The Geometry of Holding Hands

by Alexander McCall Smith

  It was Jamie, though, who made that point for her. And when he finished, Hamish and Gordon both seemed to see the force of it.

  “But she’s intending to ask for something else,” said Isabel. “You won’t have received it yet, but I think you should stand by for a request for one hundred thousand, or thereabouts, to assist in the purchase of the boat I told you about.”

  “One hundred thousand pounds is a lot of money,” said Gordon. “Put that together with fifty thousand for the Land Rover and it makes a major sum.”

  “Can the trust afford it?” asked Isabel.

  Hamish and Gordon exchanged amused glances. “Not being able to afford something is not a problem this trust has,” said Hamish.

  Jamie now spoke for the first time. “So, you wouldn’t notice it?”

  Hamish turned to him. “Oh, we’d notice it,” he said. “Our philosophy in this firm is to notice everything. Every penny that moves through our accounts is…is observed and entered in the appropriate column. But whether we would feel it is a different matter.”

  “And the answer to that is no,” interjected Gordon.

  “May I ask you something?” said Hamish.

  Isabel nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  “Do you believe this young man, this Leo, is trying to get hold of your niece’s money? When it comes down to it, is that why he’s asked her to marry him?”

  “Yes,” said Jamie. “But—”

  “No,” said Isabel.

  Gordon smiled. “I see we have a difference of opinion.”

  “Well, he is and he isn’t,” said Isabel. “I think the two of them are probably in love. They clearly enjoy one another’s company.” She thought of how she had walked in on Cat when she was draped around Leo. “They are lovers, after all.”

  Gordon blushed. “I don’t think any of us were in any doubt about that side of things.”

  “I think that they established their relationship before he knew about Cat’s situation,” said Isabel. “Then, when it became obvious that there were funds in the background, he decided to take advantage.”

  Jamie said he would, broadly speaking, go along with that hypothesis.

  “So, it’s not clear-cut,” said Hamish.

  Isabel said that indeed, she thought it was not. “Jamie and I are coming round to the view that we should accede to these two requests—the vehicle and the boat—and then make it clear that that is the limit of the trust’s support. In that way I won’t be heading for a complete rupture of relations with Cat—something I would strongly wish to avoid—because there’s something I want Cat’s co-operation over.”

  “Of course,” said Hamish. “Nobody wants disagreement. And I imagine that Gordon and I will be very happy to go along with you in that decision.”

  Now Isabel brought up the other matter she had wanted discussed. “I mentioned to you that they were thinking of selling the deli to a hairdresser.”

  Gordon looked at a note he had made on a piece of paper. “A Mr. Jonny Mustique,” he said. “Yes, you mentioned that. An unusual name, I must say.”

  “This Jonny Mustique is prepared to offer for the premises,” Isabel said. “But I was wondering—well, Jamie and I were both wondering—whether the trust could buy the deli lock, stock and barrel. We’ve had a preliminary discussion ourselves, and we wanted to sound you out.”

  Hamish made a small round hole of his lips and exhaled quickly. “Buy the deli?”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “I gather that the existing trust portfolio includes a couple of shops somewhere—and a warehouse. They’re assets, are they not?”

  “Well, they are, yes,” said Hamish. “They’re what we call immoveable property. And trusts are perfectly competent owners of immoveable property.”

  Isabel looked from lawyer to lawyer. “So you see no legal reason why we can’t acquire Cat’s deli—at its market price, of course?”

  Hamish saw no reason to preclude this, and neither did Gordon.

  “Of course,” said Hamish, “it would not be open to us as trustees to make a bad investment if it were perfectly obvious that it was not a good prospect. But I take it that Cat’s deli is thriving?”

  “It is,” said Jamie. “It makes a reasonable profit, doesn’t it, Isabel?”

  Hamish shrugged. “Then, in theory, we could make a bid for it. But who would run it? I know you work there from time to time, Isabel, but would you have the time to run it yourself?”

  For a few moments nobody said anything. Isabel and Jamie had discussed this earlier, when Isabel had first floated the idea on their walk. “I could get it up and running,” she had said. “I know my way around. And then we could appoint a manager to work with Eddie.”

  Jamie had sighed. “If I thought there was any point in trying to persuade you not to do this, I would,” he said. “But this is just too important for you, isn’t it?”

  She told him it was. “It’s mostly about Eddie,” she said.

  “I understand. And in this particular case, I’m with you.”

  “He’s got nobody, you see—except us.”

  Jamie made a gesture of acceptance. “Temporarily, then?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Temporarily.”

  Now Isabel answered Hamish’s question. “I shall run it in the first instance,” she said. “With help, of course. We already have a perfectly capable young man working there. I suspect he’d appreciate more responsibility.”

  Jamie groaned inwardly. Isabel would now have the Review, two children, a house, a husband and a delicatessen to manage. He rolled his eyes heavenwards and thought: Stoicism. Did it help? He was not sure, but when Gordon brought in a bottle of sherry and the soda-water syphon at the end of the meeting, Jamie accepted a glass with a degree of relief.

  “To the success of this new venture,” Hamish said, raising his glass.

