The Sunday Philosophy Club

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Isabel laughed. She appreciated the reference to Soapy Soutar; every Scottish child used to know about Oor Wullie and his friends Soapy Soutar and Fat Boab, but did they now? Where do the images of Scottish childhood come from now? Not, she thought, from the streets of Dundee, those warm, mythical streets which the Sunday Post peopled with pawky innocents.

  They turned away from the window and Hen looked at Isabel. “Why have you come to see us? You aren’t a journalist, are you?”

  Isabel shook her head vigorously. “Certainly not. No, I was a witness. I saw it happen.”

  Hen stared at her. “You were there? You saw Mark fall?”

  “I’m afraid I did.”

  Hen looked behind her for a seat and sat down. She looked down at the floor, and for a moment she said nothing. Then she raised her eyes. “I don’t really like to think of it, you know. It’s only a few weeks, and I’m already trying to forget about it. But it’s not easy, when you lose a flatmate like that.”

  “Of course. I can understand.”

  “We had the police round, you know. They came and asked about Mark. Then we had his parents, to come and take his things away. You can imagine what that was like.”

  “Yes I can.”

  “And there were other people,” Hen went on. “Mark’s friends. Somebody from his office. It went on and on.”

  Isabel sat down on the sofa, next to Hen. “And now me. I’m sorry to intrude. I can imagine what all this is like.”

  “Why did you come?” asked Hen. It was not said in an unfriendly way, but there was an edge to the question that Isabel picked up. It was exhaustion perhaps; exhaustion in the face of another interrogation.

  “I had no real reason,” Isabel said quietly. “I suppose it’s because I was involved in it and I had nobody to talk to about it—nobody connected with it, if you see what I mean. I saw this thing happen—this horrible thing—and I knew nobody who knew anything about him, about Mark.” She paused. Hen was watching her with her wide almond eyes. Isabel believed what she was saying, but was it the whole truth? And yet she could hardly tell these people that the reason why she was here was sheer curiosity about what happened; that, and a vague suspicion that there was something more to the incident.

  Hen closed her eyes, then nodded. “I understand,” she said. “That’s fine with me. In a way I’d like to hear about what actually happened. I’ve imagined it enough.”

  “You don’t mind then?”

  “No, I don’t mind. If it’s going to help you, then that’s all right with me.” She reached out and touched Isabel’s arm. The sympathetic gesture was unexpected, and Isabel felt—unworthily, she thought—that it was out of character. “I’ll make some coffee,” Hen went on, rising to her feet. “Then we can talk.”

  Hen left the room, and Isabel leant back into the sofa and looked about her. It was well furnished, unlike many rented flats, which quickly develop a well-used look. There were prints on the wall—the landlord’s taste, presumably mixed with that of the tenants: a view of the Falls of Clyde (landlord); A Bigger Splash, by Hockney, and Amateur Philosophers, by Vettriano (tenants); and Iona, by Peploe (landlord). She smiled at the Vettriano—he was deeply disapproved of by the artistic establishment in Edinburgh, but he remained resolutely popular. Why was this? Because his figurative paintings said something about people’s lives (at least about the lives of people who danced on the beach in formal clothing); they had a narrative in the same way in which Edward Hopper’s paintings did. That was why there were so many poems inspired by Hopper; it was because there was a now-read-on note to everything he painted. Why are the people there? What are they thinking of? What are they going to do now? Hockney, of course, left nothing unanswered. It was very clear what everybody was about in a Hockney picture: swimming, and sex, and narcissism. Had Hockney drawn WHA? She remembered that he had; and he had captured rather well the geological catastrophe that was WHA’s face. I am like a map of Iceland. Had he said that? She thought not, but he could have. She would write a book one day about quotations which were entirely apocryphal but which could be attributed to people who might have said just that. I’ve reigned all afternoon, and now it’s snowing. Queen Victoria.

  She had been staring at the Vettriano and now looked away and through the door. There was a mirror in the hall—a long dress mirror of the sort more usually found on the back of wardrobe doors. From where she was sitting she had an unimpeded view of it, and at that precise moment she saw a young man dart out of a door, cross the hall, and disappear into another room. He did not see her, though it seemed as if he was aware of her presence in the flat. And it seemed, too, that he had not intended that she should see him, which she would not have done, save for the strategically placed mirror. And he was quite naked.

  After a few minutes Hen returned, carrying two cups. She placed the cups on the table in front of the sofa and sat down next to Isabel again. “Did you ever meet Mark?”

  Isabel was on the point of saying yes, for it seemed to her, bizarrely, as if she had, but shook her head instead. “That was the first time I saw him. That night.”

  “He was a really good guy,” said Hen. “He was great. Everyone liked him.”

  “I’m sure they did,” said Isabel.

  “I was a bit unsure to begin with, you know, living with two people I hadn’t met before. But I took the room here at the same time as they got it. So we all started off together.”

  “And it worked?”

  “Yes, it worked. We had the occasional argument, as one would expect. But never anything serious. It worked very well.” Hen picked up her cup and sipped at the coffee. “I miss him.”

  “And Neil, your flatmate? They were friends?”

