The Charming Quirks of Others

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She arrived back late from the delicatessen, tired and looking forward to changing out of her clothes and having a long, relaxing bath. Working with food made one smell of food—and by the time she reached home that Saturday evening she had become convinced that she had about her a distinct aroma of strong Italian sausage. Jamie kissed her as she came in the front door, and she was sure that she saw his nose wrinkle slightly, as it might if one were called upon actually to kiss a salami or a parcel of ripe French cheese.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s handling all those sausages and French cheeses and things. It rubs off.”

  He leaned forward to kiss her again. “There’s nothing wrong with garlic.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “But I need a bath.”

  She listened to him as he told her that Charlie had been exhausted and had been put to bed early. He had dropped off to sleep immediately, Jamie said. She was disappointed; she always had enough energy for Charlie, even when at the end of her tether. But she would not disturb him—and so she went straight to the bathroom off their bedroom and cast off her delicatessen clothes. Was every day like this for Cat? She sympathised if it was. And she did smell of salami, or at least of the garlic which infused their particular brand.

  Naked, she walked to the bath and felt the temperature of the water. They had an old-fashioned boiler in the house, an arrangement that made Alex, their plumber, smile and make references to museums of industrial technology. “But it delivers oceans of hot water,” she had protested, and he had refrained from modernising it. Now those oceans were filling the tub and sending up clouds of steam, as in a Turkish bath. The water was soft to the touch—straight from the Pentland Hills. How they would love this water in London, where their own supply was so hard, so laden with calcium and other things. They might have opera and theatre in abundance in London, but when it came to water …

  She turned off the taps and lowered herself into the tub, with its ample, Victorian proportions. They were not mean, the Victorians, at least in bathroom matters, and this bath could easily accommodate …

  Jamie. He had followed her upstairs and was standing in the bathroom doorway. He was watching her, smiling. “Would you mind?” He nodded towards the bath.

  It suddenly occurred to Isabel that they had never shared a bath. There was no reason why they should not have—no inhibitions, no reserves of prudery—but they had never bathed together.

  She gestured towards the other end of the tub. “There’s plenty of room.”

  He began to remove his clothes. He was just wearing a tee-shirt and jeans, and in a few moments he was divested of them. She looked up at him and then looked away, back at the water, which, for reasons of light reflected off tiles, was light green. She moved so as to lean against the back of the bath. The enamelled surface was warm to the touch.

  He moved forward, the soft light upon his skin. He carried no spare flesh; had never done so. He was lithe; muscled, as in a sculpture by Praxiteles. I, she thought, am soft and pliant; Eve’s flesh.

  “Jamie,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  She spoke what she was thinking; private, ridiculous thoughts. “Please don’t ever change.”

  He laughed as he lowered himself into the water, facing her, his knees drawn up. “Everybody changes.”

  “Not you. The rules don’t apply to you.”

  He sent a small splash in her direction. A wisp of steam rose from the point where he had disturbed the water. “When did you last share a bath?”

  She closed her eyes. “I can’t remember. When I was small, I suppose. I had friends to stay over and we used to share baths, I think. I must have been eight or nine.” She opened her eyes. “And you?”

  He looked away. “I can’t remember. It’s so long ago.”

  She felt he was saying to her that he did not want to talk about it. She sensed that, and stopped. She reached out and touched the side of his leg. She moved her hand against him. They did not speak. He turned on the cold tap, briefly, and let the cooler water mingle with the warm. She closed her eyes. It was a delicious sensation, that drop in temperature followed by a slow warming as he turned the hot tap on again. It took her back, far back, to a place of memories and longing. Why? she thought. Why should I feel this way? Because it is a return to our earliest memory, the memory of the comfort of the womb, when we are surrounded by warmth and liquid and there is no light to impinge upon the comfort of darkness.

