapes like sleeping bears or humpback whales. This was the landscape of Walter Scott, and she imagined him at Abbotsford, looking out of his library window at the world he peopled with his characters; a world of desperate doings and heroic quests.

That was not what the world was like now, and she should not allow her imagination to suggest otherwise. There were no hidden dimensions to the world of Harry and Christine. They had nothing to do with the unresolved problem of that shortlist, and in that enquiry she was no further along than she had been before, except, perhaps, she now had the knowledge that Alex distrusted Tom Simpson and wrote him off as being intellectually inferior to the other two candidates. And a fraud, of course. That changed the picture—if it could be proved. And that should not be too difficult, despite Alex’s unsuccessful efforts: one either had the degree one claimed to have or one did not, and there must be some way of ascertaining that. She could try to find out, although she thought that it was probably a waste of time. It was just too unlikely a thing for a candidate to do. No, she would not bother. The real subject of the anonymous letter, she decided, was John Fraser. He was the one who had something serious to hide.

As she came into Edinburgh from the south and saw the lights of the city laid out below her, her thoughts turned to Jamie’s friend Prue. Down there, there were so many people she knew, or who knew about her. There were links and associations and relationships; there were all the tissue, the sinews, of human society. And one of these people whose light might still be burning at this hour was that unhappy, frightened girl whom she would have to see; whose heart was presumably already broken by the arbitrariness of her illness, and for whom only disappointment and sorrow lay ahead. Unless … the thought that came to her was unexpected, and outrageous. Unless she were to share Jamie—as an act of charity towards a girl who did not have long to live. She had everything, and that young woman had nothing; was it out of the question to allow Jamie to go to her and comfort her, to give her the experience of love before she died? Most women would be appalled by the idea—yes, appalled. But that was not how Isabel felt. She felt ashamed, embarrassed perhaps, but she did not feel appalled. And how would Jamie react if she made the suggestion? She saw him looking at her with that reproachful look that he sometimes adopted. “Isabel, are you serious? Or are you out of your mind? Perhaps you are. Completely. How could you? How could you?” Or, more likely, he would just stare at her in justified shock.

He would be right: how could she? It might have seemed an act of generosity, of sharing, but it was also an act of insouciance, an implicit statement that she did not care enough to bother if the man to whom she was about to be married had an affair with another woman. Of course she cared; of course she wanted Jamie to the exclusion of all others—what were the precise words of the marriage service, before linguistic meddling had destroyed its poetry? Forsaking all others? What a powerful, resonant word was forsake. The phrase forsaking all others meant so much more, made its point so much more emphatically than its weaker alternatives. And yet the thought had occurred to her. It did not come from nowhere. It had occurred to her, and the things that come into our mind are ours. If they are outrageous, then it is because somewhere within ourselves we have an outrageous part; a dark twin in whose mind thoughts of infidelity, carnal excess, selfishness dwell with ease and naturalness.

CHAPTER TWELVE

OF COURSE SHE SAID NOTHING about it to Jamie. The following morning, over the breakfast table, as Jamie fed Charlie his boiled-egg-and-Marmite soldiers, the thought crossed her mind again, but she quickly dismissed it by deliberately thinking of something else. This, she understood, was the technique adopted by the saints, actual and aspiring, for whom impure thoughts were temptations to be put out of mind; they thought of heavenly subjects, choirs of angels and the like, and the unsettling thoughts were elbowed out. Or they flagellated themselves, which was another way of dealing with the errant mind, though not a practice one could easily adopt at the breakfast table. In Isabel’s case, she thought of Christopher Dove, and imagined him sitting over breakfast, frowning at his bowl of muesli, plotting his next move. To this picture she added Professor Lettuce, sitting on the other side of the table, glancing with admiration at his younger colleague. The thought made her smile, and it worked: I have stopped dwelling on that dreadful idea of mine.

Jamie, unaware of Isabel’s mental struggle, discussed the day ahead. He was entirely free and wanted to take Charlie to the Botanical Gardens. Jamie had recently discovered the fish that swam languidly in one of the hothouse pools; they would visit them, he said, and look at a few of the more exotic plants. Charlie wanted desperately to touch a cactus, it seemed, and Jamie wondered whether he should be allowed to discover about thorns and spikes for himself. “That’s how they learn, isn’t it?” he asked. “How else?”

Isabel looked fondly at Charlie. There was so much that she wanted to protect him from in life—as every parent does. Cactuses were on that list somewhere, she supposed.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “There’ll be time enough to find out about cactuses in the future. Cactuses, alcohol, the breaking of the heart: lots of time to learn about all that.”

She had her own plans for the day. The previous day, before going down to Abbotsford, she had telephoned Charlie Maclean with a request to meet the father of the man who had been lost on Everest. Charlie had mentioned that he knew him, and she wondered whether she could have a word with him. Charlie was obliging, and came up with a telephone number. “He’s retired now,” he said. “He actually lives not far away from us. He still does some nosing for one or two of the distilleries. He was very good.” He paused. “Apparently he never really recovered from what happened. He was an only son—the climber. There’s a daughter, but she’s not quite right, I believe. Unfortunately she’s a bit glaikit.” He used the Scots word for mental handicap. It was not a word that many used any more, preferring learning difficulties, the modern euphemism. But there was nothing unkind about glaikit, which survived because the policing of language had not extended to the Scots lexicon.

She had telephoned the father and he had said that he was prepared to see her. He asked her what it was about and she explained. “I want to know more about what happened on that expedition,” she said.

He sounded weary. “You’re writing something?”

“Not exactly.”

“You really want to talk to me?” he asked. “I wasn’t there, you know.”

“If you don’t mind.”

There was a short silence. He does mind, she thought, and understandably so. But this is not what he said. “Very well. If it’s important to you.”

He spoke with resignation, but it was not his tone of voice that struck her: it was the phrase If it’s important to you. That phrase, she observed, was the foundation of so much of our moral dealing with others. We recognise what is important to them; we take it into account. And if we did that, then so much else followed: recognition of rights, the practice of courtesy—everything, really, that made for peaceable relations between people. Gay marriage, she thought: some people might not like the idea, but if they thought If it’s important to you, the case for their recognising it became so much stronger, so much more obvious. Unless, of course, one applied the same question to the objectors, in which case one was back where one started—trying to reconcile two mutually antipathetic positions, which was about as easy as ensuring that olive oil and balsamic vinegar remain mixed after shaking.

Isabel closed her eyes; one could not construct a moral position based on analogies of balsamic vinegar.

“Are you there?”

The voice on the line brought her back from her philosophical wandering.

“I am. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.” She apologised again and then made the arrangement. He would see her at his house at ten-thirty. He gave her the address, which was just outside Edinburgh, near Roslin Chapel, on the edge of the Pentland Hills. He lived off a road that ran between Roslin and the village of Temple; a strange slice of landscape, caught between narrow, twisting glens and the more rolling terrain that became the Border hills.

“You can’t miss our house,” he said. “It’s ochre. You won’t see any other ochre houses. You can’t go wrong.”

As he had anticipated, she found the house easily. It was larger than she had imagined: somewhere between a functional farmhouse and a house that would in the past have been called a laird’s house—a house that at the time of its building would not have been grand enough for a family with real aspirations, but which would have been perfect for one that wanted to be comfortable.

The house was served by a short drive, on which gravel had been freshly laid, making a satisfactory crunching noise under the tyres of her car; a noise like the crashing of waves on the shore; a good sound, she thought. She parked, and then, getting out of the car, looked at the house before her. It was a fortunate house, she decided, as it must have been built just before Georgian became Victorian. The shadow of Victoria was there, but had not quite fallen on this building, which still had the scale and pleasing proportions of Georgian architecture. An easy house. A house that was comfortable in its skin, or mortar perhaps.

The ochre came from the harling, that roughcast coating of tiny pebbles and lime that was applied to the outside of Scottish houses. This had been painted in the warm shade that one found occasionally in eastern Scotland, brought from somewhere else, from the Netherlands, perhaps, in the days of trade between the Scottish ports and their Dutch neighbours over the North Sea.

He had seen her and opened the front door as she stood before the house, looking up at its façade. “Miss Dalhousie?”

Iain Alexander looked somewhere in his early seventies, perhaps, but well groomed and with the clear, slightly ruddy skin of the Scottish countryman. Wind and rain were the foundations of that complexion; wind and rain and the cloud-scudded skies.

They shook hands. She gestured to the front wall of the house. “You’re very lucky living here,” she said.

“I know that. Yes, we are fortunate. Ochre is such a warm colour.” He spoke simply, with an accent that was redolent of old-fashioned Edinburgh. “My late wife was particularly fond of this place.” He pointed vaguely at the grounds. “She created a marvellous garden, which I’m afraid I’ve rather let run to seed. But one can’t do everything—or anything, sometimes.”

He invited her in, leading her down a book-lined corridor into a large drawing room that faced, unusually, the rear garden. There were paintings on the walls, all of them conventional: landscapes, a study of birds in flight, a small classical study, an old framed map of the county of Midlothian. And there, above the white marble fireplace, was her Raeburn, the one that she had examined with Guy Peploe and that she thought he would be bidding for on her behalf next month. She stood still for a moment, wondering whether she was mistaken. Was it a copy? Or was it another painting altogether, one that looked uncannily like the real Raeburn?

“Is that …” She broke off. It was her painting; it had to be.

“Raeburn,” said Iain. “My pride and joy. Or it is at the moment …” He, too, trailed off, before adding, “It has to be consigned to the auction house soon. I shall miss it.”

Isabel moved forward to examine the painting more closely. At the bottom of the frame there was a small gilt lozenge on which she now read the inscription: Sir Henry Raeburn: Mrs. Alexander and Her Granddaughter.

Mine, she thought. My painting of my four-times great-grandmother. She turned to him. “Why are you selling it?” It was a tactless question, and she realised this immediately after asking it. People sold things because they did not like them or because they needed the money. There were hardly any other explanations. And he liked this painting.

“Needs must,” he said. “I’m reluctant to part with something that has family associations, but …” He shrugged. “Financial necessity.” He spoke with an air of embarrassment, and she understood: he belonged to a generation that viewed any discussion of money as in bad taste. Indigence was borne with fortitude; solvency with modesty.

