Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She said nothing. He looked at her, waiting for her to speak, but she did not. She was staring at the Scotsman building, watching a man in a black overcoat make his way out of the revolving door and down the steps to a taxi that was waiting for him at the kerb.

  “I could ask him,” she muttered.

  “Who?”

  Isabel pointed. “Him. Over there. I know him. Angus Spens. He’s a journalist on the Scotsman. He can find anything out. Anything. All we need from him is a name. That’s all.”

  “But why would he do this for you?”

  “It’s complicated,” said Isabel. “We used to share a bath together.” She laughed. “When we were five. My mother and his mother were very close. We saw a lot of each other.”

  Jamie frowned. “What’s the point? Do you really think it likely that this other donor, whoever he is, was done in by a person with, whatever it is, a high forehead? Really, Isabel! Really!”

  “I have to see this thing through,” she said. Because you have to finish what you start, she thought, and I have started this. I have tossed a stone into a loch. But there was more to it than that. For Ian, the finding of an explanation for what was happening to him was a matter of life and death. He had told her that he felt his recovery depended on the resolution of these strange experiences, and she was sure that he meant it. People sometimes knew when they were going to die. They might not be able to explain it, but they knew. And she remembered standing in a gallery once, the Phillips, looking at an early painting by Modigliani. The artist had painted a road that led off towards the horizon, green fields on either side, hills in the distance, but that stopped short, before it reached any destination. And that, she had been told by the person beside her, was because the artist knew that his life was going to be a short one. He knew.

  She turned away from Jamie, watching the taxi which had picked up Angus Spens speed off up the road. From the mist of early years she could still summon the memory of sitting in a vast white tub with a little boy at the other end, splashing water in her face and laughing, and her mother standing beside her and reaching down for her; her mother, whose face she saw sometimes at night, in her dreams, as if she had never gone away, and who was still there, as we often think of the dead, in the background, like a cloud of love, against which weather we conduct our lives.

  ISABEL AND JAMIE walked back up Holyrood Road, mostly in silence; he was thinking, she suspected, of Pärt again, and she had Angus Spens to think of now, and of how she would approach him. Just before the Cowgate they said their goodbyes, and Jamie made his way up a narrow alley that led back to Infirmary Street. She watched him for a few moments; he turned round, waved, and then went on. Isabel continued along the Cowgate, a street which ran under South Bridge and George IV Bridge—a sunken level of the old part of the city. On either side high stone buildings, darkened by ancient smoke, riddled with passages and closes, climbed up to the light above. It was a curious street, Isabel felt, the dark heart of the Old Town, a street in which the inhabitants, troglodytes all, did not seem to show their faces and doorways were barred; a street of echoes.

  She reached the point at which the Cowgate opened out into the Grassmarket. Crossing the road, she began to make her way up Candlemaker Row. Following this route, she could pass Greyfriars Kirkyard, head across the Meadows and be home within half an hour. She looked up again; to her right was the wall of the kirkyard, a high grey-stone wall behind which lay the bones of religious heroes, the Covenanters who had signed their names in blood to protect Scottish religious freedom. They had died for their pains. That anybody should believe so strongly, thought Isabel, so strongly as to die for a vision of what was right; but people did, all the time, people who had a sufficiency of courage. And do I have such a measure of courage? she asked herself. Or any courage at all? She thought that she did not; people who thought about courage, as she did, often were not courageous themselves.

  Candlemaker Row was largely deserted, apart from a couple of boys from George Heriot’s School round the corner. The schoolboys, their white shirts hanging out, stood back against the wall to let Isabel pass, and then giggled. Isabel smiled, and looked back for a moment because one of the boys had had an impish face and it amused her, an echt small boy in an age in which children had suddenly and absurdly become young adults. And that is when she saw him, on the other side of the street, some distance behind her, but walking in the same direction as she was. She turned away immediately and walked on, her head lowered. She did not want to see Graeme again; she did not want to catch his eye and feel the force of his hostility.