  DAMP, CLAD IN TOWELS, they left the bathroom and went back into the bedroom. Through the window the evening sun, even at eight, slanted across the cover of their bed, a white Ulster cambric. She loved cambric: Tell her to make me a cambric shirt / Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme / Without no seam nor needlework / And then she’ll be a true love of mine. She had sung this to Charlie once and he had watched her studiously, his eyes wide, although the words must have meant nothing to him.

  Jamie stood in the middle of the room, the towel about his waist. “I forgot to wash my hair,” he said. “I was going to …”

  He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. Isabel glanced at him. “Should we bother?” she asked.

  “No, we should. You never know.” At odd times Jamie received requests to play; this could be one.

  He went to the bedside table on which the telephone stood and picked up the receiver.

  He answered a question she could not hear. “Yes.”

  Across the room, Isabel heard the sound of a distant voice.

  Jamie lowered his voice. “No. I can’t.”

  Isabel turned away.

  “I told you, I can’t. I just can’t.”

  Isabel turned round. He was holding the handset in an odd way, half cupping the top against his ear, as if to muffle the voice at the other end. But she had heard. Their eyes met.

  “Look, we can’t talk. I’ll … I’ll speak to you some other time. Tomorrow.” A pause while something else was said, something that elicited a heated response. “I didn’t. I did not say that. Sorry, but I have to go. Goodbye.”

  Isabel stood quite still. She heard her heart beating hard within her; her breathing was shallow. “Who was that?” She knew, of course, but still she asked.

  Jamie moved away from the telephone. “That girl.”

  “I thought so.”

  “I told her not to phone me. I told her.”

  Isabel felt her cheeks burning. “She’s phoned you before? Here at the house? Our house?”

  Jamie sighed. “I told her.” He made a gesture of helplessness. “What can I do? She’s pursuing me.” He paused. “She told me that she was feeling weak. She wanted me to come round to her flat.”

  “This evening? Right now?”

  He nodded miserably.

  “Right,” said Isabel. “I’m going to have a word with her. I’m going to go there right now. Right now.”

  “Do you think …”

  She brushed him aside. “We have to sort this out, Jamie. I know you don’t want to do it. You’re … you’re far too kind. And anyway, she’s not listening to you. Perhaps she’ll listen to me. Women have a way of conveying this sort of information to one another.” Yes, she thought—we do. And she remembered a fight she had once witnessed when walking past a bar in Tollcross years ago: two women had come tumbling out, tearing at one another’s hair, scratching at each other like cats, and one had been screaming, “Cow! Cow! He’s mine, you cow!” She remembered how shocked passersby had been, or most of them: one, a young boy, had shouted out his delighted encouragement until his mother put a hand across his mouth.

  “She’s dying,” said Jamie quietly.

  “We all are,” snapped Isabel. “Ultimately, we all are. So dying is no excuse. Not for this.”

  She was about to add something, and almost did. She was about to tell him about her bizarre idea that charity required of her that she share him, but she did not. She was ashamed that she had even thought it, and she would keep it to herself. Now she was angry too, and
that feeling was even more inappropriate. This girl, with her astonishing gall in telephoning Jamie at home, did not deserve such concern. She deserved what Isabel was going to give her: an unambiguous warning.

  She dressed quickly. Jamie said something about being gentle with Prue, but Isabel barely took it in. She asked him the address, and he gave it to her. “It’s in Stockbridge,” he said. “Leslie Place. It’s that narrow street that goes up to St. Bernard’s Crescent.” He gave her the number. He did not have to look it up, and she wanted to ask him whether he had been there before. Had he said anything about that? Then she remembered that he had.

  “I don’t expect I’m going to be long,” she said. “Can you wait for dinner?”

  He could. “I’ll cook something,” he offered. “I’ll wait for you to come back.” His voice sounded flat.