She blushed, and thought: I have made him admit to poverty. She looked again at the picture. “I know about this portrait,” she said.

He did not seem surprised. “Raeburn is well known.”

She turned to look at him again. “I know who this woman is.”

“It’s on the frame,” he said simply. “Mrs. Alexander. A distant relative of mine.”

“And of mine,” said Isabel softly. “Except not-so-distant, in my case. My four-times great-grandmother.”

For a few moments he said nothing. They looked at one another rather sheepishly, both aware that the nature of their encounter had suddenly and subtly changed. They had begun as strangers; now they were relatives, even if distant ones.

He looked out of the window momentarily and then back into the room. “Is this really why you’ve come to speak to me? Is it to do with this painting?”

She shook her head. “No, not at all. I had no idea that you and I were connected.” She paused. “And I must say I’m delighted to discover a new distant cousin.”

He seemed to relax. “Extraordinary. But then we’re not a large population in Scotland, are we? I read somewhere that the DNA people say that an awful lot of us are related. More than we think.”

“The Alexander connection should have occurred to me when I saw your name. I wasn’t thinking.”

Iain gestured to a chair, inviting her to sit down. “I have a family tree somewhere,” he said. “We had a cousin from New Zealand who turned up and burrowed away in Register House for months. He came up with this great long chart that he unravelled on the kitchen table. Rather like the book of Genesis: so-and-so begat so-and-so, unto the nth generation. A lot of pretty boring detail.”

She knew what he meant. She understood why people did such things, but she could herself never summon up interest in the details of who had married whom and who had which children; unless of course, there was an interesting historical anecdote. She was related, through her mother, to the first man to land an aircraft in Mobile, Alabama, and to a woman who became a nun after being cleared of murdering her lover, the owner of a disreputable nightclub in New Orleans. That was interesting, but only mildly so. The fact that one had landed an early aircraft in Mobile meant that one had an aircraft in a day when very few people did; it also meant that one was brave, perhaps, or foolhardy. And as for the nun … She must have done it, thought Isabel, and the jury must have reckoned that the man deserved it; juries regularly acquitted the flagrantly guilty as long as they thought the victim was sufficiently deserving of his fate. All owners of nightclubs were disreputable, she thought; it was not a profession that attracted fine, upstanding people. Not generally.

She sat down and there followed a conversation about how she and Iain were connected. It was not complicated, but it was very distant, following lines that had diverged almost two centuries before. And yet it was something—this knowledge of association; it could not be ignored. It was a form of connectedness, the one with the other, that people looked for instinctively when they met somebody. This was why people searched for mutual acquaintances when they were introduced to strangers, trying to find if the other person knew the people they knew. It was as common as conversation about the weather; and as reassuring, in its way. Weather bound us together: remarks about rain, or cold, or whatever the isobars were doing to confound our hopes reminded us that even if we did not know somebody, they felt the same as we did and had to put up with, or, more rarely, to celebrate the same weather as we did.

Isabel glanced again at the painting. “I’m sorry that you’re having to sell her,” she said.

His lips curled into a smile. “It is better, of course, to sell the grandmother of another than one’s own. She is your grandmother—great-great, whatever it is—rather than mine.”

Isabel appreciated the dry humour. Why did we use the expression to sell one’s own grandmother? Was that really the worst thing one could do?

“I must confess to something,” she said.

He looked at her expectantly.

“I saw the painting in the Christie’s catalogue,” she said. “And I was planning to bid for it.”

If he was surprised by this disclosure, he did not show it. “Well, I do hope you get it. It would be nice to know that it had gone to an appropriate home. Much better than going abroad—or whatever happens to Raeburns these days.”

She was about to say something about how at least some Raeburns returned to Scotland—she had seen one offered by an Edinburgh gallery, a striking portrait of a Scottish doctor. But she stopped herself, and within not much more than a few seconds she had made her decision; it was an unusual idea, but these were unusual circumstances.

“What if I bought it?” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “It will be a public auction. If you want to, then you can bid.” He seemed embarrassed as he continued. “It won’t be cheap, you know.”

“I know that,” she said. “But what if I bought it from you—directly? You could withdraw it from auction.”

His embarrassment became acute. “I’m very sorry. I don’t want to seem grasping, but I’ll get a higher price in the saleroom. And I need the money, I’m afraid. I have a daughter, you see, who has a difficult condition. I need the money for her care.”

Of course, she thought: the daughter whom Charlie Maclean had mentioned.

“I’ll offer you as good a price as you can reasonably expect,” she said. “Above the estimate. And I know what that figure is, as it happens.”

He seemed confused. “I don’t know …”

Now she made the offer that she had been thinking about as they spoke. She wanted to put a hand on his shoulder; she wanted to embrace this dignified, courteous man in his pride. “And there’s something else. I’d be quite happy for you to enjoy this picture for, let’s say, the next five years. You can keep it. I’ll buy it, but you can keep it here. I’m quite happy to wait five years, and it’ll give me pleasure to know that you’re enjoying it.”

He stared at her. “Are you serious?”

“Very,” she said.

“But why? Why should you do this astonishingly generous thing for me?” He paused. “Which I can hardly accept, of course.”

She was dismayed by his rejection. “But why not? We are, after all, related.” She smiled. “If only very slightly. But a gift between relatives …”

He shook his head. “You make too much of that.”

“No, I don’t. But may I tell you something? Would you mind?”

He frowned. “If you wish.”

“Doing this will give me pleasure. It will also suit me. I will get a painting I want, and you will have the advantage of being able to keep it for a while. You’re giving me something, and I’m giving something to you. I know I don’t have to. I could go and buy it at the same price at the auction, but I would like you to keep this painting for a time. Please allow me to do it.”

He was listening carefully, his expression grave. She thought: It sounds as if I’m giving him a lecture. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to lecture you.”

He raised a hand. “No, I’m the one who should apologise. You offered me a gift, and I immediately said that I could not accept it. That is churlishness—sheer churlishness.”

“So you accept?”

He shook his head, as if to clear his growing confusion. “This is really rather strange. You telephoned me and asked to speak to me about Chris’s accident. I said yes, although I couldn’t imagine what I would have to say about it that would be of interest to you. And then you turn up and claim to be a relative and offer to buy my Raeburn but not really buy it …”

She agreed that it all sounded rather odd. “But life is like that, Mr. Alexander. It really is. Odd things—unexpected things—occur all the time. I think we should let them happen.” She crossed the room. He was still seated, and she reached down and took his hand. He was surprised, but allowed her to hold it, and there was created a sudden moment of intimacy between them. It was not embarrassing in any way; it was reassuring.

“I take it that you had a valuation from Christie’s?”

He nodded. “Yes. They gave me a figure.”

“I shall give you that,” she said. “Withdraw it from the auction. You can explain, quite truthfully, that you want it to remain in the family.”

“The auctioneers might not like it,” he objected. “They may ask for their premium. They do that, you know, if you sell it privately to somebody who’s seen it in their catalogue.”

She was not bothered by this. “Fair enough. I’ll pay their premium. They won’t lose anything.”

Iain seemed to be having difficulty in grasping what was on offer. “And so the painting really will stay here? But you’ll be the owner?”

“Yes. But there will be what my father—he was a lawyer—used to call a back letter. It will say that the painting is to remain in your possession for the next five years. Would that be all right with you?”

He laughed. “How could I possibly object?” Then he added: “This really is unbelievable.”

Isabel grinned back at him. “I suppose that it’s not the sort of offer you could refuse.”

“You aren’t the Mafia?” he asked in mock alarm.

“I don’t think they allow women,” said Isabel. “And that’s another reason for closing them down.”

He stood up. “I know it’s rather early, but I always have a small sherry before lunch. May I tempt you, or would you prefer something soft? Lime cordial?”

“That would suit me very well,” said Isabel. “You have your sherry and I’ll have a glass of lime. And then, perhaps we could …”

“Talk, yes, I know that’s what you want to do. We can talk about Chris.”

He left the room and Isabel went to stand once more in front of the Raeburn. Mrs. Alexander, her forebear, looked down on her from the other end of almost two centuries, her look one of complete approbation; not that Isabel saw this. Modesty would have prevented her from thinking in such a self-congratulatory way. She had simply done what was right; in most circumstances this is not expensive—the right thing is easily and cheaply done. Sometimes, though, it can be costly, and this was one such an occasion. But it was still the right thing to do, and when Iain returned to the room, Isabel showed no regret at all. An Edith Piaf moment, she thought. Non, je ne regrette rien—even thirty-six thousand pounds, tied up for five years in a Raeburn that she would own but not possess.

THEY SAT NEAR THE WINDOW. Outside, the sky was light, with only thin streaks of cloud striated across the cold, empty blue. He said: “I never liked Chris’s mountaineering, but I knew that it was hopeless trying to stop him from doing the one thing that he wanted above all else to do. It was more important to him even than his rugby. Did you know he played for Scotland? Even as a small boy he was always climbing up things, you know. We had to get him down off the roof on more than one occasion, and when we went to Jura one summer he shot up one of the Paps without telling us. He was twelve at the time, or thereabouts. We thought that he had gone off to see a friend who was also staying on the island, but he hadn’t. He’d gone climbing.”

“I went to Jura,” said Isabel, remembering the visit with Jamie.

Iain nodded. “Lovely island. Chris likes … liked to go there, even recently.”

Isabel noticed the transition from present to past tense and thought that it must be one of the most difficult of all adjustments to make when one loses somebody. Or even when a love affair comes to an end: the present is abolished and at the same time there is no future tense.

“I knew the dangers,” Iain continued. “But I told myself that there were plenty of other much more dangerous sports. So I tried to persuade myself that Chris was level-headed and very cautious and that it was only people who became impatient or sloppy who got into trouble. But that’s not true, is it? Anybody—even the most skilled climber—can make a mistake. Or can simply put his foot in the wrong place and find himself falling into a crevasse. There are hundreds of things that can go wrong without any human error being responsible.”

Isabel waited for him to continue, but he was silent, staring into the small sherry glass that he was now turning in his right hand.