  She reached the top of Candlemaker Row and continued round the corner to Forrest Road. There were people about now, people and traffic. A bus lumbered past; a man with a scruffy black dog on a lead stood in front of a shop window; two teenaged girls in short skirts walked towards Isabel; a male student, his jeans slipping down, barely suspended, deliberately exposing his boxer shorts, walked with his arm around his girlfriend, while her hand sought out the sanctuary of his rear pocket in a casual intimacy that she did not bother to conceal. Isabel only wanted to establish a distance between herself and Graeme. He would have to turn at the top of Candlemaker Row, and he could be heading for George IV Bridge. But he did not. When she glanced back again, he was there a few yards behind her, not looking at her, but so close now that he would soon draw level with her and could not fail to see her.

  She increased her pace, glancing back quickly. He was nearer now, and she saw that he was looking at her. She turned her head away; she was on Sandy Bell’s corner, the signs—WHISKIES, ALES, and MUSIC NIGHTLY—immediately beside her. She hesitated for a moment, and then turned in, pushing open the swing door and entering the wood-panelled howff with its long, polished-mahogany bar and its array of whisky bottles on shelves. To her relief, she saw that the room was quite full, even now, just after five o’clock; later it would be packed, exuberant with music, filled with the sound of fiddles, whistles, singing. She approached the bar, pleased to find herself beside a woman, rather than a man. Isabel did not frequent bars, but this, now, was where she wanted to be, with people, in safety. She was convinced that Graeme had been following her, even if this was an absurd thought; people did not follow others in daylight on the streets of Edinburgh, or at least not on these streets.

  The woman beside her looked at the new arrival and nodded. Isabel smiled, noticing the lines around the woman’s mouth, the small lines that advertised her status as a smoker. The other woman was, she thought, somewhere in her thirties, but was ageing quickly—from alcohol, cares, smoking.

  The barman raised an eyebrow expectantly, and for a moment she was tongue-tied. All those years ago she had gone into pubs with John Liamor, who drank Guinness, and what had she had? She looked ahead of her at the rows of bottles, and remembered the whisky nosing she had attended when Charlie Maclean had used those peculiar terms of his. She had forgotten which whisky was which, but now she saw a name she recognised, which she thought he had spoken of, and she pointed to it. The barman nodded and reached for the bottle.

  The woman beside her touched her glass, which was almost empty. Isabel was pleased to respond.

  “May I?” she asked, gesturing towards the barman.

  The woman’s face lit up. “Thank you, hen.” Isabel liked the characteristically Scottish term of affection. Hen. It was warm and old-fashioned.

  “I’ve had a day and a half,” said the woman. “I’ve been on since ten this morning. Nonstop.”

  Isabel raised her glass to her new companion. “What do you do?”

  “Taxi,” said the woman. “My man and me. Both of us. Taxis.”

  Isabel was about to say something about this, how difficult it must be with the traffic, but then she saw him further along the bar, taking a glass of beer from the barman. The woman beside her followed her gaze.

  “Recognise somebody?”

  Isabel felt hollow. Graeme must have come in immediately behind her, followed her. Or co
uld it be a coincidence? Had he been heading for Sandy Bell’s at just the time that she happened to be walking up Candlemaker Row? She did not know what to think.

  She lowered herself onto a bar stool beside the other woman. Now she could not see him any more, nor he her, she imagined.

  The taxi driver glanced down the bar again. “You’re upset about something, hen,” she said, her voice lowered. “Are you all right?” Then she added, “Men. Always men. The cause of all our troubles. Men.”

  In spite of her shock, Isabel was able to smile. The woman’s remark cheered her with its assumption of solidarity. We are strong together. Women were not alone in the face of bullies. As long as they could call one another hen and stand together.

  Isabel noticed that the woman had placed a small phone on the bar, next to her glass, and the sight of it gave her an idea. She had her pocket diary in her bag, and in it were the telephone numbers she had been using recently, noted down in the pages at the end.

