The Sunday Philosophy Club

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “And is it a good place to work?” asked Isabel. “Are your colleagues agreeable people?”

  Paul did not answer immediately. Lifting his glass, he took a long sip of his beer. When he answered, he looked down at the table as he spoke. “By and large, yes. By and large.”

  “Which means no,” said Isabel.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just that … well, I lost somebody who worked for me. A few weeks ago. I have—had—two people under me in my department, and he was one of them.”

  “He went elsewhere?” asked Isabel. “Lured away? I gather that everybody’s frantically busy headhunting everybody else. Isn’t that the way it works?”

  Paul shook his head. “He died,” he said. “Or rather, he was killed. In a fall.”

  It could have been a climbing accident; those happened in the Highlands virtually every week. But it was not, and Isabel knew it.

  “I think I know who it was,” she said. “Was it at—”

  “The Usher Hall,” said Paul. “Yes. That was him. Mark Fraser.” He paused. “Did you know him?”

  “No,” said Isabel. “But I saw it happen. I was there, in the grand circle, talking to a friend, and he came falling down, right past us, like a … like a …”

  She stopped, and reached out to touch Paul’s arm. He was clutching his glass, staring down at the table, appalled by what she was saying.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT ALWAYS HAPPENED when one was in a room with smokers. She remembered reading somewhere that the reason for it was that the surfaces of nonsmokers’ clothes were covered with negative ions, while tobacco smoke was full of positive ions. So when there was smoke in the air, it was immediately attracted to the oppositely charged surface, which made one’s clothes smell. And that was why, when she lifted up the jacket that she had been wearing the previous evening and which she had left lying across the top of her bedroom chair, she was assailed by the stale, acrid smell of tobacco smoke. There had been smokers in the Vincent Bar, as there always were in bars, and even though she and Paul had sat near the door, it had been enough to leave its mark.

  Isabel gave the jacket a good shake before the open window, which always helped, before putting it away in the wardrobe. Then she returned to the window and looked out over the garden, to the trees beside her wall, the tall sycamore and the twin birches which moved so readily in the wind. Paul Hogg. It was a Borders name, and whenever she encountered it she thought of James Hogg, the writer known as the Ettrick Shepherd, the most distinguished of the Hoggs, although there were other, even English, Hoggs. Quintin Hogg, a lord chancellor (and perhaps slightly porcine in appearance, though, as she reminded herself, one should not be uncharitable to Hoggs), and his son, Douglas Hogg. And so on. All these Hoggs.

  They had not stayed long in the bar. The recollection of Mark Fraser’s fall had visibly upset Paul, and although he had rapidly changed the subject, a shadow had fallen over their evening. But before they finished their drinks and went their separate ways, he had said something which had made her sit up sharply. “He would never have fallen. He had a head for heights, you see. He was a climber. I went with him up Buchaille Etive Mhor. He went straight up. An absolute head for heights.”

  She had stopped him and asked him what he meant. If he would not have fallen, then had he deliberately jumped? Paul had shaken his head. “I doubt it. People surprise you, but I just cannot see why he would have done that. I spent hours with him earlier that day, hours, and he was not in the least bit down. Quite the opposite, in fact; one of the companies which he had drawn to our attention, and in which we had invested heavily, had come up with a spectacular set of interim results. The chairman had sent him a memo congratulating him on his perspicacity and he was very pleased with this. Smiling. Cat with the cream. Why would he do himself in?”

  Paul had shaken his head, and then had changed the subject, leaving her to wonder. And now she was wondering again, as she went downstairs for breakfast. Grace had arrived early and had put on her egg to boil. There were comments on a story in the newspapers; a government minister had been evasive in parliamentary question time and had refused to give the information which the opposition had requested. Grace had put him down as a liar the first time she saw his photograph in the paper, and now here was the proof. She looked at her employer, challenging her to deny the proposition, but Isabel just nodded.

  “Shocking,” she said. “I can’t remember when exactly it was that it became all right to lie in public life. Can you remember?”

