Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I can tell that you think it’ll be funny,” said Grace, as she made her way to the cupboard where she kept her cleaning equipment. “But it isn’t, you know. It’s serious. Very serious. And you meet some interesting people there too.” She was standing in front of the cupboard now, extracting a broom, but still talking. “I’ve just met a rather nice man in our group, you know. His wife went over into spirit a year or so ago. He’s very pleasant.”

  Isabel looked up sharply, but Grace had started to leave the room. She glanced at Isabel as she did so, but only briefly, and it was a glance that gave nothing away. Isabel looked through the open door, at the place where Grace had been standing, and mulled over what she had said. But then her thoughts returned to Ian, and to their curious, unnerving conversation in the Arts Club. He had said that he was concerned that the images that he was seeing would kill him—a strange thing to say, she thought, and she had asked him to explain why he should feel this. Sadness, he had said. Sadness. “I feel this terrible sadness when it happens. I can’t tell you what it’s like—but it’s the sorrow of death. I know that sounds melodramatic, but that’s just what it is. I’m sorry.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ISABEL DID NOT LIKE her desk to get too cluttered, but that did not mean that it was uncluttered. In fact, most of the time there were too many papers on it, usually manuscripts that had to be sent off for peer assessment. She was not sure about the term peer assessment, even if it was the widely accepted term for a crucial stage in the publishing of journal articles. Sometimes the expression amounted to exactly that: equals looked dispassionately at papers by equals and gave their view. But Isabel had discovered that this did not always happen, and papers were consigned into the hands of their authors’ friends or enemies. This was unwitting; it was impossible for anybody to keep track of the jealousies and rivalries that riddled academia, and Isabel had to hope that she could spot the concealed agendas that lay behind outright antagonism or, more often, and more subtly, veiled antagonism: “an interesting piece, perhaps interesting enough to attract a ripple of attention.” Philosophers could be nasty, she reflected, and moral philosophers the nastiest of all.

  Now, seated at her cluttered desk, she began the task of clearing at least some of the piles of paper. She worked energetically, and it was almost twelve when she glanced at the clock. She had done, she thought, enough work for the morning, and perhaps for the day. She stood up, stretched, and went over to her study window to look out on the garden. The display of pinks in the flowerbed that ran alongside the far garden wall was as bright as it ever had been, and the line of lavender bushes that she had planted a few years previously was in full flower. She looked down at the flowerbed immediately below her window. Somebody had been digging at the roots of an azalea and had kicked small piles of soil onto the edge of the lawn. She smiled. Brother Fox.

  She very rarely saw Brother Fox, who was discreet in his movements, as befitted one who must have thought that he lived in enemy territory. Not that Isabel was an enemy; she was an ally, and he might just have sensed that when he found the chicken carcasses that she left out for him. Once she had seen him at close quarters, and he had turned tail and fled, but had stopped after a few paces and they had looked at one another. Their eyes met for only a few seconds, but it was enough for Brother Fox to realise that her intentions towards him were not hostile, and she saw his body relax before he turned and trotted off.

  She was looking at the signs of his digging when the telephone rang.

  “So,” said Cat, who always started telephone conversations abruptly. “Working?”

  Isabel looked at her desk, now half clear. “I was,” she said. “But have you any better ideas?”

  “You sound as if you want an excuse.”

  “I do,” said Isabel. “I was going to stop anyway, but an excuse would be welcome.”

  “Well,” said Cat. “My Italian friend has arrived. Tomasso. Remember the one I told you about.”

  Isabel was guarded. Cat was sensitive about Isabel’s past interference in her affairs, and she did not want to say anything that could be misconstrued. So she simply said, “Good.”

  There was a silence. “Good,” said Isabel again.

  “I thought that you might like to come and have lunch here,” said Cat. “In the delicatessen. He’s coming back once he’s put his car away safely at the hotel. He’s staying at Prestonfield House.”

  “You don’t think that I shall be . . . in the way?” she asked. “Won’t you want to . . . to have lunch by yourselves? I’m not sure if you’ll want me there.”

  Cat laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s nothing between him and me. I’m not thinking of getting involved, if that’s worrying you. He’s good company, but that’s as far as it goes.”

  Isabel wanted to ask whether Tomasso thought that too, but said nothing. She was serious about not interfering and any remark like that could easily be seen as interference. At the same time, she felt relieved that Tomasso was not going to be Cat’s new boyfriend. She knew that it was wrong to judge him on the basis of scanty evidence—no evidence at all, in fact—but surely there was good reason to feel concerned. A handsome young Italian—she assumed he was handsome: all of Cat’s male friends were—with a taste for vintage Bugattis would hardly be the reliable, home-loving sort. A breaker of speed limits—and hearts, she thought, and almost muttered, but stopped herself in time.

  “Will you come over?” said Cat.

  “Of course,” said Isabel. “If you really want me to.”

  “I do,” said Cat. “I’ve got a salad specially prepared for you. Extra olives. The ones you like.”

  “I would have come anyway,” said Isabel. “You know that.”

