The Lost Art of Gratitude

by Alexander McCall Smith

  THERE WAS AN ISSUE that had now become pressing. She had put it off, as one postpones a difficult encounter, a confession or an apology, but she now had to confront it. How would she break the news to Cat that she and Jamie were planning to marry? In the usual run of events, that issue presents itself the other way round, and if anybody worries about announcing a potentially awkward engagement, then it is the niece who worries about the reaction of the aunt. But this was a rather unusual situation, as the aunt does not normally become engaged to the niece’s former boyfriend.

  But before Cat was informed, Grace would have to be told. There was no real reason why this should be difficult, but Isabel still found herself feeling anxious about how her housekeeper would react. She had time to think about it, though, as the day following the proposal was Grace’s day off and it was not until a day later that she was able to broach the subject.

  “I have something to tell you,” she said to Grace as she came into the kitchen on Tuesday morning.

  Grace hung up the lightweight raincoat that she wore throughout the summer, irrespective of the weather; she appeared not to have heard Isabel. “That bus,” she said.

  “What bus?”

  “My bus. The one I waited twenty minutes for this morning. Twenty minutes!”

  Isabel made a sympathetic sound. Grace had strong views on public transport and what she considered its egregious failings.

  “I had a word with the driver as I got on,” Grace continued. “I said to him: ‘Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?’ I spoke perfectly politely. I didn’t shout. I didn’t even raise my voice. I simply said, ‘Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?’”

  Isabel looked interested. “And did he?”

  Grace tucked her scarf into the sleeve of her coat. Few people wore scarves in summer, but she did. This is Scotland, she had once explained to Isabel, and we must be prepared for every eventuality. At all times.

  “Some people have no manners,” she said.

  Isabel said nothing.

  The indignation in Grace’s voice rose. “You’d think that if you have a perfectly civil remark addressed to you, then you’d respond accordingly.”

  “It might be hard to drive and talk,” said Isabel mildly. “I’m sure that he wasn’t being deliberately rude.”

  Grace glared at her. “He said, ‘Would you kindly address your concerns, in writing, and in duplicate, to the relevant office of Lothian Regional Transport, the address of which may be obtained from the telephone book.’ Those were his exact words. Can you credit it?”

  Isabel suppressed the urge to laugh. She could picture the encounter: the outraged Grace and the phlegmatic driver, trying to drive a bus along Grange Road while being berated by his passenger.

  “Ridiculous,” she said.

  It was a comment that covered all aspects of the situation, but Grace interpreted it as referring to the driver’s response. Mollified, she nodded, and then, remembering what Isabel had said, she asked what it was that she had to tell her.

  “Jamie and I are engaged.”

  Grace smiled broadly. It was an immediate, spontaneous reaction, and it set Isabel at her ease. “About time,” she said, and she stepped forward and put her arms about her employer. “It’s great news. Great.”

  Isabel was astonished. Grace had never given her even a token kiss—birthdays had been marked with no more than a handshake—and now this warm, enthusiastic embrace.

  “I’m very glad you’re pleased,” Isabel muttered.

  Grace disengaged herself. “But of course I’m pleased.” She looked at Isabel as if any other reaction were inconceivable. “Of course I’m pleased. Do you think that I liked it—your …” She paused and avoided Isabel’s eye. “Your living in sin?”

  Isabel gasped.

  “I’m sorry,” said Grace quickly. “I didn’t mean to say that. But it’s what I felt.”

  Isabel made a gesture of hopelessness. “What do you expect me to say? How do you think I feel about that? Living in sin? What exactly do you mean?”

  Grace was now becoming slightly flustered. “It’s an expression. That’s all. An expression. It’s what people say.”

  “Used to say,” snapped Isabel, her growing anger now showing itself in her tone of voice. “Twenty, thirty years ago. It’s a dreadful expression.”

  Grace shook her head vehemently. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not sin. Not really.”

