Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 06

by The Lost Art of Gratitude

  She was approaching the hothouses. She looked at her watch: three minutes to eleven. There was nobody there, and for a moment she wondered whether Minty was playing with her, sending her off on a wild goose chase, wasting her time; there were unbalanced people who did that sort of thing. She looked behind her along the path that she had followed from the back of Inverleith House. In the distance a woman wearing a bright red jacket was pushing a small child in a pushchair. The child seemed to be wearing a bonnet of some sort and the woman had a large sunhat on her head. If Jock Dundas came now, he might think that the woman was Minty and that the child was Roderick; he could easily think that.

  She turned round again and saw that the door of one of the hothouses was being opened from the inside. A man came out and closed the door behind him. He was not far away and Isabel saw that he was a tall man with a head of dark hair. He looked at her briefly and then up towards the woman on the path behind her. He screwed up his eyes, as the sun was bright, and stared at the other woman, momentarily uncertain.

  Isabel was sure now, and was close enough to the man to address him. “No, that’s not her.”

  She had approached him from the side, and he spun round sharply.

  Isabel smiled. “That woman over there is not Minty.”

  The man threw a puzzled glance in the woman’s direction and then looked back at Isabel. “I’m sorry, you are …?”

  Isabel was struck by Jock’s profile. Of course Minty had fallen for him. “I’m Isabel Dalhousie,” she said. “I’m a … a friend of Minty’s.”

  Jock did not react for a moment. Then he frowned. “Is there something wrong? Is Roderick all right?”

  Isabel reassured him. “He’s fine. I’ve come instead of Minty, that’s all.”

  At first Jock had been impassive, but now he began to look irritated. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but I was due to meet Minty. I don’t really see why—”

  Isabel cut him short. “Minty is very upset,” she said. “And I want to talk to you about that.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t see what any of this has got to do with you.”

  “She asked me to speak to you. She wants me to ask you to stop.”

  He looked up at the sky. “Sorry, but this really is none of your business.”

  You’re quite right, thought Isabel. It’s absolutely none of my business. But she did not say so. She did not like Jock’s attitude. It was the attitude of a bully, and bullies never liked others to become involved in their programmes of intimidation.

  She took a deep breath. “Listen, Mr. Dundas. You are treading on very dangerous ground, you know.”

  Her remark clearly took him by surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound emerged. Isabel decided to press her advantage; she felt more confident now.

  “You have no right,” she began. “You have no right to do what you’re doing. You should count yourself fortunate that Minty hasn’t contacted the police by now.”

  Jock’s surprised expression now turned to one of astonishment. “The police? What on earth are you talking about? What have the police got to do with my efforts to see my son?”

  He stopped himself, as if he had given away something he had no intention of revealing.

  “I know he’s your son,” Isabel said quietly. “I know that.”

  “Well then, I have a right to see him, I’d have thought.” There was a note of petulance in his voice.

  “But no right to intimidate Minty,” Isabel countered. “Threatening phone calls. Sending a wreath to the house.”

  Jock’s look of astonishment returned. “What?” His voice rose. “What are you saying?”

  Isabel could tell immediately that his surprise was genuine, and she was entirely thrown by the realisation. Immediately she reached a conclusion: Jock had not been intimidating Minty—that was clear. Either that, or he was a most accomplished actor.

  “Come on,” he said angrily. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  The woman who had been coming down the path was now not far away, and Isabel thought that she could probably hear what was being said. She nodded in the direction of the hothouse door. “Look, can we go inside?”

  Jock, still angry, muttered his agreement and they went into the greenhouse. The warmth of the day meant that the air inside was uncomfortably hot, in spite of the automatic windows having opened to their maximum extent. The air was heavy, too, with the scent of a flowering plant, a thick, rather sickly smell.

  “Let’s walk to the other side,” said Isabel. “We can talk.”

  “And you can explain to me exactly what you meant just then.” The anger in Jock’s voice had not abated.

  Isabel told him about Minty’s belief that he was trying to put pressure on her to surrender custody of Roderick. “Is that true?” she asked. “Are you?” She imagined what the answer would be.

  The accusation appeared to surprise Jock. “Of course not. Of course I’m not doing anything of the sort. My God, what do you take me for? I’m a lawyer, for heaven’s sake.”

  Again, Isabel was in no doubt about the genuineness of his indignation. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been misled. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

  Jock brushed aside the apology. “All I want is to see him. That’s all. And I don’t want to break up her marriage or anything like that. That’s why I’m trying to see him discreetly—so that her husband doesn’t realise.”

  Isabel shook her head. “All right. But surely you realise that you can’t go on doing that. Sooner or later he’s going to mention something to his father …” She corrected herself quickly. “Mention something to Gordon about seeing a man with his mother. Can’t you see that? And then what?”

  “I’ve thought of that,” said Jock. “I’ve told Minty that these meetings can be described as business ones. I’m a lawyer. I could easily be doing business with her bank.”

