A Distant View of Everything

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Isabel?”

  She looked up. As she did so, the salami slid past the finger-guard, and for a moment her hand might have brushed against the blade. But it did not. She reached for the switch and silenced the machine.

  It had been Eddie. Now he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to distract you…”

  She glanced at the blade. “Don’t worry. No harm done.”

  Eddie gestured towards the end of the counter. “That chap asked for you.”

  Isabel looked down the counter and knew immediately that this was Rob McLaren. It was not just that she had arranged to meet him round about this time; it was also something to do with the name. This was clearly a Rob McLaren.

  He was a man somewhere in his early forties, she thought—possibly a bit older. Although the day was fairly warm for the late spring, he was wearing a tweed jacket and a rather dashing ochre waistcoat. He had no tie, but the breast pocket of his jacket sported a blue bandana-size handkerchief, protruding enough to draw the eye. If she had looked for a single adjective to sum up his appearance, it would, she thought, have been jaunty, or even raffish. But it was the name that did the work: to be called Rob McLaren implied solidity and reliability, spoke of a world of douce Borders towns and the quiet farms that surrounded them; it reassured. There had been a famous rugby commentator called Bill McLaren, she remembered, and perhaps that was why the name resonated—at least for her—in that particular way. That Bill McLaren had been a familiar voice on the radio, even to those for whom rugby commentary was as otiose as the shipping forecast; yet, like the shipping forecast, which spoke of poetically named sea areas—Dogger, Fisher, German Bight and so on—Bill McLaren’s pronouncements on rugby had a certain timelessness about them that spoke of a rural hinterland of solid values, of quiet perseverance, of uncomplicated decency.

  Slipping her hands out of the cloying latex gloves, she made her way to the other side of the counter. They introduced themselves, and as they did so, she noticed his eyes, which were a light blue. His gaze upon her was intense, but not in any troubling way. It seemed to be anticipating something—an expectant gaze, she thought.

  They sat down. He was gentlemanly in his manner, waiting until Isabel had taken her seat at the table before he lowered himself into his. Isabel saw that Eddie was watching them, and she sipped at an imaginary cup of coffee to make the request. Eddie nodded.

  “Eddie over there does a very good cappuccino,” she said.

  “Perfect,” Rob replied.

  Isabel signalled again to Eddie, who was already at the hissing coffee machine. Cat was off to the side, busy with a customer, but she glanced over towards Isabel, clearly interested in what was going on.

  Isabel went directly to the point. “I need to talk to you about something rather sensitive,” she said.

  He brushed an invisible fleck off his jacket sleeve. “I know,” he said. “Bea told me you’d be getting in touch.”

  “Do you know her well?” asked Isabel. “I was at school with her, you know.”

  Rob smiled. “She mentioned that.”

  “I don’t see very much of her these days,” Isabel continued.

  “She said that too.” His voice was low key and modest. The accent, which was not very pronounced, had the gentle burr of the Scottish professional classes. This was an accent that would score highly in those tests of reliability that newspapers liked to carry out—those surveys that tended to reveal that a mild Scottish accent in a bank manager or financial adviser inspired more public trust than any other voice. By the same token, although the surveys were never so tactless as to point it out, people were reluctant to take investment recommendations from a person with a very strong Irish accent. There was no objective reason for this, of course, even if Ireland had created a property bubble of gargantuan proportions in the days of easily borrowed money. These views were tied in with old perceptions, and were slow to change, even in the face of hard evidence.

  “It was about this person Tony MacUspaig. Did she tell you I wanted to talk to you about him?”

  Rob looked around the room. His body language was almost imperceptible, but Isabel noticed it; something was frightening him. When he answered, his tone was tense. “She said that she had spoken to you about him.”

  “We can speak quite freely to one another,” said Isabel, her voice lowered. “I understand about confidentiality. I take it very seriously.”

  He visibly relaxed, sitting back in his chair, his shoulders less hunched. “I suppose you do. Bea tells me you’re a philosopher.”

  “I am,” she said. “Not that I practise it.”

  He looked interested. “How does one practise philosophy?”

  “You teach it,” she said. “Or you write about it. Many people do both. People think of it as a somewhat ivory tower occupation, but it’s not always like that. Philosophers play a part in the real world too…” She paused, as she thought of Professor van der Pompe and his hostility to anything that saved lives. Was he anything to do with the world of real problems—a world that was full of human suffering? The thought made her feel cross again. Did van der Pompe himself never accept any medical help? Did he ever travel by road or cross one of those bridges he said should not be there? And what about Professor Lettuce and Dr. Christopher Dove, both of whom she suspected were only very marginally interested in the problems of other people? They were not as extreme as van der Pompe in any respect, but she still doubted whether they really understood, or even cared about, the struggles that ordinary people had in living their daily lives—their battle to make ends meet, to pay the bills, to raise their children, to keep a roof above their heads.

