The Right Attitude to Rain

Miranda was staring at her. “You’re a philosopher, aren’t you? Eddie was telling me.”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “That’s what I do.”

“I might have guessed that,” said Miranda. “Even if I didn’t know. You seem to think so hard about things. Just then you were sitting there and thinking about something, weren’t you?”

Isabel laughed. “Yes, I suppose I was. I find myself thinking at a bit of a tangent. I think of one thing and then I go on to think about something connected with it. And so it goes on.”

“And you get paid to do that?”

“Very little, I’m afraid. Philosophy doesn’t pay very well.”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Miranda was looking at her quizzically. “And yet Eddie says that you’re rich. He told me that you live in a large house and that you have somebody who works for you there.”

There was no malice in the observation, and Isabel found that she did not resent it. “I’m very fortunate,” she said. “I’m well-off. I was left money. That’s where it comes from. But I try not to splash it around, I assure you. I don’t live in great splen-dour or anything like that.”

“Pity,” said Miranda. “I would, if I had money.”

“You don’t know that. You might find that it made no difference. And it doesn’t, you know. Once one has the minimum required for reasonable comfort, any more makes no difference to how you feel. It really doesn’t.”

It was clear that Miranda did not believe this, but the conversation came to an end as Cat came in the front door. “The boss,” said Miranda. “When the Cat’s away the mice will play. I must get back to work. Nice to talk to you, Isabel. And thanks again for getting me this job.”

Cat moved over to the counter and said something to Eddie before she came over to Isabel’s table and sat down opposite her aunt. Isabel could tell immediately that there was something wrong. Cat was tense, and her greeting of Isabel verged on the cold. Patrick trouble, she thought. This was how Cat behaved when her emotional life became complicated; it had happened with Toby and with the others, and although it tended not to last long, it was uncomfortable for everybody.

“Had a good weekend?” asked Cat.

Isabel hesitated. “Yes. I did. I—”

“I’ve just seen Mimi,” said Cat. “I bumped into her in the post office.”

Isabel suddenly thought: Jamie, and she experienced a T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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moment of panic. She had not considered this, but of course she should have. “I thought that they weren’t going to come back until later this afternoon,” said Isabel. “We spent the weekend in the Borders. A house near Peebles.”

“So she told me,” said Cat. “And you had a good time?”

There was no doubt in Isabel’s mind now that Cat knew—

her tone of voice was unmistakably sarcastic.

“Cat,” she said. “I was going to talk to you. I was going to . . .”

Cat leant forward slightly and lowered her voice. “How could you? How could you do it?” she half whispered, half hissed.

Isabel drew back. “What did Mimi tell you?”

“That Jamie was there.”

Isabel wondered whether she should deny Cat’s inference.

Mimi would certainly not have told her about what had happened—and she had not discussed anything with Mimi. As far as Mimi was concerned, Isabel and Jamie were still just friends. But a denial on her part would be, quite simply, a lie, and one could not lie.

“Yes, he was. Jamie was there.” She left it at that. She was not obliged to account to Cat, even if Jamie had once been her boyfriend. Cat had rejected him and made it very clear that she had no intention of taking him back. In the circumstances, then, she could hardly complain if Jamie became involved with somebody else. But then, that somebody else was Cat’s aunt.

“Isabel,” whispered Cat, “I can’t believe that you would do it. That you would go off with Jamie. He was my boyfriend, for God’s sake. Mine. I knew that you saw him, but I fondly imagined that it was just a nice little friendship—not this.”

Isabel sighed. “I’m sorry, Cat. I really am. It was just a 2 2 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h friendship to begin with—I promise you that. I had no idea that you would be jealous of him. You knew that Jamie was head over heels in love with you. You knew that. But you’re the one who got rid of him and you shouldn’t really be jealous of him. That’s hardly fair, is it? To him or anybody else for that matter.”

Cat gave Isabel a look which disturbed her greatly. If it was not quite hate, it was close to it. “Jealous? Jealous?” She spat out the words. “I am not in the slightest bit jealous.”

Isabel spoke calmly. “You must be. Otherwise you wouldn’t behave like this.”

“It is not jealousy,” said Cat. “It’s disgust.”

Isabel was silent. Miranda and Eddie, from the other side of the room, had picked up that an argument was in progress and were looking in their direction with curiosity. She averted her gaze. Suddenly she felt ashamed. Disgust. That was what Cat felt about her conduct. Her own niece felt that.

“Think about it,” Cat went on. “He’s twenty-eight and you’re forty-two. You could be his mother.”

Isabel looked up. “Hardly,” she said. “I was fourteen when he was born.”

“So what?” Cat said abruptly. “He’s much younger than you are. Much. And anyway, don’t you think that there’s something a bit disgusting in an aunt taking her niece’s boyfriend into her bed? Or did you climb into his bed? Did you? Is that what happened?”

“You have no right to talk to me like that. You don’t know what you’re saying, Cat.”

Cat sat back in her chair. The anger now seemed to drain out of her expression and Isabel noticed that there were tears welling in her eyes.

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“Cat,” she said, reaching out to her. “Please don’t be upset.

Please.”

“Go away,” said Cat. “Just go away.”

Isabel reached for the shopping bag that she had placed on the floor below the table. Cat kicked it, and the bag fell over, spilling the contents on the floor.

Eddie watched from the counter. Then, when Cat rose to her feet and went silently into her office, he walked over to Isabel’s table and bent down to retrieve the items that had fallen out of the bag.

“She sometimes gets into a bad temper,” he whispered to Isabel. “Usually it’s when her boyfriend is being difficult. She gets over it.”

Isabel tried to smile as she thanked Eddie, but it was difficult. What had she done? When she had entered the delicatessen that morning she had still been feeling elated over Jamie. Now that had changed. She simply had not thought about the impact her affair with Jamie might have on Cat. It was remiss of her; she spent so much time thinking about other things, about the moral ramifications of every act, that when it came to something so close to her, something as important as her relationship with Cat, how could she not even have thought about the implications?

But then she thought: Why should I feel guilty? I should feel elated, not guilty; elated that I have the affection of somebody like Jamie; elated that I have been the recipient of such an unexpected gift. That is how she should have felt, but did not.

Guilt over Cat put a stop to it.

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y

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ISABEL?”

She had answered the telephone in her study. In front of her, a particularly impenetrable—and dull—manuscript bore the markings of her blue pencil. “The Ethics of Tactical Voting”

was not easy reading. Was it acceptable to vote for somebody you did not like in order to prevent somebody else from winning an election? Of course it was, thought Isabel, because in those particular circumstances you did like the person for whom you voted; you liked him more than you liked the opposition. So the fundamental premise that you were indicating approval where you really felt disapproval was false: that was not what your vote meant. Normally, this paper would have been rejected, but it had been written by a member of the editorial board and comity had to be borne in mind. The telephone call was a welcome diversion, and indeed Isabel had been on the point of getting up to make a cup of tea—her third that morning—in order to give herself an excuse to stop reading. She was also distracted, of course, by the row with Cat. That had been terrible, and she had tried to put it out of her mind, but it was there nonetheless, a background feeling of dread. And Jamie had not telephoned.

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She had dared to hope that it would be Jamie, but she recognised Tom’s voice. “I’ve been meaning to call you to say thank you,” she said. “That was a wonderful weekend.”

He said that the pleasure was entirely his—and Angie’s of course—which Isabel doubted, as she was certain Angie would have been just as happy, or happier perhaps, had she not been there. There was a silence after this, but only a brief one. The Tom said, “We’re coming into town today. I don’t know how busy you are . . .”

She glanced at “The Ethics of Tactical Voting.” “I’d welcome an interruption,” she said. “If that’s what you were going to suggest.”

He sounded pleased. “I was. Could I drop by?”

Isabel hesitated, not through any unwillingness to see Tom, but through uncertainty about what he had in mind. Was Angie coming?

He answered the unspoken question. “Just me, I’m afraid.

Angie has a hair appointment and I believe that she has some shopping to do. So it’ll just be me.”

They agreed on a time, and Isabel went through to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. She was sure that Tom was not just calling for a casual chat; he had sounded as if there was something that he wanted to talk about. She was not sure what it was, though. Over the weekend they had conversed a lot together, and they had got on well, but it could hardly be a case of something being left unfinished. One did not come into town to discuss a point in an interrupted conversation.