“What exactly happened?” she asked. “He was climbing with John Fraser, wasn’t he?”

Iain nodded. He was still looking down into the sherry glass. “He and John were on Everest. It was his great dream to go there—I suppose every climber’s great dream. They were a day or two away from the summit, just below the final camp, or whatever they call it. They were walking over an ice field and apparently Chris stumbled and fell. John came back for him and they returned to the camp below. He helped Chris all the way—John and the Sherpa did that, taking it in turns to support him. But when he got down to the camp he was delirious and he only lived another couple of hours, apparently. Altitude sickness, complicated by … oh, I forget the exact terms of the medical report.”

Isabel listened, transfixed. In her mind’s eye she saw a high ice field, white in brilliant sun, and two men helping a third across a ladder bridge, below them a cavern of blue ice.

“John Fraser was a real hero,” said Iain. “I gather that there are many climbers these days who wouldn’t even bother to take somebody back—they’d just tuck them up in an ice hole somehow and leave a flag to mark the spot in case they were still alive when they came down again. Can you believe that? Can you really? Is this what we’ve come to?”

Isabel did not answer his question; she was thinking about how wrong her assumptions could be. She was not surprised by her wrongness; she often misunderstood a situation or reached entirely the wrong conclusion.

But then Iain said, “It’s such a pity about the other one, though.”

Isabel became alert. “What other one? Was there somebody else on that expedition who didn’t make it?”

He shook his head. “No, that other climb. The one in Scotland. Up north.”

Isabel spoke quietly. “Another tragedy?”

“Yes,” he said. “Chris told me about it. It happened a few years before they went to Everest.”

She enquired whether Chris had been present, and Iain confirmed that he had. “He didn’t see what happened, but he had a very good idea what took place.”

“Which was?”

“I don’t like to pass on rumours,” he said. “I have no proof. All that I have is hearsay.”

“I shall take that into account,” said Isabel. “Please tell me.”

He looked pained. She had just been immensely generous to him, and here he was, denying her a scrap of information. Well, even if he could not be absolutely sure about it, he could at least pass on what he had heard. “I’ve heard it said that John Fraser cut somebody’s rope,” he said. “He was climbing with a man called Cameron, who had been a friend of Chris’s, although he was a bit older. Cameron slipped, or fell, or whatever, and John Fraser cut his rope in order to save himself.”

He did not say anything more. He looked ashamed, as if he regretted crossing some imaginary line between simple narration and scandal.

“But if it’s a choice between two people,” asked Isabel, “then surely it’s understandable if one prefers oneself. And is there any sense at all in two people rather than one being carried down to their deaths?”

Iain weighed this for a moment. “I am not suggesting that he should not have done it. And I’m not even saying that he did it. All I’m saying is that this is what I was told. He cut a fellow climber’s rope in order to save his own skin. That’s all.”

Isabel was silent. Would she have cut another’s rope? How many people could honestly say that they would not? But then what if Jamie were on the other end of the rope? Or Charlie?

“Where did that take place?” she asked.

Iain seemed sunk in thought. “I’m not sure. It was in Glencoe, I think. One of those mountains that loom over you as you drive through the pass. One with a lot of gullies.”

The conversation went on for a short time more before Isabel, looking at her watch, said that she had to go.

“Do you still intend to …” Iain looked towards the painting.

Isabel reached out to take his hand. “Enjoy it,” she said. “It stays exactly where it is. I’ll get Simon Mackintosh to write to you. He’s my lawyer.”

“I know him,” said Iain. “I also knew Aeneas, his father.”

“Well, there you are,” said Isabel. “All arranged.”

“Isn’t Edinburgh marvellous?” he suddenly remarked. “That we can do all this on … trust.”

Isabel smiled. “It works very well,” she said. She wondered, as she left the house, whether that sounded smug. It might, she thought, but on the other hand every city had its way of working; every city, no matter how large, relied on the fact that people would know one another and act well towards their fellow citizens. What was wrong with that? Only those who believed in chaos would want it otherwise; or those who believed that we should have no sense of who we are, of where we are placed, and of what we owe to those with whom we have bonds of fellow feeling. There were of course many such people: many who hated the local, who hated the sense of identity that people had, who wanted us all reduced to the servitude of anonymity, living in vast impersonal states, governed from a distance by people whose faces we never saw, whose names we would never find out. They thought this somehow better. Let them think that; she would not. She would not be ashamed of loving her place, her city, and of doing her utmost to ensure that the things that gave it a sense of itself, the small, personal things that bound its people together, would survive. No, she would not.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE FOLLOWING DAY, a Saturday, was a delicatessen day. It had been planned some weeks before and although Isabel had other things to do, she did not feel that she could ask Cat to change the arrangement. Cat was going to London for the day, leaving on the six o’clock train from Waverley Station and coming back on Sunday morning. The occasion was a lunch for a school friend who was getting married to an army officer.

They had discussed this couple a few weeks earlier, when Cat had first said that she hoped to go to the wedding. “He’s drop-dead gorgeous,” said Cat. “He’s called Jon, without an aitch.”

“Dropped his aitch?” asked Isabel. “Or born without one?”

Cat did not think this funny. “Who cares?”

“I don’t,” said Isabel. “But you did mention it. You said that he didn’t have an aitch. Usually Johns do.”

“I think it’s sexier not to,” said Cat. “Jon’s a really sexy name.”

Isabel said nothing. John Liamor spelled his name with an h and he was … well, he was sexy, which was why she had married him. That had been her conclusion; after all that soul-searching and wondering where she had gone wrong, she had come to the conclusion that she had been seduced by his looks.

“I don’t think that one should concern oneself with the sexiness—or otherwise—of a person’s name,” she said. “And I don’t think that you should marry somebody because they’re drop-dead gorgeous.” She paused. Cat was turning red.

“I didn’t say—”

Isabel tried to calm her. “No, I didn’t say you did. I’m sure that your friend is marrying Jon for a whole lot of other reasons. All that I’m saying is that in general it’s a bad idea. Don’t go for a good-looking man just because he’s good-looking. Men make that mistake all the time. They go for looks and they end up with a woman they can’t stand, or who bores them rigid.”

Cat stared at her. “And you?” she said.

“What about me?”

“You’re hardly one to talk, are you?”

Isabel opened her mouth—wordlessly.

“Well, you aren’t, are you?” Cat went on. “Jamie. Look at him.”

Isabel gasped; Cat, though, was adamant. “I’m sorry, but you can’t criticise others for something you yourself do.”

“Are you suggesting that I have taken up with Jamie because of his looks? Are you really accusing me of that?”

Cat looked down at the floor. “I’m not accusing you of anything. However … forgive me for wondering whether you and Jamie would have got together if he had been … well, podgy and shorter than you. Or had halitosis and terminal dandruff. Do you think you would have? Do you really think so?”

“Looks are nothing to do with it.” Isabel spat the words out.

“People tell themselves that. But who really believes it?”

“I do. People love others who are not at all prepossessing. Are you saying they don’t?”

Cat shook her head. She was not saying that; what she was saying, she explained, was that people made do with what they could get. Of course an unattractive person can be loved, but it is harder and they have to earn it. Whereas an attractive person is loved immediately and by any number of others. It was obvious, she said; obvious. Just look at couples. The beautiful fell for the beautiful, and got them; everybody else made do.

You silly, shallow woman, thought Isabel. You superficial … But her anger faded away in seconds; it was not real anger. Isabel would have been more outraged if it had not occurred to her at that moment that Cat was probably right. If Jamie had been as Cat described him, then it was at least possible that she would not have become involved with him; she might as well be honest with herself. But what a bleak conclusion that was: that it was the accident of looks that determined affection. Surely she was above such shallowness.

“Maybe not,” she said.

“Well, there you are,” said Cat.

They had moved on from the topic of looks, and Isabel had asked whether Cat’s friend was worried about her husband-to-be being sent off on active service. “We have so many small wars now,” she said. “The life of an army officer is not what it used to be. They used to play polo and go skiing; now they … well, they have to go out and get shot at. I suspect that not all of them appreciate that when they join the Army.”

“She says that she isn’t worried,” said Cat. “But I don’t believe her. Maybe these wars will end.”

Isabel doubted that. “There will always be another one, and another one after that. There’ll be no shortage of wars, I’m afraid. Has there ever been?”

At least these wars seemed increasingly to be fought by volunteers, she reflected, which was some consolation, even if not very great; and it was not a consolation that stood examination, being based on the assumption that they were real volunteers. Poverty and limited options were powerful recruiting sergeants, and neither of those burdens was exactly voluntary.

CAT WENT OFF to the wedding in London. Isabel left Charlie with Jamie and made her way to the delicatessen shortly after eight-thirty; that would give her time to grind coffee and make other preparations before she opened the front door at nine. There was always a busy period immediately after opening, during which regulars would snatch a morning cup of coffee. If she and Eddie had everything ready in advance, they could dispense coffee at the rate of one cup a minute; she had timed it once, in a time-and-motion mood, and announced the results to Cat, who had seemed unimpressed.

“But if you serve them so quickly,” Cat said, “then they won’t buy anything else. Their eyes will have no time to linger on chocolate and other essentials.”

“We could ask them whether they wanted any chocolate,” suggested Eddie. “That’s what they do in that place round the corner. They say: ‘Do you want a muffin this morning?’ And you shake your head and they look all disappointed.”

“I hate that,” said Isabel. “I hate people asking me if I want something else. If I wanted it, I would have asked. And quite frankly, I think it’s wrong in principle to implant muffin ideas in the minds of the public. For one thing, it undoes all the anti-muffin work of the government. They spend all that money on persuading us to eat healthy food and then along comes somebody asking whether we wouldn’t like a muffin.”

“What has the government got against muffins?” asked Eddie.

The discussion had proved inconclusive; Cat was aware of the fact that Isabel was unpaid for her help in the delicatessen, and you could hardly instruct somebody who was working for nothing, and who was, anyway, your aunt. So Isabel was left to serve coffee at the pace that she determined, and did so.