  “We must purchase it first,” said Gordon. “And in my experience, it doesn’t do to celebrate prematurely.”

  Hamish nodded sagely. “Good advice,” he said. “Until you have the property deed in your hand, the contract signed, the banker’s draft paid into the account, the court order pronounced and so on—until you have these things actually in your grasp, anything can go wrong.” He raised his small glass of sherry and soda water to his lips. “And it often does, doesn’t it, Gordon?”

  “Oh my,” said Gordon. “It certainly does, Hamish.”

  “It sounds as if your firm should perhaps be called Messrs. Jeremiah and Jeremiah, WS,” said Isabel.

  The two lawyers both burst out laughing—a slightly shrill, high-pitched laugh in both cases—a laugh redolent of deed boxes and red document tape and the dust of ancient agreements.

  “How very funny,” said Hamish.

  “I must tell the senior partner,” added Gordon. “He loves a joke.”

  * * *

  —

  ISABEL MANAGED to snatch a couple of hours later that afternoon to concentrate on the Review. She worked quickly and with a degree of concentration that she would have found difficult to muster had her mind not been put at rest by Hamish and Gordon. They had been completely accommodating at the trustees’ meeting, and when she and Jamie had left the lawyers’ office, they both felt that the Cat issue had been more or less defused. That, coupled with the easy exit Isabel had found from her entanglement with Iain Melrose, made her feel that her life was now both simpler and considerably less stressful.

  She was coming to the end of her working session, shortly after five, when she saw the courier walking up the path that led to the front door. Leaving her desk, she was at the door when he pressed the bell. He was her regular from Eagle Couriers, a young man called Steve, with whom she often exchanged the time of day when he made a delivery or picked up a parcel.

  “What do you have for me this evening, Steve?” she as
ked. “More books, I assume.”

  Steve produced a small rectangular parcel. “Nope,” he said. “This is marked fragile.”

  He handed her the parcel. Through the protective wrapping she could tell that it was a framed object of some sort.

  “A nice change,” she said, as she signed Steve’s machine, her fingernail tracing an indecipherable squiggle across the screen.

  He left her and she went inside with her parcel. There was no note on the outside, just her name written on the wrapping in an elegant italic script. She removed this layer and the plastic bubble-wrap underneath it.

  It was, as she had suspected, a painting, framed in an expensive-looking gilt frame. On the back was a gallery label: The Scottish Gallery: Jack Reay, Machair, South Uist.

  She turned the picture over. A delicate picture, worked in oil pastels, and protected by glass. It showed a stretch of foreshore: sand, shells, wildflowers, a green sea, white crest tumbling. This was machair, that quintessentially Hebridean landscape—part beach, part sand dune, part field of tiny flowers.

  She stared at it. She could smell the land it represented. She could hear the cold sea falling upon its broken shells and sand.

  There was an envelope taped to the back of the painting, again with her name in italic script. She opened this.

  Dear Isabel,

  Time always conspires against us, no matter how organised we try to be—do you find that? I had intended to invite you and Jamie (do I have the name right?) for kitchen supper over here at the house, and then, looking at the diary, I saw a whole lot of inflexible engagements. Hopeless. However, I am determined we should do that, and I’ll be getting in touch to find a convenient evening for the two of you.

  In the meantime, though, I thought you might appreciate this little painting. Jack did it a couple of years ago when we went over to Barra and the Uists. It was summer—a gorgeous spell in which the rain, by some miracle, held off for a full two weeks. He managed to do a lot of painting, and this little oil pastel is one of the things he did. I could tell, at the opening the other evening, that you liked his work and so I thought you might appreciate this little gift. Both Jack and I like the thought of it being in your house rather than being whisked off to Dubai or somewhere like that.

  No need to acknowledge. I hope that you find a place for it somewhere on your walls. Until very soon, I hope,

  Hilary Reay

  Isabel put the painting down on the hall table. She glanced at it again, and then made her way through to the kitchen, where she had heard Jamie making the boys’ supper, while they played on the floor with a wooden toy railway. There was some sort of dispute going on as to the ownership of a piece of track, and small voices were raised.

  “Don’t fight,” shouted Jamie above the din. “There’s enough for everybody.”

  Isabel thought: Yes, that was true and might be said to all humanity. Don’t fight—there’s enough for everybody. The problem, though, was that not everybody understood the necessary limitations.

  Isabel stepped over the chaos at floor level. “A picture has arrived,” she said. “A Jack Reay.”

  Jamie, half concentrating on his cooking, and half on what was happening down below, said, “Jack who?”

  “Jack Reay. The opening at the Scottish Gallery.”

  He stirred a pot of home-made pasta sauce. “Oh yes, of course.”

  “Sent by his wife, Hilary,” said Isabel. “The juror, no less. As a gift, she said.”

  Jamie looked thoughtful. Then he said, “A bribe, obviously.”

  “What else can it be?” asked Isabel.

  “We must return it. Send it back.”

  Isabel nodded. “It’s lovely, by the way. It’s of a stretch of machair on South Uist. I could fall in love with it.”

