Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Isabel glanced at the wall of books. These were books about those things that could not be seen or touched, but in that respect they were probably no different from books about pure mathematics. She made an appreciative but noncommittal sound.

  Grace now led the way into the meeting room, a large room with, at one end, a fireplace in front of which a platform and podium stood. Beside the podium was an easy chair and a table with an arrangement of flowers. A rather angular-looking woman, of about Isabel’s age, was sitting in the easy chair, her hands resting on her lap. She was gazing up at the ceiling, although as Grace and Isabel entered, her glance rested briefly, appraisingly, upon them. In the body of the room, rows of chairs had been set out in ranks. Grace pointed to seats near the back.

  “The best place to see what’s going on,” she said.

  Once seated, Isabel looked about her, discreetly. There was always a certain awkwardness, she felt, in the witnessing of the religious—or spiritual—rituals of others. It was rather like being an outsider at a family party, a Protestant in St. Peter’s Basilica, a Gentile at the Wailing Wall. One might sense the mystery, and understand its value for others, but one could not share it. Each of us is born into our own mysteries, thought Isabel, gazing at the flowers and then at the impassive face of the medium, but the mystery of another might just take us in and embrace us. And then what a sense of homecoming, of belonging!

  A man entered the room and took a seat immediately behind them. He leant forward and whispered something to Grace, who smiled and said something in reply that Isabel did not hear. Isabel noticed his coat, which he had not taken off and which was an expensive one. She saw his regular profile and his head of thick hair. He looked to all intents and purposes like . . . like what? she wondered. An accountant or bank manager? Somebody with a certain assurance about him.

  She noticed that the medium had transferred her gaze from the ceiling and was looking at the man seated behind them. It was not a stare, but a gaze which moved on to somebody else, and then came back to him.

  A man in a dark suit walked up the aisle between the rows of chairs and mounted the platform. He nodded to the medium and turned to face the thirty or so people who were now seated in the room. “My friends,” he began, “you are welcome. Whether you are a stranger or a member of this body, you are welcome.” Isabel listened closely. The accent was Hebridean, she thought; a lilting voice from the islands. She noticed his suit, which was one of those black ill-fitting suits that Scottish crofters wore on Sundays, and she remembered, suddenly, how once as a young woman she had been on the island of Skye—was it with John Liamor? yes, it was—and they had driven past a croft house, low and white-painted, surrounded by fields and with a line of hills in the distance, and had seen a suit like that, freshly washed, hanging out to dry on the clothesline before the house. And the wind had been in the arms and legs of the suit and had given it life.

  A few announcements were made, and then the man introduced the medium. He did not give a surname; she was just Anna. And then he stepped down from the podium and sat down in the front row.

  The medium stood up. She looked at the people in the room and smiled. Her hands were clasped loosely in front of her, and now she opened them in a gesture of supplication. She closed her eyes, her head lifted up. “Let us each dwell on our thoughts,” she said. “Let us open our hearts to the world of spirit.”

  They sat in silence for ten minutes, or more. Eventually the medium spoke again.

  “I have somebody here,” she said, so quietly that Isabel had to strain to hear the words. “I have somebody here. There is a child coming through.”

  Isabel saw a woman in front of her stiffen, and she knew from this the nature of her loss. Such pain.

  The medium opened her eyes. “Yes, there is a child coming through and she is saying something to me . . .”

  The woman in the row in front leant forward and the medium’s gaze fell upon her.

  “It is you, my dear, isn’t it?” said the medium. “It is for you, isn’t it?”

  The woman nodded silently. Another woman seated near her reached out and touched her gently on the shoulder.

  The medium took a step forward. “My dear, there is a little girl who says that she is with you and watching over you. She says that her love will always be with you and around you . . . around you every moment until you join her. She says you are to be brave. Yes, that’s what she says. She says that you are to be brave. Which you are, she says. She says that you have always been brave.”

  “It’s a little boy she lost,” whispered Grace. “But sometimes they can’t see very well into the other side. It’s easy to get little boys and little girls mixed up.”

  “Now,” said the medium, “I pass to another person in spirit who is coming to me. Yes, this person is saying very clearly to me that there is somebody in this room who has not forgiven him for what he did. That is what he is saying. This person says that he is very sorry for what he did and begs this other person on this side to forgive him. It is not too late to forgive, even now.”

  She looked out over the rows of seats. A woman at the end of the second row had risen to her feet. “This message might be for me,” she said, her voice uneven. “I think that it might be for me.”

  The medium turned to face her. “I think it is, my dear. Yes, I think it is for you.” She paused. “And do you have that forgiveness in your heart? Can I tell this person in spirit that he has your forgiveness? Can I tell him that?”

  The woman who had been standing up suddenly sank back into her seat. She put her hands up to her face and covered her eyes. She was sobbing. A woman behind her reached forward to comfort her.

  The medium said nothing. When the woman’s sobbing had subsided, she sat down again and looked up at the ceiling, and did so for a good fifteen minutes. She rose to her feet and looked about the room, her gaze alighting on the man behind Grace.

  “I have somebody coming through for you,” she said. “I have somebody here. Yes. This is your wife. She is here. She is with me. She is with you. Can you sense her presence?”