  Isabel stared at her. She forgave Grace a great deal—her outbursts, her possessiveness of Charlie, the implied criticism in many of her remarks, but she found it difficult to accept this. “My relationship with Jamie may not be entirely conventional,” she said, “but one thing I am very clear about, and that is that it is not in any remote sense of the word sinful.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  Grace looked down at the floor. Suddenly she started to cry. She started to say something, but the sobs obstructed her words. Isabel immediately felt guilty. She should not have reacted so sharply; it was only an expression. It had nothing to do with sin.

  She reached out and touched Grace’s sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I overreacted. I know what you mean.”

  Grace did not look up. “I only want you to be happy,” she said. “I really do. I wanted him to marry you. All along I wanted him to marry you, rather than to live …”

  “Together,” supplied Isabel quickly. She was sure that Grace had been about to refer to sin again, and she helped her avoid it.

  “Yes,” said Grace. “And now that he’s asked you, I really am happy.”

  Isabel comforted her. Grace’s shoulder was bony—surprisingly so—and it was hard to pat it reassuringly; but she did, even though the thought came into her mind that it felt like patting an old horse, where blades of bone lay only just below the surface of the skin and felt like … felt like this.

  “You must understand,” Isabel began, “that sometimes I feel a bit sensitive about the fact that Jamie is younger than I am. That’s probably why I bit your head off just then. I don’t mean it.”

  Grace wiped at her cheek with a small handkerchief. Isabel noticed that it had been embroidered in one corner with an elaborate letter G. It was a small thing, but the sight of this made her feel a sudden rush of sympathy for the other woman. Our small possessions, she thought, can say so much about vulnerability.

  “You shouldn’t feel like that,” Grace said. “Not these days.”

  “Oh, I know that,” said Isabel. “Everybody says that it’s absolutely fine. They keep saying it, and I suppose I know that they’re right. But every so often, just every so often, you see an expression on somebody’s face that tells you that’s not the way they’re thinking.”

  “A look of disapproval?”

  “Exactly. Nothing too obvious, but it’s there. People can’t hide their feelings, you know.”

  “Ignore them. It’s none of their business.”

  Isabel sighed. “Oh, I do ignore them. But I don’t think they see it as being none of their business. We are great interferers, you know. We’re an inherently moral species. If we see something we disapprove of, we experience reactive feelings, even when we know it’s none of our business. And maybe it’s just as well that we do.”

  Grace was puzzled, and Isabel explained. “If we didn’t react to the behaviour of others when we’re not directly affected, then people would get away with murder. Literally. We wouldn’t intervene over genocide if it was happening in somebody else’s country. We wouldn’t have done anything about Hitler. Tyrants could act with impunity.”

  “They do, anyway,” said Grace.

  “I suppose so. We’re selective in our moral outrage. We’re very ready to vent it on the weaker tyrants but not so much on the strong ones. Who did anything about Stalin?”

  “They didn’t want a nuclear war.”

  Isabel had to agree. “No, they didn’t. I suppose that demonstrates that moral philosop
hy has to be practical. It has to take into account who has a big fist. It also has to bear in mind who we are, our human limitations. It’s not just something that one does in armchairs.” As she spoke, she thought of her own armchair. The last time she had sat in it, she had drifted off to sleep while watching the news. For a moral philosopher’s armchair, she thought, it’s somewhat under-used.

  GRACE WAS ONLY TOO PLEASED to be left in charge of Charlie that morning while Isabel went into Bruntsfield. She would take him down to the canal, she said, to look at the boats. And then there was her friend who lived in Harrison Gardens and who always welcomed a visit from Charlie. After that he could have his sleep.