That morning, Eddie was in talkative mood. He supported a small football team from an obscure town in Fife—an arrangement that was the result of his father’s having been brought up there. This team, which bumped along the bottom of a secondary league, was of little distinction but could count on the near-fanatical loyalty of its supporters. Now, though, this support was being tested by a scandal that had even made the national papers. The team’s goalkeeper had been found to have taken a bribe to allow a goal through. The bribe had been sexual rather than monetary, the understanding being that if he allowed the goal he would be rewarded with the sexual favours of the girlfriend of one of the players in the opposing team. He had accepted this offer, but had not been duly rewarded—the girl in question said that she had never intended to carry out her side of the bargain. This had so outraged the goalkeeper that he had told his friends that he had been duped and that the young woman in question should feel ashamed of herself.

Isabel listened to this story with fascination. “He was perhaps a bit naive,” she remarked. “And talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Presumably that’s the end of his goal-keeping career.”

Eddie agreed. “He wasn’t much good anyway. But he shouldn’t have trusted her, should he? He should have made sure that she … well, that she carried out her part of the deal before he let the goal through. He was really stupid.”

Isabel, who was grinding coffee, momentarily stopped the machine. “But, Eddie, he shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

“No, he shouldn’t. But since he did, he should have done it differently.” Eddie paused. “And now everybody’s laughing at us. That’s what really gets me.”

“I’m very sorry.”

Eddie acknowledged the expression of sympathy. “It’s her fault,” he said. “No man can be expected to resist an offer like that, can he?”

Isabel shook the ground coffee into a jar. She glanced at Eddie. Was he suggesting that men are incapable of controlling themselves? She frowned: Was that what he really thought?

“Do you mean that?” she asked. “Do you really think he couldn’t have said no?”

He blushed. “I don’t mean that men shouldn’t say no to women like that. What I mean is that I blame the woman—I really do.”

Isabel said nothing. Perhaps that was the way Eddie saw the world, with women as temptresses, circling about vulnerable goalkeepers. She looked at her watch and signalled for Eddie to open the door. They could return to the subject later on—or perhaps not. Of course men could control themselves, and did so. Jamie did; the girl, Prue, who had set her sights on him had found that out. Poor girl … No, she thought; unfortunate, maybe, but calculating and prepared to steal a married, or almost married, man. But then so many people seemed utterly ruthless when it came to getting the person they wanted. Would she stand back if there were one person she wanted above all else, if she felt that this person was the only person in the world for her? Would she deny herself if it happened that the person she wanted belonged to somebody else? She was not sure. And that realisation depressed her as she served coffee that morning. When it came to those currents of the heart, who amongst us would not be prepared to do virtually anything to achieve what we wanted? People behaved like that all the time; reason, restraint, conscience—these were all small defences against the onslaught of passion, small defences against the tides of raw emotion that we all knew could so easily overwhelm us. And that had always been well understood by human society, which had put up all sorts of barriers against what it saw as destructive forces. Marriage, disapproval, self-denial: all cautionary responses to our human weakness, to the inescapable facts of human biology.

She glanced at Eddie. Eddie was no philosopher, but he understood perfectly well. She, by contrast, was a philosopher, yet she did not think she understood the world any better than he did: she knew the technical terms for life, he knew how life was when you suffered from it. And when you considered the views he expressed, it would be easy to pick holes in his remarks, in particular what he had said about blaming the woman. But perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was that young woman’s fault. Perhaps Eve was far guiltier than Adam.

No, she could not accept such a conclusion. Eve was framed: everybody knew that by now.

THEY WERE PARTICULARLY BUSY that morning, and it was not until well after two that they were able to take a break. The hour between two and three was usually quiet, and now there were no customers at all. Isabel looked at Eddie and wiped her brow. “Heavens! That was busy.”

“You can sit down,” said Eddie. “I’ve got some stuff to clear up.”

“No,” said Isabel. “You take a break. Then me. I’ll …” She was going to clear up for Eddie when the door opened. Her heart sank. They would be on the go until six, when they closed. She would be exhausted.

Eddie nudged her. “It’s him,” he whispered.

Isabel turned to see Gordon Leafers closing the door behind him. For a moment she did not take in who it was, but then Eddie picked up her hesitation, whispering, “Her man. Him. Cat’s man.”

Gordon came up to the counter. “Is Cat around?” he asked. He had clearly not expected to see Isabel, and he looked puzzled. “I hadn’t expected you …”

Isabel wiped her hands on her apron. “A family firm. We all help out.” She gestured to Eddie. “Eddie and I are a long-established team. He’s the boss.”

Eddie looked nervous. “Not really. She is. I’m just …”

Isabel helped him. “The assistant manager, then. And a very good one. Cat, I’m afraid, is in London.”

Gordon suddenly remembered. “Of course. There was a wedding. She told me.”

Men never remember, thought Isabel. Women tell them things and they never remember. “I’ll tell her that you dropped in.” And then she added, “A coffee? Or tea?”

He looked at his watch. He would have time, he said, for a quick cup of coffee. “I’m meant to be turning up at a cricket match. I’m not all that keen, but it’s an important match for the school.”

Isabel gestured to a table. “I’ll join you.” She turned to Eddie. “Would you mind taking the second break, Eddie?”

He shook his head. “No. Go ahead.” He looked unhappy, though.

She made two cups of coffee and took them over to the table at which Gordon was sitting, looking at a copy of The List, the magazine that set out forthcoming events in Edinburgh and Glasgow. She glanced at the heading of the page he was reading: Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transsexual. There was a boxed advertisement for gay athletic games in Queen Street Gardens. He turned the page quickly. She watched him. Was it possible that he was … transsexual? If he were, then would he be attracted to Cat? Surely if he was in the course of becoming a woman then he would, as a woman, in the normal run of things be more attracted to men. Unless he planned that his new identity as a woman would be lesbian, in which case Cat was an entirely appropriate choice, although she, of course, might not be prepared to convert a heterosexual relationship with a man into a lesbian relationship with a former man, now a woman, even if, as a man, he had already been her lover.

She discreetly studied his features as she took a sip of her coffee. Her eyes went to his chin, where there were signs that he needed a shave; perhaps he did not bother on Saturdays. And then she saw his hands, with their thin covering of dark hair; again not a feminine feature.

He must have noticed her staring, as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Sorry,” said Isabel. “I was thinking about how we are what we are—biologically—and how difficult it must be to escape that identity.”

He looked at her quizzically. “Oh? What prompted that?”

She could not tell him. “I find my mind wanders off at a tangent. I think of something—some odd question or hypothesis—and then my train of thought seems to acquire a direction of its own.”

He relaxed. “Daydreaming. Everybody does it. I find I have to fight it in the classroom. Boys start looking out of the window and they’re just not there any more. They’re off somewhere altogether different.”

She met his eyes. “Do you enjoy your job?” she asked.

He shrugged. “At times it’s tremendously rewarding; at other times … well, I could strangle the boys. I really could.”

She thought: What if he had? But she said, “You never would, of course. You can’t raise a hand to them any more, can you?”

“Strangling was never exactly encouraged,” said Gordon, smiling.

She changed the subject. “You told me that you were applying for another job. Have you had any news?”

“No. Not yet. As I said, I probably don’t have much chance of getting it.”

She lowered her cup. “And why’s that?”

“Because of the competition. I happen to know who else is on the shortlist.”

She touched the side of her cup lightly with a forefinger, tracing a tiny pattern in the crust of milk foam. She spoke very casually. “Oh? How did you manage that? I imagined that these lists would be confidential. Other candidates …”

“Might not want it to be known that they were applying. Yes, they should be confidential. But people talk. You know how they are.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes.”

She thought: The person who wrote the letter knew who was on the list. He knew … She put it syllogistically: (1) The writer of the anonymous letter knew the names of the candidates; (2) Gordon knows the name of the candidates; (3) therefore Gordon is the writer of the anonymous letter.

That was fallacious, of course. The major and the minor premises were true, but the conclusion made a massive and unjustifiable leap. What it should have said was: therefore Gordon falls into the category of people who might have written the anonymous letter.

She wondered whether he really knew. Information from the rumour mill was not always reliable. “Who are they?” she asked.

He looked at her teasingly. “You won’t know them.”

“I might. In fact, I’ve heard …”

He cut her short. “I doubt it.”

“John Fraser,” she said. “He’s one. And Tom Simpson.”

He looked at her in complete astonishment. Isabel laughed. “Perhaps I listen to rumours too,” she said. I said perhaps, she thought; I have not lied to him.

Before he could say anything more, she leaned forward and, dropping her voice, said, “John Fraser is a keen climber, isn’t he?”

Gordon nodded almost imperceptibly.

“And I’ve heard,” continued Isabel, “that he was involved in a couple of climbing accidents.”

Gordon was looking at her coolly. “So they say.”

“On Everest, for instance.”

He was impassive. “I read about that. They lost a member of their party. It seems to happen a lot.”

“Yes, the Death Zone.”

She waited for him to say something, but he merely watched her silently.

“And then there was Glencoe,” she went on. “Something happened there.”

His features showed barely a flicker of movement. “Lots of things happen in our mountains. How many climbers do we lose a year? Half a dozen?”

“I have no idea.”

He picked up his coffee cup and took a final swig. “I must dash. That cricket match.”

“Of course.”

She watched him leave. Eddie, who had been busying himself with a task behind the counter, came over to her table and joined her.

“I don’t like him,” he said. “I just don’t like him. He’s worse than Bruno. Far worse.”

“But he’s not,” said Isabel. “He’s infinitely better.”

“He never looks at me,” said Eddie. “He comes in here and looks straight through me. It’s as if I don’t exist.”

“Are you sure? Perhaps he’s shy. And have you greeted him? Have you done anything to show friendly feelings to him?”

Eddie pouted. “Why should I?”

“Because people who don’t show friendliness towards others can hardly complain about others not showing friendliness to them. That’s why.”