She made her tea and returned, reluctantly, to her study. It would be three hours before Tom arrived, and in that time she could finish her editing of “The Ethics of Tactical Voting.” The other possibility was to let the paper go forward in its existing 2 3 2

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h form. That would please the author, she was sure, but it would involve a lowering of her own standards—not that anybody would read this particular article, anyway, and so perhaps nobody would notice. Or would they? There were people who thought about nothing other than voting behaviour; they liked this sort of thing. Psephologists. She sighed. There were psephologists.

TO M A R R I V E D at the house at three o’clock, exactly the time they had agreed upon. Isabel had just finished editing the article and was pleased with the result. What had been dull and unin-telligible had now become dull and intelligible, which was little achievement, but enough for the day. It was a warm afternoon and the air was still. They could sit out in her summer house, drink their tea, and Tom could say whatever it was he wanted to say. For a few moments she fantasised. He would say, “I’ve gone off Angie in a big way. I feel a bit bad about it. But I realized that . . . well, you were the one I really wanted. What about it?” And she would say, “Oh, dear, Tom, I’m so sorry. Bad luck for Angie, of course, but there we are. As for me, I’ve got a boyfriend at the moment and can’t take up your kind offer.

Thanks anyway.” She smiled at the ridiculous thought. Absurd fantasies were fun, provided one did not overindulge in them.

People could begin to believe their fantasies—she had known several who did. Her poor neurotic friend, Mark, who had been adopted, believed that he was really the son of a wealthy Glasgow shipowner who would come to claim him and induct him into his inheritance; he believed that in spite of the lack of any evidence.

“You’re dressed for tea in the garden,” she said to Tom when T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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he arrived. He was wearing a white linen jacket, open-necked white shirt, and loose beige trousers. She noticed the air of crumpled expensiveness about the jacket, and the belt through the loops of the trouser waist—a discreet, yachting-club stripe.

He laughed. “I have a Panama hat back home, but didn’t think I’d need it in Scotland.”

She led him into the garden, which seemed drowsy that afternoon. The summer house, which had been her father’s retreat, was at the end of the lawn, backed by rhododendrons and a high stone wall that gave the entire garden privacy from the neighbours. This was Brother Fox’s territory, of course, and one year he and his vixen, whom she never saw, had raised their cubs under the foundations of the summer house itself. She had heard them scratching there when she had been sitting in her chair, and she had thought of the warm, dark comfort of their den, and of the vixen, Sister Fox, she supposed, who might at that moment be licking the fur of her cubs with pride, and of their small eyes which even at that tender age were so full of fox knowledge and wisdom.

She poured the tea and passed him his cup. It had not occurred to her before that the Bell’s palsy might make it difficult for him to drink, but now she saw that when he raised the cup to his lips he had to turn it carefully to the side. He saw her watching.

“I have to be a bit careful,” he said. “When this first happened, I spilled coffee all over the place. I’m used to it now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

He was quick to reassure her. “I really don’t mind. I remind myself that it really makes very little difference to the things I can do. And as for the disfigurement . . . well, we’ve all seen far 2 3 4

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h worse, haven’t we? People who have had bad facial burns. And dwarves. Imagine what they have to put up with. People embarrassed to look at them and not knowing how to speak to them.”

“But attitudes have changed, surely.”

He lowered his cup. “Maybe. Until this happened to me, though, I had no idea what people with . . . with disabilities have to put up with. The looks. The pity. Yes, that’s difficult to take.

The pity. It’s well meant, but we don’t want it, you know. And it also made me realise something that I never thought about. Dallas is part of the South, in its own way, and I never thought very much about what it was to be black in a white world. Now I think I know a little bit about what that might have been like. A bit late to get that education. This thing—this illness, just a virally damaged facial nerve—gave me wisdom. How about that? The wisdom of the facial nerve.”

She did not say anything, but she knew exactly what he meant. To be able to imagine the other, and the experience of the other, was what wisdom was all about; but nobody talked about wisdom very much any more, nor virtue, perhaps because wisdom was not appreciated in a world of glitz and effect. We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television—grey, lined, thoughtful.

Tom picked up his cup again and looked into it. “Coming to Scotland has been important for me,” he said. “We almost went to France, but decided that it would be Scotland this year.”

“Tarwhinn is a lovely place. You must be happy there.”

He took a careful sip of tea. “Oh, the house is fine. But it’s not really that. It’s just that I’ve been able to do some thinking.”

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She listened attentively. The sun had moved to fall through the open doors of the summer house, against the side of his trouser leg and on his left hand, which was resting on the arm of his chair. She noticed the signs of early sun damage on his skin, a dryness and freckles—Dallas, of course, and the harsh Texas summers.

“I don’t know how to say this, Isabel.”

She was about to pour more hot water into the teapot, but she stopped.

He took a deep breath. “Everything’s wrong,” he blurted out. “Everything.”

She did not know what to say. It was the engagement, obviously. He had made a mistake. People found out about other people when they went on holiday with them, and perhaps that was what had happened; it was a simple falling of scales from the eyes. And sometimes it took different surroundings to reveal a person’s inadequacies. Angie may have been fine in Dallas, where she made sense, but out there in Peeblesshire, amongst those hills, she could well seem strident, brittle.

Tom continued, “I can’t help myself. When I met you, I realised what sort of person I should really be looking for. Somebody like you.” He looked at her, gauging her reaction. She smiled, but her smile was weak and uncertain. He was sufficiently encouraged, though, to go on. “I suppose that I’m a little bit smitten with you. In fact, I’m downright smitten. There you are. I’ve said it. Sorry. It’s very rude of me.”

This was not welcome, but his manner was so formal, so polite, that it somehow seemed not in the least threatening. She reached across and placed her hand on his forearm. The linen of the sleeve was rough to the touch. “Tom, you don’t have to apologise. You—”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h He interrupted her. “I agonised over telling you, but then I decided I had to. I know that it’s ridiculous—”

“It isn’t.”

“Yes, it is,” he insisted. “You’ve got your friend, Jamie. I’m an engaged man, and I’ve got this . . . this face. I know that nothing can come of it. But I couldn’t bear just sitting there with this knowledge about myself and not being able to talk to anybody about it. That’s why I had to come and speak to you. I shouldn’t have.”

Her relief showed. He was not going to press her. “Of course you should.”

He looked at her. There was anxiety in his face. “You don’t mind?”

“Of course I don’t. I’m flattered. I really am. But, as I’m sure you’ll agree, it really doesn’t have much of a future, does it?”

He appeared to think about this for a moment. And Isabel, for her part, controlled the urge to smile at the thought of how this meeting had followed the script of her fantasy, thus far at least, although there had been no direct mention of Angie.

“And what about Angie?” she asked.

For a while he said nothing. Then, speaking quietly, he said,

“She doesn’t really care for me. In fact, I think she’d be quite happy to get rid of me.”

He looked at her to see her reaction. If he had expected her to be shocked, then she disappointed him, for she was not. It was as she had thought. She had known all along, in the way that one knows some things that cannot be explained, beliefs of unknown aetiology. She had just known that, and had felt embarrassed when she expressed the fear to Mimi. And Tom had known it too.

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She spoke very carefully. “How do you know that?” She would not tell him about her dream; it would be too melodra-matic. But she would make it clear that she did not think that what he said was outrageous.

He joined his hands together in a gesture that seemed close to hand-wringing. “I think she tried. We went to the Falls of Clyde. I was trying to get a photograph, right at the edge, from a place where I suppose one shouldn’t go because there was a sheer drop just a foot or so away, and suddenly I felt that I had to turn round. And I did, and Angie was right behind me.”

“And she tried to . . .”

He shook his head. “No. I lost my balance, and I started to go backwards. It was very strange. I was teetering, I suppose. It must have looked as if I were going to go over.”

“And?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, as if reliving the scene.

“She didn’t do anything. She just looked. She didn’t reach out.”

Isabel had felt a knot of tension within her, which now dis-sipated. It was that old favourite of the moral philosophers, the act/omission distinction. Was it as bad to fail to act as to act, if the consequence in each case was the same?

“You think that she should have done something?”

“Of course she should.” He paused. “I know that one might panic in such circumstances, one might freeze. But when that happens the eyes show it. I looked into her eyes and saw something quite different.”

“Which was?”

“Pleasure,” he said. “Or perhaps one might describe it as excitement.”

She thought about this, and then asked Tom whether he 2 3 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h had said anything to her about it. He replied that he had not, and the reason for this was that he could not be sure. It was a terrible thing to accuse anybody of, and he found that he was not able to do it.