  “Of course,” said Hen. “They sometimes played golf together, although Neil was too good for Mark. Neil is almost a scratch player. He could have been a professional, you know. He’s a trainee lawyer with a firm in the West End. Stuffy place, but they all are, aren’t they? This is Edinburgh after all.”

  Isabel picked up her coffee cup and took her first sip. It was instant, but she would try to drink it, out of politeness.

  “What happened?” she said quietly. “What do you think happened?”

  Hen shrugged. “He fell. That’s all that could have happened. One of those freak accidents. He looked over for some reason and fell. What else?”

  “Might he have been unhappy?” said Isabel. She made the suggestion cautiously, as it could have been met with an angry response, but it was not.

  “You mean suicide?”

  “Yes. That.”

  Hen shook her head. “Definitely not. I would have known. I just would. He wasn’t unhappy.”

  Isabel considered Hen’s words. “I would have known.” Why would she have known? Because she lived with him; that was the obvious reason. One picked up the moods of those with whom one lived in close proximity.

  “So there were no signs of that?”

  “No. None.” Hen paused. “He just wasn’t like that. Suicide is a cop-out. He faced up to things. He was … You could count on him. He was reliable. He had a conscience. You know what I mean?”

  Isabel watched her as she spoke; the word “conscience” was not one which one heard very much anymore, which was strange, and ultimately worrying. It had to do with the disappearance of guilt from people’s lives, which was no bad thing, in one sense, as guilt had caused such a mountain of unnecessary unhappiness. But there was still a role for guilt in moral action, as a necessary disincentive. Guilt underlined wrong; it made the moral life possible. That apart, there was another aspect to what Hen had said. The words were uttered with conviction, but they could only have been spoken by one who had never been depressed, or gone through a period of self-doubt.

  “Sometimes people who are very clear about things on the outside are not so sure inside … they can be very unhappy, but never show it. There are …” She trailed off. Hen clearly did not appreciate being spoken to in this way. “I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to lecture you …”

  Hen smiled. “That’s all right. You’re probably right—in general, but not in this case. I really don’t think it was suicide.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said Isabel. “You obviously knew him very well.”

  For a few moments there was a silence, as Hen sipped at her coffee, apparently deep in thought, and Isabel looked at the Vettriano, wondering what to say next. There seemed little point in continuing the conversation; she was not going to learn much more from Hen, who had probably said as much as she wanted to say and who was, in Isabel’s view, not very perceptive anyway.

  Hen put her cup down on the table. Isabel moved her gaze from the oddly disturbing picture. The young man whom she had seen in the corridor was now entering the room, fully clothed.

  “This is Neil,” said Hen.

  Isabel rose to shake hands with the young man. The palm of his hand was warm, and slightly moist, and she thought: He’s been in the shower. That was why he had been dashing naked across the hall. Perhaps that was not unusual these days; that flatmates, casual friends, should wander about unclothed, in perfect innocence, as children in Eden.

  Neil sat down on the chair opposite the sofa while Hen explained why Isabel was there.

  “I don’t mean to intrude,” said Isabel. “I just wanted to talk about it. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No,” said Neil. “I don’t mind. If you want to talk about it, that’s fine with me.”

  Isabel glanced at him. His voice was very different from Hen’s; from the other side of the country, she thought, but disclosing an expensive education somewhere. He was Hen’s age, she thought, or perhaps slightly older, and like her he had a slightly outdoors look to him. Of course, he was the golfer, and what she was seeing was the effect of time spent on blustery Scottish fairways.

  “I don’t think I should burden you much more,” said Isabel. “I’ve met you. I’ve talked about what happened. I should let you get on with things.”

  “Has it helped?” asked Hen, exchanging a glance, Isabel noted, with Neil. The meaning of the glance was quite clear, Isabel thought: she would say to him afterwards, “Why did she have to come? What was the point of all that?” And she would say that because she was nothing to that young woman; she was a woman in her forties, out of it, not real, of no interest.

  “I’ll take your cup,” said Hen suddenly, rising to her feet. “I have to get something going in the kitchen. Excuse me a minute.”

  “I must go,” said Isabel, but she remained on the sofa when Hen had gone out of the room, and she looked at Neil, who was watching her, his hands resting loosely on the arms of the chair.

  “Do you think that he jumped?” Isabel asked.

  His face was impassive, but there was something disconcerting in his manner, an uneasiness. “Jumped?”

  “Committed suicide?”

  Neil opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again. He stared at Isabel.

  “I’m sorry to ask you that,” she went on. “I can see that you think the answer is no. Well, you’re probably right.”

  “Probably,” he said quietly.

  “May I ask you another thing?” she said, and then, before her question could be answered, “Hen said that Mark was popular. But might there have been anybody who disliked him?”

  The question had been uttered, and now she watched him. She saw his eyes move, to look down at the floor, and then up again. When he answered he did not look at her, but stared out the door, into the hall, as if to look for Hen to answer the question for him.

  “I don’t think so. No. I don’t think so.”

  Isabel nodded. “So there really was nothing … nothing unusual in his life?”

  “No. Nothing unusual.”