They left it at that; a couple of customers had come in, and they needed to attend to them. As Isabel did so, she reflected on what she had just learned. Gordon knew all about John Fraser, and, what was more, he had been cagey about this. It now occurred to Isabel that the solution was staring her in the face. Perhaps Gordon had written the anonymous letter in order to put one of his rivals out of the picture. He had the motive and he had the knowledge. But if he had done that, then why had he not revealed what he knew? He had hinted that one of the candidates had something to hide, but had not said which one it was and what he had done. Would there have been any reason for him to be so indirect, so coy? None, she thought. And yet she said to herself: Why shouldn’t it be him? And she could think of no reason why it should not.

That meant that there were two conclusions she should now report to the board. The first was that one of the candidates was suspected—suspected, and that was all—of an act of cowardice, and the second was that there was a possibility that one of the other candidates was prepared to write an anonymous letter in order to boost his chances of success. The board of governors could make what they wished of that information, but of one thing she was sure: Tom Simpson, by some accounts the least intellectually distinguished of the three, would get the job—unless, of course, his claim to a master’s degree proved to be false.

She felt irritated that the school had imposed on her in this way. And she felt angry with herself for allowing it. I am weak, she thought. I should be more selfish. Like Cat. Like virtually everybody else. And then she thought: I should not think in this uncharitable way; Cat is my niece, and my friend. If I think uncharitable thoughts about her, then what shall I think about Christopher Dove, or—and here she shuddered—Professor Lettuce? The thought of Lettuce brought to mind a field of vegetables, dreary, wilting, devoid of feature. And Lettuce himself, standing glumly looking out over that field, uncertain what to do. No, she would not think about him either. Yet the process of thinking that one should not think about something requires that one think about it. She attempted an experiment. She tried not to think about coffee, and immediately it came to mind: heaps of coffee, coffee unground and then ground, its characteristic smell so evocative of morning and all its possibilities. Of Paris (for some reason). Of crisp unread newspapers and the morning sun.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SHE HAD TO ACT. Issues were piling up: the school enquiry, with all its complexities and uncertainties; Lettuce’s piece on Dove’s new book—which would arrive at any moment; a slew of indigestible books that would have to be sent out for review—why were philosophers so prolix?; Prue; her wedding, even—if it was to take place. She had to act.

She arrived back late from the delicatessen, tired and looking forward to changing out of her clothes and having a long, relaxing bath. Working with food made one smell of food—and by the time she reached home that Saturday evening she had become convinced that she had about her a distinct aroma of strong Italian sausage. Jamie kissed her as she came in the front door, and she was sure that she saw his nose wrinkle slightly, as it might if one were called upon actually to kiss a salami or a parcel of ripe French cheese.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s handling all those sausages and French cheeses and things. It rubs off.”

He leaned forward to kiss her again. “There’s nothing wrong with garlic.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “But I need a bath.”

She listened to him as he told her that Charlie had been exhausted and had been put to bed early. He had dropped off to sleep immediately, Jamie said. She was disappointed; she always had enough energy for Charlie, even when at the end of her tether. But she would not disturb him—and so she went straight to the bathroom off their bedroom and cast off her delicatessen clothes. Was every day like this for Cat? She sympathised if it was. And she did smell of salami, or at least of the garlic which infused their particular brand.

Naked, she walked to the bath and felt the temperature of the water. They had an old-fashioned boiler in the house, an arrangement that made Alex, their plumber, smile and make references to museums of industrial technology. “But it delivers oceans of hot water,” she had protested, and he had refrained from modernising it. Now those oceans were filling the tub and sending up clouds of steam, as in a Turkish bath. The water was soft to the touch—straight from the Pentland Hills. How they would love this water in London, where their own supply was so hard, so laden with calcium and other things. They might have opera and theatre in abundance in London, but when it came to water …

She turned off the taps and lowered herself into the tub, with its ample, Victorian proportions. They were not mean, the Victorians, at least in bathroom matters, and this bath could easily accommodate …

Jamie. He had followed her upstairs and was standing in the bathroom doorway. He was watching her, smiling. “Would you mind?” He nodded towards the bath.

It suddenly occurred to Isabel that they had never shared a bath. There was no reason why they should not have—no inhibitions, no reserves of prudery—but they had never bathed together.

She gestured towards the other end of the tub. “There’s plenty of room.”

He began to remove his clothes. He was just wearing a tee-shirt and jeans, and in a few moments he was divested of them. She looked up at him and then looked away, back at the water, which, for reasons of light reflected off tiles, was light green. She moved so as to lean against the back of the bath. The enamelled surface was warm to the touch.

He moved forward, the soft light upon his skin. He carried no spare flesh; had never done so. He was lithe; muscled, as in a sculpture by Praxiteles. I, she thought, am soft and pliant; Eve’s flesh.

“Jamie,” she said.

“Yes?”

She spoke what she was thinking; private, ridiculous thoughts. “Please don’t ever change.”

He laughed as he lowered himself into the water, facing her, his knees drawn up. “Everybody changes.”

“Not you. The rules don’t apply to you.”

He sent a small splash in her direction. A wisp of steam rose from the point where he had disturbed the water. “When did you last share a bath?”

She closed her eyes. “I can’t remember. When I was small, I suppose. I had friends to stay over and we used to share baths, I think. I must have been eight or nine.” She opened her eyes. “And you?”

He looked away. “I can’t remember. It’s so long ago.”

She felt he was saying to her that he did not want to talk about it. She sensed that, and stopped. She reached out and touched the side of his leg. She moved her hand against him. They did not speak. He turned on the cold tap, briefly, and let the cooler water mingle with the warm. She closed her eyes. It was a delicious sensation, that drop in temperature followed by a slow warming as he turned the hot tap on again. It took her back, far back, to a place of memories and longing. Why? she thought. Why should I feel this way? Because it is a return to our earliest memory, the memory of the comfort of the womb, when we are surrounded by warmth and liquid and there is no light to impinge upon the comfort of darkness.

DAMP, CLAD IN TOWELS, they left the bathroom and went back into the bedroom. Through the window the evening sun, even at eight, slanted across the cover of their bed, a white Ulster cambric. She loved cambric: Tell her to make me a cambric shirt / Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme / Without no seam nor needlework / And then she’ll be a true love of mine. She had sung this to Charlie once and he had watched her studiously, his eyes wide, although the words must have meant nothing to him.

Jamie stood in the middle of the room, the towel about his waist. “I forgot to wash my hair,” he said. “I was going to …”

He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. Isabel glanced at him. “Should we bother?” she asked.

“No, we should. You never know.” At odd times Jamie received requests to play; this could be one.

He went to the bedside table on which the telephone stood and picked up the receiver.

He answered a question she could not hear. “Yes.”

Across the room, Isabel heard the sound of a distant voice.

Jamie lowered his voice. “No. I can’t.”

Isabel turned away.

“I told you, I can’t. I just can’t.”

Isabel turned round. He was holding the handset in an odd way, half cupping the top against his ear, as if to muffle the voice at the other end. But she had heard. Their eyes met.

“Look, we can’t talk. I’ll … I’ll speak to you some other time. Tomorrow.” A pause while something else was said, something that elicited a heated response. “I didn’t. I did not say that. Sorry, but I have to go. Goodbye.”

Isabel stood quite still. She heard her heart beating hard within her; her breathing was shallow. “Who was that?” She knew, of course, but still she asked.

Jamie moved away from the telephone. “That girl.”

“I thought so.”

“I told her not to phone me. I told her.”

Isabel felt her cheeks burning. “She’s phoned you before? Here at the house? Our house?”

Jamie sighed. “I told her.” He made a gesture of helplessness. “What can I do? She’s pursuing me.” He paused. “She told me that she was feeling weak. She wanted me to come round to her flat.”

“This evening? Right now?”

He nodded miserably.

“Right,” said Isabel. “I’m going to have a word with her. I’m going to go there right now. Right now.”

“Do you think …”

She brushed him aside. “We have to sort this out, Jamie. I know you don’t want to do it. You’re … you’re far too kind. And anyway, she’s not listening to you. Perhaps she’ll listen to me. Women have a way of conveying this sort of information to one another.” Yes, she thought—we do. And she remembered a fight she had once witnessed when walking past a bar in Tollcross years ago: two women had come tumbling out, tearing at one another’s hair, scratching at each other like cats, and one had been screaming, “Cow! Cow! He’s mine, you cow!” She remembered how shocked passersby had been, or most of them: one, a young boy, had shouted out his delighted encouragement until his mother put a hand across his mouth.

“She’s dying,” said Jamie quietly.

“We all are,” snapped Isabel. “Ultimately, we all are. So dying is no excuse. Not for this.”

She was about to add something, and almost did. She was about to tell him about her bizarre idea that charity required of her that she share him, but she did not. She was ashamed that she had even thought it, and she would keep it to herself. Now she was angry too, and that feeling was even more inappropriate. This girl, with her astonishing gall in telephoning Jamie at home, did not deserve such concern. She deserved what Isabel was going to give her: an unambiguous warning.

She dressed quickly. Jamie said something about being gentle with Prue, but Isabel barely took it in. She asked him the address, and he gave it to her. “It’s in Stockbridge,” he said. “Leslie Place. It’s that narrow street that goes up to St. Bernard’s Crescent.” He gave her the number. He did not have to look it up, and she wanted to ask him whether he had been there before. Had he said anything about that? Then she remembered that he had.

“I don’t expect I’m going to be long,” she said. “Can you wait for dinner?”

He could. “I’ll cook something,” he offered. “I’ll wait for you to come back.” His voice sounded flat.

She moved towards him. She was clothed now; he was still wearing his towel. There were goosebumps on his shoulders when she embraced him. She did not want to go; she wanted to stay with him. She wanted to lie down with him and forget about this girl, and about everything, really: about being the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, about being a person to whom others came for help, about being one of whom material charity was expected. She wanted to forget all that and think only of the fact that she was a woman singularly blessed with a beautiful young lover who wanted to marry her, and who could play the bassoon, and loved their son and …

“I have to go and speak to her. You realise that, don’t you?”

He nodded silently.

“Sometimes,” she went on, “the only way of stopping a mess becoming more of a mess is to … gird up your metaphors and lance the boil.”

They laughed together, the tension disappearing.

“A mixed metaphor never harmed anybody,” he said.

“Don’t you believe it.”