  Isabel did not like to turn and stare, but did so anyway, discreetly. The man’s eyes were fixed on the medium; he was listening intently. In response to her question he nodded.

  “Good,” said the medium. “She is coming through very strongly now. She says that she is still with you. She . . .” The medium hesitated, and frowned. “She is concerned for you. She is concerned that there is one who is trying to get to know you better. She is concerned that this person is not the right person for you. That is what she says.”

  The relaying of this message had its effect on the room, and there were whispers. One or two people turned round and looked in the direction of the man to whom it was directed. Others looked firmly ahead at the medium. Isabel glanced at Grace, who was looking down at the floor and who seemed hunched up, as if hoping for the moment of embarrassment around her to pass.

  There was little more after that. The world of spirit, momentarily goaded into action by the medium, must have been exhausted, and after a few minutes the medium declared that she had finished her communication with the other side. Now it was time for tea, and they all withdrew to a cheerfully furnished room next to the library. There were plates of biscuits and cups of strong, warm tea.

  “Very interesting,” whispered Isabel. “Thank you, Grace.”

  Grace nodded. She seemed preoccupied, though, and did not say anything as she helped Isabel to a cup of tea and a biscuit. Isabel looked about her. She saw the medium standing at the side of the room. She was sipping at a cup of tea and talking to the man who had introduced her, the man in the black suit. But as she talked, Isabel saw her eyes move about the room, as if seeking somebody out. And they fixed on the man who had been seated behind her, the man who had received the message from his wife. Isabel looked at the medium’s expression, and at her eyes in particular. It was very clear to her, as it would be clear, she thought, to any woman. She had see
n enough.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “WHAT’S IT LIKE?” Ian asked. “I know it may sound like a rather simple question, naÏve perhaps, but what’s it like—being a philosopher?”

  Isabel looked out of the window. It was mid-morning and they were sitting in her study, the tang of freshly brewed coffee in the air. Outside, on the corners of her lawn, the weeds had begun to make their presence increasingly obvious. She needed several hours, she thought, several hours which she would never find, for digging and raking. One must cultivate one’s garden, said Voltaire; and there, he said, is happiness to be found rather than in philosophising. She thought for a moment of the juxtaposition of philosophy and the everyday: zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance had been an inspired combination for its moment, but there might be others, as novel and surprising. “Voltaire and the control of weeds,” she muttered.

  “Voltaire and . . . ?” asked Ian.

  “Just musing,” said Isabel. “But in answer to your question: It’s much the same as being anything else. You carry your profession with you, I suppose, in much the same way as a doctor or, I should imagine, a psychologist does. You see the world in a particular way, don’t you? As a psychologist?”

  Ian followed her gaze out into the garden. “To an extent,” he said, but sounded doubtful. “Being a philosopher, though, must be rather different from being anything else. You must think about everything. You must spend your time pondering over what things mean. A somewhat higher realm than the rest of us inhabit.”

  Isabel drew herself away from the lawn. She had been thinking about weeds. But weeds, and what to do about them, were very much a part of everyday life, and everyday life was exactly what philosophy was about. We were rooted in it, inevitably, and how we reacted to it—our customs, our observances—was the very stuff of moral philosophy. Hume had called them, these little conventions, a kind of lesser morality, and in her view he had been right.

  “It’s much more mundane and everyday than you would imagine,” she began. And then she stopped. One could easily simplify too much, and discussions about social convention could give him the wrong idea. How you drank your coffee was not what it was about, but the fact that you drank coffee together was of tremendous significance. But she could not say that, because that statement could be made only after a great deal of earlier ground had been covered and understood.

  Ian nodded. “I see. Well, that’s a little bit disappointing. I imagined that you spent all your time pacing about trying to work out the nature of reality—wondering whether the world outside is real enough to take a walk in. That sort of thing.”

  Isabel laughed. “Sorry to disabuse you of such amusing notions. No. But I must admit that my calling—if I can call it that—sometimes makes life a little difficult for me.”

  This interested him. “In what way?”

  “Well, it’s mostly a question of duty,” Isabel said. She sighed, thinking of her demons; moral obligation was the real problem. This was the cross she bore, the rack on which she was obliged to lie—even the metaphors were uncomfortable.

  “I find myself thinking very carefully about what I should do in any given situation,” she went on. “And it can get a little bit burdensome for me. In fact, sometimes I feel rather like those unfortunate people with OCD—you know, obsessive-compulsive disorder; of course you know that, you’re a clinical psychologist—but I sometimes think I’m like those people who have to check ten times that they’ve turned the oven off or who have to wash their hands again and again to get rid of germs. I think I can understand how they feel.”

  “Now you’re on familiar ground,” he said. “I had quite a few patients with OCD. One woman I knew had a thing about doorhandles. She had to cover the doorhandle with a handkerchief before she could open it. Tricky, sometimes. And public washrooms were a real agony for her. She had to use her foot to flush. She lifted a foot and pushed the lever down by stepping on it.”

  Isabel thought for a moment. “Very wise,” she said with a smile. “Imagine what results you’d get if you took a swab from one of those handles and cultured it. Imagine.”

