The Lost Art of Gratitude id-6

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Has somebody shot him?”

  Jamie shook his head. Brother Fox had his enemies in the neighbourhood, for sure, but he doubted if they were armed. “Maybe a dog.” Will there be dugs?

  Isabel shivered; she did not like the thought of fox hunting. Why dress up, she wondered, to kill something? If foxes had sometimes to be killed—and farmers had to protect their lambs—she felt that it should be done with regret rather than delight. “His balance seems affected. When he came out he was … well, it was like a lurch.”

  It seemed to Isabel that this was no different from any other situation where somebody needed her help. “We have to do something.”

  “Yes.”

  They walked back towards the house. She remembered the man in Dalkeith with his traps; she had never thought that she would have occasion to contact him, but now perhaps she did. They would never be able to catch Brother Fox unless they could get him into a trap. If they did that, then they could call the vet and the wound could be cleaned out. If they did not do this, then Brother Fox would either get better himself, as happened in the wild, or die a slow and painful death, as also happened in the wild. It seemed to Isabel that the second possibility was the more likely.

  “I’m going to phone the man from Dalkeith,” she said. “His number must be in the yellow pages. Under Pest and Vermin Consultants.”

  “Rat catcher,” said Jamie.

  They went inside. Charlie was beginning to niggle, which meant that he was ready for his morning nap; he had been up since six that morning. While Jamie took him to his room, Isabel went into her study and took out the heavy volume of yellow pages from the drawer in which she kept it. She paged through it: Painters and Decorators—Quality Work Since 2001. And before that? Potato Merchants, Pipers—who would pay them? she wondered. Finally she found it. Pest and Vermin Consultants. She saw the distinctive advertisement, with its picture of a small army of cockroaches, wasps and moles in panic-stricken retreat. Moles? She did not think of them as pests, but then she had none burrowing under her lawn; her attitude might change if moles were actively undermining her. So William McClarty of Peebles Street, Dalkeith, was a mowdie man as well. The mowdie man was the mole-catcher in Scots, the subject of a poem she had once known by heart. The mowdie man came on to the land a figure of vengeance, and stalked the mole, the mowdie, whose velvet coat and tiny paws would break the heart of anyone, the poet said—except the mowdie man’s.

  There were two numbers—one with (house) beside it; the other with (all other times). She telephoned the house first but there was no reply. She imagined the phone ringing in the empty corridor of the mowdie man’s house; a dog barking perhaps at the insistent ring, but the mowdie man himself out, stalking the land, driving off those armies of pests. She dialled the other number and the mowdie man answered immediately, or so she thought. But it was not him. “It’s his brither,” came a voice. “You wanting Billy?” She explained that she was, and she was asked to hold the line. So the mowdie man had a brother, she thought, who …

  “Billy McClarty speaking.”

  She told him who she was. Then: “I have a fox.”

  “There’s a lot of them in Edinburgh. They’ve been breeding like Cath …” He stopped himself. “Like nobody’s business.”

  Isabel was astonished. She had heard that a long time ago, but nobody said it these days, she thought.… And yet, his name was Billy McClarty and the Billy could be a giveaway. An Orangeman: Billy McClarty was an Orangeman.

  “Like rabbits, you mean,” she said.

  Billy McClarty was silent for a moment. Then he continued, “You want him away?”

  She caught her breath. She felt as if she were a conspirator, contacting a hit man with a view to a contract killing—which it was, in a way. Their victim was a sentient being, with memory, plans, a family—with some sense of who he was. For a moment an intrusive, unwanted thought crossed her mind: one might invite Billy McClarty to take Minty away; to set a large trap in her walled garden, baited with … What would one bait a Minty trap with? The answer came to Isabel almost immediately: money.

  “No, I don’t want him away.”

  Billy McClarty continued. “Cannae kill him there,” he said. “I get into trouble with neighbours. Where are you, by the way?”

  She told him, and there was a grunt of recognition at the other end of the line. “There are lots of folk there who encourage foxes,” he said. “I’ve heard of a daft wumman there who gies chicken to the fox. Those dafties wouldnae like it if I killed him, ken?”