SHE WALKED DOWN LESLIE PLACE, looking up at the numbers painted on the stone above the doors. With one or two exceptions, the doors here led to what were called common stairs—a stone stairway shared by a number of flats that gave off each landing of the four-storey tenement. The flats themselves varied: most of them were spacious enough; others, tucked in almost as an afterthought, consisted of no more than a bedroom and a living room that doubled up as a kitchen. In the nineteenth century, when they were built, even such cramped accommodation would have housed an entire family, that of some struggling clerk, perhaps, battling its way up from more modest housing in a less favoured part of the city. Some of the stairways had now been done up, with new stone treads and refurbished banisters; others remained dowdy, with crumbling plaster where generations of careless removal men had allowed wardrobes to collide with walls, and smelling vaguely of cat.

Prue’s flat was up one flight of stairs. The door seemed freshly painted, a lilac colour in contrast to the black of the other two doors off her landing. A small card had been pinned to the door with the name—P. L. McKay—written on it, and underneath: Mail for Thompson and Edwards. In pencil, somebody had written alongside the name Edwards: Owes me ten quid. Although she was feeling tense, Isabel allowed herself a smile.

She drew in her breath. She could see from light coming through the fanlight above the door that there was somebody within, which would be Prue, as she had only recently made the telephone call. Thompson and Edwards only received their mail there; they would not be in. And Edwards, of course, would be keeping his head down.

She rang the bell, which had an old-fashioned wire pull. Inside there came a muffled clanking sound.

Prue opened the door. She was a young woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in a pair of jeans and a red-flecked sweater. She wore no shoes.

Isabel said, “You’re Prue?”

Prue’s lip quivered. Isabel saw this. She knows who I am.

“I’m Isabel Dalhousie.”

Prue took a step back. It was not a planned movement, Isabel thought, and for a moment she was worried that the other woman was going to faint.

“Do you mind if I come in?” Isabel moved forward as she spoke, and reached to close the door behind her. “I knew you were in, you see, because you telephoned Jamie a short time ago. You telephoned him at our house.”

Prue said nothing. She was staring at Isabel in unmistakable fear.

“I don’t think that it’s a good idea to …” Isabel searched for the right words, remembering that Jamie had said something about being gentle. She would be gentle. This poor girl was dying.

She started again. “Look, I know that you are very fond of Jamie. I understand that. But Jamie and I are together, you know. We’re going to get married. He likes you—don’t think that he doesn’t like you. It’s just that … well, he and I are together and that’s really all there can be to it. You do understand, don’t you?”

Prue seemed to be recovering herself. Her shocked expression was slowly changing; now she was beginning to smile. “Jamie is very fond of me,” she said. “Yes, you’re right. He is. He’s shown it.”

The words hit Isabel with an almost physical force. “Shown …”

The smile widened. “Yes. Jamie and I are … well, we’re lovers.”

Isabel stared at her. She could not speak.

Prue continued. “Has he not told you? I thought he had. He told me he was going to speak to you.”

“When?” It was a whisper, almost inaudible.

“When what?”

“When did you become lovers?”

“Oh, I forget exactly when. A month or so ago. May, I think. Yes, May.”

A door opened. They were standing in a small entrance hall, and the door gave on to a living room. There was another woman, slightly older than Prue. She shot a glance at Isabel and then addressed herself to Prue.

“Prue? Is everything all right?”

Isabel turned and opened the front door. She did not say anything to either woman, but simply left the flat. She felt her eyes stinging with tears. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and grasped the rail. She looked up, right up through the stairwell to a skylight. There was still a glow in the sky, which was empty, white in the evening, innocent of the insignificant tragedy happening below it.

She heard footsteps on the stone stairs; somebody was coming down. She looked up, prepared to see Prue, but it was the other woman.

“You’re Isabel, aren’t you?”

Isabel did not answer. She stared at the other woman, uncertain what her intentions might be. She remembered the catfight in Tollcross.

The other woman was before her, reaching out to place a hand on Isabel’s arm. “I’m Prue’s sister,” she said. “And I heard what was said up there. I came round when she telephoned me a few minutes ago—I live round the corner in Danube Street.”

She continued: “You have to forgive my sister. She’s not well.”

There was something in the other woman’s manner that reassured Isabel. She started to speak. “I’m shocked … I don’t know …”

“Of course you are. But listen: it’s not true. None of it. It’s all imagined.”

It took a few moments. There were words; now there was meaning, and eventually, slowly, there came relief. Isabel felt herself being plucked from the dark place into which she had fallen. “Not true about Jamie?”

The woman shook her head. “Certainly not. She’s done this before, I’m afraid.”

Isabel winced. “And she’s dying.”

The other woman groaned. “There’s nothing wrong with her—at least nothing physical. It’s a trick she plays. She tells people that she’s at death’s door. It gets sympathy.”

It took Isabel a moment or two to absorb this. Of course. Of course. It was an obvious trick: if you were dying you could get what you wanted. “It’s a sort of blackmail,” said Isabel.

“Exactly. Look, we’re trying to get her to have treatment. I think we’re getting there, but it’s not easy.”

Isabel felt weak with relief. “It never is.”

“You’ve been very understanding,” said the woman. “And I can promise you there’ll be no more of this. She’s going up to Aberdeen. Our parents are there, and they’re taking over. My father’s a doctor up there. He’s spoken to his psychiatrist friends.”

Isabel felt sympathy for both of them—for Prue and for her sister. There were apologies. The woman told her how embarrassed she was by Prue’s behaviour. Not everybody, she said, was as understanding as Isabel.

They made their goodbyes to one another and Isabel walked out into the street. She felt drained, and would need to get a taxi. She saw one at the end of the road, its yellow light glowing. She waved her arms. The taxi turned, the driver signalling with his headlights that he had seen her.

“You all right?” he asked, as she settled into her seat.

“Entirely all right,” she said.

Edinburgh taxi drivers were not just taxi drivers. They were social workers, psychotherapists and, like Isabel, philosophers. She caught his eye in the mirror.

“You seemed upset,” he said.

“I was,” she admitted. “A few minutes ago I thought my world was in ruins. Now I know it’s not.”

The taxi was making its way up the hill past the end of Ann Street. Down to the right, at the end of a wide road, was the Gothic bulk of Fettes College, another school.

“Well, that’s good,” he said.

“May I ask you something?”

He looked into the mirror again. “Of course.”

“Should we feel ashamed of believing ill of someone we love? When we ought to trust them?”

He thought for a moment before replying. “No,” he said. “That’s natural.”

“You think it is?”

“I know it is.”

She smiled. “I suppose you people see all of life in your cabs—and then some.”

“Aye, we do.”

They were now approaching the Dean Bridge; beyond it, the dizzy terraces perched on the edge of the ravine. Edinburgh was called a precipitous city, and it was.

“So I shouldn’t feel bad about thinking the worst of somebody I love?”

The driver was clear on the point. “Not in the least. As long as you’re ready to admit you’re wrong.”

“I was wrong,” said Isabel.

WHEN SHE RETURNED, she found Jamie at the piano. She came into the room behind him, quietly, and it was a few moments before he became aware of her presence. He turned round, his hands on the keys, and looked at her. She nodded.

“You spoke to her?”

“Yes.” She crossed the room so that she was standing immediately behind him. She placed her hands gently on his shoulders. “I think it’s over.”

He sighed. “Poor girl. It’s very unfair, isn’t it?”

“What’s unfair?”

“That she’s so ill. That sort of illness—it’s unfair, isn’t it?”

Isabel wanted to laugh. “Yes, if it’s genuine.”

She felt him react. He twisted round to face her. “What?”

“Prue isn’t dying at all,” she said. “I spoke to her sister. There’s nothing wrong with her—at least not in the physical sense. Mentally, it’s a different matter.”

Isabel explained to Jamie what had happened and what Prue’s sister had told her. He listened in astonishment that slowly turned to anger.

“Forget all about it,” she said.

“I hate her for this.”

Isabel bent down to kiss him. “You mustn’t. Don’t hate her. I don’t think it’s ever the right thing to do to hate somebody.”

“Isn’t it?”

She thought. Righteous anger? Yes, there was a place for that. Hatred? Could that ever be right? “What’s hatred? Wishing ill for others? Wanting their utter negation, their death?”

“Yes. That, and …”

“And what?”

“Wanting to see them suffer.”

She stroked his cheek. “And do you want that for her? Do you really want her to suffer?”

He shook his head. He nestled against her. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

She thought: Hatred shrivels you up inside. It’s like stoking a fire to burn the other person and all the time it’s burning you yourself. She knew that she would have to remind herself of this, because she had found it so easy to hate Jamie when she had first heard of the cinema outing with Prue. She had shocked herself over that.

“I interrupted you,” she said.

He turned back to the piano and began to play. She recognised the song and she mouthed the words silently. I shall build my love a bower / By yon pure crystal fountain / And upon it I shall pile / All the flowers of the mountain.

All the flowers of the mountain. All the flowers of the mountain. She would gladly bring him all the flowers of the mountain. Gladly, however long it took. Songs did not exist in a world of reality; they made such feats quite possible. Ten thousand miles was not far to walk in a song. Nor was Eternity a long time to endure.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WITH ALL THE BRISK ENTHUSIASM of one who has at last successfully tackled one awkward task, Isabel set about disposing of the second. She had telephoned Alex Mackinlay to arrange to see him and tell him what she had found out and what her views were. She could not give him a firm answer to his problem, but could reveal what she knew about the three candidates and leave him to reach his own conclusions. She did not relish voicing her suspicions about Gordon, but she felt that she had no alternative. She would put it in as objective a way as she could manage: he might, just might, have written that letter, and the board might care to bear that in mind. She had no grounds for attributing the letter to him, yet somehow she felt that this is what had happened. There was something in their conversation that had made her think so: some sixth sense had prompted her to this conclusion. But should one pay any attention to a sixth sense?

When it came to John Fraser, he might have behaved less than heroically on a mountain, but once again she was unsure about exactly what had happened. She knew that she should have talked to the family of the other climber, but she had not done so. They had moved to London and were difficult to contact; she had not pursued the matter.

