The Lost Art of Gratitude

CHAPTER FIVE

RODERICK McCAIG’s second birthday party was to take place at three o’clock on Sunday afternoon, with carriages at five. Isabel smiled at the thought: baby carriages.

Jamie was not enthusiastic. “Do we have to go? I don’t like that woman, you know. And Charlie hates Roderick. Do you really have to sit through the birthday party of somebody who tries to pull your shoes off?”

Isabel conceded that Roderick was, at present, not perhaps the friendliest company for Charlie, but pointed out that there would be other children there. “He’s got to start making friends at some point. Who has he got at the moment?”

“Me,” said Jamie lamely. “You. Grace.”

“You can stay behind if you like,” said Isabel. “I don’t want to force you. I can say that you couldn’t make it, which will not exactly be a lie. The truth would be that you couldn’t make it because you couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm. Minty won’t care.” It occurred to her, though, that Minty might well mind. She had looked at Jamie with undisguised interest, and she might be disappointed if he were not there. And then the further thought occurred: perhaps that was why the invitation had been issued in the first place. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Roderick and Charlie, but everything to do with Jamie.

“I’ll come,” said Jamie. “It may have its moments.”

They dressed Charlie with care. Isabel thought that he might wear the kilt that she had recently bought for him—a small strip of Macpherson tartan, expertly pleated and complemented by a tiny sporran and ornate Celtic kilt-pin. The garment had been specially designed for a wearer who was still in nappies, thereby resolving, in a very evident way, the age-old question of what was worn under the kilt, at least in this case.

“Look at him,” said Jamie. He pointed to Charlie, who was standing up unsteadily, getting the feel of his new outfit. “Aren’t you proud, seeing him in his kilt?”

Isabel was. She knew that one’s nationality was an accident of history and that it was difficult to justify being proud of a heritage—one never did anything to deserve being Scottish or American or whatever one was. But national pride was something that people did feel—they could not help it—and she felt it now on Charlie’s behalf. And it was a form of love, she decided; loving one’s country, one’s culture, amounted to loving a particular group of people, and that, surely, was not something for which one had to apologise.

They set off, with Isabel at the wheel of the car, Jamie at her side and Charlie strapped into his child-seat in the back. He liked the car, and chuckled with excitement as they started the drive to Minty’s house. Halfway there, with the Pentlands rising on one side of the road and the hills of Peebleshire off to the other, Charlie suddenly said “olive” again. Jamie turned round and smiled at him. Charlie stared back, as if surprised by his father’s sudden attention.

“Olive?” Jamie said. “Olive, Charlie?”

Charlie said nothing, fixing Jamie with the disconcerting, utterly fearless stare that only babies and very young children are capable of.

“No olives, Charlie,” said Isabel over her shoulder. “Olives all gone.”

“Olives all gone,” repeated Jamie. And then, turning to Isabel, he said, “That would make a lovely title for a song, you know. ‘Olives All Gone.’ It’s very poignant.”

Isabel agreed. “And the words?”

“I’ll have to think,” Jamie said. “I’ll tell you once I’ve composed it.” The song would come to him, he was sure; it always happened when a line struck him in this way. “Olives All Gone”—it would be about loss, of course, as so many songs were; about what we once had, but had no more.

It did not take long to reach Minty’s house, which was just short of Carlops, a small village twelve miles or so out of Edinburgh. It was in a stretch of country that Isabel particularly liked. Here the land spread out to the south and east, gently rolling fields and folds, green here, ripening brown there, becoming blue in the distance. It was a landscape of mists and distances, beneath a sky that was somehow washed, attenuated, softened. It was a landscape that had been the same for a very long time, dotted with farmhouses and shepherds’ cottages that were there in Robert Louis Stevenson’s time, and in the time of Hume. People here did what they had always done—tending this part of Scotland, keeping it fertile, handing it on to provide for a new generation. It was a place of custom and fond usage.

Minty had given very detailed instructions, which Isabel had written down on the piece of paper she now handed to Jamie. He used these to direct her along the narrow farm track, pressed in upon by hedges, that led off the main road and past a large stand of Scots pines.

“That’s it,” said Isabel. “Look.”

Jamie drew in his breath. “Is that her place?”