  Isabel said nothing. She was that daft woman. So one of the neighbours had considered trapping Brother Fox, for how else would Billy McClarty know about her? It was a very uncomfortable feeling; Brother Fox belonged to her.

  She decided to explain. “I like him,” she said. “I know you won’t sympathise, but I actually like this fox. And yes, I do give him chicken. He has as much right to exist as you do, Mr. McClarty.”

  Billy McClarty sounded unsurprised. “Oh, aye?”

  “Aye,” said Isabel. “So we understand one another now.”

  “I think we do.” He paused. “Nobody’s asked me to trap that fox.”

  “Well, I’m asking you now,” said Isabel. “He’s been injured and I want to get the vet to take a look at him.”

  “Hundred pounds,” said Billy.

  Isabel had no idea what the going rate for the trapping of a fox was. One hundred pounds sounded rather a lot—fifty? He was sure to be overcharging her.

  “How about fifty?” she ventured.

  “That would get you only hauf a fox,” said Billy. “You choose. Fifty for hauf a fox. One hundred for a whole fox.”

  She agreed, and they arranged a time. Billy would try to get into town by four in the afternoon; he had work to do until then. She would need to have a roast chicken available—or, if possible, a pheasant. “He cannae resist a pheasant. Mind you,” he warned, “a sick fox sometimes doesnae eat. Even pheasant. We’ll see.”

  Before she rang off, Isabel had a last shot to fire. “And a final thing, Mr. McClarty: I’m not daft.”

  Billy McClarty laughed. “I wasnae meaning to be rude.”

  “Well, in general people don’t like to be referred to in those terms …” She did not complete the sentence. It would not help to lecture Billy McClarty on this; it would merely confirm his view. And she needed him now; or, rather, Brother Fox needed him. The contradiction struck her forcibly—this agent of Nemesis for foxes was about to become his rescuer.

  SHE DECIDED that it would be better to see Jock Dundas in person. A telephone conversation was sufficient for ordinary transactions, but not for those circumstances in which one needed to assess the other person’s reaction. Minty had mentioned the name of his firm, and it was simple work to arrange with his secretary an appointment for later that morning. Isabel looked at her watch; if she left now and walked to the lawyers’ offices in the West End she would arrive with a few minutes in hand.

  She chose to walk down to the bridge at Harrison Gardens and to follow the canal towpath to the basin at Fountainbridge. There were few people about—a handful of dog owners taking their dogs for a walk, a couple of runners glistening with sweat and engaged in an earnest discussion between their exhausted pantings, a teenager on a bicycle—the youth wore a leather jacket on which the words Attack Squad were embroidered in red. Who was being attacked, she asked herself, and why? He looked pallid, not unlike Eddie, and certainly not the type to attack anybody, Isabel thought, which was probably why he wore the jacket in the first place. Real members of an attack squad presumably never advertised themselves.

  The towpath afforded an unusual view of the city—the backs of tenement buildings with their rough stone walls making for a crazy-paving effect, pinched back greens on which drying washing was pegged on laundry lines, arched stone bridges, a disused brewery. And in the basin itself, where the canal came to an abrupt end, brightly painted barges were tethered against the side of the canal,
smoke coming from their tin-can chimneys, bicycles and other day-to-day paraphernalia stacked on narrow decks. The corners of a city, she thought, are where the sense of place was strongest. The world saw the official Edinburgh, the elegant Georgian squares, the lines of fluttering flags in Princes Street Gardens, the bands and the spectacles. It did not see the back greens, the closes, the streets where people led ordinary lives. It was possible, she reminded herself, to love both equally—the Scotland of the romantic tourist posters and this unadorned, workaday Scotland—and she was, in fact, fond of both of them and not ashamed, as some were, of the romanticised vision. Myth could be as sustaining as reality—sometimes even more so.