John Fraser was the victim of a campaign of whispers, but perhaps, just perhaps, with good reason. Which left Tom Simpson, a man considered to be none too intelligent by Alex Mackinlay himself. Well, what did that mean? His assessment of the candidate could be based on personal animosity. Sometimes people had strong views on the question of who would be their successor. Harry Slade might have conveyed his dislike of Tom Simpson to Alex and this might have led him to question the genuineness of Simpson’s claim to a master’s degree. But again this sounded like tittle-tattle, and did the board want even to consider it?

Isabel had expected that Alex Mackinlay might offer to come to the house to hear what she had to say, but he did not.

“We’re having a meeting at the school tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “It’s the end of term. We’re meeting through lunch and should be finished by three. If you would care to come out, I could show you round, and then you and I could have a private conversation.”

She was on the point of saying that this would not be convenient and would he mind coming in to see her, but she did not. It was convenient, as it happened; Grace wanted to take Charlie to tea with one of her friends in Trinity, and Jamie was rehearsing. She had wanted to see what the school was like, and this would give her a chance. So she replied that she would be happy to come out.

“And do you have an answer for us?” asked Alex.

Isabel hesitated. “Some answers come more in the form of questions,” she said.

He laughed. “That sounds very enigmatic.”

“Some situations are inherently enigmatic.”

She was not sure whether he would appreciate that. He was a businessman, she remembered—a doer—and he probably thought in terms of certainties. But he appeared intrigued. “Then let us de-enigmatise them.”

Isabel laughed. “Indeed.”

The next day, she left the house shortly after two. It would not take her much more than half an hour to get to the school, but she thought that she might walk round the grounds before she had the meeting with Alex. The school had a well-known garden that had been stocked with rare rhododendrons brought from the Himalayas in Edwardian times, and Isabel wanted to see this. There were sculptures too—a renowned sculptor who lived not far away had donated some of his unusual works to the school: there was enigma enough there, she thought, in the messages the sculptor carved into the stone.

On the drive out she stopped just after Silverburn to watch a bird of prey hunting over the lower slopes of the Pentlands. It was a large hawk, waiting to swoop down on its victim. She drew up at the side of the road and watched as it was mobbed by a flock of smaller birds and ignominiously chased away. The small birds, like tiny spitfires in some unequal, heroic Battle of Britain, twisted and turned in dizzying aerial combat; the hawk, outnumbered and irritated by the onslaught, suddenly flew off towards higher ground and disappeared. Isabel sat for a moment, the engine of the green Swedish car idling, before she resumed her journey. This little battle was so close to the city and yet belonged so completely to another world—as did the man feeding his cattle in the field a mile further along the road, emptying a sack of food into a metal hopper while the cattle thronged about him, jostling for position at the trough.

She knew West Linton, where her friend Derek Watson had his tiny bookshop. She resisted the temptation to call on him; there would be time for that on another occasion. Driving through the village, she followed the smaller road that led into the hills and after a few hundred yards came to the gates of the school. Bishop Forbes School, an Independent Boarding School for Boys Aged 8 to 18. Eight, she thought, was terribly young to be sent away from home. She tried to imagine sending Charlie off to boarding school in just over six years’ time, his possessions packed in a small suitcase. No, she could never do it, no matter what people said about the character-building and the sense of independence fostered by such schools. Those could be developed at home, she felt. She would socialise Charlie—she and Jamie—not some stranger.

She followed a sign to the car park, where she left the car. Behind this, beyond a stand of oak trees, she saw the main building of the school, a large stone structure, Palladian in spirit, with several wings stretching out on either side. There were wide lawns around it, with, at their edges, clusters of other, more modern buildings—what looked like a gym, hostels, a chapel. Here and there small groups of boys moved from doorway to doorway, books under their arms, going, she thought, from lesson to lesson. From somewhere further away the wail of pipes split the afternoon air: band practice.

The rhododendron garden was reached by a path that led away from the car park. She followed this, and after a few minutes found herself standing before a small notice that explained the history of the garden and listed some of the varieties it contained. Some of the shrubs had lost the blossom of early summer; others were still a brilliant flourish of colour. The paved walkway snaked its way through the shrubs, and she made her way along it, pausing from time to time to read the small nameplates at the side of each plant.

She reached the far end of the garden and found, to her surprise, that she was on the edge of a cricket pitch. Cricket was not a Scottish game, but was played at schools such as this; a sign of English influence. She knew a few Scottish cricket players, and it seemed to her that they took a perverse pride in playing an arcane game that was a matter of such little interest to the vast majority of their fellow Scots. And here were boys being initiated into just such an attitude.

Not far from where she was, a couple of benches had been placed under the shade of a tree, and it was here that the members of the batting team were sitting. Around them was a mess of pads and other cricket paraphernalia: bats, white jerseys with the arms tied in knots, a large blackboard on which the score had been written in chalk. She walked over; the boys acknowledged her politely, one raising his cap in greeting.

She spoke to a boy who was standing at the edge of the group. He was a smallish boy, as they all were—it was clearly a junior team, made up of boys of ten or eleven.

“How’s the game going?”

The boy replied politely. “Very well. We’re going to win.”

“And how many runs have you made yourself?”

He looked down at the grass. “I was out for a duck. None. Bowled. Macdonald did it. He’s a fast bowler.”

“Bad luck.”

“Thanks. I’m going to bowl to Macdonald when they go in. I’m going to get him.”

She pointed to a couple of deck-chairs that were a little way away from the group. “Who’s sitting there?”

The boy shrugged. “Two of the teachers. They’ve gone back in. You can sit there if you like.”

“Would you sit there beside me and tell me what’s going on on the pitch? I don’t really understand cricket.”

He hesitated, but then agreed. “If you like.”

They moved over to the deck-chairs.

“You have to be careful with deck-chairs,” Isabel said. “They can collapse and catch your fingers.”

“That happened yesterday. A boy called Brodie. He got his fingers caught and he had to go and get plasters put on them. Served him right.”

Isabel smiled. “Oh? Did he deserve it?”

“He’s a bully,” said the boy.

“Ah. And does he bully you?”

“Yes.”

Isabel looked at the boy’s face. He had freckles and green eyes. She noticed a small scar on his chin—a recent scratch, nothing serious. Boys were always scratching and cutting themselves, breaking things too.

“Can’t you do anything about it?”

He shook his head. “You can’t clype on him. If you do that, they hit you.”

“Who?”

“Other boys.”

It was a jungle. Of course it was. A jungle for boys between eight and eighteen.

“Are you happy here?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. “Yes. A bit.”

Then she asked, “And are you going to miss Mr. Slade when he goes?”

He frowned. “He’s going to Singapore.”

“Yes. To a school a lot like this one, I believe. Lots of cricket there.”

“I like Mr. Slade. I’ll be sorry when he goes.”

She smiled. “So you will miss him then?”

“Not as much as Miss Carty will. She …”

Isabel waited for him to finish his sentence, but something had happened on the pitch and his attention was diverted. A batsman had hit a ball in the air and a fielder was running towards it. There was a groan from the field as the catch was dropped.

“A near thing,” said Isabel. “But tell me, who’s Miss Carty?”

“She’s the school secretary. We call her Tarty Carty.”

Isabel tried not to laugh. “Not very polite. And may I ask why?”

“Because she’s a tart.”

Isabel drew in her breath. He looked so innocent—and probably was. He probably had no idea what he was saying.

“That’s not very kind. Do you think you should say that?”

“She’s in love with Sladey.”

Isabel said nothing. Miss Carty was in love with Mr. Slade. Nonsense. Schoolboy fantasy. Boys made things up; shocking stories dreamed up with no regard to the truth or even to feasibility. They made them up. But then she thought: Miss Carty, unhappy school secretary, in love with Mr. Slade, handsome headmaster. Headmaster announces his departure for Singapore; Miss Carty pleads with him not to go. He says he must. She thinks: If I stop them making an appointment, then he might stay, even for a few months longer. And anything can happen in a few months …

She watched the boy. He had taken a tube of peppermints out of his pocket and had peeled one off. “Would you like a mint?”

She shook her head. “How do you know that Miss Carty is in love with Mr. Slade?”

He answered nonchalantly. “I saw him kiss her. He didn’t know I was there. I had lost a ball under one of those bushes back there.” He gestured towards the rhododendron garden. “I was looking for it when they came along the path. They didn’t know I was there. I saw him kiss her. Tarty Carty. Yuck! Disgusting. I wanted to be sick right there. Yuck!”

ISABEL FOUND THE SCHOOL OFFICE by asking a boy where to go. He pointed to a staircase that gave off the main entrance hall. “Up there. There’s a white door that says Headmaster. That’s the school office.”

She climbed the stairs and reached a broad landing. There were several chairs placed around a glass-topped coffee table, and beyond that the door marked Headmaster. Slightly below, there was a sign saying Knock and enter.

She knocked and pushed open the door to a spacious room in which there were several desks, a bank of filing cabinets, and a pinboard covered in notices and aides-memoires. At the far end of the room, a woman sat at a desk under a window. She had streaky blonde hair and was wearing a red shift dress. Tarty Carty, Isabel thought.

The woman turned round in her seat when Isabel entered. She looked at her watch. “Miss Dalhousie?”

Isabel nodded. “Mr. Mackinlay …”

“Yes, he’s expecting you. He’s in the Governors’ Room—I’ll take you there.”

Isabel followed the secretary out of the room and along the corridor, which was lined with photographs of sports teams. Under-15s Rugby, First Tennis Team, Swimming Team. All schools were the same. This took her back to George Watson’s Ladies’ College and the headmistress in her black bombazine and the smell of chalk and …

“You have wonderful grounds here,” said Isabel. “I walked through the rhododendron garden.” What do I expect? she asked herself. Blushes at the memory?

“It’s very pretty,” said Miss Carty. “I like it a great deal.”

“Yes,” said Isabel. And then, her heart racing at her effrontery, she went on: “You’ll all miss Mr. Slade when he goes off to Singapore.”

She was ready for Miss Carty’s reaction—any reaction—but there was none. “A great loss,” the secretary said evenly. “But that happens in schools. Popular teachers move on. One gets used to it.”

“You must have worked closely with him.”