“I assume so,” said Isabel. “I never imagined Minty in cramped accommodations, but all the same …”

The house was several hundred yards back from the farm track, which meandered off towards a low byre and a huddle of sheds in the distance. A driveway led from the track to the house; this was lined with rambling rhododendron bushes, flowering in clusters of pink and pale red. Beyond the bushes, a lawn swept up to the house itself, which was Georgian and far more imposing than the larger gentleman-farmers’ houses of the area. At the time of its construction this would have been the house of a family on its way up; not quite in the league of those who aspired to a country mansion, but heading in that direction.

They turned off the farm track and made their way up the somewhat smoother driveway and to the parking place at the side of the house. There were already several prosperous-looking vehicles, which made Isabel’s green Swedish car look distinctly shabby. One of these cars had evidently arrived only a few minutes before, as a woman was still in the process of unloading a small child and a basketful of supporting paraphernalia. She looked in Isabel’s direction, hesitated for a moment and then gave a friendly wave as she made her way into the house.

They approached the front door, which had been left open. Minty was standing in the hall, talking to one of the other mothers. She broke off and welcomed Isabel and Jamie warmly.

“You’ve not been here before, have you?” she said.

Isabel shook her head. “No. But what a lovely place.”

Minty looked pleased. “We searched and searched, and eventually we found this just as we were seriously thinking of going to live in Gullane. Edinburgh sur mer, as you know. Then this came up. It was just what we were after.” She smiled at Isabel and then turned to give Jamie an even bigger smile. “Do have a look around. But it might be best later on, when I can show you. We need to get the children to the table. The masses require to be fed.”

They went through to the kitchen, a vast square room floored with large stone slabs. The room was dominated by a long refectory table at which places for the party had been laid. Most of the small guests were now seated—all eight of them—with a parent beside them to feed them and to keep the food off the floor. Jamie took Charlie over to the table and sat beside him; Isabel watched from the side of the room.

As Charlie and Jamie appeared to be enjoying themselves without her, Isabel moved across to a French window to look out at the garden. The kitchen wing was at the back of the house, a Victorian addition that gave on to a small square of grass. On the other side of this lawn was a large kitchen garden, its surrounding wall built in the grey stone of eastern Scotland, several feet higher than head height. Against its outer side were espaliered apple trees and, in between them, white climbing roses, now in full bloom. Through the open doorway in the wall, she could make out what looked like fruit bushes, some of which were covered with nets against marauding birds.

Isabel became aware that somebody was standing behind her, and she turned to find Minty, holding a plate.

“I made these cheese scones for the adult palate,” she said. “Everything for the children, I’m afraid, is sweet. There are no carrots, I confess. I’m not the most modern of mothers.”

Isabel laughed. “I suspect that their little hearts sink if they get carrots at a birthday party.”

Minty held the plate of scones out to Isabel. “Do try one. I used Parmesan. The recipe called for Cheddar, but I find Cheddar so dull.”

“I suppose it is,” agreed Isabel. She felt almost guilty over her remark, which seemed to dismiss a whole tradition of cheese-making. So, as she took a scone, she added, “Some people like Cheddar, though, and they don’t think it’s that dull.”

“Oh, but it is,” said Minty.

Isabel took a bite of her scone. She was not sure if she wanted to get into an argument with Minty about the merits or otherwise of Cheddar, and so she simply said, “A chacun son fromage.”

Minty looked at her. “And mine is definitely not Cheddar.”

Isabel said nothing. The scone tasted very good, and she decided to compliment Minty on it; it would be a way of ending the debate about Cheddar. But Minty, who had now put the plate down on a nearby sideboard, suddenly took Isabel by the arm, holding her just below the elbow. Isabel felt a momentary shock; surely a disagreement about Cheddar would not lead to a fight about Cheddar. For a moment she imagined the headlines in the press—it would be a gift for a sensationalist sub-editor: Edinburgh Ladies Slog It Out in Georgian Mansion over Cheese Disagreement; Shocked Kids Look On. Minty’s grip, though, was not confrontational, but conspiratorial.

“Let me show you the garden. Come.”

Minty did not wait for an answer but gently propelled her guest towards the door. They went outside and crossed the lawn towards the entrance to the walled garden. A child’s toy, a broken helicopter, lay sideways on the lawn, plastic rotors bent from impact; ditched on a sea of green.