  Rob was looking at her. He had addressed a remark to her that she had missed because she was thinking of the shortcomings of her bêtes noires.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said. “I was thinking of something. People accuse me of daydreaming…and I’m afraid they’re right.”

  He smiled. “Bea told me you’re the editor of some rather impressive journal. I was just wondering about it.”

  She made a dismissive gesture. “I’m not sure how impressive it is. We have what most people would consider a pretty tiny circulation. In fact, I sometimes wonder just how many people read the articles we publish.”

  He seemed interested. “What? Ten thousand? Something like that?”

  Isabel’s eyes widened. “That would be beyond our wildest dreams. Even one thousand would be a vast improvement.”

  “Surely—”

  She interrupted him. “No, you see we’re very academic. Although we mostly deal with applied ethics and although we are, in a sense, quite practical, we still have a tiny circulation. Most of the copies go to university libraries. We have about thirty private subscribers—people who are interested enough in philosophy sign up for a subscription, but they’re a real minority.”

  “But then people must read them in libraries?”

  She grimaced. “I wish that were true. But walk into the current periodical section of an academic library, and what do you see? Row upon row of periodicals—every one of them the latest issue in any number of titles. The review of this, the journal of that: every subject under the sun, and some others, will be there.” She paused. “And in philosophy alone—just in philosophy—there’ll be about forty journals, more if the university in question is well funded. So the question I ask myself is this: Are there enough people to read all these journals, and, if so, who exactly are they?”

  “Students?”

  She considered this. “Sometimes. But I’m not sure that students read specialist academic articles. And so…”

  He was looking at her sympathetically.

  “And so, I suppose what we publish,” she continued, “is only read by a handful of other philosophers. And I suppose the friends and relatives of the people who write the papers.”

  This clearly surprised him. He raised an eyebrow. “Then why do you continue?”

  She did not answer immediately, and h
e looked contrite. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  She forced herself to smile. His question had disconcerted her. Why did she continue with the Review if it had so little impact on the world? Was there any point in continuing to publish purely for the edification of people like van der Pompe and all the others whose main objective was to see their name in print, to get tenure in their posts or simply to give vent to their preoccupations? She thought that, but gave expression to none of it. Instead, she said, “Maybe it’s worth doing something even if the effect is very tiny.”

  His face lit up. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “Yes, that’s exactly right. I have a couple of projects myself that don’t make a massive difference to the world, but that I happen to think are worth persisting with. Small things, but…”

  “But small things are worth doing,” she said. “Of course they are.”

  She wondered whether she should ask him what these projects were, but she reminded herself that the point of their meeting was to find out about Tony MacUspaig, and so far she had only got as far as mentioning his name.

  “This man, Tony MacUspaig—how well do you know him?”

  He became tense once again. “Not all that well,” he said.

  She waited for him to continue, but he lapsed back into silence. Eddie had brought their coffee over by now, and Rob was taking a cautious sip of his.

  “How did you meet him?”

  This time he answered without hesitation. “We were at university together. St. Andrews. I was studying history and he was a medical student. As you may know, the medical students at St. Andrews go off to do their clinical years elsewhere. They do anatomy and so on at St. Andrews and then go off for the hospital bit. He went to Manchester, as all of them did in those days.”

  “And then he came back to Scotland?”

  Rob looked up at the ceiling. He had the air, Isabel thought, of one who was searching the dusty corners of memory. “Not straightaway. As far as I know he worked in hospitals in London, and I think he was somewhere in Africa—I think it was Zambia. In fact, I’m sure it was Zambia because I met somebody else who was in my year and he had seen him in Lusaka. He mentioned it.”

  “He became a plastic surgeon?”

  Rob nodded. “Yes. When he came back to Scotland, he came to a year reunion we had up at St. Andrews. The university published a small booklet with a note on what everybody was doing, and I remember reading his entry. He said that he had specialised in plastic surgery in London and was now back in Scotland, working at a hospital just outside Edinburgh, I think. It didn’t say much more.”

  Isabel asked if that was the extent of his dealings with Tony MacUspaig. It was not, he said. “As it happens, he took up with a woman I knew vaguely. Apparently he had been married when he was in London—somebody from Glasgow, I think, who was working down there, another doctor. Anyway, they divorced, and she went back to Glasgow. Then Tony came up to Scotland and started to see a woman called Andrea Murray. They were together for less than a year, and then it fell apart.” He paused. “She tried to commit suicide.”

  Isabel had not been prepared for this. She had her cup of coffee halfway to her mouth; she put it down, spilling a small amount on the table. She reached for a paper napkin and spilled some more in the process.