“But you can’t stay with somebody if you think that she’s capable of that,” said Isabel. “You can’t do that.”

He spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. “I’m engaged to her. All Dallas knows. I can’t turn round and . . . and end it just on the basis of a suspicion.”

Isabel felt a growing anger within her. “You can’t? Of course you can. People break off engagements all the time. That’s why we have them. A trial period.”

He looked at her helplessly. “I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t tell her.” He sighed. “And maybe I’m wrong anyway.

Maybe the whole thing is my imagination.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think it’s that. But the point is, surely, that you don’t want to marry her. You’ve just told me that meeting me made you feel that. You did mean that, didn’t you?”

He nodded vigorously. “I did. Yes, all that was true. This other thing—the thing at the falls—that’s something on top of it. An extra difficulty. But—and I know this sounds weak—I just can’t bring myself to break it off. She would be devastated.” He met her gaze, as if pleading. “I just can’t decide. I know I have to, but I can’t.”

“Why would she be devastated if she wants to get rid of you?”

Tom sighed. “I don’t know. I just don’t.”

Isabel decided. “Do you want my advice?”

“No. I have to make my own decision.”

“But you’ve just told me you can’t do that.”

Now he looked anguished. “I’d be a coward if I let somebody else do my dirty work, do my thinking for me.”

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“Yes,” said Isabel. “It would be cowardly. But all of us are cowards from time to time. I certainly am, and just about everybody else is, if they’re honest with themselves.” She looked at him searchingly. “One thing occurs to me, though. I take it that if she wants to get rid of you, she would want to do so after your marriage, not before. For financial reasons.”

He shifted in his chair, as if the question made him feel uncomfortable. “She stands to benefit from my death, even now.

I have already made arrangements. My lawyers advised it when we got engaged.”

“I see.” She picked up a small silver teaspoon from the tea tray and began to play with it between her fingers. “Do you think she might accept a settlement?”

“You mean that I should pay her off?”

“Yes. Because if she doesn’t really like you, then why is she engaged to you?”

“Money?”

“It looks that way,” said Isabel. “Don’t you think?”

Tom said something that Isabel did not catch. But then he repeated himself. “How horrible to have to put it that way,”

he said.

Isabel thought so too. Human affairs, though, were reduced to monetary calculation all the time, and marriage had traditionally been about money every bit as much as it had been about love.

He was staring at her. “Should I do that? Should I offer her money?”

“What do you think?”

“No,” he said. “I’m asking you what you think.”

“All right. Yes, I think that you might offer her something.

You don’t have to, but if it’s important to you that she releases 2 4 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h you, so to speak, then do it.” I should not be interfering, she thought. I have resolved not to interfere in the affairs of others, and now I’m doing this. But he had asked her, had he not? He had pressed her to give her advice, and she had done so. Did that amount to interference? She was not sure.

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E

E

JAMIE TELEPHONED. He did so shortly after Tom’s departure, when Isabel had stacked the teacups in the dishwasher and returned to her study to work. He wanted to have dinner with her, he said, if she was free. Of course she was, although she tried not to say so too quickly. But she was quick enough.

At Jamie’s suggestion, they met in a pub, the St. Vincent Bar, on his side of town. It was a small bar tucked away near the end of a wide Georgian thoroughfare that went down the hill from George Street. This road came to an architectural full stop at an imposing, high-pillared church on St. Vincent Street; beside it was a much more modest Episcopal church, also known as St.

Vincent’s, in which high rites were celebrated. This was the home, too, of a slightly eccentric order, the Order of St. Lazarus, the members of which paraded in ornate uniforms and claimed descent from Templar-like chivalrous organisations; harmless enough, thought Isabel, and evidently satisfying two deep-seated male desires—to have secrets and to belong.

The afternoon weather had held, and as Isabel made her way down the hill from George Street the high northern sky was still filled with evening light. It was shortly after eight, but it 2 4 2

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h would not get dark until well after ten, and even then the darkness would be attenuated by a lingering glow, the simmer dim as they called it in the far north of Scotland. The air was warm, too, but with that touch of freshness that reminded one that this was Scotland after all.

The door of the bar was wide open and there were several people sitting on the stone steps outside, enjoying the warmth.

Jamie was already there, sitting at a table just inside the doorway, a glass of beer on the table in front of him. When he saw Isabel his expression lightened. He rose to his feet and took her hands. Then he leant forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Isabel felt herself trembling, like a schoolgirl on her first date. He has obviously had no regrets, she thought; he feels now as he felt over the weekend.

She sat down at the table while Jamie went to buy her a drink. She looked around the bar, taking in the small groups of friends, the couples, the one or two solitary drinkers seated on stools at the bar itself. There was nobody she knew, which did not surprise her. This was not her territory. And the thought of territoriality made her think, inconsequentially, of Brother Fox.

She imagined that she might come into this bar and find him seated on a stool, his neat furry legs crossed elegantly, sipping a glass of . . . What would Brother Fox drink? Sherry perhaps, or something even more sophisticated, one of those cocktails with elaborate names that one saw listed in grander bars. Brother Fox would drink something called a “St. Francis,” she thought: two parts gin, one part lime and one part chicken. And Brother Fox would have a group of somewhat raffish friends—people like Charlie MacLean, perhaps, that man who wrote books on whisky and whose whisky-nosing she had once attended down T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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in Leith; he and Brother Fox would get on well, telling each other stories. Absurd, but she smiled.

Jamie came back with her drink. When he sat down, his knee touched hers under the table, but he did not move it.

“I’ve got a present for you,” Jamie said, fishing into the bat-tered leather music case that he habitually carried. It was a case that served every purpose, from carrying musical scores to trans-porting cartons of milk and groceries from the supermarket.

He took out a compact disc in a small plastic bag and handed it to her. “It’s a wonderful mixture of things,” he said.

“And some of them we’re going to have to do ourselves. I’ll try to do arrangements if we can’t find the music. And I suspect that we won’t be able to find some of these things.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You’re . . . you’re very sweet.” She took his hand briefly and squeezed it. She examined the disc.

“Mood Scottish,” she read.

“A play on Mood Indigo, I think,” said Jamie. “But don’t worry. It’s all very good. Some lovely stuff. Look.”

He took the disc and pointed to an item on the list of tracks.

“ ‘Sinclair.’ It’s a Faroese song about a Scottish soldier in Sweden. They went there a long time ago. By invitation, unlike most British soldiers . . .”

“I know all about that,” said Isabel. “That’s why you come across Scottish names in Sweden. Macpherson and such like.

But Swedish now.”

Jamie tapped the CD case. Isabel noticed his finger, which was tanned light brown. It was gentle; so beautiful. “This Sinclair was on his way to battle,” he said, “and was warned by a mermaid not to go. By a mermaid, mind you.”

“One should always listen to mermaids,” said Isabel. “They 2 4 4

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h address one so infrequently that anything they have to say must be important.”

He looked at her in surprise and burst out laughing. Nobody else would say things like that; just Isabel. That was one of the reasons he found her irresistible.

“He didn’t,” Jamie went on. “And he was killed as a result.

Poor Sinclair. But the song is wonderful—it goes on and on.

Very odd stuff.”

Isabel pointed to something else. “And some Peter Maxwell Davies,” she said. “ ‘Lullaby for Lucy.’ I met him up in Orkney once.”

“Max,” said Jamie. “We played his ‘Orkney Wedding.’ Complete with a piper. Very dramatic.” He paused, took the disc and examined the cover carefully. Then he handed it back to Isabel.

“We could listen to ‘Sinclair’ after dinner. Would you like that?”

“Yes. I would.” Her heart was racing.

“Or we could go to the flat now and have dinner there. In Saxe-Coburg. How about that?”

That, she thought, was even better. “Do you want me to cook?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll manage something.”

They finished their drinks in the bar and then walked down St. Stephen Street, back to Jamie’s flat.

“That flat round the corner,” Jamie said. “Have you decided?”

“I have,” said Isabel. “I shall buy it. Grace looked at it the other day and liked it very much. She also met our friend Florence. They hit it off. She’ll probably recruit her for her spiritualist meetings.”

“Florence is too rational,” said Jamie. “Still, it’s a happy ending.”

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“I suppose so. And there’s nothing wrong with happy end-ings, is there?”

“No,” said Jamie. “Except, perhaps, for that fact that they are rather rare.”