“This garden was one of the things that really sold the house to us,” said Minty. “There’s something special about a walled garden, don’t you think? And it’s very useful here, of course, with the wind that comes up from Lanarkshire. Biggar, you know, is one of the coldest places in Scotland. Really freezing.”

They reached the doorway into the garden and Minty gestured for Isabel to go in first. Isabel ducked, although the doorway was quite high enough to accommodate her easily, and found herself faced with the fruit bushes that she had seen from the house. There were more of them than she had imagined, though, as they occupied at least half the area of the garden, the other half being given over to salad vegetables—lettuces, red and green; kale; spring onions.

“Very functional,” said Minty.

Isabel thought of her failure as a gardener. “I should grow something,” she remarked. “Even a few potatoes. But we have a fox, you see, and he digs things up.”

“Get rid of him,” said Minty. Then she added, “We had a fox too.”

For a moment Isabel imagined a fox in this domain, using one of the espaliered apple trees to get to the top of the wall, sleeking his way along the top, and then finding his way down into the garden itself. What harm would he have caused? There was plenty of room for him to dig, to make his earth, without impinging on Minty’s vegetables. Four words showed that this woman, this successful banker, had no heart, Isabel thought: Get rid of him. Four words.

Then Minty said, “I couldn’t bring myself to have him … well, they don’t mince their words in the country, the farmer offered to shoot him. I said no.”

I have misjudged you, Isabel said to herself. Again, I have misjudged you.

“I know how it is,” said Isabel. “I rather like him.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you do him in,” Minty explained. “But you can get somebody—there’s a man in Dalkeith, I think—who will come and collect him from town and release him somewhere in the country.”

“I’ve heard of that,” said Isabel. “But I wondered whether he would really …”

“We have to trust people,” interrupted Minty. And it seemed to Isabel that as she said this, the other woman looked at her more pointedly.

Isabel wondered what had happened to Minty’s fox. Had the man from Dalkeith called?

“What …”

Minty seemed to have an ability to anticipate questions. “He died a natural death. I found him on the other side of the wall. At first I thought he was sleeping and then I saw that he was quite still. His grave is down by the burn over there.” She pointed away from the house. Isabel looked; it would be a fine place to be buried, she felt, with those hills crouching on the horizon like great sleeping foxes, vulpine deities, perhaps, the gods to whom foxes prayed at night. A good place for a fox.

Isabel sighed. “Poor fox.” It was a trite thing to say, she knew, but what else could one say about living and then dying, as we—and foxes—all must do.

Minty was silent. It was a strange moment: there was a wind, not a strong one, just a breath, and Isabel felt it against her cheek; a wind from over there, from the hills that ran towards the coast, towards the North Sea, towards the edge of Scotland. Then Minty spoke. “I don’t know how to say this,” she said.

Isabel looked at her enquiringly.

“I wondered whether I should raise it with you at all,” Minty went on. “I decided I could. You seem … well, you seem so sympathetic.”

Isabel was about to protest. She wanted to say “I’m not really,” but when she opened her mouth all she said was, “Oh.”

“Yes,” said Minty. “I’ve got plenty of friends—close ones too. But I don’t feel that I can burden any of them with this. I don’t know how they would handle it.”

Isabel ran over the possibilities in her mind. Matrimonial difficulties? That was the sort of matter one was usually worried about raising with friends. But what possible insight could Minty imagine that she, Isabel, could bring to the matrimonial problems of a person whom she barely knew? Financial problems? Surely not; not with this house and the private whisky label and the bank.

“You can speak to me,” said Isabel. “I don’t know whether I’ll be much help, but you can certainly speak to me.”

Minty thanked her. Then she continued, “The reason I thought that I should speak to you is because I know you have helped various people. Remember how we met—over that awful business with that young man who fell in the Usher Hall? Remember? And then somebody else told me about something you had done for another person. So I thought that you might not mind if I told you.”

“Told me what?” Isabel prompted.

“Or asked you, rather. Have you ever been frightened?”

In her surprise, Isabel blurted out, “Me?”

Minty bent down to pick a small blue flower growing by the side of the path. “Wild hyacinth,” she said, showing the flower to Isabel. “Uninvited.”

Isabel glanced at the flower. She remembered something she had read somewhere, some generalisation about women picking flowers and men letting them be. It was Lawrence, she thought; women were always picking flowers in his novels, watched by men. “Bavarian Gentians.” What a strange poem. Not every man has gentians in his house … Of course they didn’t …

“We’ve all been frightened at some time or other,” Isabel said. “And I’m no exception.”