  With these arrangements in place, Isabel made her way along Merchiston Crescent to the post office at Boroughmuir-head. The streets were quiet; students from Napier University had been discouraged from parking in the area since the introduction of a permit system that restricted parking to the local residents. This uncluttered the streets, except on occasions when a student was late for a class and decided to feed the meter. It was also, she thought, an example of how people might be forced to be good. If we were not prepared to walk—the environmentally responsible thing to do—or to wear crash helmets—the personally responsible thing to do—then those in power over us might force us to do these very things. The difficulty with this, of course, was squaring such an approach with human freedom. Isabel had not been much of a skier, but on her relatively few ventures on to the slopes she had enjoyed the feeling of the wind in her hair. Having to wear a helmet to ski—as some people were proposing—would spoil that sensation. And where would such enthusiasm end? Walking itself had some dangers—as the late Dr. Henderson had unfortunately found out—and there must be figures somewhere for the risk of falling over and cracking one’s skull even when walking a short distance, as she was now doing.

  Would anyone seriously propose that it should be compulsory to don a helmet to walk? The question was absurd, and yet even as she asked it she realised that even such an absurdity could not be ruled out. If a society could ban the throwing of sweets into the audience during a pantomime, or insist that people holding a church barbecue should attend a course to teach them how to fry sausages safely, then it was capable of anything. Yes, she thought, our very ordinary freedoms were being rapidly eroded by the nanny state, but it was difficult to make the point without sounding strident, or like an opponent of motherhood and apple pie. So she had done nothing to defend these freedoms, which made her … the realisation was a shocking one: it made her one of Christopher Dove’s free riders.

  The purchase of stamps at the post office at least took her mind off issues of civic duty and freedom. Then, crossing the road, she made her way towards the delicatessen. She had decided to tell Cat directly about the engagement and to breeze her way through any hostile reaction. She should not be intimidated by her niece; the worst thing one could do with a moody person was to pander to her moods. If Cat chose to go into a sulk, then she could do so, and Isabel would simply bide her time until she was ready to come out of it. She always did get over things, even if it took a little while.

  Five or six doors from the delicatessen was the small jewellery shop, run by two young women, where Isabel had seen the ring that she thought she would buy for Jamie. She had imagined that she might go there with him and have his ring finger measured, but now, on impulse, she went in. One of the jewellers was at her workbench at the back of the room, peering through a large magnifying lens at some intricate piece of jewellery. She looked up when Isabel came in and smiled; they knew one another slightly, as Isabel occasionally took in items from the collection of jewellery she had inherited from her mother. There had been a pearl necklace that needed restringing. It had belonged to a great-aunt in Mobile, Alabama. “Particularly fine pearls,” the jeweller had said. “Look at their lustre.” Isabel had looked and had seen why it was that pearls needed their own adjective: pearlescent. There was no other word for their colour, their sheen, their very texture.

  “Pearls?” the jeweller said.

  “No, a ring this time,” said Isabel. “I saw a ring in the window—a man’s ring. Gold.”

  The jeweller set aside the necklace she had been examining and switched off the workbench light. “Was it rose gold?”

  Isabel said that it was. “It was a lovely colour. That’s why I noticed it.”

  “We still have it,” said the jeweller, standing up and reaching for a bunch of keys. “I made it myself. I thought that a man might walk past the window and buy it as a signet ring. But none has. Perhaps there aren’t enough men.”

  Isabel laughed. “There never are, are there?” And she thought: that’s absolutely true—the demographers confirm it. Yet one of these increasingly rare men has asked me to marry him.

  The jeweller extracted the ring from a display case and handed it to Isabel; it felt heavy in her hand, as it should, and warm too. She held it in her palm and knew. This was the ring she would give Jamie.

  “Could you have it engraved?” she asked.

  The jeweller nodded. She was looking at Isabel with interest, as if she was aware that this was an important moment. “Of course. I could do it myself. It’s broad enough. Sometimes it’s tricky with very delicate rings, but there’ll be no problem with this one. Just write down what you want.”