They passed a small antique shop on the way and Isabel paused in front of the window. “I knew the man who ran this shop,” she said. “He used to sit in a chair, right there, dressed in a black suit with a waistcoat and a rose in his lapel, and everybody who went in received a great welcome and a story. He had Scottish literature on those shelves over there, and all other writers, including English, were shelved under foreign literature. But he didn’t mean it unkindly. He was just making a point.”

Jamie pressed his nose against the glass. The chair was empty, the shop dusty. “A point about what?”

“About cultural assumptions,” said Isabel. Seeing the empty shop saddened her. There were pockets of character, of resist-ance, that held out against all the forces that would destroy local, small-scale things, even small-scale countries; little shops were on the front line, she thought.

“I don’t like shopping in great big shops,” she muttered.

Jamie looked at her in puzzlement. “Excuse me?”

She smiled, and drew him away from the window to continue down the street. “I don’t like the idea of little shops like that disappearing. That’s all. I like small things.”

“Convenience,” said Jamie. “Isn’t there something in convenience?”

“I suppose there is. But then . . .” She trailed off. Perhaps it was too late, and the logic of the large scale was unstoppable, but it all led to sameness and flatness, and who wanted that?

Francs had gone, marks had gone, the insanely inflated Italian 2 4 6

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h lira had gone; cars looked the same wherever you went, clothes too. All the colour, all the difference, was being drained out of life. And species were dying too; every day insects disappeared for ever, strange little lives that had been led for millennia in the undergrowth came to an end with the destruction of a last toe-hold of habitat. It seemed like a relentless return to barrenness, to unrelieved rock. She looked at Jamie and wondered whether he cared about this. Or did one need another fourteen years to understand, or even to feel, these things?

“I’m hungry,” said Jamie.

“Then let’s go,” said Isabel. She was about to slip her arm into his, but stopped herself. Could she do that, or would that embarrass him? The early days of any relationship raised questions of that sort, of course; the easy familiarities came later, and seemed natural then, but at this stage they could be awkward. And they were not officially a couple, in the sense that people did not necessarily know about it, and would he want them to know? They walked separately.

In his flat, Jamie took from Isabel the disc that he had given her and slipped it into the player. His kitchen, which ran off the living room, was small, and Isabel watched him as he prepared the meal: mozzarella and tomatoes, followed by pasta. He poured her wine and they raised their glasses to each other in a toast.

“To you,” she said. And Jamie replied, “To me,” and then laughed. “I mean, to you.”

“To me, one imagines,” said Isabel, “is the toast of the Ego-tists’ Club. What do you think?”

Jamie agreed. “I’m sure it is,” he said. “Their dinners, though, will be difficult occasions. Everybody will want to give an after-dinner speech.”

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“And they’ll all think that there are too many members,”

she said.

There was silence for a moment. Jamie picked up the bottle of dressing that he had prepared for the mozzarella and tomatoes and shook it so that the black of the balsamic vinegar suffused the olive oil.

Isabel fingered the stem of her glass. “Jamie,” she said. “Are you happy about this . . . about what has happened between us?

Are you sure that you’re all right with it?”

He looked at her intently and she thought, I should not have said that. There are some things best left unsaid.

“Of course I am,” he said. “Of course.”

“You would tell me if you weren’t?”

“I would tell you.”

“Promise?”

He moved his right hand in a quick crossing of the heart.

“Promise.” Going back into the kitchen, he said over his shoulder, “Have you spoken to Joe and Mimi about last weekend?”

“Briefly.”

“And?”

“They both enjoyed themselves.”

“And Tom and Angie?”

Isabel hesitated. She wanted to speak to Jamie about her talk with Tom, but she feared his reaction. He had always lectured her about interfering in others’ affairs, and she had just engaged in a major intervention, having encouraged Tom to get rid of Angie. Of course Tom had asked for that advice—he had effectively insisted that she be involved—but she was not sure whether Jamie would appreciate that.

“Tom came to see me today. Just before you phoned. He wanted to talk.”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Jamie, who had been stirring the pot of pasta, turned away from the cooker and looked at her quizzically. “Talk about what?”

She would not tell him of Tom’s confession of feeling for her, but she decided that she would tell him the rest. “About him and Angie.”

Jamie had put down the spoon and was standing in the kitchen doorway, wiping his hands on a tea towel. “What did he say?”

Isabel lifted her glass and took a sip of wine. “He thinks she isn’t very fond of him. He’s decided to end the engagement.”

Jamie looked down at the floor. “I’m not surprised,” he said.

“You think that they’re unsuited too?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know about that. Maybe. But . . .”

Isabel detected his uncertainty and encouraged him. “Go on. You can tell me.”

He stared at her, embarrassed. “Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure . . .”

“You have to tell me now.”

He joined her at the table and sat down. “When we went into Peebles on Saturday morning, something happened.”

Isabel caught her breath. “What happened?” Her voice was small.

Jamie shifted in his seat. “I don’t really like to talk about this,” he said.

Oh, she had eyes for you, that woman, thought Isabel. And her feelings, now, were ones of anger.

Jamie mumbled, “She made a pass at me. Or I think she did.”

This should be no surprise—Isabel had seen her looking at him—but she had not imagined that it would be translated into action. Where, though, was the doubt? “But you must know.

Either she did or she didn’t. What did she say?”

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Jamie’s embarrassment seemed to be mounting. “It was while we were driving back. She put a hand on my knee. Suddenly. Just like that. But quite far up.” He blushed, and Isabel lowered her eyes.

“Was that all?” she asked. It was, she thought, and she felt relieved.

“Maybe she didn’t mean it like that,” said Jamie. “I don’t know.”

“I should think that she meant it exactly like that,” said Isabel. “Come on, Jamie. Women don’t do that sort of thing by mistake.” She mused for a moment. “What did you do?”

Jamie bit his lip. “I told her a lie.”

“Oh? That you were married?”

“That I had a girlfriend.”

Isabel smiled. “And that had the desired effect?”

“She looked at me and she just said, ‘Pity.’ And then she took her hand away.”

They sat in silence for a while. Isabel reflected on what she had heard and thought: It is exactly as I imagined. Angie is not in love with Tom. And since that is true, then my encouraging him to bring it to an end is the right thing to have done.

“I told him to end the engagement,” she said. “I told him that he should talk to her about it. And he’s going to do it.”

Jamie shrugged. “That’s probably for the best,” he said.

He turned to go back into the kitchen. Isabel was relieved that he had not criticised her for interfering, and she started to talk about something else. Jamie, too, seemed pleased to move off the subject of Tom and Angie. He moved the disc back a track and played Isabel something that he wanted her to hear.

Then they sat at the table and began their meal.

He put down his knife and fork, although he had just begun 2 5 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h eating. He took her hand. “You can do no wrong, you know,” he said. “Not in my eyes.”

“What a funny thing to say. But very nice.”

“I mean it.”

She felt the pressure of his fingers on the palm of her hand.

It was gentle, as everything about him was. Gentle. Love is not a virtue, she thought; not in itself. But it helps us to be virtuous, to do good for those whom we love, and in that sense it can never be wrong, wherever it alights, whatever direction it takes.

She looked at Jamie, in fondness. But she found herself thinking: He said that he had lied to Angie when he told her he had a girlfriend. Therefore I am not his girlfriend. So what does that make me?

He let go of her hand and returned to his meal.

“Can we go away together?” he asked. “Somewhere on the west coast? Or one of the islands?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’d like to go to Harris,” he said. “Have you ever been to the Outer Hebrides?”

“Yes,” she answered. “And there’s a hotel I know there, just a small one, a converted manse. It looks down on a field that is full of wild flowers in the spring and summer, with the sea just beyond. Cold, green waves. The very edge of Scotland. It’s very beautiful. We could go there. Would you like that?”

“Very much.”

She smiled at him, and put her hand to his cheek, as she had done before, on that first discovery. But as she did so, she thought: I am going to break my heart over this, but not now, not just yet.

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T W O

E

HAPPINESS. Over the next few days, Isabel felt herself to be in state of blessedness. She spoke to Jamie every day, and saw him briefly, for a snatched lunch in the small café opposite the gate of the Academy; he had an hour between pupils and they talked, low-voiced because a couple of the boys from the school were sitting at a nearby table, sniggering. Isabel eventually smiled at them and they blushed scarlet and turned away.

