Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 06

by The Lost Art of Gratitude

  It had not been an argument, merely a discussion about why things are done, or not done, the way they are—or are not.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SHE LEFT THE OFFICES of McGregor, Fraser & Co. and walked the short distance into Charlotte Square itself. It was a little after noon, and she felt at a loose end. Grace had been left in charge of Charlie until two, and was taking him out to lunch with one of her spiritualist friends, Annie, a woman whom Isabel had not met but of whom she had heard a great deal. Annie, who came from the Isle of Mull, was said to have a particular gift of second sight. “A lot of people from the islands are like that,” said Grace. “They see things we don’t see. Annie often knows what the weather is going to be like. It’s uncanny.”

  Isabel had been about to suggest that Annie might perhaps watch the weather report, but checked herself. She had discovered that there was no point in engaging with Grace on these issues, as her housekeeper usually interpreted even mild disagreement as a direct challenge to her entire Weltanschauung. Not that Grace felt undermined by such exchanges. “You’ll find out,” Isabel had once heard her mutter. “You’ll find out once you cross over.”

  Isabel had thought about this. She was open-minded enough to recognise that the self—or the soul, if one wished—might have an extra-corporeal existence that might just survive the demise of the mass of brain tissue that appeared to sustain it; the rigid exclusion of that possibility could be seen as much as a statement of faith as its rigid assertion. That is what she believed, and it allowed her to concede that Grace could be right. It also allowed her to find room for spirituality in its attempt to give form to a feeling that there was something beyond what we could see and touch.

  “I’ve never asked you this,” Jamie had once said, as they sat together one summer evening on the lawn. “Do you believe in …” He looked at her and spread his hands to create a space.

  And that space, she thought, might be God. “In God? Is that what you’re asking?” She assumed so, although he could very easily have been about to ask, “Do you believe in Scottish independence?” or “Do you believe in pouring the milk in first when you make a cup of tea?” Both important questions, but not ones that would necessarily lead to much.

  He picked a tiny blade of grass and idly began to strip it down; how complex—and perfect—the construction of even this little piece of vegetation. “Yes. I suppose that’s what I want to know.”

  “And you?” she asked.

  “You first. I asked you.” Children dared one another in this way: you jump first, no you, no you go, then I will.

  She lay back on the grass. The night was warm as was the lawn itself, warm, breathing out into the darkening air. The earth breathes, she thought.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Not in the white-bearded sense. But I sense something that is beyond me. I’m not sure I would give it the name God. But one could, if one wanted to.”

  He listened carefully, and she realised, turning her head slightly so that she could see him, that for him this was one of the most intimate conversations they had ever had. To talk about sex was nothing to talking about God; the body stripped bare was never as bare as the soul so stripped. “And what about you?” she asked gently.

  “I don’t think about it very much. It’s not really the sort of thing that I think much about.”

  The answer pleased her. She would not have wanted him to reveal a certainty concealed up to this point. And there was something unattractive about a belief that excluded all doubt.

  “But you’re not an out-and-out atheist? You don’t deride people who do believe in God?”

  Again his answer pleased her. “No, not at all. People need some idea … some idea of where they are.”

  “Exactly.”

  He had been lying down too, and now he propped himself up on an elbow and faced her. “And there’s Mozart.”

  She encouraged him to explain.

  “Mozart, you see,” he said, “is so perfect. If there can be music like that, it must be tied in some way to something outside us—it has to be. Some combination of harmony and shape that has nothing to do with us—it’s just there. Maybe God’s something to do with that. Something to do with beauty.”

  Something to do with beauty. Yes, she thought, that was one way of expressing it. Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we would find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations. It was an intriguing thought, as it meant that a concert could be a spiritual experience, a secular painting a religious icon, a beguiling face a passing angel.

  But that was on the lawn and this was in Charlotte Square. She looked at her watch again. The meeting with Jock Dundas had resolved itself well—in a handshake that had amounted to an act of reconciliation. Yet in another sense it had left her angry and disturbed. She had been used by Minty Auchterlonie, and had she not gone to see Jock Dundas, she might never have discovered that fact. It should not surprise her, of course. Peter Stevenson had spelled it out for her: Minty was, quite simply, wicked. Of course she would use people, as she had just used Isabel.

  As she began to walk round the square, thinking of having lunch somewhere but not yet decided, Isabel found her anger mounting. Anger was like that, she knew: one did not necessarily feel at one’s angriest in the first few minutes after some act of provocation by another—one’s anger slowly grew as the implications of what had happened sank in. And there was a physiological basis to this too: levels of noradrenaline peaked in the system some time after the event. Anger of the moment was often less vivid than the anger that came later, once one got home and reflected on what had happened.

  She stopped walking and stood quite still, closing her eyes. I am a philosopher, she told herself. I shall not allow myself to be overcome by this emotion of anger. I shall not. She opened her eyes. She took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled. Her heart rate slowed. That’s better, she thought. That was the way to deal with noradrenaline. Minty is … Minty is nothing. But she was not nothing. There was no comfort to be obtained in thinking something so patently false. No, she is not nothing, she is simply a manipulative psychopath. But even that was not very satisfactory; labelling another may help, but not always. A label which one can preface with the word poor is capable of putting things in perspective and defusing antagonism, but we did not say poor psychopath.