  Upstairs, she looked at herself in the mirror. She was wearing the dove-grey skirt that she often wore when editing. It was complemented, if complemented were not too strong a term, by a loose, cream wool cardigan on which a small smudge of ink had appeared on the left sleeve. She smiled. This would not do. One could not meet a man with an interest in vintage Bugattis in such an outfit; indeed, one could not meet any Italian dressed like that.

  She opened her wardrobe. Guilty by Design, she thought, looking at a black shift dress she had bought from the aptly named dress shop in Morningside, for there was a great deal of guilt involved in the buying of expensive dresses—delicious guilt; she had loved that dress and had worn it too often. Italians wore black, did they not? So something different—a red cashmere polo-neck would transform the skirt, and a pair of dangly diamanté earrings would add to the effect. There! Cat would be proud of her. Tomasso’s own aunt would probably wear widow’s weeds and have a moustache and— She stopped herself. Not only was that uncharitable, but it was probably also incorrect. Italian aunts used to run to fat and excessive hair, but things had changed, had they not, and now they were more likely to be slender, fashionable, tanned.

  She called out a goodbye to Grace, who replied from somewhere deep within the house, and then made her way outside. The students from Napier University nearby had lined the street with their cars, which irritated the neighbours but which Isabel did not mind too much. Local people were never all that real to students; they were the backdrop for the student drama of parties and long conversations over cups of coffee and . . . Isabel paused. What else did students do? Well, she knew the answer to that, and why should they not, as long as they were responsible about it? She did not approve of promiscuity, which she thought made a mockery of our duty to cherish and respect others; an emotional fast food, really, which one would not wish on anybody. But at the same time one should not starve oneself.

  As she turned into Merchiston Crescent, the road that wound its way towards Bruntsfield and Cat’s delicatessen, Isabel imagined what it would be like to give to others the gift of love. Not from oneself—as that may be unwanted—but from those whose love the recipient yearned for. Such a power that would be, she thought. Here, my dear, is the girl whom you have adm
ired for so long, and yes, she is yours. And here, for you, is that desirable boy whose eye you have so long tried to catch, in vain; well, try catching it now.

  I do not even have a man myself, Isabel said to herself; I am in no position to give one to another. Of course, she had not over-exercised herself in the obtaining of a man, not since John Liamor. For some years after that, a long time, she had not even been sure that she wanted one. But now, she thought, she was ready again to take the risk that men brought with them—the risk of being left, cheated upon, made unhappy. She could get one if she wanted, she imagined. She was young enough and attractive enough to compete. Men found her interesting; she knew that, because they showed it in the way they reacted to her. It would be good to go out to dinner with the right man. She could see herself sitting at a table in the window at Oloroso, looking out over the roofs of George Street to Fife in the distance, and a man on the other side of the table, a man who was a good conversationalist, with a sense of humour, who would make her laugh, but who could make her cry, too, when he spoke of the more important, moving things. A man just like . . . She racked her brain. What men like that were there? And, more to the point perhaps, where were they?

  Jamie, of course. He came unbidden into her mind, sitting at that unreal table at Oloroso, watching her with those grey eyes of his, and speaking to her about exactly those things that they liked to speak about. She closed her eyes. It was too late. There had been a fatal, anachronistic error in the stars that had brought them together. Had she been born fifteen years later, then it would have been a perfect match, and she could imagine herself fighting tooth and nail to possess him—he would have been all that she wanted; but now, it was inappropriate, and impossible, and she had decided not even to think about it. She had freed herself of those thoughts of Jamie in the same way in which an addict frees himself of thoughts of the bottle, or the racetrack, or the bedroom.

  She was approaching the end of Merchiston Crescent, and she saw ahead the busy line of cars coming into town from Morningside and further south. Cat’s delicatessen was in the middle of a block, with a jeweller on one side and an antiques shop on the other. A few doors further down, on the same side as the delicatessen, was the fishmonger from whom her father had bought his Loch Fyne kippers for all those years. She had seen the antiques dealer buying kippers himself, bending down to peer at the smoked fish on the slab. One of the pleasures of living in an intimate city, she thought, was that one could know so much about one’s fellow citizens. This was what made those small Italian cities so comfortable: the fact that there was so little anonymity. She remembered visiting her friend who lived in Reggio Emilia, the same friend who had taken her to the Parmesan factory, and taking a stroll with her in the piazza. It seemed that they stopped every second minute to pass the time of day with somebody. That one was a cousin; that one was a friend of an aunt; that one had lived on the floor below for a year or two and had then gone to Milan, but must be back; that one had the cruellest nickname when he was at school, yes, they called him that, they really did. One could not stroll in quite the same way in Edinburgh—the weather was hardly perfect for la bella figura—but one could at least see people one knew buying kippers.

  Cat’s delicatessen was busy when she arrived. As well as employing Eddie full-time, Cat had now taken on a young woman, Shona, who worked several hours a day and who was now at the counter, slicing salami. Cat was weighing cheese and Eddie was at the cash register. Isabel wondered whether she should offer to help, but thought perhaps that she might just get in the way. So she sat down at a table and picked up a magazine that was lying on the floor, abandoned by some untidy previous customer.