  Grace could. “President Nixon started it. He lied and lied. And then it came across the Atlantic and our people started to lie too. That’s how it started. Now it’s standard practise.”

  Isabel had to agree. People had lost their moral compass, it seemed, and this was just a further example. Grace, of course, would never lie. She was completely honest, in small things and big, and Isabel trusted her implicitly. But then Grace was not a politician, and never could be one. The first lies, Isabel assumed, had to be told at the candidate selection board.

  Of course, not all lies were wrong, which was another respect, Isabel thought, in which Kant was mistaken. One of the most ridiculous things that he had ever said was that there was a duty to tell the truth to the murderer looking for his victim. If the murderer came to one’s door and asked, Is he in? one would be obliged to answer truthfully, even if this would lead to the death of an innocent person. Such nonsense; and she could remember the precise offending passage: Truthfulness in statements which cannot be avoided is the formal duty of an individual to everyone, however great may be the disadvantage accruing to himself or to another. It was not surprising that Benjamin Constant should have been offended by this, although Kant responded—unconvincingly—and tried to point out that the murderer might be apprehended before he acted on the knowledge which he had gained from a truthful answer.

  The answer, surely, is that lying in general is wrong, but that some lies, carefully identified as the exception, will be permissible. There were, therefore, good lies and bad lies, with good lies being uttered for a benevolent reason (to protect the feeling of another, for example). If somebody asked one’s opinion of a newly acquired—but tasteless—possession, for instance, and one gave an honest answer, then that could hurt feelings and deprive the other of the joy of ownership. So one lied, and praised it, which was surely the right thing to do. Or was it? Perhaps it was not as simple as that. If one became accustomed to lying in such circumstances, the line between truth and falsehood could become blurred.

  Isabel thought that she might visit this issue in detail one day and write a paper on the subject. “In Praise of Hypocrisy” might be a suitable title, and the article might begin: “To call a person a hypocrite is usually to allege a moral failing. But is hypocrisy inevitably bad? Some hypocrites deserve greater consideration …”

  There were further possibilities. Hypocrisy was not only about telling lies, it was about saying one thing and doing quite the other. People who did that were usually roundly condemned, but again this might not be as simple as some would suggest. Would it be hypocritical for an alcoholic to advise against drinking alcohol, or a glutton to recommend a diet? The recipient of the advice might well level charges of hypocrisy in such a case, but only if the person giving the advice claimed that he did not drink or eat too much himself. If he merely concealed his own vices, then he might still be considered a hypocrite, but his hypocrisy might be no bad thing. It certainly did not harm anybody, and indeed it might even help (provided that it remained undiscovered). This was a topic which would have been ideal for the Sunday Philosophy Club. Perhaps she would try to get people together for precisely such a discussion. Who could resist an invitation to discuss hypocrisy? The members of the club, she suspected.

  Her boiled egg placed on the table, she sat down with a copy of The Scotsman and a freshly brewed cup of coffee, while Grace went off to start the laundry. There was nothing of note in the paper—she could not bring hers
elf to read an account of the doings of the Scottish Parliament—and so she quickly passed to the crossword. Four across: He conquers all, a nubile tram (11). Tamburlaine, of course. It was an old clue and it even appeared as the final line of one of Auden’s poems. WHA, as she thought of him, liked to do the crossword, and would have The Times delivered to Kirchstetten for that very purpose. There he lived, in his legendary domestic mess, with manuscripts and books and overflowing ashtrays, doing the Times crossword each day, with a tattered volume of the big Oxford open on a chair beside him. She would have so loved to have met him, and talked, even just to thank him for everything that he had written (except the last two books), but she rather feared that he might have written her off as one of his legion of bluestocking admirers. Six down: A homespun poet, a pig in charge of sheep? (4). Hogg, naturally. (But a coincidence, nonetheless.)

