The Lost Art of Gratitude

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She looked at Bruno, being struck by the fact that he was short; he was like a jockey—short and wiry. Every previous boyfriend of Cat’s had been tall, and here was Bruno, half a head shorter than Cat herself, and even that, she noticed as her eyes ran down his legs to his feet, was in his elevator shoes.

  They went inside. Jamie appeared from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea cloth. He embraced Cat quite easily, kissing her lightly on each cheek before shaking hands with Bruno.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Bruno said.

  Again Isabel experienced an involuntary reaction, this time a slight wince. It was an ill-chosen remark—immediately embarrassing for the one to whom it was addressed. The knowledge that one is being talked about is not always welcome; it makes one wonder just what has been said, particularly in a case like this where relations between Jamie and Cat had not been especially easy.

  Isabel could see that Bruno’s comment made Jamie feel uncomfortable, and she was on the point of making some anodyne remark on the weather when Jamie spoke.

  “Oh yes?” he said. “And I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Bruno glanced at Cat. He was clearly annoyed. “Can’t imagine there’s much to be said about me,” he said. “Apart from my film credits, of course.”

  Isabel seized the opportunity. “Now that’s something I didn’t hear. Nobody mentioned films.”

  Bruno turned from Jamie to Isabel. “You’ve never seen me on the screen?”

  “I watch so little,” Isabel said, waving a hand in the air. “I’d like to see more of … more of everything, but where’s the time?”

  “I was in Oil,” said Bruno. “That was the last one. You know it?” This last question was addressed more to Jamie than to Isabel, since Bruno had obviously decided she knew nothing about films.

  “Oil?”

  “Yes. It was set on an offshore oil rig up near Shetland—or most of it was. Joe Beazley directed. You know him?”

  Isabel looked thoughtful, as if trying to remember Joe Beazley amongst the many film directors of her acquaintance. “Joe Beazley? No, I can’t say that I know him.”

  “What were you in Oil?” Jamie asked.

  “Stunts,” said Bruno. “That’s what I do. I’m a stunt man.”

  “I thought that you were a tightrope walker,” said Jamie.

  Bruno laughed. It was a rather unpleasant sound, Isabel thought; more of a snigger really. “I do that as well,” he said. “It goes with doing stunt work. Know what I mean?”

  “Sort of,” said Jamie.

  They were still standing in the hall, and Isabel now gestured for them to move into the sitting room, where Charlie was enjoying his last few minutes before bedtime. Bruno bent down to tickle Charlie under the chin, calling him “mate” as he did so. “You fed up, mate? I don’t blame you. Tell you what: I’ll teach you to escape from that thing.”

  Charlie looked at Bruno with distaste. He had not enjoyed having his chin tickled and his brow knitted into a frown. Isabel wanted to laugh: Cat had done it again. Bruno was worse, far worse, than she had imagined.

  “Are you an escapologist as well?” she asked.

  Bruno looked up at her. “Escape-how-much?” he asked.

  “An escapologist. I wondered whether you were both a funambulist and an escapologist.”

  Now Cat decided to intervene. Throwing a sideways glance at Isabel, she said, “Isabel can talk English. It’s just that sometimes she forgets.”

  “Forgets what?” asked Bruno.

  Jamie cleared his throat. “What stunts did you do in Oil?” he asked.

  Bruno seemed pleased with the question. “I was covered in oil in one scene,” he said. “They used molasses, actually. It looks just like crude, but it’s easier to get off.”

  “You must get yourself into some sticky situations,” interjected Isabel.

  Cat threw Isabel a warning glance.

  “And then, in another scene,” Bruno continued, “I had to do a fire job. Asbestos clothing, flames, the works. They had me toppling over and ending up in the drink. I almost hit the rescue boat when I went in, but it didn’t show up in the shot so the director didn’t make me do it again.”

  Cat smiled appreciatively. “Bruno says that filming is very dull work. He says that they do the same thing over and over again, just to get it right.”