“Of course. But no doubt we’ll get a good replacement.”

Isabel nodded. “It’s a good field,” said Miss Carty. “Or so I’m told. I have nothing to do with the appointment process, of course. But I’ve heard that we’ve got some strong candidates, whoever they are. I’ll be interested to find out when they come for interview.”

“I’M SORRY,” said Isabel to Alex Mackinlay. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to sort out my thoughts.”

They were alone in the boardroom. Miss Carty, after having shown Isabel in, returned a few minutes later with a tray of tea, and then went back to her office.

“She’s a pillar of this place,” said Alex as the secretary closed the door behind her. “She’s been here for fifteen years or so. She’s become the institutional memory.”

“Useful,” said Isabel.

Alex began to pour the tea. “You said that you needed to order your thoughts. Do you want me to leave you for a while to do that?”

Isabel shook her head. “Do you mind if I think aloud?”

Alex handed her a cup of tea. “Not in the slightest.”

Isabel took a sip from her cup. “I’ve found out a certain amount about two of the candidates,” she began. “John Fraser and Gordon Leafers.”

“Yes?”

“John Fraser is a climber.”

“I know that.”

“And do you know that he’s lost a couple …”

Alex raised a hand. “Let me save your time. John Fraser is no longer a candidate. We don’t need to bother about him.”

It took Isabel a moment to take this in. “You’ve taken him off the shortlist?”

“No. He did it himself. He withdrew.”

She asked why, and Alex explained that he had received a letter from John Fraser only that morning. He did not wish to pursue his application for personal reasons, but felt that he owed the school an explanation, having made claims on their time. “It was a rather long and emotional letter. He said that he was being treated for depression, and he felt that he should not conceal this from us. The depression came, he said, from the fact that he felt massively guilty.”

“I was going to tell you that,” said Isabel. “I think he felt guilty about cutting a rope.”

Alex frowned. “No. Quite the opposite. His rope was cut.”

“I’m not …”

Alex put down his cup. “Apparently his life was saved somewhere up near Glencoe. The other climber had fallen and was tied on to him. He was beginning to drag John down into danger and realised that the only way in which he could stop this happening was to cut himself free. So he did, and fell. It was an act of self-sacrifice on the other man’s part. Remarkable, really. And John felt guilty that he was alive and the other man was killed. People can feel guilty in that way—survivor’s guilt, it’s called.”

Isabel looked out of the window. Of course.

“Anyway,” Alex went on, “he felt that he really couldn’t cope with this job in that frame of mind and he pulled out. Understandable. Poor man.”

“Yes,” said Isabel.

“But that still leaves the other two. Leafers and Simpson. What about them? Any skeletons there?”

She was still absorbing the news of John Fraser’s withdrawal. There was not much left for her to say, she thought. “I haven’t really paid much attention to Simpson. I formed the impression that you had a lowish opinion of him.”

He nodded. “I’m afraid so. He’s not up to it, in my view. There were one or two members of the board who were keen to give him a chance, so I let his name go on the shortlist. But I’m afraid that that’s as far as he’ll get.”

“We don’t need to worry about him, then?”

He shook his head. “No, we don’t. Even if there were to be something in his past, which I rather doubt, it wouldn’t matter. He’s not going to get the job.” He looked at Isabel expectantly. “And that leaves Gordon Leafers. Enlighten me about him.”

Isabel knew what she must do. “I must declare an interest in respect of Gordon,” she said. “He’s my niece’s current boyfriend.”

Alex listened as she explained that she liked Gordon but that she understood that she had to be objective.

“And your objective assessment?” asked Alex.

“My objective assessment is that there’s probably nothing to worry about with him, other than …”

He looked interested. “Yes?”

“I wondered whether he was the writer of the letter. I think he’s ambitious and might have wanted to compromise the other two candidates. I can’t say why I feel that—I have no evidence.”

“So it’s just a feeling?”

“Yes. He knew who was on the list. So he would have both motive and ability.”

Alex thought about this. “But there were others who knew.”

“Who?” asked Isabel.

“Miss Carty. And another woman in the office. That’s where the list was typed up.”

Isabel waited a moment. “By?”

“Miss Carty, I believe. She’s the one who passed it on to me to pass on to you.”

“So she knew I was going to see it?”

He nodded. “And I think I told her about what we were asking of you. I trust her, you see. She’s in on everything here, but she’s the soul of discretion.”

And she misled me, thought Isabel. But that was not what she wanted to talk about. “May I speak to you in absolute confidence?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know of any relationship between Mr. Slade and Miss Carty?”

“Beyond an employer and employee relationship?”

“Yes. An affair.”

His eyes widened. “My goodness! Highly unlikely, I would have thought. I just can’t see him getting involved with her.” He seemed amused by the idea. “Nor she with him.”

Isabel was insistent. “Why should it be so unlikely? Mr. Slade is a good-looking, even rather charismatic man. His wife, if I may say so, is hardly exciting.”

Alex looked embarrassed. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I just don’t see it.” He paused. “Why would you even suggest it? Have you heard something?”

Isabel hesitated. She did not like to lie. But one does not have to answer every question one is asked. So she said, “One should always be prepared to consider every possibility.”

He shrugged. “Yes. But some possibilities … Still, what about Gordon Leafers? You have your suspicions about him. You think he might be capable of doing something underhand, such as writing an anonymous letter in order to strengthen his chances. Well, maybe, maybe not. I can’t see it, frankly.”

He poured more tea. “There is, however, something I heard about Gordon that makes me think that he might not be our best bet. I heard, in fact, that he’s not a serious candidate at all—and never was.”

She waited for him to continue.

“I heard from a very reliable source, somebody at the school he’s currently teaching at, that his application is intended purely to enable him to show an offer—if he got one from us—to his existing employer and ask for promotion. Apparently he confessed to a colleague, and it got out. He doesn’t want to move at all. He’s using us, as people sometimes do in these job competitions. So we’re going to tell him that his application is no longer shortlisted. We are certainly not going to let people make use of us like that.”

Isabel hardly knew what to say. All three candidates were out of the running now, which made her wonder why Alex Mackinlay had wanted to see her. Did he think she had nothing better to do with her time than investigate a list of non-candidates?

She drew in her breath. “I’m surprised that you didn’t tell me about all this earlier,” she said. “I’ve rather wasted my time, haven’t I?”

He looked immediately apologetic. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “I would hate you to think that. In fact, I have remained very keen to hear what you have to say.”

She looked at him reproachfully. “But nothing I say has any relevance.”

“But it does, Miss Dalhousie. It’s the letter I’m really interested in. Who wrote it? Can’t you see that this is in a way a more important issue for us? Is there somebody here who can’t be trusted? That’s a very important question for me.”

She understood. An anonymous letter was an acutely destabilising thing. It bred distrust and suspicion; it weakened the normal bonds between people.

He suddenly turned and reached for a file on the table behind him. Taking out a single sheet of paper, he held it out towards her. It was the letter. She saw the green ink and the handwriting—which had been disguised in childish capital letters.

“This bit of paper is potentially very destructive,” he said. “And I was hoping that you might be able to help us find out who wrote it. Have you any ideas?”

She stared at it. Miss Carty and her assistant knew who was on the list, but so did the other members of the board. She had no means of knowing what they thought about the candidates and she doubted if she would have the time or opportunity to find out. Any one of them might have written the letter.

“I’m not sure. But perhaps we should consider the obvious suspect.”

“Namely?”

“Well, Miss Carty knew who was on the list, didn’t she?”

He laughed. “You do have it in for her, don’t you?”

“Well, she had the information and she had a motive. What if she didn’t want Harold Slade to leave? What if she thought that the best way of ensuring this was to prevent, or at least delay, the appointment of his successor?”

His reply was brusque. “Out of character. As much out of character as … having an affair with Harold Slade.”

Isabel considered this. He seemed confident of his opinion, even if he had earlier admitted to her how wrong he had been about that poor man in Glasgow.

“May I tell you something?” she said. “When I was being shown in here, she—Miss Carty—said to me that she had no idea who was on the list. She said that. Nor, apparently, has she seen any of the candidates. Why would she mislead me?”

He frowned. “Is that what she said?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you didn’t mishear her?”

“Positive.”

He frowned again. It was as if he was searching for an explanation. It came. “Discretion,” he said. “She’s very discreet. What would you do if somebody engaged you in conversation about a sensitive topic—one of which you had confidential knowledge? Might you not say, ‘I don’t know anything about it?’ I would. It puts people off.”

He seemed pleased with this, and he looked at her expectantly, as if challenging her to refute what he had said. Isabel said nothing. She looked at the letter in his hand. “May I?” she said.

He handed it to her. “Offensive thing, isn’t it?”

She noticed that the letter was crumpled where he had been holding it. She felt chilled at the thought of the venom that went into the writing of something like this. Snideness too. Cowardice.

“Did you show it to anybody?” she asked.

Alex Mackinlay answered in an offhand way, “Show it? No, of course not.”

“So nobody else—absolutely nobody—saw it? Not even your wife?”

“I certainly didn’t show it to Jilly,” he said. “I put it in that file and that’s where it remained. It disgusts me. I feel dirty even handling a thing like that.”

“But you mentioned it to other people?”

“No,” he replied. “As far as I recall, the only person I told was Jilly.”

Isabel felt her breath coming in short bursts. She was getting close. When they had first discussed this over coffee at Cat’s delicatessen, Jillian had told her that the letter was written in green ink, and yet she had never seen it. Her mind raced ahead. That meant that … No, all that it meant was that her husband had probably told her. Letters in green ink were unusual, and he could well have mentioned that feature of it to Jillian. She felt disappointed: it would all have been so neat.

“Green ink,” she muttered, looking at the letter.

Alex frowned. “What?”

She gestured to the letter. “Green ink.”

He shrugged. “Oh, I see. Or don’t, rather. I have the usual male thing—red-green colour blindness.”

She spoke very quietly. “You can’t tell?”

He seemed slightly irritated by her question, as if he wanted to get back to the subject in hand. “No, I can’t. And lots of men are in the same position. It’s very common. You women don’t seem to suffer from it—or hardly ever.”