  She finished the crossword in the morning room, allowing her second cup of coffee to get too cool to drink. She felt uneasy for some reason, almost queasy, and she wondered whether she had not perhaps had rather too much to drink the previous evening. But, going over it, she had not. She had had two smallish glasses of wine at the opening, and a further one, if somewhat larger, in the Vincent Bar. That was hardly enough to unsettle her stomach or trigger a headache. No, her feeling of unease was not physical; she was upset. She had imagined that she had recovered from witnessing that awful event, but clearly she had not, and it was still having its psychological effect. Putting down the newspaper, she looked up at the ceiling and wondered whether this was what they called post-traumatic stress disorder. Soldiers suffered from it in the First World War, although they called it shell shock then, and shot them for cowardice.

  She thought of the morning ahead. There was work to be done; at least three journal articles were waiting to be sent out to referees, and she would have to despatch them that morning. Then there was an index to be prepared for a special issue that was due to appear later that year. She did not enjoy indexing and she had been putting the task off. But it would have to be sent to the general editor for approval before the end of the week, which meant that she would have to sit down to it either that day or the following day. She looked at her watch. It was almost nine-thirty. If she worked for three hours she would get through most, if not all, of the index. That would take her to twelve-thirty, or perhaps almost one o’clock. And then she could go and have lunch with Cat, if she was free. The thought cheered her up: a good spell of work followed by a relaxed chat with her niece was exactly what she needed to get over this temporary blue feeling—the perfect cure for post-traumatic stress disorder.

  Cat was available, but only at one-thirty, as Eddie had asked to take his lunch break early. They would meet at the bistro opposite the delicatessen; Cat preferred getting out for lunch rather than taking up one of her own few tables. Besides, she knew that Eddie listened to her conversation when he could, and this irritated her.

  Isabel made good progress with her index, finishing the task shortly after twelve. She printed out what she had done and put it in an envelope for posting on the way in to Bruntsfield. Finishing the work had lifted her spirits considerably, but it had not taken her mind off her conversation with Paul. That still worried her, and she kept thinking of the two of them, Paul and Mark, climbing together up Buchaille Etive Mhor, roped together perhaps, with Mark turning and looking down at Paul, and the sun on his face. His photograph, published in the newspapers, had shown him to be so good-looking, which seemed to make everything all the sadder, although, of course, it should not. When the beautiful died, it was the same as when the less well blessed died; that was obvious. But why did it seem more tragic that Rupert Brooke, or Byron for that matter, should die, than other young men? Perhaps it was because we love the beautiful more; or because Death’s momentary victory is all the greater. Nobody, he says, smiling, is too beautiful not to be taken by me.

  The crowd in the bistro had thinned out by one-thirty, when she arrived. There were two tables occupied at the back, one by a group of women with shopping bags stacked at their feet, and another by three students, who were sitting in a huddle over a story that one of them was recounting. Isabel sat down at an empty table and studied the menu while she waited for Cat. The women ate in near silence, tackling long strands of tagliatelle with their forks and spoons, while the students continued their conversation. Isabel could not help but overhear snatches of it, particularly when one of the students, a young man in a red jersey, raised his voice.

  “… and she said to me that if I didn’t go with her to Greece, then I couldn’t keep the room in the flat, and you know how cheaply I get that. What could I do? You tell me. What would you have done in my position?”

  There was a momentary silence. Then one of the others, a girl, said something which Isabel did not catch, and there was laughter.

  Isabel glanced up, and then returned to her scrutiny of the menu. The young man lived in a flat which was owned by this anonymous she. She wanted him to go to Greece, and was obviously prepared to use whatever bargaining power she had to see to it that he did. But if she was coercing him in this way, then he would hardly be much of a travelling companion.

  “I told her that …” Something was said which Isabel missed, and then: “I said that I would come only if she left me alone. I decided to come right out with it. I said that I knew what she had in mind …”

  “You flatter yourself,” said the girl.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said the other young man. “You don’t know her. She’s a man-eater. Ask Tom. He could tell you.”