Isabel’s happiness, though, was qualified by her anxiety over Cat. There had been rows with Cat before, and they always resolved themselves after a few days. The normal pattern would be for Isabel to apologise, whether or not she was in the wrong, and for Cat, grudgingly, to accept the apology. Isabel thought that she might wait a little longer before she went to speak to her niece; that would give Cat time to simmer down and also, she hoped, to begin to feel guilty about her own behaviour. This time it really was not her fault, she thought. Cat had no right to Jamie, having rejected him and turned a deaf ear to his attempts to persuade her to take him back, and even if Isabel had perhaps been insensitive to the need to talk to her about her feelings for Jamie, she considered this to be a light offence.

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h She made her way to the delicatessen in the late morning.

She had written a note which she would leave for Cat—a note in which she confessed her lack of sensitivity and asked Cat to forgive her. I’ve been thoughtless, she wrote. But then, in self-defence, It may be hard for you—I understand that—but please let me be happy. I had not imagined that this would happen.

Please give me your blessing. She had read and reread the note, agonising over the wording, but had eventually decided that the words were just right because they were true.

Cat was not there. Miranda and Eddie were behind the counter, Eddie cleaning the slicer—Isabel’s blood ran cold even at that—and Miranda serving a customer. Both of them glanced at her; Miranda smiled and Eddie acknowledged her with a slight nod.

“Cat?” she asked Eddie.

“Out,” he said. And then added, “Patrick.”

Isabel sighed. Even if Patrick was as busy as his mother suggested, he still seemed to have a lot of time for lunch with Cat.

She wondered whether his mother knew about these trysts, and whether, if she did, she would try to interfere.

She asked Eddie to pour her a cup of coffee. Then she picked up a newspaper and went to sit at one of the tables. The world was in chaos, the front page suggested: floods had destroyed a large part of somebody’s coast, and there were pictures of a couple stranded up a tree, the woman wailing, her skirts torn and muddied; there were people building nuclear weapons; a large lake somewhere had been found to be poisoned, dead. So we frighten ourselves daily, thought Isabel, and with reason.

She folded the newspaper up and put it away. She would look out at the street, watching passers-by, and then, if Cat had not returned in twenty minutes, leave the note. She stared T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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through the window, past the carefully arranged display of bottles of olive oil which Eddie had set up to lure customers inside.

Eddie was in charge of the window displays, and looked forward to the beginning of each week, when he would rearrange them.

He brought Isabel her coffee and sat down opposite her, his cleaning cloth draped casually over his shoulder. “I heard your news,” he said, grinning as he spoke. “Congratulations.”

Isabel sipped at the scalding, milky coffee. She had not anticipated this; Cat must have told him. “She told you? Cat did?”

Eddie nodded. “She wasn’t pleased. Or at least not at first.

She said that I’d never believe what you’d got up to. Then she told me, expecting me to side with her.”

Isabel watched Eddie as he spoke. He would never have been this forthcoming a few months ago. And when he had first come to work for Cat he would hardly have said more than a word of greeting, and mumbled at that. This was progress.

“And you didn’t?” she asked.

“Of course not,” said Eddie. “I laughed. She didn’t like that.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Isabel. “She virtually accused me of stealing him.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Eddie. “And I told her she had no right to be jealous.”

Isabel told him that that was exactly what she had thought.

But one was dealing with irrational feelings here, she pointed out. Jealousy was something which people found difficult to control; sometimes it was impossible.

“I know,” said Eddie. “Anyway, I talked to her about it and she calmed down. Then, at the end, she said that maybe she should be proud. She said that . . .” He trailed off, and Isabel looked at him quizzically.

“Go on,” she encouraged him. “She said what?”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Eddie looked sheepish. “She said that not everyone had an aunt who was capable of running off with a younger man. She said that it showed a certain style.”

“And that was how you left it?”

He nodded. “Yes. Then we started talking about Miranda.

We—”

Isabel glanced across the room and cut Eddie off. Miranda had finished dealing with the customer and was coming over to join them at the table. “Here she is. Here’s Miranda.”

Miranda came up to stand behind Eddie. She greeted Isabel, smiling warmly, and then she rested a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie half turned, smiled and lifted a hand to place on hers, patting it fondly. Isabel watched in astonishment.

“Yes,” said Eddie.

“Well,” said Isabel. “Well . . .”

“You should have told me, Isabel,” said Miranda in mock admonition. “You should have told me that the nicest boy in Scotland worked here. As it is, I had to discover that myself.”

Eddie beamed with pleasure. “We must get back to work.”

He rose to his feet and touched Miranda gently on the shoulder.

“Come on.”

Isabel watched them return to the counter. For each of us, she thought, there is our completeness in another. Whether we find it, or it finds us, or it eludes all finding, is a matter of moral luck. She had a good idea of what it was that had happened to Eddie, but now she saw that shattered, timid life begin to be made confident and whole, and she felt a warm rush of satisfaction and pleasure. She reached into her pocket and took out the note she had written to Cat. It was in its rectangular white envelope, the flap tucked in. She took it out and reread it. It had T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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taken time to choose and weigh each word; now she tore it up in seconds and tossed the pieces into the bin used for scraps of sugar wrappers and the like. The next move was Cat’s rather than hers, and she would wait for it with impatience. She did not have to apologise for Jamie; she did not have to apologise to anybody for her happiness.

M I M I A N D J O E were out when she returned to the house, but Grace told her that they had said that they would be back in the late afternoon. There had been a change in their plans, and they had decided to go off the following day to Skye for a week. Joe wanted to write up his article on adoption and there were distractions in Edinburgh. “If I go somewhere really remote, I shall get it done,” he said. And Mimi had agreed. Skye, she said, was far enough away and, more important, there were few, if any, bookshops to distract him. For her part, she had reading to do, and could do it as well on a small island as on a big one.

Isabel would miss them, but would see them briefly on their return. And they had persuaded her to make a trip to Dallas to stay with them, which she had agreed to do before too long. “My sainted American mother would have liked me to . . . ,” she had said, and faltered. No. There was no reason why her mother should not still be called sainted. A saint might still fall in love; indeed, would it not be most likely that those who loved their fellow man in general might feel all the more strongly inclined to love their fellow man in particular? I love Jamie, she thought, and has that not made me love the world all the more? Of course it had.

That evening Mimi sat in the kitchen while Isabel did the 2 5 6

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h cooking. They talked about Skye, and what Joe and Mimi might do there. They could stay in Claire Macdonald’s hotel; they could walk; they could watch the slow movement of the sea; they could sniff at the peat smoke in the air.

“Come with us,” urged Mimi. “There’s room.”

“I’d love to,” said Isabel. “But I have my work.”

“Be irresponsible for once,” said Mimi.

Isabel smiled at the thought. I’m being very irresponsible as it is, she thought, and it’s immense fun. “I can’t, I’m afraid,” she said. “The journal . . .”

Mimi conceded. “Of course. But if you change your mind, jump in the car and join us.”

Isabel, standing at the cutting board, neatly sliced an onion into rings. She felt tears come into her eyes and wiped them away with the back of her hand. “Not real tears,” she said to Mimi. “Nor even crocodile ones. Just onion tears.”

“A nice name for tears that don’t mean anything,” said Mimi.

“Yes. We’ll need to think about that.”

She looked out the window. To the west, the sky had clouded over to the west and was heavy and dark. “Rain,” said Isabel. “I hope that you’re not washed out on Skye. It has a tendency to rain over there, as you know.” She remembered a couple of lines which Michael Longley had written about such landscapes: I think of Tra-na-Rossan, Inisheer / Of Harris drenched by horizontal rain. It was such a powerful image of the rain that came in off the Atlantic, relentless, horizontal across the island.

“I’m not put off by rain,” said Mimi. “Rain can be beautiful, don’t you think? And there’s no point becoming depressed by it. That never changes anything.”

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“That’s fine if you’re from Texas,” said Isabel. “Rain doesn’t outstay its welcome down there.”

“Perhaps,” said Mimi. “But still . . .” She played with a button on her sleeve. “We had lunch in town today,” she said. “An interesting encounter.”

“With?”

“Angie, no less. She’s moved into town and is going back home tomorrow. Just her. The engagement with Tom is over, it seems. Very dramatic news. I’ve been itching to tell you. Joe, though, has been a bit embarrassed about it. He feels that it’s indecent to crow too much, even in a case like this. I told him I wasn’t crowing.”

Isabel moved the chopped onion to the side of the board, neatly, making a small white pile. So Tom had acted. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. And she was, in a sense; it was a tale of unhappiness from start to finish—an unhappy, false beginning and now an unhappy ending.