  “That makes no difference,” said Jamie. “It has to go.”

  “You’re right,” said Isabel. “But what do I say?”

  Jamie shrugged. “You say that you can’t accept it. Just that. You don’t have to give a reason.” He paused, and dipped a spoon into the sauce. “Taste this.”

  Isabel did. “Lovely.”

  “We could have it too, if we decided to have pasta tonight. I have some salmon steaks, but there’s something about this sauce that makes me want to change my mind and eat what the kids eat.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” said Isabel.

  She turned to go back to the hall to retrieve the painting. As she did so, an idea came to her. It was an outrageous, improbable idea, but it came to her with complete clarity. She returned to Jamie’s side.

  “Do you remember my mentioning a woman who was a victim of that Macglashian character? The fraudster?”

  “Vaguely,” said Jamie. “A hairdresser, you said.”

  “Yes. She was a hairdresser with a son who had cystic fibrosis. I remember her well when she gave evidence in court. She was so brave.”

  “What about her?” asked Jamie.

  “I remember a few details,” Isabel said. “She worked in that salon on Morningside Road. You know the big one on the left as you go down towards the clock.”

  “I can’t place it,” said Jamie.

  “You’ll have walked past it,” said Isabel. “Anyway, she trained there and was working there six years ago. She might still be there. I remember that her name was Jean—I can’t remember her surname.”

  “Why are you thinking about her now?”

  Isabel told him. “She lost everything—all her savings. Well, I have an idea about getting something back for her. Say half of what she lost.”

  Jamie put down his spoon and replaced the lid on the pot. “How?” he asked.

  “We sell this picture we’ve just been given. You saw the prices at the exhibition. Jack Reay is seriously expensive now.”

  Jamie smiled. “Rather nice…We sell the picture and give her the proceeds.”

  “Precisely,” said Isabel, warming further to the plan by the moment. “I’ll speak to Guy about it. It’s the sort of thing he’d approve of.”

  “I assume we have title?” said Jamie. “I don’t want to sound like Hamish or Gordon, but we’re talking about something quite valuable here.”

  “I have a letter in her own handwriting,” said Isabel. “It’s signed by her. She’s given it to me. It’s what art dealers call a good provenance. In fact, it’s a perfect provenance. Watertight.”

  Jamie’s expression was one of deep satisfaction. “Lovely,” he said. “And I take it we can tell her what we’ve done with her gift?”

  “I think we should,” said Isabel. “Transparency is a great virtue.” She looked at her watch. “I can’t wait, Jamie. Would you mind if I went to see if that place is still open—the hair salon? I think they don’t close till after six.”

  He understood her impatience. When a good idea occurred to him, he found similar difficulty in waiting. “Go straightaway,” he said. “Then go and see Guy, if he’s around.”

  She looked at him in gratitude. “You’ll do the supper? And bedtime?”

  “The works,” he said. “Come back whenever you like.”

  * * *

  —

  SHE TOOK the green Swedish car to save time. Parking it near the Dominion Cinema, she made her way down Morningside Road to the Morningside Salon: Hair Stylists Since 1972. She paused outside: inside she could see several customers still being attended to. A young woman sitting at a desk near the window was paging through an appointment register.

  She went in and introduced herself to the young woman at the desk. “I’m not here for an appointment,” she said. “I wondered if Jean still worked here.”

  The young woman smiled. “Jean Martin? Yes, she’s here. Round the back.”

  Isabel caught her breath. She had not expected it to be that easy.

  “The same
Jean Martin?” Isabel asked. “She trained here years ago.”

  “That’s her,” said the young woman. “You’ll still catch her. She’s in the staff room, but she’ll be going home in a few minutes, I think. Do you want me to call her?”

  Isabel nodded. “Please.”

  The young woman got up and walked through the salon to a door at the far end. A few minutes later, she reappeared, accompanied by a woman in her mid-forties, wearing blue jeans and a white linen top.

  Isabel smiled at her. “You don’t know me,” she said. “My name is Isabel Dalhousie and I live over there in Merchiston.”

  Jean’s expression was open. She has a friendly face, thought Isabel.

  “Oh yes.” Her tone was polite—enquiring.

  “Some years ago,” said Isabel, “I was on the jury in a case at the High Court. You gave evidence. There was a man called Macglashian.”

  Jean’s expression darkened. “Him,” she spat out. “He got away with it.”

  “Not everyone on the jury agreed with that,” Isabel whispered. “We’re not meant to talk about it, but I can tell you that’s how it was.”

  Jean looked at Isabel mutely. Then she said, “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I may be in a position—may be—to recover some of the money you lost.”

  Jean gasped. “Recover…”

  “Not all, by any means,” said Isabel. “And I don’t know exactly how much. But I want to try.”

  Jean was silent. Isabel noticed that her hands were trembling.

  “I’ve rather sprung this on you,” said Isabel.

  “Aye,” said Jean. “I haven’t thought about it for some time. I thought it best to forget it. And it’s making me feel a bit…”

  “Of course it is,” said Isabel. “But look, I’m going to give you my phone number and my email address. Can you give me yours?”