  “Could I ask you a favour? I need to make a telephone call.”

  The woman willingly slid the phone along the bar. Isabel picked it up and dialled. Her fingers fumbled, and she dialled again. He answered. He could come, if she insisted. Was it important? Yes, he would be there in however long it took to call a taxi and to make the short trip to Sandy Bell’s.

  “Please hurry,” said Isabel, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  AS ISABEL WAITED, she exchanged a few words with the woman beside her.

  “You’re frightened of somebody, aren’t you? That fellow down there?”

  Isabel could not bring herself to say that she was frightened of anybody. Her world—her normal world—did not involve fear of others, but she knew that many people lived in fear. We forget.

  “I think he followed me in.”

  The woman grimaced. “Oh, that sort. Pathetic, isn’t it? They’re just pathetic.” She sipped at her drink. “Do you want me to have a wee word with him? I get those types in the taxi. I know how to deal with them.”

  Isabel declined the offer.

  The other woman seemed taken aback. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I don’t want a confrontation.”

  “Don’t let them get away with it.” The advice was given with feeling. “Just don’t.”

  For a while they sat together in silence, Isabel grateful for the company but engrossed in her own thoughts. And then Ian arrived, unobtrusively; suddenly he was beside her, a hand on her shoulder. This was the signal for the other woman to push her empty glass away and get up from her bar stool. “Remember, hen,” she whispered. “Remember. Take nae nonsense. Stand up for yoursel’.”

  Ian sat down on the vacated stool. He was dressed less formally than he had been when Isabel had seen him on previous occasions. His sweater and moleskin trousers were in keeping with the clothes of the drinkers in the bar. He looked relaxed.

  “This is a bit of a surprise,” he began, looking about the room. “I used to come here years ago, you know. Hamish Henderson often sat over there. I heard him sing ‘Farewell to Sicily.’ It made quite an impression on me.”

  “I heard it too,” said Isabel. “Not here. At the School of Scottish Studies once. He sang while standing on a chair, as I recall.”

  Ian smiled at the thought. “That great, shuffling figure. The teeth all over the place . . . You know, we took them for granted then, didn’t we? We had all those people amongst us, those poets, those Scots makars—Norman MacCaig, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Hamish himself. And you could see them in the street. There they were.” He looked at her. “Do you remember ‘The lament for the makars,’ Isabel?”

  Isabel remembered: warm afternoons during the summer term at school, sitting on the grass with Miss Crichton, who taught them English and who loved the early Scottish poets.

  “I have that entire poem in my head,” Ian said. “It’s such a striking idea—just to list all the poets, all the poets who have gone before. And then Dunbar says that he’s probably next! The good Sir Hew of Eglintoun,/Ettrick, Heriot, and Wintoun,/He has tane out of this cuntrie:—/Timor Mortis conturbat me.”

  He caught the eye of the barman and pointed to a whisky. “Taken out of the country, Isabel. Such clear good language. I am taken out of the country. I am taken from you. I was almost taken out of the country, Isabel, until that young man, whoever he was, and those surgeons came to my rescue.”

  The barman passed him a small glass of whisky and he raised it, giving the Gaelic toast. “Slainte.”

  Isabel raised her own glass in acknowledgement.

  Ian looked at her enquiringly. “Why have you asked me here, Isabel? Not to discuss poetry.”

  She lifted her glass and looked into the whisky, which she was not enjoying. It was too strong for her.

  “That man I told you about,” she began. “Graeme. The man I found.”

  His expression changed; he now became tense. “You’ve decided on something?”

  Isabel lowered her voice. “He’s here. Right here. But I’ve found out something. He’s got nothing to do with the person who donated for you. Nothing!”

  He did not look round immediately, but stared ahead, at the bottles of whisky on the shelf. Then, very slowly, he turned his head and looked towards the back of the bar.