“Yes, it’s a bit sad really,” agreed Mimi. “I felt rather sorry for her at the end.”

Isabel looked up in surprise. “For Angie?”

“Yes,” said Mimi. “She said that she felt she had to do something about it. She didn’t want to hurt Tom, she said, but she felt that it just wasn’t working.”

Isabel stared at Mimi wide-eyed. “She said that she was the one who ended it?”

“Yes. I must say that I was a bit taken aback. I’d thought of her, as you know, as a gold-digger. But a gold-digger doesn’t end an arrangement like that. A real gold-digger would have hung on in. She didn’t.”

Of course she wouldn’t, thought Isabel. She would have 2 5 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h received her pay-off. There would be no reason to hold on after that.

“Then she said something really surprising,” Mimi went on.

“She said that Tom had offered her money to end the engagement. She said that she had been quite shocked and had turned him down.”

“Turned him down?”

“Yes.”

No, thought Isabel, highly unlikely. “Did you believe her?”

“Yes, I did,” said Mimi. “She seemed completely sincere.”

Both were silent for a while. In Isabel’s case, it was a silence of indecision. If Angie was telling the truth, then Isabel had completely misjudged her. But had she been telling the truth?

Mimi, though, seemed to be in no doubt. “I’ve learned a bit of a lesson,” she said. “Or rather, I’ve been reminded of something that I suppose I knew all along—that you just can’t be certain about people and their motives. You can’t. You think you know, then . . .”

Mimi could be right, thought Isabel. And then reminded herself that she had encouraged Tom to end the engagement on the basis of her own, possibly misguided, feelings about Angie’s venality. But did that make any difference to the outcome? If Angie had ended it of her own accord, then the fact that she had urged Tom to tackle her about it was quite irrelevant. It occurred to her, though, that if Angie was not telling the truth and the break-up had really been at Tom’s insistence, then her own encouragement of Tom may have played a part in the end result.

She looked helplessly at Mimi, wondering whether she should tell her cousin about what she had done. Mimi, though, had guessed that there was something on Isabel’s mind. “You’re T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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feeling bad too?” she asked gently. “You shouldn’t worry about it, you know. Angie probably misjudged you too.”

“Maybe. Maybe she did. But she wouldn’t have thought of me in quite the terms I thought of her. I doubt if she thought I was up to committing murder.”

Mimi looked at Isabel in astonishment. “And you thought that of her? That she was capable of murdering Tom?”

Isabel confessed that she had, and told Mimi of the conversation in which Tom had described Angie’s reaction to the near-disaster at the Falls of Clyde. Mimi listened thoughtfully, and then, when Isabel had finished, looked up into the air, as if searching for the solution to a conundrum. “Very curious,” she said at last. “Because, believe it or not, she said something rather similar to me. She said that she felt unsafe in Tom’s presence, as if there was something in him, something not always apparent, something buried deep within him, and this thing, this hidden thing, was a propensity to violence. She said she feared that he might use it against her.”

They looked at each other. “Well,” said Isabel. “Who’s to be believed?”

“Both?” asked Mimi.

Isabel considered this. It was true that people were inclined to rewrite their personal histories, like overly generous biogra-phers, so that they appeared in the best light. But even if there was no such rewriting here, it was quite possible that two people might feel threatened by each other and harbour fears that the threat might materialise; that was quite believable. It was also perfectly possible that Angie had made the first move to end the engagement, and that Tom, feeling guilty, had still offered her a financial settlement, and that she, out of pride, had turned it down. If this were so, then everything had worked out for the 2 6 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h best, for everybody. A loveless marriage was staved off, Angie’s pride was intact; and Tom, on mature reflection, might conclude that he had no need to feel guilty about anything.

She turned to Mimi to answer her question. “Perhaps,” she said. It was not much of an answer, but there were circumstances in which “perhaps” or “maybe” were the only answers one could honestly give.

She pondered, though. She pondered the question of whether she had done a wrong to Angie—a wrong which somehow needed redress. She had thought ill of her, and although Angie might never have been aware of what was thought of her, Isabel had gone further and actually spoken ill of her. That, in any system of reckoning, was a wrong against another. But she was not sure if she had the moral energy to pursue the matter and, besides, what could she do: write to her and apologise?

Only the most conscientious person would take moral duty to those lengths, and Isabel decided to leave matters where they lay. She had learned her lesson about leaping to conclusions and judging people unfairly, and that perhaps was enough. Again it was a question of a “perhaps.”

J O E A N D M I M I went to Skye, where it rained, and came back to Edinburgh, where it rained too, but not so persistently. Then, after a few more days there, they left for Oxford, where they planned to spend the rest of the summer. “Joe’s happy there,”

said Mimi. “He was a Rhodes Scholar, quite a few years ago now, and it’s full of memories. I’m not sure whether we’re happiest at that time of life, but we often think we were.”

I’m happiest now, thought Isabel. She wanted to say that to Mimi, but hesitated, because it seemed to her that one might so T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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easily slip into sentiment; and protestations of happiness could sound almost boasting to those whose happiness is incomplete.

One did not boast of perfect skin to one affected by dermatitis; for the same reason, perhaps, one should take care in proclaim-ing one’s happiness. Not that Mimi was unhappy in any way; she seemed equable, content and, indeed, Isabel need not have felt reticent, as Mimi, detecting Isabel’s state of mind, commented on it. Mimi had enough experience of life to sense the presence of love in the life of another, and to understand its transforming power. And she knew, too, how strong may be our wish to show off the object of our love, to say, Look, here he is, here!

“I know what’s happening to you,” Mimi said, reaching for Isabel’s hand. “Enjoy your good fortune.”

To her own surprise, Isabel did not feel any embarrassment.

“I have to pinch myself,” she said. “I have to persuade myself that it’s real.”

“It seems real enough to me,” said Mimi.

“And I know that it can’t last for ever,” said Isabel. “Auden said—”

Mimi smiled. “I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. Yes, we all think that. But don’t be too realistic about it.

Love can last an awfully long time. Even after the other person has gone away, one can still love him. People do that all the time.” She paused, and looked enquiringly at Isabel. “Is he likely to go away?”

They were sitting in Isabel’s study during this conversation, and Isabel glanced up at the shelves of books as she answered.

Her life was filled with baggage: a house; all these books, all these philosophers; a garden, a fox . . . Jamie’s life had none of that. He could go away at any time if a good job came up some-2 6 2

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h where in an orchestra. He had almost joined an orchestra in London not all that long ago, and he had also talked of living in Berlin as if it were a real possibility. She had never thought of living in Berlin, and would have no idea how to go about it; that was the difference between them, that and those fourteen years.

“He might,” Isabel said. “I think we’re at different stages of our lives. We really are. He might want to go off and work somewhere else. He’s just starting. He could do anything.”

Mimi reached for a magazine on the sofa beside her. She flicked idly through the pages, and then turned again to Isabel. “There’s an expression that people use these days—have you noticed it?—which is actually quite useful. They just say

‘whatever.’ It sounds very insouciant—and it is—but there are occasions . . .”

“And you feel that you want to say it now?”

“Yes,” said Mimi. “Whatever. There you are. Whatever. It more or less sums things up. Things will sort themselves out.

That’s what it means. Things will sort themselves out and we don’t really need to do anything.”

“Whatever,” said Isabel.

“Yes,” said Mimi, tossing the magazine aside. “Whatever.

And do take some advice from me on this, Isabel. You know that I don’t like to play the older cousin, but maybe just this once.

May I?”

Isabel nodded her assent. She could not imagine herself ever resenting advice from Mimi. “Yes. Of course.”

“Just let this thing evolve naturally,” said Mimi. “Stop thinking about it. Just for the moment remember that first you are a woman, then, second, you’re a philosopher. Can you do that, do you think?”

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It would be hard not to be a philosopher, because that is what she was, and, thought Isabel, you don’t easily forget what you are. But she could try, and she told Mimi she would. This satisfied her cousin, who only wanted Isabel to be happy, that was all. And Isabel wished the same for Mimi, and knew, too, that she would miss her when she went back to Dallas. They would write to one another, and speak on the telephone, but it was never the same as being in the same room, without three thousand miles of sea and half a continent between you.

On impulse she rose to her feet and bent down to plant a kiss on Mimi’s brow, which made Mimi smile, moist-eyed for a moment at this friendship between cousins, something one could never replicate afresh, even if one had the recipe, relying as it did on a long past, and so much that had been said and not said.