  Bruno nodded in agreement. “It’s a tough business, even if you aren’t a stunt man. You work for the dough, you really do. Except for the body doubles. That’s easy money.”

  Jamie was intrigued. “Body doubles?”

  Bruno grinned. “They’re the people who stand in for actors’ body parts—an arm, maybe, or a foot—depending.” He hesitated, looking at Cat as if for a signal. She smiled encouragingly, and he was emboldened. “And nude scenes. You know, bedroom stuff. When they want to show a bit of flesh. You don’t have to show the face, and so they use the body double rather than the actor.” He turned to Isabel and winked. “Know what I mean?”

  It occurred to Isabel that she should wink back, and she did. Jamie saw this, and his mouth opened as if he was about to say something. Then Bruno winked at Isabel again.

  THEY BOTH HAD DIFFICULTY getting to sleep. Isabel knew that Jamie was still awake by the sound of his breathing; once he was asleep he breathed so quietly that it was as if nobody was there.

  “Oh well,” she muttered.

  Jamie turned. He put an arm gently about her shoulder, pushing the sheet and blanket aside. “You behaved,” he said. “In fact, I thought you behaved very nicely.”

  She was relieved. She had made a supreme effort—for the sake of her relationship with Cat—and it was a relief to know that at least Jamie had been impressed. “That wink,” she said.

  He chuckled. “Yes. I saw it. What did it mean?”

  “A wink is usually a sign of complicity,” said Isabel. “It says, ‘We’re on the same side, aren’t we?’”

  Jamie sighed. “It’s not going to work, is it? And do you know what? I feel rather sorry for him. He may be pretty keen on her.”

  Isabel feared that he was right. “He’s rougher trade than her usual boyfriends,” she said. “I hope that when it comes unstuck he won’t be difficult.”

  Jamie confessed that this had been worrying him too. “There’s something about him,” he said. “Something rather odd. You know how it is with some people, there’s a sense of their being on the edge. Wound up like a spring.”

  Isabel knew what he meant. She had sensed it too, and it had worried her. “Do you think we should warn her?” She felt the weight of his forearm on her shoulder; it was a reassuring feeling

  Jamie was silent for a moment. Then he spoke. “No. We mustn’t. She won’t take well to any interference. She’ll have to discover it by herself.”

  Isabel knew that he was right. The decision not to interfere was counterintuitive though, and she knew that it was going to be hard. The arrival of Bruno was potentially disastrous; even saying his name was proving difficult now, so strongly negative were the associations.

  “At least we won’t have to wait long. It probably won’t last,” she said, drowsily.

  “Or he won’t,” muttered Jamie.

  Jamie’s remark jolted Isabel back to wakefulness. “What?”

  Jamie explained. “His job is pretty dangerous, isn’t it? Flaming jackets, oil, molasses … tightropes. All very dangerous. High life insurance rates, I would have thought. Poor chap.”

  The last two words, thought Isabel, were vital. They converted a heartless remark into a sympathetic one, showing the power of small words to do big things.

  CHAPTER TEN

  JOCK SAID he would be at the entrance to the Old Greenhouses at eleven o’clock,” Minty had said to Isabel over the telephone. “He’s very punctual. He’ll be there.”

  Isabel had asked Minty to describe him. “There may be other people there,” she said. “I don’t want to sidle up to the wrong man. Not that I’d really know how to sidle.”


  Minty did not find this amusing. “What does he look like? Tall,” she said. “Very good-looking. The sort of man whom married women fall for.” She waited for a reaction, but Isabel said nothing. “Which is why I did,” she added lamely. “I know, I know …”

  “Anybody can succumb to temptation,” said Isabel. “It’s easy enough.”

  “I can’t see you giving in to temptation,” said Minty. “I really can’t.”

  Isabel was not sure what to make of this remark. It could be complimentary or otherwise; Minty might be suggesting that she was too strong—which would be complimentary—or too unlikely to attract temptation, which would hardly be flattering.