Minty dropped the flower, dusting her hands as if to remove its traces. “Of course. Momentarily. It’s different, though, living with fear. All the time.”

“I suppose it is,” said Isabel. Was Minty in that position? It was difficult to imagine this competent, successful woman living with fear; it just seemed somewhat unlikely.

“Fear like that,” said Minty, “is really odd. It’s there with you all the time—you don’t forget it. It’s like … well, I suppose it’s like a thundercloud. It’s the backdrop to everything you do.”

Isabel stopped walking. It was time, she thought, to find out what Minty was driving at. She was frightened—obviously—but why? Threats of legal action? Blackmail? The possibility occurred to Isabel as she looked at the house. It was respectability and success rendered in stone and mortar, but such edifices could so easily be toppled, brought down, by a few words.

“What’s frightening you?” Isabel asked. “Is that what you want to talk about?”

The directness of Isabel’s question seemed to irritate Minty. “I was just trying to explain,” she said. “People don’t necessarily know what it’s like.”

“I can imagine,” said Isabel quickly. “But what is it? What’s making you feel that way?”

“Somebody’s targeting me,” said Minty.

“How?”

“Small things. Or quite big, sometimes. A sudden investigation by the tax authorities. That often means that somebody has given them a tip-off or made an allegation.” She paused, looking sideways at Isabel. “Unjustified, of course. But very annoying—and expensive. Accountants’ fees.”

“But you can’t really tell, surely,” said Isabel. “They do random checks, don’t they?”

Minty ignored this. “Then my PA resigned. I relied on her and she suddenly announced she was leaving. A better offer. I said that we would match whatever they—whoever they were—had offered and add five per cent on top of that. But she wouldn’t even discuss it. I think she was threatened. Simple as that. Scared off.”

Isabel admitted that this was rather strange. But, again, people changed jobs and had their reasons for not explaining why. Privately, the possibility crossed her mind that Minty’s PA disliked her, as one might; Jamie certainly did, and Isabel had in the past.

Minty nodded. “Yes, yes, there are plenty of reasons for getting a new job. But there have been other things—quite a lot of them. The worst was last week. I came back from work in the evening and discovered that somebody had ordered flowers to be delivered to the house.”

It now occurred to Isabel that Minty was not well. Paranoia showed itself in odd ways—she had had an uncle on her father’s side, a retired stockbroker, who had insisted that the postman was hiding his mail, and had eventually attacked and bitten him. The postman had been remarkably understanding and had joked about the frequency with which he and his colleagues had been bitten by dogs, suggesting that to be bitten by householders was really only a small escalation. That attitude—and an understanding procurator fiscal—had avoided an embarrassing prosecution. Uncle Fergus had spent his remaining days in a nursing home, quite content, it seemed, although suspicious to the end that the home’s matron was intercepting his letters. She, though, had been as many matrons used to be, built like a galleon and with attitudes to match. He would never have dared bite her, Isabel’s father had pointed out, and had then added the observation that deterrence and fear were major inhibitors of crime, and that criminologists might care to reflect on that.

“Flowers,” said Isabel quietly.

Minty’s eyes flashed with anger at the recollection. “In the shape of a wreath,” she said.

Isabel was silent.

“A wreath,” Minty said again. “A funeral wreath. And there were other things too. A fire in one of the greenhouses, for example. It was started deliberately. We were away at the time.”

“Who might have done this?” asked Isabel. “Have you any idea?”

The question seemed to distress Minty, and it was a few moments before she answered. “I think I do.”

Isabel waited. Minty was looking away from her, out towards the hills.

“Why don’t you go to the police?” She realised, of course, that this question was seldom helpful. In an ordered, middle-class world there was an assumption that people could go to the police and receive the help and protection that the police are meant to provide. But that was not the world as it really was. Often there was nothing the police could do; often there was nothing that the police wanted to do. Much of the time, people simply had to look after themselves.

Minty sniffed. “What help could they offer? None. And they’d treat it as some sort of neighbourhood dispute, you know. They don’t like to get involved in people’s private arguments.”

Isabel knew that this was true. The police liked to talk of a light touch, but that light touch could mean inaction.