  It seemed rather unlikely to Isabel, and she gave him a searching look. “Really? Do you really think that would be credible? And what’s the point? What’s the point of getting to know this little boy when you know that in the long run nothing can come of it? He’s never going to treat you as his father.”

  Jock was silent. The confident, rather arrogant expression of a few moments ago had yielded to something rather different. Now there was a look of defeat—a look of sadness.

  “I hoped,” he said quietly.

  “Hoped? What for?”

  He did not answer.

  Isabel decided to probe. “Why can’t you just accept it? Why can’t you say to yourself that Roderick may be your son but in reality he’s hers—and Gordon’s? Find somebody else. Have a proper son. One you can bring up yourself, not see furtively, like some sort of criminal.”

  They were standing still now, next to a tropical creeper that had sent out elongated tendrils and strange cup-like blossoms. Isabel did not like the scent of the flowers, which was vaguely meaty, with a whiff of carrion.

  Jock looked into her eyes, and she saw pain. “Has it occurred to you that you don’t know what you’re talking about? Sorry to be blunt, but has that possibility occurred?”

  Isabel lowered her gaze; she was in no mood to argue. She would telephone Minty when she got home and remonstrate with her for involving her in the whole business. She had assumed that Minty was telling the truth when she spoke of Jock’s difficult behaviour, but now she thought that Minty had exaggerated—at best—or even lied.

  “I can’t have another child,” Jock said suddenly. “Last year I had orchitis. You know what that is?”

  She was taken by surprise. She did know. It was becoming clear to her now.

  “People talk lightly of mumps,” he said. “Even the name sounds a bit jokey. But it’s deadly serious—at least in some cases. And I’m one of those cases. I can’t have children now. Or ever.”

  Isabel looked down. She had been ten minutes or so with Jock and her entire understanding of the situation had been completely ca
lled into question. Not only did she suspect that the campaign that Minty referred to was an imagined one but she had also come to understand why Jock might be so desperate to have some relationship with Roderick—sufficiently desperate to concoct a ridiculous and unrealistic scheme to see something of the boy. She felt confused, as if she had tumbled into a place where things were not quite what they purported to be. It was easy to feel that, of course, and it was unsettling; it was why people clung so fervently to their beliefs about the world.

  She took Jock’s arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Perhaps I’ve misunderstood the situation. I’m very sorry.”

  They began to walk back towards the hothouse door.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Jock.

  “I’ll contact Minty and tell her that I can’t do anything to help her,” she said. “In other words, I’ll withdraw.”

  Jock shook his head in frustration. “Can’t you do something? Can you persuade her to see it from my point of view?”

  Isabel was not sure how to answer him. It seemed to her that the situation simply could not be resolved in a way that would allow for compromise. If Jock came out into the open and took legal action for access to Roderick, it could result in the end of Minty’s marriage to Gordon, which would hardly predispose her to sharing Roderick with him. If Gordon forgave Minty her unfaithfulness, it might help Minty but would not help Jock’s claim to see the boy, as it was difficult to imagine his agreeing to let another man develop a relationship with Roderick, even if that other man was the boy’s real father. Why should he? And if it went to court, a judge would almost certainly take the view that Roderick’s best interests would be served by his remaining with Minty and the man whom he had been brought up to believe was his father. In any event, Jock stood to lose.

  It would have been simplest to disengage altogether, to wash her hands of them both. And she almost did; but not quite. It was moral proximity again: this man standing before her was not a moral stranger to her—he was asking her for help and she could not turn him away. She simply could not. “All right, I’ll talk to her,” she said. “But I really don’t see any solution that’ll help you.” She broke off as they went through the door. Now, out in the sunlight, feeling cooler and more comfortable than in the artificial warmth of the hothouse, she said, “Mr. Dundas, I think that you may just have to accept that Roderick can never be yours.”

  He stared at her. There was nothing firm or confident in his manner now. He was like a man facing sentence. And this made Isabel all the more certain: this was not a man who had been threatening anybody.

  “Do you know how I feel?” he asked. His voice was low and unsteady.

  “I think I do,” said Isabel.

  “It’s like being dead,” he said.

  He spoke quietly, each word chiselled out with complete clarity. Of course he was right—that is what such a loss felt like. Stop all the clocks, as WHA had said in that harrowing poem of his. Yes, that is how she herself would feel if somebody came to her and said, “You may never see Charlie again.”

  She could not think of anything to say to that, and indeed she did not want to; any gloss on his remark was unnecessary. The feeling behind the death analogy was perfectly vivid. This poor man had made a terrible mistake in becoming involved with Minty Auchterlonie in the first place, probably an ill-thought-out, regretted fling. And then it had brought these dreadful, painful consequences. But who had seduced whom? She him, Isabel imagined; he would have been an entertainment for Minty, as men can be for predatory women, a bit of variety to relieve her of the tedium of the worthy—but wealthy—Gordon. And now she had the result of that, a little boy who very clearly was loved to distraction by his natural father, who, through him, had been given a vision of fatherhood, only to see it abruptly snatched away.