  She moved towards him. She was clothed now; he was still wearing his towel. There were goosebumps on his shoulders when she embraced him. She did not want to go; she wanted to stay with him. She wanted to lie down with him and forget about this girl, and about everything, really: about being the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, about being a person to whom others came for help, about being one of whom material charity was expected. She wanted to forget all that and think only of the fact that she was a woman singularly blessed with a beautiful young lover who wanted to marry her, and who could play the bassoon, and loved their son and …

  “I have to go and speak to her. You realise that, don’t you?”

  He nodded silently.

  “Sometimes,” she went on, “the only way of stopping a mess becoming more of a mess is to … gird up your metaphors and lance the boil.”

  They laughed together, the tension disappearing.

  “A mixed metaphor never harmed anybody,” he said.

  “Don’t you believe it.”

  SHE WALKED DOWN LESLIE PLACE, looking up at the numbers painted on the stone above the doors. With one or two exceptions, the doors here led to what were called common stairs—a stone stairway shared by a number of flats that gave off each landing of the four-storey tenement. The flats themselves varied: most of them were spacious enough; others, tucked in almost as an afterthought, consisted of no more than a bedroom and a living room that doubled up as a kitchen. In the nineteenth century, when they were built, even such cramped accommodation would have housed an entire family, that of some struggling clerk, perhaps, battling its way up from more modest housing in a less favoured part of the city. Some of the stairways had now been done up, with new stone treads and refurbished banisters; others remained dowdy, with crumbling plaster where generations of careless removal men had allowed wardrobes to collide with walls, and smelling vaguely of cat.

  Prue’s flat was up one flight of stairs. The door seemed freshly painted, a lilac colour in contrast to the black of the other two doors off her landing. A small card had been pinned to the door with the name—P. L. McKay—written on it, and underneath: Mail for Thompson and Edwards. In pencil, somebody had written alongside the name Edwards: Owes me ten quid. Although she was feeling tense, Isabel allowed herself a smile.

  She drew in her breath. She could see from light coming through the fanlight above the door that there was somebody within, which would be Prue, as she had only recently made the telephone call. Thompson and Edwards only received their mail there; they would not be in. And Edwards, of course, would be keeping his head down.

  She rang the bell, which had an old-fashioned wire pull. Inside there came a muffled clanking sound.

  Prue opened the door. She was a young woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in a pair of jeans and a red-flecked sweater. She wore no shoes.

  Isabel said, “You’re Prue?”

  Prue’s lip quivered. Isabel saw this. She knows who I am.

  “I’m Isabel Dalhousie.”

  Prue took a step back. It was not a planned movement, Isabel thought, and for a moment she was worried that the other woman was going to faint.

  “Do you mind if I come in?” Isabel moved forward as she spoke, and reached to close the door behind her. “I knew you were in, you see, because you telephoned Jamie a short time ago. You telephoned him at our house.”

  Prue said nothing. She was staring at Isabel in unmistakable fear.

  “I don’t think that it’s a good idea to …” Isabel searched for the right words, remembering that Jamie had said something about being gentle. She would be gentle. This poor girl was dying.

  She started again. “Look, I know that you are very fond of Jamie. I understand that. But Jamie and I are together, you know. We’re going to get married. He likes you—don’t think that he doesn’t like you. It’s just that … well, he and I are together and that’s really all there can be to it. You do understand, don’t you?”

  Prue seemed to be recovering herself. Her shocked expression was slowly changing; now she was beginning to smile. “Jamie is very fond of me,” she said. “Yes, you’re right. He is. He’s shown it.”

  The words hit Isabel with an almost physical force. “Shown …”

  The smile widened. “Yes. Jamie and I are … well, we’re lovers.”

  Isabel stared at her. She could not speak.

  Prue continued. “Has he not told you? I thought he had. He told me he was going to speak to you.”

  “When?” It was a whisper, almost inaudible.

  “When what?”

  “When did you become lovers?”

  “Oh, I forget exactly when. A month or so ago. May, I think. Yes, May.”