  “Maybe,” said Ian. “But we need to be exposed to germs, don’t we? All this hygiene and refined foods—what’s the result? Allergies galore. Everyone will eventually have asthma.” He paused. “But back to philosophy. Those papers over there—are they submissions for that journal of yours?”

  Isabel glanced at the pile of manuscripts and suppressed a shudder. Guilt, she thought, can sometimes be measured in physical quantities. A heavy drinker might measure his guilt in gallons or litres; a glutton in inches round the waist; and the editor of a journal in terms of the height of the stack of manuscripts awaiting her attention. This was almost eighteen inches of guilt.

  “I should be reading those,” she said. “And I will. But, as Saint Augustine said about chastity, not just yet.”

  “You don’t want to read them?” Ian asked.

  “I do and I don’t,” said Isabel. “I don’t want to read them in one sense, but in another sense I want to read them and get them finished.” She looked again at the pile. “Most of those are for a special issue we’re bringing out. It’s on friendship.”

  Ian looked puzzled. “What has philosophy got to do with that?” he asked.

  “A great deal,” Isabel replied. “It’s one of the great topics. What is the nature of friendship? How are we to treat our friends? Can we prefer our friends to others who are not our friends?”

  “Of course we can,” said Ian. “Isn’t that why they’re our friends in the first place?”

  Isabel shook her head. She arose from her chair and went to stand by the window, looking out on the lawn, but averting her gaze from the weeds. Weeds had a closer relationship with guilt than did grass.

  “There are some philosophers who say that we shouldn’t do that at all,” she said. “They say that we have a moral duty to treat others equally. We shouldn’t discriminate among people who need our help. We should allocate such help as we can give absolutely even-handedly.”

  “But that’s inhuman!” Ian protested.

  “I think so,” said Isabel. “But it’s not all that easy to make a sound case for preferring the claims of your friends. I think one can do it, but you’re up against some powerful counter-arguments.”

  “Do philosophers tend to have many friends?” asked Ian. “If that’s the way they think . . .”

  “It depends on the extent to which they possess the virtues that make friendship thrive,” Isabel answered. “A virtuous person will have friends in the true sense. A person whose character is afflicted with vices won’t.”

  She turned away from the window and faced Ian. “We can return to this topic, if you like, Ian, but I’m afraid this is not why I invited you for coffee today. It’s something else altogether—”

  “I can guess,” he interrupted. “You’ve been thinking about what I said to you.”

  “Yes. I have. And I’ve been acting on it, too.”

  He looked at her anxiously. “I hadn’t intended to draw you in,” he began. “I didn’t imagine that—”

  “Of course you didn’t,” she interjected. “But you may recall that I said something about obligation earlier on. One of the consequences of being a philosopher is that you get involved. You ask yourself whether you need to do something and so often the answer comes up yes, you do.” She paused for a moment. It occurred to her that she should be careful not to make Ian feel stressed. Presumably he had to avoid stress, and shock, too. “I’ve traced the family of your donor. It wasn’t hard. You could have done it, if you thought about it.”

  “I didn’t have the courage,” he said. “I wanted to thank them but . . .”

  “And I’ve found your man,” Isabel continued. “The man with the high forehead and the hooded eyes. I’ve found him for you.”

  He was silent; sitting there in his chair, staring at Isabel, completely taken aback, quite silent. Eventually he cleared his throat. “
Well, I’m not sure if I was looking forward to that. But I suppose . . . Well, I suppose that if I don’t do something about this, I’m not really going to give myself much of a chance, am I? I told you earlier on that I thought this thing would kill me—this sadness, this dread, whatever we call it. I think it’ll prevent the new heart from . . . from taking, so to speak.” He looked at her, and she saw the anguish in his eyes. “Maybe it’s best to know,” he said. “Do you think so?”

  “Maybe,” said Isabel. “But remember, there are some things which we would probably prefer not to know once we’ve found them out. This may be one of them.”

  He looked confused. “I don’t see how—”

  Isabel raised a hand to stop him. “You see, the difficulty is that this man—the man who looks so like the man of your . . . your imaginings—lives with the mother of the young man who was the donor.”

  He frowned slightly, taking in the information. “How did he die?” he asked. “Did you find out?”

  “A hit-and-run accident,” she said. “Still unsolved. It was very close to the house. He was knocked over and he died shortly thereafter in hospital. He was unconscious when they found him, which meant that he was unable to say anything about what happened. But . . .”

  “But,” he said, “but he could have been conscious immediately after being knocked over, and the driver could have bent over him and looked at him?”

  “Exactly,” said Isabel.

  For a few minutes nothing further was said by either of them. Isabel turned away again and looked out into the garden, oblivious now of the weeds, thinking only of the dilemma which she had created for herself and from which there seemed no easy, painless escape. Unless she handed it over to Ian, though he had done nothing to bring the situation about in the first place—other than to tell her about what had happened.

  Ian’s voice broke the silence. “Does she know?” he asked.

  “Know what?” Isabel had not told him that she had been unable to speak about his vision. “I didn’t tell her about you,” she said. “I couldn’t. He was there.”