She realised that Minty had not revealed the precise nature of her suspicions. So she asked again, “Who is it?”

Minty turned and looked directly at Isabel. When she spoke, her voice was lowered. “I haven’t talked to anybody about this. And I don’t know why I’m telling you.” She stopped herself. “Well, I do, I suppose. There’s something about you … Well, I trust you. You can keep things to yourself, can’t you?”

Isabel nodded. “I hope so.”

Minty added a qualification. “Of course I assume that you’ll tell Jamie. That’s all right. But otherwise …”

“I won’t. I just won’t.”

Minty hesitated for a few seconds more. Then she made her decision. “Blackmail.”

“I wondered if it would be that,” said Isabel. “When you started to tell me—”

Minty interrupted her. “Not for money. Not that sort of blackmail.”

“Oh?”

“It’s more personal than that.”

Isabel reached out to touch Minty gently on the arm. She was not sure that she wanted to be burdened with this particular confidence. Minty, after all, was hardly more than a stranger to her. “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

But Minty had clearly decided. “I know I don’t have to. But I’d like to.” She paused. “It’s to do with Roderick.”

Isabel drew in her breath. “They’ve threatened to harm him?”

Minty shook her head. “No. It’s about him. You see, Roderick is … well, Roderick isn’t Gordon’s.”

It made immediate sense. Minty may be very much the successful banker, but she was a woman, too, with a husband.

“There,” continued Minty. “I’ve said it. I’ve told you something I haven’t told anybody else, not a soul. Roderick is the result of an affair I had with another man. It didn’t last long, but it was a full-blown affair and I became pregnant. I didn’t tell Gordon—obviously—and he thinks that he’s Roderick’s father.”

“Are you sure?”

Minty looked up sharply. “Sure? Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”

Isabel found it difficult to put it delicately. “Because if you were still with Gordon when you were having the affair with … with this other man, then might it not be possible that …” She left the question unfinished. It hardly needed to be spelled out further, she thought.

Minty laughed. She seemed unembarrassed by the suggestion. “Oh, I see what you mean. Well, that goes with the territory, doesn’t it? If a married woman has an affair, then that could happen. All right. He could be Gordon’s, too, but he isn’t.”

“You’ve had a test?”

Minty explained that she had not. The thought had crossed her mind, but she had dismissed it, initially because she did not want to know the information, and then later because she knew already. “I don’t need a laboratory to tell me who Roderick takes after. You just have to look at him. Everything. Shape of head. Eyes. Everything.”

Isabel knew what she meant. Charlie was Jamie’s son; it was something that a mother simply could tell. “And now somebody’s found out and is making demands for money?”

Minty closed her eyes. “Not found out. Knew all along.”

Isabel waited for her to explain.

“The father,” she said. She added, “Not money. He wants Roderick.”

Isabel and Minty stared at one another for a few moments. Then Minty shrugged. “So there we are,” she said. “But let’s go inside and see what’s going on. Did I ask you to sign the visitors’ book?”

“No.”

Minty took Isabel’s arm. “Well then I must. Let’s do it now, otherwise it gets forgotten, and I like to have a record of everybody who comes to see us here.”

ONLY LATER THAT EVENING did Isabel tell Jamie about her conversation with Minty. She had wanted to speak to him about it in the car on the way home, but he had been full of what happened at the party and she did not have the opportunity. While Isabel had been out in the garden with Minty, Roderick McCaig, nominally under the control of his father, had thrown a piece of cake at Charlie. Apparently unsurprised at this behaviour on the part of his host, Charlie had calmly picked up the crumbs of the missile and eaten them, causing an outburst of rage from Roderick, who clearly regarded the cake as still belonging to him. The child sitting next to Roderick had then been sick over Roderick’s trousers, which had not led to any improvement in the young host’s mood.

“It’s a jungle down there,” said Jamie, smiling. “We forget what it’s like to be two.”

“Selvan,” muttered Isabel.

Jamie raised an eyebrow. “Sylvan? As in forests?”

“No, selvan. It’s a word that I think should exist in English, but doesn’t quite. Selva exists in English—just—for Amazonian forest, from the Spanish word selva. So I think we should be able to say selvan for forests that are too jungly to be called sylvan.”