  Isabel wanted to ask, “And did you go? Did you go to Greece?” but could not, of course. This young man was as bad as the girl who had asked him. They were all unpleasant; all sitting there gossiping in this snide way. You should never discuss the sexual offers of others, she thought. Don’t kiss and tell summed it up nicely. But these students had no sense of that.

  She returned to the menu, eager now to shut out their conversation. But fortunately Cat arrived at that moment and she could put the menu aside and give her attention to her niece.

  “I’m late,” said Cat, breathlessly. “We had a bit of a crisis. Somebody brought in some salmon which was way beyond its sell-by date. They said they had bought it from us, which was probably true. I don’t know how it happened. And then they went on about complaining to the hygiene people. You know what that involves. They make the most enormous fuss.”

  Isabel was sympathetic. She knew that Cat would never deliberately take risks. “Did you sort it out?”

  “A free bottle of champagne helped,” said Cat. “And an apology.”

  Cat picked up the menu, glanced at it, and then replaced it in its stand. She had little appetite at lunch, and would be happy with a minimalist salad. Isabel thought that this might have something to do with working with food all the time.

  They exchanged a few scraps of news. Toby was away on a wine-buying trip with his father, but had telephoned the previous evening from Bordeaux. He would be back in a few days’ time, and they would be going to Perth for the weekend, where he had friends. Isabel listened politely, but could not feel enthusiastic. What would they do on their weekend in Perth, she wondered, or was that a naïve question? It was hard to put yourself back to your early twenties.

  Cat was watching her. “You should give him a chance,” she said quietly. “He’s a nice person. He really is.”

  “Of course he is,” said Isabel quickly. “Of course he is. I’ve got nothing against Toby.”

  Cat smiled. “You’re very unconvincing when you’re telling lies,” she said. “It’s quite apparent you don’t like him. You can’t help showing it.”

  Isabel felt trapped, and thought: I’m an unconvincing hypocrite. There was silence now at the table of students, and she was aware of the fact that they were listening to the conversation. She stared at them, noticing that one of the boys had a small pin in his ear. People who had metal piercing in their heads were asking for trouble, G
race had once said. Isabel had asked why this should be so. Hadn’t people always worn earrings, and got away with it? Grace had replied that metal piercings attracted lightning, and that she had read of a heavily pierced man who had been struck dead in an electric storm while those around him, unpierced, had survived.

  The students exchanged glances, and Isabel turned away. “This is not the place to discuss it, Cat,” she said, her voice lowered.

  “Maybe not. But it does upset me. I only want you to try with him. Try to get beyond your initial reaction.”

  “My initial reaction was not entirely negative,” whispered Isabel. “I may not have felt particularly warm towards him, but that’s just because he’s not really my type. That’s all.”

  “Why isn’t he your type?” asked Cat defensively, her voice raised. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Isabel glanced at the students, who were now smiling. She deserved to be eavesdropped upon, she reflected; your acts will be returned to you, faithfully, every one.

  “I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with him,” she began. “It’s just that, are you sure that he’s quite … quite your intellectual equal? That can matter a lot, you know.”

  Cat frowned, and Isabel wondered whether she had gone too far. “He’s not stupid,” Cat said indignantly. “He has a degree from St. Andrews, remember. And he’s seen a bit of the world.”

  St. Andrews! Isabel was just about to say, “Well, there you are: St. Andrews,” but thought better of it. St. Andrews had a reputation of attracting well-off young people who came from the upper echelons of society and who wanted to find somewhere congenial to spend a few years while they attended parties. The Americans called such places party schools. In this case, it was an unfair reputation, as many reputations were, but there was at least a modicum of truth in it. Toby would have fitted very well into that social vision of St. Andrews, but it would have been unkind to point that out, and, anyway, now she wanted the conversation to stop. It had not been her intention to become embroiled in an argument about Toby; she did not think it right to interfere, and she must stop herself from drifting into a confrontation with Cat. This would make it more awkward in the future. Besides, he would go off with somebody else before too long and that would be that. Unless— and here was another appalling thought—unless Toby was interested in Cat for her money.