  She left the canal basin and made her way towards Lothian Road. Like all cities, Edinburgh changed quickly: a block or two could bring one to a different world. Lothian Road was traffic and bustle; all cheap Italian restaurants where spaghetti bolognese would count as the day’s special and low-life bars outside which black-suited pugilists served as bouncers, their broken noses bearing stark witness to their profession. Isabel did not like this street and wished it was not there, but knew that it had its role. Soldiers came here at night, down from the barracks at Redford, ready for hard drinking and picking up girls. If there was blood on Scottish pavements it was because of old wounds, not new; things that had happened a long time ago, old hardships, old cruelties, old exploitation and old injustice.

  And then, quite abruptly, the surly atmosphere of Lothian Road gave way to the Edinburgh of law and finance, and, amongst other discreet entrances, to the doorway of Messrs McGregor, Fraser & Co., Solicitors and Notaries Public, Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet. Isabel went in that door, just on the edge of Charlotte Square, and found herself in a waiting room not unlike the drawing room of one of the Georgian flats that graced the square just a few hundred yards away. A sofa and several armchairs surrounded a low table on which a selection of the day’s papers were arranged alongside Scottish Field, Homes & Interiors Scotland and The Economist. There was an air of calm to this room that belied what the business of McGregor, Fraser was all about: conflict and holding on to what one had. In the back offices somewhere in the building, there would be people in their shirtsleeves watching turbulent markets and planning litigation; but out here, in the front, there was no sign of that.

  The receptionist who had greeted Isabel smiled and spoke quietly into her telephone. Then she invited Isabel to wait. “Mr. Dundas will only be a moment.”

  He was not much more than that. “Ms. Dalhousie?”

  Isabel looked up from the magazine she was perusing. She had started on an article about a man and his friend who had transformed a run-down Glasgow flat into an elegant venue for entertaining. George (left) and Alice (right) had met at art college where they had both studied design. “We both liked red,” said George. “It was a bond between us,” explained Alice. “Reds brought us together.” And now the Glasgow flat which had been “the most ghastly beige colour when we saw it first—we were almost sick on the spot”—was largely red. “George knew a guy who made really good bespoke furniture. He had trained with Lord Linley and his work was all over London …”

  She put the magazine down with some reluctance. She would never be able to find out more about George and Alice, but she was not worried about them—reds would hold them together, she had no doubt about that.

  She stood up and looked at Jock Dundas, who was standing in the doorway. He looked grave, and she knew immediately that her instinct had been right.

  “This way, please,” he said, indicating a short corridor. At the end, behind a half-ajar door, was a small interview room furnished in dark mahogany.

  “Please sit down.”

  “Thank you.”

  He closed the door behind him and returned to take a seat at the table.

  Isabel studied him. He was frightened; behind the air of professional competence and suave self-assurance, there was fear.

  Jock Dundas spoke first. “Why have you come to see me?”

  “Because I believe you telephoned me yesterday.”

  He looked down at the table. “I didn’t leave a message. Perhaps I should have.”

  She wanted him to look at her, but he would not meet her eyes.

  “Are you afraid of something, Mr. Dundas?”

  He looked up sharply. “Yes, of course.”

  “May I ask what is it that you’re afraid of?”

  He dropped his gaze. “You,” he muttered.

  Isabel’s surprise prevented her from saying anything for a few moments. Jock Dundas spoke again. “You didn’t expect me to say something like that?”

  Isabel recovered her composure. “Of course not.” She paused. “Why on earth would you be frightened of me?” Then she added, “It’s ridiculous.”

  Again the lawyer’s reactions made it apparent that he meant what he said. “Is it? Is it ridiculous? Or is that just part of your technique of intimidation?”

  Isabel’s voice rose. “Of what?”

  He articulated the word carefully. “Intimidation.”

  Isabel leaned forward. “I am at a loss, Mr. Dundas. An utter loss.”

  If Isabel had been able to read Jock Dundas earlier, now he could do the same to her; and he, too, realised that Isabel was not dissembling. She was indeed at a loss, and this conclusion led to a sudden change in his demeanour. “You aren’t … you aren’t what Margaret Wilson said you are?”

  Isabel spread her hands in a gesture of puzzlement. “I have no idea what Margaret Wilson said I was.” Margaret Wilson? The name was vaguely familiar, but possibly only because its two elements were. Isabel knew plenty of Margarets and plenty of Wilsons; she could not place Margaret Wilson, though.