  A door opened. They were standing in a small entrance hall, and the door gave on to a living room. There was another woman, slightly older than Prue. She shot a glance at Isabel and then addressed herself to Prue.

  “Prue? Is everything all right?”

  Isabel turned and opened the front door. She did not say anything to either woman, but simply left the flat. She felt her eyes stinging with tears. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and grasped the rail. She looked up, right up through the stairwell to a skylight. There was still a glow in the sky, which was empty, white in the evening, innocent of the insignificant tragedy happening below it.

  She heard footsteps on the stone stairs; somebody was coming down. She looked up, prepared to see Prue, but it was the other woman.

  “You’re Isabel, aren’t you?”

  Isabel did not answer. She stared at the other woman, uncertain what her intentions might be. She remembered the catfight in Tollcross.

  The other woman was before her, reaching out to place a hand on Isabel’s arm. “I’m Prue’s sister,” she said. “And I heard what was said up there. I came round when she telephoned me a few minutes ago—I live round the corner in Danube Street.”

  She continued: “You have to forgive my sister. She’s not well.”

  There was something in the other woman’s manner that reassured Isabel. She started to speak. “I’m shocked … I don’t know …”

  “Of course you are. But listen: it’s not true. None of it. It’s all imagined.”

  It took a few moments. There were words; now there was meaning, and eventually, slowly, there came relief. Isabel felt herself being plucked from the dark place into which she had fallen. “Not true about Jamie?”

  The woman shook her head. “Certainly not. She’s done this before, I’m afraid.”

  Isabel winced. “And she’s dying.”

  The other woman groaned. “There’s nothing wrong with her—at least nothing physical. It’s a trick she plays. She tells people that she’s at death’s door. It gets sympathy.”

  It took Isabel a moment or two to absorb this. Of course. Of course. It was an obvious trick: if you were dying you could get what you wanted. “It’s a sort of blackmail,” said Isabel.

  “Exactly. Look, we’re trying to get her to have treatment. I think we’re getting there, but it’s not easy.”

  Isabel felt weak with relief. “It never is.”

  “You’ve been very understa
nding,” said the woman. “And I can promise you there’ll be no more of this. She’s going up to Aberdeen. Our parents are there, and they’re taking over. My father’s a doctor up there. He’s spoken to his psychiatrist friends.”

  Isabel felt sympathy for both of them—for Prue and for her sister. There were apologies. The woman told her how embarrassed she was by Prue’s behaviour. Not everybody, she said, was as understanding as Isabel.

  They made their goodbyes to one another and Isabel walked out into the street. She felt drained, and would need to get a taxi. She saw one at the end of the road, its yellow light glowing. She waved her arms. The taxi turned, the driver signalling with his headlights that he had seen her.

  “You all right?” he asked, as she settled into her seat.

  “Entirely all right,” she said.

  Edinburgh taxi drivers were not just taxi drivers. They were social workers, psychotherapists and, like Isabel, philosophers. She caught his eye in the mirror.

  “You seemed upset,” he said.

  “I was,” she admitted. “A few minutes ago I thought my world was in ruins. Now I know it’s not.”

  The taxi was making its way up the hill past the end of Ann Street. Down to the right, at the end of a wide road, was the Gothic bulk of Fettes College, another school.

  “Well, that’s good,” he said.

  “May I ask you something?”

  He looked into the mirror again. “Of course.”

  “Should we feel ashamed of believing ill of someone we love? When we ought to trust them?”

  He thought for a moment before replying. “No,” he said. “That’s natural.”

  “You think it is?”

  “I know it is.”

  She smiled. “I suppose you people see all of life in your cabs—and then some.”

  “Aye, we do.”

  They were now approaching the Dean Bridge; beyond it, the dizzy terraces perched on the edge of the ravine. Edinburgh was called a precipitous city, and it was.

  “So I shouldn’t feel bad about thinking the worst of somebody I love?”