  Most problems, Isabel had always believed, could be solved by the telling of the truth. This, though, was not one of them. She saw no solution here other than the denial of the love that Jock had for his son. She wished that she could have found some words of comfort for him, but she could not. There were none.

  Minty was the one who was responsible for this, she felt. She had brought this anguish to this man because she had thoughtlessly engaged in an extramarital affair. She paused. Of course Jock might have been responsible too: an affair, after all, always involves two—only complete narcissists are capable of having an affair with themselves. Here, though, it was easy to imagine Minty as Siren, luring Jock on to the rocks. So she was to blame for that, and, while one was about it, she had had no right to bring Isabel into the situation with those invented stories of threats and danger.

  Isabel would speak to her and decisively wash her hands of the whole business. Jamie was right—again. She should not get involved in the affairs of others, especially when the other person reveals herself as manipulative and ruthless, ready to use people where and when it suited her. Jamie was also right in another respect. He did not like Minty; how astute he was, how acute his judgement. Minty Auchterlonie, she now decided, was in that category of people who did nothing but bring trouble into the lives of others, whatever they did. The only way of dealing with them was to keep out of their way, to isolate them as bearers of a dangerous infection who must be stopped from going out into a city with their burden of germs. But who was there to stop Minty Auchterlonie? Isabel?

  She made to take her leave of Jock.

  “You’ll talk to her?” There was anxiety in his voice.

  She nodded. “Yes. But, as I’ve said, I don’t see it making the slightest bit of difference to anything.”

  “But please do it anyway. Please.”

  “I shall. I said I shall.” She paused. Minty had told her to offer him money; now it seemed quite unnecessary, and quite inappropriate. And yet, it was there in the background, and might just move the situation on; one never knew.

  “There’s something else,” she said. “I don’t know whether I should even mention this. You may feel very insulted. I suspect you will.”

  “What?”

  “Money. She told me that she would … would compensate you for dropping your claim on Roderick.”

  He was quite still; he did not move. But she saw that something was going on in his mind. He turned his head away.

  “I’m sorry even to have raised this,” she said.

  He shrugged. “You were an emissary. I’m a lawyer and I know that you have to say unpalatable things when you’re acting for somebody else.”

  She was relieved that he did not appear to be angry. But if he was not angry, then what had he been thinking when she made the offer?

  “Minty mentioned a figure of fifty thousand pounds,” she continued.

  He did not meet her gaze. He was looking at a bee orchid, now in flower: a blaze of gold. So are we all reduced by money, thought Isabel; so are we all corrupted.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ISABEL HAD TRIED not to think about Christopher Dove, ignoring him as one studiously avoids looking at an ominous rain-cloud spotted on a country walk. But such acts of self-delusion provide only temporary relief, and she knew that sooner or later she would have to answer his letter and the charge it contained. She was not a prevaricator by nature and she would get round to it, but it seemed at the time that there were just rather too many unpleasant or delicate duties waiting to be performed.

  She would have to write to Christopher Dove; she would have to speak to Minty Auchterlonie; she would have to buy Cat an engagement present and make a further effort to like Bruno; she would even have to bring herself to watch Oil so that she could tell him that she had seen him on the screen. He would like that, Isabel thought, and it might be a way of building a relationship between them, which she knew she had to do. She had to do so many things, and most of them, it seemed to her, were things that she did not really want to do. That, though, was what life was like for most of us: doing things that we would probably not do if we really had any choice in the matter.

  She th
ought about this as she sat at her desk the following day. Jamie had caught an early train from Haymarket to Glasgow, to play in a recording session—lucrative work that came his way occasionally and that he enjoyed. Grace had taken Charlie for a walk down Morningside Road, where there was household shopping to be done, and that left her with the time to get through the mail that had piled up again on her desk. But no sooner had she started than the telephone rang.

  For a moment she toyed with the idea of not answering. It was a delicious feeling, ignoring the phone, a feeling of freedom almost wicked in its intensity. Why, she asked herself, should we be so enslaved by such instruments?

  She looked at the telephone on her desk, struggling with the temptation to let it ring itself out. How many rings would that be? If it was Jamie on the line he would let it ring and ring because he would know that she was somewhere in the house. But if it was a stranger it might ring only five or six times before the caller gave up.

  After eight rings she reached forward and lifted the receiver.

  “Miss Dalhousie?”

  The man’s voice was one that she had heard before, but not for some time and she could not place it.

  “Lettuce speaking.”

  Her hand tightened about the receiver. Of course, that was it; those precise, rather pedantic tones were familiar because it was Professor Lettuce, former chairman of the editorial board of the Review, professor of moral philosophy, author of Living Strenuously and, most significantly, friend and mentor of Christopher Dove.

  “How nice to hear from you, Professor Lettuce.” The words came out before she could stop them. It was a lie, and she should not have uttered them. It was not nice to hear from Professor Lettuce—it never had been. Lettuce: what a ridiculous name, she thought. Poor Lettuce: his salad days were over. She smiled; a secret joke, even such a weak and childish one, made it so much easier.