  Jock Dundas sat up. His earlier air of defeat had vanished and he was once again the confident lawyer, safe on his own ground.

  “And I’m afraid I don’t know who Margaret Wilson is. Or I don’t think I do.”

  “Margaret Wilson,” he said, “is one of Minty’s colleagues. They’re also quite close friends.”

  “I see. And?”

  “She came to see me after you and I met in the Botanics. She said that she had to warn me about something.”

  Jock Dundas had taken a pen out of his pocket and was fingering it, slipping the cap on and off. Isabel watched his fingers; they were tanned and the nails were carefully manicured. He was an elegant man; Minty would never have consorted with anybody crude.

  Jock continued with his explanation. “Margaret said that she had found out that Minty had approached a woman enforcer. That’s the word she used. Enforcer.”

  Isabel wanted to laugh. It was completely absurd. Enforcers were the thugs used by gangsters to twist people’s arms metaphorically, which meant to break them in reality.

  “She said I was an enforcer?”

  He nodded. “She said you were a subtle one.”

  “Well, at least that’s something,” said Isabel. “I should hate to be thought of as some sort of mafiosa.” She wondered whether Italian had a feminine form of mafioso. Presumably not, as the Mafia was traditionally a male organisation.

  “She said that you specialised in ruining reputations,” Jock continued. “She said that you could kill a professional reputation stone-dead. Through smears.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes. And she said that you were going to make sure that I didn’t get my partnership here.” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder. “This is a fairly conservative firm, as you may know. It wouldn’t be helpful for the partners here to know that I had …”

  “Had an affair with another man’s wife?” prompted Isabel. “Particularly a man as well-connected as Gordon?”

  “Yes. And she said that you could ruin me in other ways. She didn’t say how.”

  “I suppose there are ways,” said Isabel. “But not being an enforcer, I wouldn’t really know.”

  He sat back in his chair. “So I tried to contact you. To tell you that I was dropping my claim to Ro
derick. I didn’t get you and so I telephoned Margaret and asked her to pass on the message to Minty that I was out of it. Altogether. Completely. She wouldn’t hear from me again.”

  Isabel was listening, but as she did so she was trying to master what had happened. It was very neat. Minty had used her to give Jock Dundas a fright. She could have made the threats herself, but it might not have had the same effect. To hear that somebody else had been engaged—particularly somebody portrayed as being ruthless—gave a subtle twist to the situation. It was considerably more frightening, bringing in two enemies instead of one.

  “May I ask you something?” Isabel said.

  “Yes.”

  “If I tell you that this is complete nonsense,” she said. “If I tell you that I spoke to you the other day purely as a favour for Minty and with no intention at all of intimidating you. If I told you all this—and if you believed me—would you still give up your claim to Roderick?”

  “Yes.”

  “For career reasons?”

  It took him some time to speak. “All right. Yes. You won’t approve of that, will you?”

  Isabel remembered T. S. Eliot. This was a clear case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. But she said nothing about that.

  “I think it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “It really is.”

  She rose to her feet and offered her hand. “I think we should shake hands. We don’t have anything else to say to one another really.” But then she thought that in fact she did.

  “We have both been wronged by the same woman,” said Isabel.

  Jock Dundas looked thoughtful. Then he nodded his agreement. “Yes, we have.”

  “And I hope that you find somebody else,” said Isabel. “Maybe somebody with a child, or children. It’s a good thing to be a stepfather, you know, even if you can’t be a father. It’s a good thing.”

  They shook hands. Isabel noticed how soft his hands felt, like the hands of a woman, a young girl. She noticed, too, that he was wearing some sort of cologne—sandalwood, she thought. She had bought Jamie a bottle of something like that the previous Christmas, but he had left it on a shelf in the bathroom with the top off and it had evaporated. She had asked him, “Was that a mistake, Jamie? Or did your subconscious prompt you to do it because you don’t want to use it?” And he had looked at her, smiled, and said, “Why must you complicate everything, Isabel?”