  She took another deep breath and began to walk again. She was now outside the National Trust for Scotland café on the south side of Charlotte Square. It was just what she needed: the National Trust stood for stability, for reason, and for conservation of what had gone before. The Trust looked after castles and gardens and stretches of coastline. It was synonymous with peace and calm, and Isabel decided she would order a bowl of soup in the café—there was nothing quite like soup as a comfort food—and she would have a sandwich or two and perhaps a glass of wine. All of which, she imagined, would remove any remaining traces of anger-inducing noradrenaline as surely as a glass of something rich in antioxidants will mop up circulating free radicals.

  She went in and took a seat at one of the tables. She looked about her. A waitress was coming towards her, smiling, bearing a menu, and behind her was another waitress holding a plate of food. She looked in the other direction. The café was not crowded; only one or two tables were occupied as it was not yet the lunch hour. But the table next to hers was taken, and at it was sitting Minty Auchterlonie.

  IT IS HARD to ignore the other people in a room when there are only a few of you. You can try, of course, and some people make a passable job of acting as if others are just not there. Grace had once recounted such an experience when she had found herself in a small room with two other candidates for a part-time job in a hotel. One of the others had acknowledged her presence and smiled encouragingly; the other woman, “putting on airs” said Grace, pretended that nobody else was in the room and looked everywhere but at her companions—up at t
he ceiling, at the pictures on the wall, at her wristwatch. Isabel relished the thought: Grace in combat was glorious.

  “And what happened?” asked Isabel.

  “When I walked past her I stood on her toe,” said Grace. “Deliberately.”

  Although Isabel would have preferred not to encounter Minty in the National Trust café, the other woman was none the less there, and was looking in Isabel’s direction.

  “Isabel!”

  Isabel looked up from her feigned scrutiny of the menu; it had been upside down anyway.

  She smiled at Minty, who rose from her table and crossed the floor towards her.

  “Are you by yourself?” Minty asked brightly.

  Isabel had no alternative but to welcome Minty to the empty seat on the other side of her table.

  “I very rarely come to this place,” said Minty. “I usually have lunch at my desk. I send my assistant out for a sandwich. Of course there are business lunches, and I have my places for those. What about you?”

  Isabel waved a hand airily. “Oh, just like you. A sandwich. A bowl of soup. Mostly at home.”

  “You’re so lucky,” said Minty. “Not to have a job.”

  Isabel’s eyes narrowed; she would not be condescended to by Minty. “Actually, I do have a job. As you know, I edit a journal.”

  Minty seemed hardly to hear the reply. This was not a real job as far as she was concerned. “Of course.”

  Isabel glanced at the menu. The soup was Tuscan bean. “Tuscan bean,” she began to point out, but was cut short by Minty. “I was going to phone you this evening,” she said. “This is fortuitous.”

  Isabel looked at Minty evenly. “Yes, I wanted to talk to you too.”

  “Well, here we are,” said Minty breezily. “Tell me, how did—”

  Isabel decided that it was her turn to interject. “I’ve just seen Jock Dundas,” she said. “I went to his office.”

  Minty was silent. Isabel saw a muscle on the side of her face twitch slightly; it was almost imperceptible, but she saw it.

  “Yes,” Isabel continued. “I went round to McGregor, Fraser and talked to him.”

  “A good firm,” said Minty. “We occasionally use—”

  Isabel was aware that any conversation with Minty was a struggle for control. Again she cut in. “He told me something quite extraordinary. He said that Margaret Wilson had been speaking to him.”

  Minty frowned. “Margaret Wilson? The Margaret Wilson at the bank? That one?”

  “Yes. Your Margaret Wilson. And what she told him has effectively frightened him off.”

  Minty shook her head in puzzlement. “I’ve never mentioned you to Margaret. Never.”

  Isabel watched her. Minty would have no difficulty, she thought, in denying any knowledge of this. But she was determined to persist.

  “Margaret Wilson is a friend of yours, I believe.”

  “She isn’t,” snapped Minty. “She works at the bank, yes, but I don’t know her all that well. And let me repeat what I’ve just said—she and I have never discussed anything to do with you. We just haven’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Isabel. “I’m afraid that I think that you have. The significant thing is that she told Jock Dundas that you had set me on to him and that I was some sort of … ‘enforcer.’ She said that my job would be to ruin him.”

  Minty’s eyes opened wide. “What?”

  “And Jock Dundas believed her. He’s very concerned about a partnership in the firm. He thought he wouldn’t get it if a scandal blew up.”

  Minty seemed to be listening very carefully. “Even if …”

  “Even if that means giving up Roderick.”

  Minty sat back in her chair. Isabel found herself feeling surprised over her adversary’s reaction. She had anticipated a flat denial from Minty, which she would simply discount. But what she saw now was something quite different. There had been an initial denial—at least with regard to Margaret Wilson—but that had been followed by a reaction that was altogether more calculating.