  “You don’t know me all that well,” said Isabel. There was mild reproach in her response, but Minty did not appear to pick up on it, instead asking Isabel to contact her at the office once she and Gordon were back from Skye. “I may not be able to talk freely,” she said. “For obvious reasons. But please tell me what happened.”

  Isabel reached the Botanical Gardens slightly early. It was a warm morning, the air still and the sky unclouded. Edinburgh could not count on many days of that sort, even in a good summer, and people were quick to respond. The bus down to Stock-bridge was full of men in tee-shirts or with their sleeves rolled up, the women in thin cotton blouses. The person sitting beside Isabel faced out of the window, the sun on her face, her eyes closed, and muttered, “Gorgeous sun! Gorgeous sun!” Her words were like the words of a prayer, offered up that the sun should not change its mind and disappear.

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” murmured Isabel.

  The woman half turned to her. “I miss it so much,” she said.

  “Perhaps we live in the wrong country,” Isabel remarked.

  The woman laughed, and returned to her sun worship. “No choice,” she said. “Like the rest of life. No choice.”

  No choice. She was right, thought Isabel—most of us had no choice as to where we lived. Once again, she had cause to reflect on the fact that the big lottery was the very first one, the one that determined what we were: French, American, Sudanese, Scottish. And with that, there came a mountain of baggage—a culture, a language, a set of genes determining complexion, height, susceptibility to disease and so on. And for most people that was their fate: later changes, if they could be made at all, would be accidental or hard-fought-for. The woman on the bus would like to live in Spain or Portugal, she imagined, closer to the sun, but could not do so because she had a job, a husband and a past that tied her to Scotland and its weather.

  What was the solution? To bemoan the fact, or to love where you were? To love where you were—obviously. And that, by and large, was what people did. They accepted, and the acceptance became love. Is that why I love Scotland, she asked herself, because it is simply the place that I have to love? No. It was not the reason.

  She followed the winding road that led along the side of the Water of Leith before meandering up the brae to the Botanical Gardens. Turning round here, one was afforded an unusual view of the city skyline, of the Castle, of the spiky churches and the crouching lion of Arthur’s Seat, mantled gold in the sunlight. She took this in briefly, and then looked down at the river below her, its surface half silver, half peaty brown. It rarely became very deep: one could wade across and never wet one’s knees in most places. Only after heavy rains in the Pentlands did it seem at all impressive, but she felt a strong affection for it as the river of her childhood. They had picnicked beside it up in Colinton Dell, where it tumbled over a weir, her father demonstrating to her how to make flat stones skip over the surface, something she never achieved. And her mother lay back on their tartan picnic rug and drew on a cigarette, sending tiny clouds of smoke skywards. “You look like a volcano, Mummy. A volcano.” She remembered her words, after all this time, just as she remembered how her mother had not appreciated the remark. Isabel had felt hurt and surprised, because she had never been able to take parental anger or disappointment.

  She took the path that led round the back of Inverleith House, which stood surrounded by trees in the middle of the gardens. Again there were memories—this time of being brought to see an exhibition in the days when the building was used by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. She had been brought with her class from school and they had been taken round an Anne Redpath exhibition. Miss McLaren, their art teacher, who believed that every twentieth-century artist of any note had been influenced by Cézanne, had duly found signs of this in the Redpath paintings. “Cézanne again,” she had said. “And Matisse. She was influenced by both, of course, as so many were. Look at the colours in this painting, girls. The hillside. The path. Does that not make you think of Cézanne?”

  She had not thought of Miss McLaren for years. That outing to the gallery had until now been absent from her memory, and although she could remember the art teacher and what she said, she could not recall which of her classmates had been with her. It was a blank. Twenty years from now, would she have forgotten why she was here today, and what was about to happen? She imagined so. And then went on to think: twenty years on, Charlie would be coming to the end of his university days—a young man about to embark on a career. She could not picture it, nor could she imagine how she would feel, although it would be the same as everybody else feels in similar circumstances. That at least was a consolation: separation and loss were something that we all experienced; the pain was shared, and was perhaps easier for that.