  She was immersed in an article by the time Cat came over to see her.

  “He’ll be here any moment,” Cat muttered. “I’m sure you’ll like him.”

  “I’m sure I shall,” said Isabel mildly.

  “No, I mean really like him,” Cat said. “Just wait and see.”

  Isabel was intrigued. “But I thought you sounded a little bit . . . how shall I put it? A little bit lukewarm when you spoke about him, on the phone.”

  “Oh,” said Cat lightly. “If you mean I sounded as if he’s not for me, yes, that’s right. He isn’t. But . . . But you’ll see what I mean.”

  “What’s the snag?” asked Isabel.

  Cat sighed. “Age.”

  “Age? How old is he? Seventy-five?”

  “Not quite,” said Cat. “About your age, I would have thought. Early forties.”

  Isabel was taken aback. “Over the hill in that case. You think.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” said Cat. “Forty’s nothing really. Forty is thirty these days, I know. I know. It’s just that for me, from the perspective of twenty-something, forty-something is . . . I’m afraid I don’t see myself falling for somebody who’s almost twenty years older than I am. That’s all. It’s simply a question of sticking to one’s contemporaries.”

  Isabel touched her niece on the forearm in a gesture of reassurance. “That’s perfectly reasonable,” she said. “You don’t have to apologise.”

  “Thank you.” Cat looked up. The door had opened and a man had entered. He cast a quick eye about the delicatessen and, spotting Cat, gave her a wave.

  Tomasso came over to the table. Cat rose to her feet and gave him her hand. Isabel watched, and then he turned to her, and reached forward to shake hands with her. He was smiling, and she saw his eyes move across her, not very obviously or crudely, but move nonetheless.

  He sat down with them and Cat went to fetch him the glass of mineral water for which he had asked. It was too late for coffee, he said, and he was not hungry. “Water,” he said, “will be perfect.”

  He turned to Isabel and smiled. “Your city is very beautiful,” he said. “We Italians think of Scotland as being so romantic and here it is, just as we imagined it!”

  “And we have our own ideas about Italy,” said Isabel.

  He inclined his head slightly. “Which are?”

  “So romantic,” said Isabel.

  Tomasso’s eyes widened with mirth. “Well,” he said. “We are in the realm of cliché, are we not?”

  Isabel agreed. But the clichés came from somewhere, and that was why they tended to have a measure of truth in them. If Italy was not romantic, then what country was? She looked at Tomasso, a bland look, she hoped, but one which concealed serious examination. He was tall and well built, and his features, which were strong, were . . . were familiar. He looked like somebody she knew, but who was it? And then, in a moment, she realised who it was. This was Jamie fifteen years on.

  The realisation surprised her, and for a few moments she was sunk in thought. Jamie was the borderline-Mediterranean type, as she had often observed, and so it was perhaps not surprising that there should be some similarities between him and Tomasso, who was the real thing. But it went beyond that: there was something in the expression and in the way of speaking that made the two seem so similar. If you closed your eyes, briefly, which she now did, briefly, and if you factored out the Italian pronunciation, then it could be Jamie with her. But Jamie would never come into Cat’s delicatessen—even now.

  This unexpected comparison unnerved her and for a moment she floundered. The banal came to her rescue. “You speak such beautiful English,” she said.

  Tomasso, who had been about to say something, inclined his head. “I’m glad you understand me. I’ve lived in London, by the way. I was there for four years, working in an Italian bank. You wouldn’t have said that I spoke good English when I first arrived. They used to stare at me and ask me to repeat what I had just said.”

  “They’re ones to talk,” said Isabel. “With their Estuary En-glish and its words all run together. The language is being murdered daily.”

  “The bank paid for me to have lessons with an elocution teacher,” said Tomasso. “He made me hold a mirror in front of my mouth and say things like The rain in Spain . . .”

  “Falls ma
inly on the plain,” supplied Isabel.

  “And where’s that ghastly plain?” asked Tomasso.

  “In Spain,” Isabel answered.

  They laughed. She looked at him, noticing the small lines around the edge of the mouth that told her that this was a man who was used to laughter.

  “Is my niece going to show you Scotland?” Isabel asked.

  Tomasso shrugged. “I asked her if she would, but unfortunately she cannot. She is very tied up with this business. But I shall see what I can myself.”

  Isabel asked him if he was going to Inverness. Visitors to Scotland made the mistake—in her view—of going to Inverness, which was a pleasant city, but nothing more. There were far better places to go, she thought.

  “Yes,” he said. “Inverness. Everybody tells me I must go there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s . . .” He trailed off, and then burst out laughing. “I shall not go there. I shall not.”

  “Good,” said Isabel.

  Cat returned. She was not going to be able to show Tomasso Scotland, but she was able to get away to show him Edinburgh that afternoon. Would Isabel care to accompany them?

  Isabel hesitated. She noticed Tomasso glance at Cat after the invitation had been extended; just a quick glance, but enough to tell her that he did not want her to go along.

  “I’m sorry,” Isabel said, “but duty calls. My desk is looking awful. In fact, I can’t see the surface for papers.”