  Minty now leaned forward. “Well, I must say that this is very satisfactory, Isabel,” she said. “At least from my point of view. As for this … this ridiculous story that Jock came up with—who knows where he got that from. He probably made it up.”

  “Why? Why would he make it up?”

  Minty shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea.” She paused for a moment. “To get back at me? Probably. A parting shot. Yes, why not? People get pleasure from harming others … after it’s all over. Hell hath no fury—you know the expression.”

  “Like a woman scorned,” Isabel continued. “That saying rather focuses on women, as I recall.”

  Minty laughed. “Oh, come on! Men are just as bad as we are. A man can be as vituperative as a woman any day. Are you telling me that men don’t go in for revenge?”

  “They do, I suppose.”

  “Well,” said Minty. “There you are.”

  Isabel needed to find something out. “I take it that you ended the affair? It wasn’t the other way round?”

  Minty did not answer immediately; she glanced away. “It was me. Yes. I became a little bit bored, frankly. Some men—these good-looking ones—are really rather, how shall I put it delicately, disappointing. You’ll know that, of course.”

  Isabel caught her breath at the naked effrontery. Minty had seen Jamie and was obviously including him in this category of disappointing good-looking men. You’ll know that, of course.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said icily. “Perhaps I’ve just been luckier.”

  They stared at each other. Isabel felt her dislike for Minty well up; simple, pure dislike. Is this what hate is? she asked herself. Or is hate something even stronger? Is hate the desire to annihilate, to stamp out—to annul the other? She could not recall hating in that sense—ever—but perhaps this is how it started.

  The intensity of her antipathy worried her, and she briefly closed her eyes. Unbidden, a line of poetry came to her: Let hatred not distort us / nor make crooked our ways. She could not place it; it was dredged from some deep place in her memory, detached from its reference, its anchor. But she would heed it, wherever it came from.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “I suppose he might wish to harm you.”

  Minty sensed a small victory. “Yes,” she said, simply. “As I told you.”

  Yet it still seemed implausible to Isabel—why would Jock Dundas bother? And she remained puzzled by Minty’s reaction. If Minty had indeed set the whole thing up, then surely she would have taken more trouble to protest her innocence. She had not even bothered about that, as if she did not care at all whether or not Isabel believed her.

  Isabel’s appetite had disappeared, and even had she still felt hungry and in need of soup, she could not face the prospect of lunch with a triumphant Minty. She looked at her watch. “I’m not sure that I have time for lunch after all,” she said. “I have to see somebody.”

  Minty smiled sweetly, almost conspiratorially. “Somebody interesting?”

  “Very,” said Isabel. I’m married, she thought. Or almost—and you know it. It was Charlie—she would go home and wait for him. She would make him a warm chocolate drink, which he loved, even on a sunny day. She would settle him for his afternoon rest and hold his hand while he went to sleep. Charlie belonged to a world of innocence and truth—not to the world of lies and deception inhabited by Minty.

  “I’m grateful to you,” said Minty. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am. Everything’s changed now. You helped, and I owe you.”

  Isabel looked at her watch once again—unnecessarily—and began to rise from the table.

  “I really am grateful,” Minty said. “If there’s ever anything …”

  Isabel tried to smile. “Thank you,” she said. “One never knows.”

  “No,” said Minty. “One doesn’t.”

  Isabel started to leave, but Minty suddenly stood up and reached out for the sleeve of her jac
ket; she felt her fingers around her arm, surprisingly tight.

  “A final thought,” said Minty.

  Isabel moved her arm slightly, causing Minty’s grip to loosen.

  “You know something? I think that Jock had no real interest in Roderick at all. None at all.”

  Isabel waited for her to continue, although she wanted to leave now; she felt that she was becoming entangled in an unpleasant end-of-affair squabble. Shots were being exchanged, recriminations, and all the parties wanted in such circumstances was to enlist your support, to hear you say: “Yes, you’re right, how terrible, how badly you’ve been treated.”

  Minty seemed to warm to her theme. “He doesn’t care, does he? This business with Roderick was just to put me on the spot, to exert pressure on me. And then, when push comes to shove, he drops the claim like that—just like that. No man who really loved his son—really loved him—would choose professional promotion over the boy himself. He just wouldn’t, would he?” She pressed her hands together in a curious gesture that Isabel could not interpret.

  Isabel said nothing. Her earlier belief that Minty had lied was now being undermined by the apparent logic of what Minty said. What Minty said could be true. In fact, as she thought about it, it seemed to her that she was very probably right. But if this was so, then she had misjudged Minty again, and that conclusion made her feel foolish. It was as if she was swithering this way and that, quite unable to make up her mind—a reed blown in the wind. “Don’t you think I’m right?” asked Minty.

  Isabel started to leave again. But not before she said, “Yes, you may be.”

  GRACE WAS LATE in bringing Charlie home, but was apologetic. “Annie didn’t draw breath,” she said. “That woman! Talked and talked, which meant that lunch was late. I was getting hungrier and hungrier.”