Jamie smiled wryly. Isabel occasionally made new words when it suited her, and he found himself adopting at least the more apt of these. The pad under a toe, for instance, was a gummer, a neologism she had coined one day when inspecting Charlie’s tiny feet. And the crook of a bassoon, that curious curved pipe that held the reed, she had called a bahook, a word which seemed admirably suited to its purpose, even if it had to be used carefully—and never diminutively—in order to avoid confusion with the Scots word bahookies, a word that bordered on the vulgar, if it did not actually tip over that border. “Well, it’s certainly selvan down amongst the two-year-olds,” he said.

“And up here too, amongst the …” She almost said forty-year-olds, but stopped herself, and said, instead, “adults.”

“Meaning?” he asked.

She was about to explain about her conversation with Minty, when Charlie started to cry in the back of the car and Jamie had to turn round to attend to him. So it was not until later, over dinner, that she told him of Minty’s unexpected frankness in the walled garden. Jamie listened attentively, sipping on the glass of New Zealand wine Isabel had poured him. She was trying the products of new vineyards and had chanced upon one they both liked.

When she finished, Jamie asked her whether she had believed Minty. “I’m not sure about her,” he said. “Even if you believe what she says—and it sounds rather unlikely, I would have thought—you still have to wonder why she’s telling you all this. What’s it got to do with you?”

He asked the question but almost immediately realised that he knew the answer. Isabel was about to interfere in matters that did not concern her. She did it all the time, as a moth will approach the flame, unable to stop herself. She had to help; it was just the way she was.

Isabel sensed what he was thinking. “I didn’t commit myself,” she protested. “But it was a real cri de coeur. She was frightened—she really was.”

“But what are you meant to do?” asked Jamie. “Why doesn’t she hire somebody? A close-security guard or whatever they call themselves. She’s got the cash.”

“It was difficult for her to speak about it,” said Isabel. “I don’t think that she would find it easy to open up to a total stranger.”

Jamie sighed. “Isabel, you’re a lovely, helpful person. Everybody knows that, and it means that anybody could take advantage of you. Minty’s as sharp as all get-out—she knows that you’re a soft touch.”

Isabel looked into her glass. “All I said was that I’d look into it. I gave no promises.”

Jamie shrugged. “Well, all that I would say is be careful. Don’t get in too deep. That woman’s dangerous.”

“Come on!” said Isabel. “She’s ambitious and a bit pleased with herself, but she’s not dangerous.”

“Well, her son is,” countered Jamie, and then laughed. “Just don’t get sucked in.”

“If I’m sucked in, I’m sure I’ll be spat out,” said Isabel.

Jamie was not sure what she meant by this, and neither, in fact, was she. So he drained his glass and stood up.

“Let’s go and sing something. Or rather, you accompany me and I’ll sing. What would you like to hear?”

Isabel thought for a moment. “ ‘King Fareweel’?” she asked.

Jamie agreed. She had enquired about the words a couple of days earlier, on Dundas Street, outside the Scottish Gallery. Why was she thinking about Jacobite songs?

“Because I saw a picture of Charles Edward Stuart,” Isabel explained. “The song came into my mind. That’s all.”

She sat down at the piano and played; Jamie sang. And when he got to the lines about Prestonpans, she faltered and stopped, her hands unmoving on the keyboard.At Prestonpans they laid their plans,

And the Heilan lads they were lyin’ ready,

Like the wind frae Skye they bid them fly,

And monie’s the braw laddie lost his daddy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t find this song very easy.” It was too painful to think of those boys deprived of their fathers, and these simple words made her think of how Jamie was so relishing being Charlie’s father. Charlie, her braw laddie, and his daddy.

“All right,” said Jamie. “Let me sit down there.” He gestured to the piano stool, which was wide enough for two. Isabel shifted over, and he sat beside her. He reached forward and played a chord, and then moved to another. “That’s it,” he said.

“That’s what?”

He repeated the chords. “That’s the tune I was going to compose,” he said. “ ‘Olives All Gone.’ Listen.”

He played a simple, rather sad melody; she thought it beautiful.Olives all gone, olives all gone,

The olives I loved, now they are gone,

Summer will bring more, you say,

The trees will bear fruit;

That may be true, my dear,

But the olives are gone.

Isabel listened, solemnly, then burst out laughing, to be joined by Jamie. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and he kissed her back, not lightly, but with passion.

She said, “Oh,” and he said, “Isabel Dalhousie, please marry me.”