OV E R T H E N E X T T WO W E E K S Edinburgh basked in unusual warmth. Isabel found that she could sit out in her garden and work there, in a shady spot to avoid the heat in the sun. She had to water the lawn, which had started to dry out, and when she did so she caught the Mediterranean smell of settling dust, and the scent of thyme, too, wafting from her herb bed. It was a time of long afternoons and the humming sound of bees attracted by the low lavender hedge about her lawn. She and Jamie had several meals outside, lunches and dinners, sitting lazily on the grass itself or on the old canvas deck chairs which Isabel had taken from their dusty storage place in the garden shed. With his pupils away on holiday, Jamie had less to do than usual. He was working on a composition, he said, but it was going slowly:

“It’s about islands,” he said, and that was all he told her.

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel would find him gazing at her sometimes, just gazing, and he would smile when he saw that she had noticed. She asked him on one such occasion what he was thinking, and he replied, “About you. I’m thinking about you.” He said it with guilelessness, with a sort of innocence, and she felt something happen within her, some suffusion of warmth, that made her want to hold him, there and then, hold him to her.

He stayed for days at a stretch, going back to his flat in Saxe-Coburg Street only to pick up the mail and find things, a bassoon reed, a page of his composition which he had scribbled and left somewhere, a book he was reading. For much of the time they were alone, but once they invited friends round for a dinner at which they sat out until midnight, under a sky which was dark, but only just, dotted with faint stars. They talked, united in a common feeling of contentment and peace, and then sat silently, with neither saying anything for a long time, each looking up at the sky, alone in his or her private musing.

Isabel bumped into Cat in Bruntsfield, in the post office. It was an awkward meeting; Cat was polite but seemed embarrassed, and Isabel’s efforts at a normal conversation were too studied to be anything but stiff. They parted after a few minutes, nothing resolved. Isabel asked herself whether she should try another apology, but decided again that there was nothing for her to apologise for. It was taking a long time, but Cat would come round eventually. She almost told Jamie about it, but stopped herself because it occurred to her that he might interpret Cat’s jealousy as a sign that she wanted him back, which Isabel knew was not the case.

Then came the letter from Mimi. They were back in Dallas, and she complained about the heat. Joe had gone to a legal history conference in Denver. It was cooler there, he had told her, T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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and she wondered whether she should have gone too. Then: Something bad happened here a couple of days ago. Tom Bruce, who entertained us all, had a fire at his place near Tyler. He has a house there, and he goes there for weekends now and then. It went up pretty quickly, I’m afraid. He was in it at the time.

Isabel strained to make out Mimi’s handwriting. A word had been smudged, but the rest of the sentence was clear.

In spite of that . . . he managed to escape out a window.

The front door had been locked by somebody who had a key. He said that he didn’t bother to lock up at night. But the fire people thought that he had probably done so and had forgotten. I’ve done that myself, haven’t you? Forgotten whether or not I’ve locked something. But I imagine that somebody else might have had a key.

Tom was all right, apart from having breathed in smoke, which made them keep him in hospital for a night.

Hank and Barb Lischer saw him. They said that he was pretty shocked, but otherwise none the worse for it all. It’s not a very nice story, bearing in mind that the fire chief in Tyler says that the fire was deliberately started. He’s ada-mant about it. Apparently they can tell if gas has been used, and they said it had. So who did it?

Mimi then wrote, and underlined, We know, of course. She understood, and shared, Isabel’s liking for crosswords, and wrote, Take the saint from German anxiety, that is.

Isabel smiled at the clue, which was hardly a revelation. She would be more direct, though, and called Mimi immediately.

“I’ve had your letter,” she said. “That fire: you know, I know—do you think Tom knows?”

“He’s not stupid,” said Mimi. “I imagine he does.”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

“But are you sure?”

“No,” said Mimi. “I’m not.”

“Sometimes when things concern us intimately, we don’t see the obvious.”

“We don’t,” said Mimi. “Often we don’t.”

There was silence as each waited for the other to say something. It was Isabel who spoke. “Go and ask him if he’s done something about his will,” she said. “He said that he had made arrangements after the engagement.”

“He must have done something about that,” said Mimi.

“He has his advisers. I can’t imagine that sort of thing would be left.”

“But it can be,” Isabel protested. “You’re always hearing about people who don’t bring these things up to date. Then they die and their first wife gets everything and the second nothing.”

Mimi sounded doubtful. “But is it our business?”

“Yes,” said Isabel firmly. “It is. But, if you like, I’ll call him.

Just give me his number.”

“I’ll speak to him,” said Mimi.

“And tell him to tell Angie,” added Isabel.

“To tell her what?”

“To tell her that the provision he made has been unmade.

That’s very important.” She paused. “Of course it may have nothing to do with it. It may just be a settling of scores. She feels rejected. A fire might restore her amour propre. ”

“It’s unlikely that they will be able to prove anything,” said Mimi. “And anyway, even if he has an idea that it’s her, would he want to take matters further? Probably not.

“You may be right, though,” Mimi continued. “Anything else?”

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“Just an observation,” said Isabel. “A question for us. How wrong can you be?”

“Perhaps we should trust our intuitions,” said Mimi.

“Of course, there are other reasons for arson,” said Isabel, as an afterthought. “Especially in the country. Local issues. Local jealousies. Resentment over boundaries, trees, livestock. Anything.” One just could not tell. And until there was proof, nothing was clear, which was the way that so much of life was—vague, ambiguous, by no means as simple as we imagine it to be.

“And people set fire to their own property,” said Mimi.

“That’s very common, apparently. And not just for insurance purposes.”

Isabel said nothing. She remembered a conversation she had had with Tom on their walk up the hill, about something to do with a house not being in the right place. They had talked about it. But she could not remember exactly what had been said, and after puzzling for a few moments, she stopped thinking about it.

She rang off. In her mind there was a counting rhyme, one of those rhymes one learns as a child, and which stays in the mind for ever. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo: he lies, she lies, he lies, she lies, he lies . . . And the finger ended up pointing at the child who was in the wrong place when one finished counting. Liar!

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E

E

THE CONVERSATION with Mimi took place on a Monday; the next two days were days of activity and revelation. By Wednesday she knew that she had to talk to Jamie. He had gone to Glasgow to take part in a musical workshop organised by the chamber orchestra in which he occasionally played. That was due to finish on Friday afternoon and he would return, he said, on Saturday afternoon: there were friends he wanted to meet in Glasgow. Isabel said to him, “You don’t think that you would be able to come back for Friday evening? We could have dinner.”

“What about Saturday evening? Are you doing anything on Saturday evening?”

She was not, but she needed to talk to him. It could wait, of course—most things can wait—but she wanted to talk to him as soon as possible.

“There’s something we need to discuss,” she said, trying not to sound too insistent, but fearing that she did.

Jamie’s hesitation was very brief, but enough to convey anxiety. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come round on Friday evening. We can discuss whatever it is. What is it, by the way?”

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“Do you mind waiting?”

A note of irritation crept into his voice. “No, not really.

But . . .”

“It would be better,” she said.

After that their conversation came to an end. She knew what he was thinking: that she was proposing to end their affair and that she wanted to do it face-to-face. He must be thinking that, she told herself—if only he knew.

She decided to make a special meal for that evening and went into Bruntsfield to buy supplies. When Isabel went into the delicatessen Miranda was serving, standing behind the counter with Eddie. They had been laughing at a shared joke.

“Something amusing happen?” asked Isabel.

Eddie glanced at Miranda, and burst into giggles.

“Eddie said . . . ,” began Miranda, but she, too, started to laugh.

Isabel smiled, not at the joke, whatever it was, but at the sight of the two of them so obviously enjoying themselves.

She had so rarely seen Eddie smiling, let alone laughing, and the sight pleased her. “Don’t bother,” said Isabel. “Some jokes just don’t translate.”

“She said . . . ,” Eddie began, but again burst into squeals of laughter.

Isabel shook her head in mock despair. She saw that the door of the office was open and that Cat was sitting at her desk.

She approached the door, knocked and stuck her head in.

Cat looked up. When she saw Isabel, her expression changed. There was a flicker of a frown, but only a flicker. Then she gestured to a chair in front of the desk.

“I mustn’t stay,” said Isabel. “I thought that I might just . . .”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h She had not thought of what she might say to Cat, but now she knew. The time for reconciliation had arrived. “I thought I might just say that I’m sorry.”