  He looked at her now, and she saw in his eyes a look of dislike. He felt—and who could blame him for this?—that it was none of her business to go prying into his friend’s life. She had clearly outstayed her welcome, as Hen had made apparent, and now she would have to leave. She rose to her feet, and he followed her example.

  “I’d just like to say good-bye to Hen,” she said, moving into the hall, followed by Neil. She looked about her quickly. The door out of which he had darted when she had by chance looked into the mirror must be the door immediately to her right.

  “She’s in the kitchen, isn’t she?” she said, turning and pushing open the door.

  “That’s not it,” he called after her. “That’s Hen’s room.”

  But Isabel had taken a step forward and saw the large bedroom, with its bedside lamp on and its closed curtain, and the unmade bed.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “The kitchen’s over here,” he said sharply. “That door there.” He looked at her sideways. He was nervous, she thought; nervous and hostile.

  She withdrew, and walked over to the door which he had indicated. She found Hen, who was embarrassed to be seen sitting on a stool reading a magazine. But she thanked her profusely, and said good-bye, and then left the flat, to the sound of Neil locking the door behind her. She had left them her card, and had said that they could contact her if they ever wanted to, but they had looked at it doubtfully, and she knew that they would not. She had felt awkward and foolish, which, she now thought, was how she deserved to feel. But at least something had become clear.

  Hen and Neil were lovers, which was why he had been in her room when she had rung the bell downstairs. Hen had told her that Neil was not yet home, but then she could hardly have explained to her, a complete stranger, that he was in her bed, and at that hour. Of course this vindicated her instinct about Hen, but it had little bearing on her knowledge of how they had lived together, the three of them. It could be, of course, that Mark had felt excluded. Hen implied that she had not known the other two when she first moved into the flat, and this meant that at some point the relationship had become one of more intimate cohabitation. This might have changed the dynamics of their communal life, from a community of three friends to one of a couple and a friend. Alternatively, it was possible that Hen and Neil had fallen into each other’s arms after Mark’s death, for comfort and solace in their shared sorrow, perhaps. She could imagine that this might have been the case, but again it made no difference to her understanding of what might have been going through Mark’s head on that evening at the Usher Hall. If she had known him hardly at all before she called on the flat in Warrender Park Terrace, she did not know him any better now. He had been a pleasant young man, popular and not given to self-doubt; no surprise, perhaps, as self-doubt is the territory of the teenager and, much later, of the failing, not of young men in their twenties. If he had been concerned about something, then his concern must have been hidden from those who were closest to him in his daily life.

  She walked home slowly. It was a warm evening for the time of year, an evening that had in it just the smallest hint of summer, and there were others making their way home too. Most of them had people to go to, husbands, wives, lovers, parents. Her house awaited her, large and empty, which she knew was the result of choices she had made, but which perhaps were not entirely to be laid at her door. She had not deliberately chosen to fall in love so completely, and so finally, that thereafter no other man would have done. That was something which had happened to her, and the things that happen to us are not always of our making. John Liamor happened, and that meant that she lived with a sentence. She did not ponder it unduly, nor speak to others of it (although she had spoken to Jamie, unwisely perhaps, the previous evening). It was just how things were, and she made the most of it, which was the moral duty which she thought that all of us had, at least if one believed in duties to self, which she did. If x, then y. But y?

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK was uneventful. There was a small amount of work to be done for the review, but with the proofs of the next issue recently sent off to the printers, and with two members of the editorial board out of the country, Isabel was har
dly overburdened. She spent much of the time reading, and she also helped Grace in a long-overdue clearing of the attic. But there was still time for thought, and she could not help but return to what she now thought of as the event. The feeling of rawness which had followed that evening was certainly fading, but this now seemed to be replaced by a sense of lack of resolution. Her meeting with Hen and Neil had been unsatisfactory, she decided, and now she was left with nothing more that she could do. There was to be a Fatal Accident Inquiry; she had been informed by the procurator fiscal of the date when this would be held and had been told that as the most immediate witness she would be called to give evidence, but the fiscal had implied that it would be an open-and-shut case.

  “I don’t think that there’s much doubt,” he said. “We’ve had evidence that the height of the rail is perfectly adequate and that the only way in which somebody could fall over would be by leaning right over. He must have done that, for whatever reason—perhaps to see if he could see somebody downstairs. So that will be more or less that.”

  “Then why hold an enquiry?” she had asked, sitting before the fiscal’s desk in his sparsely furnished office. He had asked her in for an interview, and she had found him in an office marked Deaths, a tall man with a gaunt, unhappy face. On the wall behind him there was a framed photograph. Two young men and two young women sat stiffly in chairs in front of a stone archway: University of Edinburgh, Law Society Committee, read the printed inscription below. One of them was the fiscal, recognisable in his lanky awkwardness. Had he hoped for, or expected, more than this job?

  The fiscal looked at Isabel and then looked away. He was the deaths officer for Edinburgh. Deaths. Every day. Deaths. Small and big. Deaths. He would do it for a year, and then back to crime in some place like Airdrie or Bathgate. Every day: crime, cruelty, stretching off into retirement. “What’s the current expression?” he asked, trying not to show his weariness. “Closure? To give closure?”