  She was approaching the hothouses. She looked at her watch: three minutes to eleven. There was nobody there, and for a moment she wondered whether Minty was playing with her, sending her off on a wild goose chase, wasting her time; there were unbalanced people who did that sort of thing. She looked behind her along the path that she had followed from the back of Inverleith House. In the distance a woman wearing a bright red jacket was pushing a small child in a pushchair. The child seemed to be wearing a bonnet of some sort and the woman had a large sunhat on her head. If Jock Dundas came now, he might think that the woman was Minty and that the child was Roderick; he could easily think that.

  She turned round again and saw that the door of one of the hothouses was being opened from the inside. A man came out and closed the door behind him. He was not far away and Isabel saw that he was a tall man with a head of dark hair. He looked at her briefly and then up towards the woman on the path behind her. He screwed up his eyes, as the sun was bright, and stared at the other woman, momentarily uncertain.

  Isabel was sure now, and was close enough to the man to address him. “No, that’s not her.”

  She had approached him from the side, and he spun round sharply.

  Isabel smiled. “That woman over there is not Minty.”

  The man threw a puzzled glance in the woman’s direction and then looked back at Isabel. “I’m sorry, you are …?”

  Isabel was struck by Jock’s profile. Of course Minty had fallen for him. “I’m Isabel Dalhousie,” she said. “I’m a … a friend of Minty’s.”

  Jock did not react for a moment. Then he frowned. “Is there something wrong? Is Roderick all right?”

  Isabel reassured him. “He’s fine. I’ve come instead of Minty, that’s all.”

  At first Jock had been impassive, but now he began to look irritated. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but I was due to meet Minty. I don’t really see why—”

  Isabel cut him short. “Minty is very upset,” she said. “And I want to talk to you about that.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t see what any of this has got to do with you.”

  “She asked me to speak to you. She wants me to ask you to stop.”

  He looked up at the sky. “Sorry, but this really is none of your business.”

  You’re quite right, thought Isabel. It’s absolutely none of my business. But she did not say so. She did not like Jock’s attitude. It was the attitude of a bully, and bullies never liked others to become involved in their programmes of intimidation.

 
She took a deep breath. “Listen, Mr. Dundas. You are treading on very dangerous ground, you know.”

  Her remark clearly took him by surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound emerged. Isabel decided to press her advantage; she felt more confident now.

  “You have no right,” she began. “You have no right to do what you’re doing. You should count yourself fortunate that Minty hasn’t contacted the police by now.”

  Jock’s surprised expression now turned to one of astonishment. “The police? What on earth are you talking about? What have the police got to do with my efforts to see my son?”

  He stopped himself, as if he had given away something he had no intention of revealing.

  “I know he’s your son,” Isabel said quietly. “I know that.”

  “Well then, I have a right to see him, I’d have thought.” There was a note of petulance in his voice.

  “But no right to intimidate Minty,” Isabel countered. “Threatening phone calls. Sending a wreath to the house.”

  Jock’s look of astonishment returned. “What?” His voice rose. “What are you saying?”

  Isabel could tell immediately that his surprise was genuine, and she was entirely thrown by the realisation. Immediately she reached a conclusion: Jock had not been intimidating Minty—that was clear. Either that, or he was a most accomplished actor.

  “Come on,” he said angrily. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  The woman who had been coming down the path was now not far away, and Isabel thought that she could probably hear what was being said. She nodded in the direction of the hothouse door. “Look, can we go inside?”

  Jock, still angry, muttered his agreement and they went into the greenhouse. The warmth of the day meant that the air inside was uncomfortably hot, in spite of the automatic windows having opened to their maximum extent. The air was heavy, too, with the scent of a flowering plant, a thick, rather sickly smell.

  “Let’s walk to the other side,” said Isabel. “We can talk.”