Cat looked down at her desk. “I’m the one who should be saying that,” she mumbled. “I got carried away.”

“We all get carried away,” said Isabel. “It’s a risk of being human—being carried away.”

The tension that had been in the room disappeared. “May I come round on Sunday? To tea?”

“Of course,” said Isabel. In her relief, she decided to include Patrick. “And Patrick too. Please bring him.”

Cat’s frown returned. “Patrick and I . . .”

Isabel looked up quickly. Patrick’s mother had won. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do,” said Cat. “We’re no longer seeing each other.”

“His work?” asked Isabel. “Was that the trouble?”

Cat seemed surprised by the question. “How did you guess?

He said that he just didn’t have the time at the moment to continue to be involved.”

Mother, thought Isabel. That interfering woman had got what she wanted. And Patrick joins the ranks of Cat’s former suitors.

“Oh well,” said Isabel. “You’ll be all right.”

“I am,” said Cat. “I am all right.”

“Good.”

“And you?” asked Cat. It was not a prying question.

“I’m all right too,” said Isabel. “You know how it is . . .” It was a vague, pointless thing to say, and for a moment she thought of adding whatever, but did not.

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She left Cat’s office and made her purchases. Miranda and Eddie were still laughing with each other, and Isabel’s presence seemed to tickle them all the more. “Anyone would think that you were high on something,” Isabel said good-naturedly.

There was a sudden, sober silence. You are! thought Isabel.

And that, she thought, must be Miranda’s doing. She would have to speak to Cat about it, discreetly. She did not like the idea of Eddie being led astray by an older woman. Young men are easily led astray, she thought, but then . . .

Eddie pointed to a large box filled with crumpled silver-paper wrappings. He smiled guiltily. “Liqueur chocolates,” he said. “Cat found a time-expired box and gave them to Miranda.

Rum. Cointreau. Even crème de menthe. We’ve eaten them. All of them. Thirty-two.”

He turned to Miranda, as a conspirator turns to an accom-plice; she put a hand to her mouth in an elaborate display of greed discovered, but then burst out laughing again. Isabel shook her head and smiled, then left the delicatessen. Once again I jumped to the wrong conclusion, she thought; I am often almost right, she told herself, or right but wrong.

She made her way back to the house, walking slowly along Merchiston Crescent in the warmth of the afternoon, deep in thought. There was no turning back; she would not do that, she would see things through. Once back at the house, she laid out the provisions she had bought. Grace was about to leave, but before she did she showed Isabel the rearrangement she had made of the spice cupboard. “The nutmeg was all mouldy,” she said accusingly. “I had to throw it out.”

Isabel would not be held responsible for mould and she ignored Grace’s remark.

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

“And as for the pepper,” Grace went on, “you had three opened jars. That makes pepper dry and dusty. I put everything into one jar and sealed it.”

Isabel accepted the reproach. “I’ll try to remember to finish each one before I open another,” she said.

They finished with the spice cupboard, and Grace gathered her things in readiness to leave. Isabel asked her about her plans for the weekend and was told that there was a session at the spiritualist centre that night. “A very good medium,” said Grace.

“She’s very direct, and she doesn’t hesitate to warn us.”

She looked challengingly at Isabel, as if expecting contradiction. But Isabel said only, “How useful.” She was wondering when she should speak to Grace, when she should tell her; next week perhaps.

Then Grace said, “I’ve not said thank you properly. For the flat. I’m very grateful to you, you know.”

Isabel looked away. She felt awkward about thanks; she knew that she should not, but she could not help it. She knew how to show gratitude; it was harder to accept it, and she would have to learn.

“I’m glad that you like it,” she said. “I took to it straight away.”

Grace nodded. “Shall I pay you the rent monthly?”

Isabel frowned. “There’s no rent,” she said.

“But I must,” said Grace. “You can’t . . .”

“I can.”

“I won’t accept it,” said Grace. She could be stubborn, as Isabel knew well.

“In that case we’ll agree on a peppercorn rent,” said Isabel, pointing to the spice cupboard. “A jar of peppercorns.”

The matter was left at that; they would discuss it later.

T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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Grace left Isabel in the house shortly before five. Jamie would be coming at seven, and she had things to make ready. But although she had things to do, she could not do them. She sat down at the kitchen table, feeling suddenly weepy; she rested her head in her hands, staring at the stripped pine surface. The table—a long one—had been bought by her father when it was no longer required by a psychiatric hospital on whose board of trustees he had served. It had seen sorrow, she thought, confusion, unhappiness. And she remembered, as she sat there, a short film she had seen about the life of a man, a quiet, gentle man, who had been taken from his small farm on one of the Hebridean islands and had been detained in that hospital for seventeen years. He had been a weaver, and had made figures out of reeds and rushes; she realised, as she watched the film, that her father had known this man and had brought back for her one of these small figures, a corn dolly, and she had kept it on her window sill amongst her other dolls. When he had been allowed to go back to his croft, after all those years, he had been looked after by a sister, who had waited for him to return and was ready to care for him again, as she had done before.

That was all that the film was about: exile and return, and the small needs of quiet people. She had wept then, as she watched the film, as she wept now, for very different reasons.

S H E M E T JA M I E in the front hall and led him through to the kitchen, where she had been preparing their supper. He yawned, stretched and said, “I’m really tired, you know. We had a party last night—the people from the workshop. I didn’t get to bed until two.”

“We can eat early tonight,” she said.

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

“I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“No, I know that.” Her heart was beating hard within her; her stomach felt light, topsy-turvy. She walked over to the fridge and took out the opened bottle of New Zealand white wine which she had put in to chill. She poured Jamie a glass of wine and a glass of ginger ale for herself.

He took the wineglass from her, looking at her glass as he did so. “Ginger ale?”

“Yes,” she said, trying to steady the glass in her hand, which was shaking.

He raised an eyebrow. He knew that Isabel enjoyed a glass of wine in the evening, particularly at the end of the week.

“Why?”

She closed her eyes. Her glass was chilly on her fingers, moist. Now was as good a time as any, perhaps the best.

“Because I’m pregnant,” she said.

He dropped his wineglass. It fell to the floor, to the Victorian stone flags; it shattered, although the stem remained intact, a little glass tower catching the light from the window. There was the sharp smell of wine, released in a sudden rush of bouquet.

She looked at him. “Oh, Jamie.”

He fell to his knees and began to pick up the glass. He cut a finger, just a small cut, but there was blood, and she bent down beside him and took the cut finger and pressed it against her blouse. It was his blood; his blood. Their faces were close together, and she kissed him. He kissed her back, and placed a hand on her shoulder, steadying himself.

“How clumsy of me,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You couldn’t be clumsy if you tried,” she said.

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He looked at her in amusement, and then laughed. They stood up. He held her hand in his. There was a small patch of blood on her palm now; his blood. He squeezed her hand.

“What are we going to call him?” he asked.

T H E Y AT E TO G E T H E R in the garden room at the back of the house, because it was so warm. The French doors were left open, and there was the scent of lavender on the air; there was only one topic of conversation, of course. She allowed herself a half-glass of wine, and they raised their glasses to each other.

She had been uncertain as to how he might react, but she had not expected this enthusiasm. “I’m glad for you, and for me,” he said. “I love children. I love them. I really do. And you’ll let me help, won’t you?”

“Of course,” she said. “After all, you will be the father.”

He repeated the word, and dwelt on it. “All of a sudden I feel very responsible,” he said.

She said nothing. He might not feel this way later on, she thought; she would have to see. But for the moment, her happiness was profound, and that was sufficient.

They sat together. Later, without ringing the bell and announcing her presence, Cat left a peace offering for Isabel at the front door: a package of French cheeses and a spiced Italian sausage from the delicatessen. She had taped a note onto the package which simply said, We must never have another argument. Never! And then, in a spirit of what might have been realism, or humour, or both, she added, Until the next one!

Shortly after Cat had left this present outside the door, Brother Fox, skulking through the front garden, hungrily sniff-2 7 6

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h ing at the evening air, detected its presence and padded cautiously up to the small package. He made short work of the wrapping paper—no challenge for a fox—and ate the sausage within a few minutes, spitting out the open elastic stocking in which it had been encased. After that he moved on to the cheeses, which he also ate, although not in their entirety, leaving small bits of rind littered about the path, evidence of the gift that he had so fortuitously intercepted. Then, replete and content, he moved away, back into the welcoming shadows, the undergrowth.

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics.

Document Outline

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three