  “Here,” said Rob. “Allow me.”

  While he dabbed at the coffee, she composed herself. She found suicide ineffably sad, even just to hear about it like this, let alone to encounter it. How alone, how abandoned, could people feel to take that final step? What desperation, what utter wretchedness, could drive people to negate everything; and yet they did, daily, hourly, throughout the world, in the far reaches of despair people took their own lives.

  “Because of him?” she asked.

  Rob folded the soggy paper napkin and laid it neatly by his own cup. The action of an obsessive, thought Isabel.

  “I don’t know,” he said evenly. “It’s the usual post hoc, ergo propter hoc question. I’ve never asked her. I used to see her now and then, but I haven’t been in touch with her for a while.”

  “And then?” said Isabel.

  “He took up with somebody else.”

  Isabel waited.

  “She was a few years younger than he was. Late thirties. He must have been, what…forty at the time? Yes, he would have been, because he was in my year, as I’ve already said. He would have been forty because it was three years ago.”

  “Who was she?” asked Isabel.

  “Her name, as far as I recollect, was Tricia. Tricia somebody or other. I didn’t know her, but somebody I knew did. I have a friend who’s a lawyer in town. He knew this woman because she was a client of theirs. He told me that Tony MacUspaig had started seeing this client, and he was a bit worried. Those were his actual words: ‘I’m a bit worried.’ I asked him why, and he said that their client was very wealthy, and although they tried not to be too protective, they felt a bit concerned about the motivation of any suitors. He said…” He stopped. “You know, there’s a bit of a problem here. You mentioned confidentiality.”

  “Yes, I did. But I really do assure you—I give you my word—I won’t reveal any of this to anybody. This conversation we’re having is strictly confidential.”

  He smiled wryly. “The Edinburgh definition of ‘strictly confidential’ being: tell only one person at a time?”

  Isabel grinned. “No, not that. I really mean it.”

  “I’m sure you do,” he said. “But it’s not confidentiality as far as you’re concerned that worries me—it’s what I said to my lawyer friend. I told him that I wouldn’t tell anybody what he told me about his client. And here I am about to tell you. That’s what worries me.”

  Isabel realised that she was now bound by her own assurance to him. She could hardly stress the importance of confidentiality in relation to anything he told her, and then, in the same breath, go on to urge him to break a promise of confidentiality that he had given somebody else.

  “The principle of confidentiality isn’t an absolute one, you know,” Isabel said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you don’t have to keep quiet if some other value is threatened.” She wondered what the most apposite example would be. “If somebody came to you and said, ‘Don’t tell anybody, but I’m planning to plant a bomb in a shop on Princes Street,’ of course you’d have to tell the police.”

  “Of course.” He thought for a moment. “Unless you’re a priest. Don’t they keep what is said in the confessional a complete secret?”

  “I think so,” said Isabel. “But that’s a special case. In more normal circumstances you can ignore confidentiality if you’re protecting somebody from harm.”

  “Provided the harm is serious enough?” asked Rob.

  “Yes.”

  He thought for a moment. “What’s the harm here?”

  “Financial exploitation,” said Isabel. “Separating people from their money.”

  Rob smiled. “Isn’t that what normal business does?”

  She conceded the point. “Yes, but that’s governed by rules—at least in enlightened capitalism.”

  He seemed to savour the phrase. “Enlightened capitalism…” And then he suddenly said, “All right, I can hardly mention something to you then suddenly clam up, can I?”

  Isabel was about say, No, you can’t, but stopped herself. That would not be the real justification for his telling her, and she wanted him to make a properly defensible decision.

  Rob folded the table napkin over on itself, and then once more, making a compressed postage stamp of it; a fussy gesture, Isabel thought. As he did so, he explained, “The lawyer told me that alarm bells rang when Tricia made a substantial transfer of funds to Tony. The lawyers knew about it because they handled the money. It was fifty thousand pounds.”

  “Ah,” said Isabel.

  “Yes,” said Rob. “Ah.”

  “Did they know what it was for?”

  Rob shook his head. “No. They
just knew that the money had been paid over.”

  “And did he—the lawyer—ask Tricia about it?”

  “He did, and Tricia became all defensive. She more or less told the lawyer to mind his own business.”

  “But maybe it was his business.”

  Rob considered this for a moment. “To an extent, I suppose. He was a trustee, but ultimately the money’s hers as the beneficiary. The lawyer couldn’t stop her using it for whatever purpose she wanted, as long as the capital was preserved.”

  Isabel said that people gave gifts to lovers. Or maybe they were buying something together—a flat, perhaps, and this was her share of the deposit.

  “Who knows?” said Rob. “But whatever it was, it didn’t stop them separating three months later.”

  “I see. Well, I suppose that puts a somewhat dubious complexion on it.”