  “Where?” he muttered. “I can’t see anybody . . .” He stopped, and Isabel saw his bottom lip drop slightly. His right hand, resting on the bar, was suddenly clenched.

  Graeme was sitting on a bench at the back. He had a newspaper unfolded on his lap. In front of him, on a small table, was a half-empty glass of beer.

  “Is that him?” Isabel asked. “Is that the man you keep seeing?”

  Ian’s eyes were fixed on the figure at the other end of the bar. Now he turned back to face Isabel. “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “I feel very strange.”

  “But it’s him?” Isabel pressed.

  Ian looked over his shoulder again. As he did so, Graeme turned his head, and Isabel saw his glance come in her direction. She stared back at him, and they looked at one another, across the room, for almost a minute. Then he turned back to his paper.

  Ian suddenly reached for Isabel’s arm. He clutched at her, and she felt his grip through the material of her sleeve. “I’m not feeling well,” he said. “I’m going to have to go. I’m sorry . . . I’m feeling very odd.”

  Isabel experienced a moment of sudden alarm. His face looked drawn, pale; he had slumped slightly on his stool, his right arm slipping off the bar. She imagined the heart within him, the alien organ, sensing the adrenalin from the shock that he had experienced on seeing the face of his imaginings. It was folly to have invited him here, and for what reason? That he should confront this man, who had nothing to do with him anyway, since his partner’s son had not been the donor?

  She put her arm round him, half to support him, half to comfort him.

  “Shall I call somebody? A doctor?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing. It seemed to Isabel that he was gasping for air, and she looked about wildly. The barman, from behind the bar, leant forward in concern. “Sir? Sir?”

  Ian looked up. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right.”

  “Let me take you to a doctor,” said Isabel. “You don’t look all right. You really don’t.”

  “It sometimes happens like this,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with the heart. It’s the drugs, I think. My system is at sixes and sevens with itself. I suddenly feel weak.”

  Isabel said nothing. She still had her arm about him and now he stood up, gently pushing her aside.

  “That looks like him,” he said. “It’s very odd, isn’t it? That’s the face I’ve been seeing. Now, there he is. Sitting over there.”

  “I’m not sure that I should have asked you to come,” said Isabel. “You see, I thought that he had followed me in here. It occurred to me that at least we should establish whether it was him.”

  Ian shrugged. “It’s hi
m. But I don’t want to speak to him.” He made a helpless gesture. “And what would I say to him, anyway? You tell me that he’s got nothing to do with what happened. So where does that leave us?”

  They left the bar together, not looking back at Graeme. Isabel asked him whether he would mind walking with her round the corner to the taxi rank outside the high Gothic edifice of George Heriot’s School. He agreed, and they walked off slowly. He still seemed slightly breathless, and she walked at the pace he set.

  “I’m worried about you,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done this.” And as she got into the taxi, she said, through the open window, “Ian, would you like me to do nothing more? To keep out of the whole thing?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t want that.”

  Very well. But there was another thing that had puzzled her. “Your wife, Ian? What does she think of my involvement in this? I’m sorry, but I can’t help wondering what she thinks about your seeing me, rushing out to meet me in a bar, for example.”

  He looked away. “I haven’t told her. I haven’t told her about anything.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “Probably not. But don’t we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?”

  Isabel looked into his eyes for a moment. Yes. He was right. She closed the window. He walked to the next taxi on the rank and opened the door, and then both taxis moved out into the traffic. Isabel sat back in her seat. Before the taxi turned, to make its way along Lauriston Place, she looked back to the end of Forrest Road, half expecting to see Graeme appear, coming round the corner. But she did not see him and she upbraided herself for her overactive imagination. He had no reason to follow her. He was an entirely innocent man who was simply annoyed with her for upsetting his partner. She should keep out of his way—as she had been trying to do. She could imagine how he felt about her. She imagined his saying to a friend: There’s a silly woman, a so-called medium, who has upset Rose. There are people like that, you know: they can’t let the dead lie down.