  The jeweller handed Isabel a small piece of paper and a pen. Isabel gave her back the ring and took the paper. But then she realised that she had no idea what she wanted engraved. Jamie’s initials? The initials of both of them? A date? The problem for Isabel was that she found herself in this realm of personal, emotional gesture, and she was unsure of the territory. There were people, she felt, who were much better at this sort of thing than she was. There were people who were unembarrassed by writing Eternal Love or I’ll love you always, or such messages; people who thought nothing of putting the most intimate Valentine Day’s messages in the newspapers, or proposing to somebody on the scoreboard at sporting events. That was not really her style. Perhaps she could have Amor omnia vincit—Love conquers all things; but then that was masking sentiment in Latin, and it also raised issues of truth. Did love indeed conquer everything, or did we merely hope that it did? She did not want to engrave something that was debatable.

  She picked up the pen and wrote out a few words. Then she handed the piece of paper to the jeweller.

  The jeweller read the message. “Isabel Dalhousie gave this ring.” She smiled. “That’s nice wording. I was worried that you were going to write Eternal Love.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Isabel. “Because it isn’t. Nothing’s eternal.”

  The jeweller put the piece of paper down on her desk. “You should see some of the things that engravers are asked to do,” she said.

  “People are odd,” said Isabel, adding, “but generally they mean well.”

  The jeweller seemed intrigued by this. “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “Most people know what’s right. Most people understand the needs of others. They know what we should do.”

  “Maybe,” said the jeweller as she looked for a suitable ring box. “May I congratulate you, anyway? I assume that the ring is for somebody special.”

  “My husband-to-be,” said Isabel.

  The jeweller smiled. “Congratulations. May I ask: Who is he?”

  Isabel had been looking out of the window. There was a small knot of pedestrians on the other side of the road waiting for the crossing light to turn green. One of them was Jamie.

  “As it happens,” she said, “that’s him over there, on the other side of the street.”

  The jeweller came round to the front of the desk. “Him? The one in the red sweater?”

  Isabel noticed that it was an older man. “No,” she said. “The one next to him.”

  The jeweller said nothing for a moment. She watched Jamie waiting to cross the road. “He’s lovely.”

  “Thank you,” said Isabel. “He is.” She h
esitated. “May I bring the ring back for engraving later? I want to give it to him now. Since he’s there.”

  “Of course.”

  The jeweller passed over the ring. Isabel could come back later and pay, she said. She knew her; that would be all right. “I shouldn’t watch,” she said. “I promise I won’t.”

  “But you can,” said Isabel.

  She went out into the street. Jamie had crossed the road now and was heading towards her. Seeing her, his face broke into a broad smile.

  “I was going to Hughes’,” he said when he reached her. Hughes’ was the old-fashioned fish shop on Holy Corner, the intersection so-named for the three churches overlooking it. “I decided to make kedgeree tonight. I was reading about it and it made me want to make it. Is that all right with you?”

  “I love kedgeree,” she said. And then added, “And you.”

  He looked taken aback, but he was clearly pleased. “Thank you. And I love you too.”

  She was holding the ring in her hand, holding it tight. Now she opened her fist and he looked down. He raised his eyes to hers; surprise yielded to a tender look of enquiry. “For me?”

  “Yes.”

  He took the ring from her and slipped it on his finger.

  Now Isabel looked at him questioningly. “Does it fit?”

  “Yes. A tiny bit loose, maybe. But it fits.”

  “They can adjust it.” She tossed her head in the direction of the jeweller’s window; there was a slight movement within, nothing noticeable from outside.

  “You’ve beaten me to it,” he said. “That’s where I was going.” He paused. “Should we go there right away?”

  She nodded. “They’re open.”

  He looked at the ring, holding up his hand to admire it. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Isabel.”

  He had to stoop slightly to kiss her. She raised her face to his. She saw behind his head, above the rooftops of Bruntsfield, a gull riding a current of air, briefly dipping and then disappearing behind the stone chimney stacks.

  ONCE THEY HAD FINISHED their business in the jeweller’s, Jamie would brook no opposition from Isabel. “I’m coming with you,” he said.