The Lost Art of Gratitude

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “And you can explain to me exactly what you meant just then.” The anger in Jock’s voice had not abated.

  Isabel told him about Minty’s belief that he was trying to put pressure on her to surrender custody of Roderick. “Is that true?” she asked. “Are you?” She imagined what the answer would be.

  The accusation appeared to surprise Jock. “Of course not. Of course I’m not doing anything of the sort. My God, what do you take me for? I’m a lawyer, for heaven’s sake.”

  Again, Isabel was in no doubt about the genuineness of his indignation. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been misled. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

  Jock brushed aside the apology. “All I want is to see him. That’s all. And I don’t want to break up her marriage or anything like that. That’s why I’m trying to see him discreetly—so that her husband doesn’t realise.”

  Isabel shook her head. “All right. But surely you realise that you can’t go on doing that. Sooner or later he’s going to mention something to his father …” She corrected herself quickly. “Mention something to Gordon about seeing a man with his mother. Can’t you see that? And then what?”

  “I’ve thought of that,” said Jock. “I’ve told Minty that these meetings can be described as business ones. I’m a lawyer. I could easily be doing business with her bank.”

  It seemed rather unlikely to Isabel, and she gave him a searching look. “Really? Do you really think that would be credible? And what’s the point? What’s the point of getting to know this little boy when you know that in the long run nothing can come of it? He’s never going to treat you as his father.”

  Jock was silent. The confident, rather arrogant expression of a few moments ago had yielded to something rather different. Now there was a look of defeat—a look of sadness.

  “I hoped,” he said quietly.

  “Hoped? What for?”

  He did not answer.

  Isabel decided to probe. “Why can’t you just accept it? Why can’t you say to yourself that Roderick may be your son but in reality he’s hers—and Gordon’s? Find somebody else. Have a proper son. One you can bring up yourself, not see furtively, like some sort of criminal.”

  They were standing still now, next to a tropical creeper that had sent out elongated tendrils and strange cup-like blossoms. Isabel did not like the scent of the flowers, which was vaguely meaty, with a whiff of carrion.

  Jock looked into her eyes, and she saw pain. “Has it occurred to you that you don’t know what you’re talking about? Sorry to be blunt, but has that possibility occurred?”

  Isabel lowered her gaze; she was in no mood to argue. She would telephone Minty when she got home and remonstrate with her for involving her in the whole business. She had assumed that Minty was telling the truth when she spoke of Jock’s difficult behaviour, but now she thought that Minty had exaggerated—at best—or even lied.

  “I can’t have another child,” Jock said suddenly. “Last year I had orchitis. You know what that is?”

  She was taken by surprise. She did know. It was becoming clear to her now.

  “People talk lightly of mumps,” he said. “Even the name sounds a bit jokey. But it’s deadly serious—at least in some cases. And I’m one of those cases. I can’t have children now. Or ever.”

  Isabel looked down. She had been ten minutes or so with Jock and her entire understanding of the situation had been completely called into question. Not only did she suspect that the campaign that Minty referred to was an imagined one but she had also come to understand why Jock might be so desperate to have some relationship with Roderick—sufficiently desperate to concoct a ridiculous and unrealistic scheme to see something of the boy. She felt confused, as if she had tumbled into a place where things were not quite what they purported to be. It was easy to feel that, of course, and it was unsettling; it was why people clung so fervently to their beliefs about the world.

  She took Jock’s arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Perhaps I’ve misunderstood the situation. I’m very sorry.”

  They began to walk back towards the hothouse door.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Jock.

  “I’ll contact Minty and tell her that I can’t do anything to help her,” she said. “In other words, I’ll withdraw.”

  Jock shook his head in frustration. “Can’t you do something? Can you persuade her to see it from my point of view?”

  Isabel was not sure how to answer him. It seemed to her that the situation simply could not be resolved in a way that would allow for compromise. If Jock came out into the open and took legal action for access to Roderick, it could result in the end of Minty’s marriage to Gordon, which would hardly predispose her to sharing Roderick with him. If Gordon forgave Minty her unfaithfulness, it might help Minty but would not help Jock’s claim to see the boy, as it was difficult to imagine his agreeing to let another man develop a relationship with Roderick, even if that other man was the boy’s real father. Why should he? And if it went to court, a judge would almost certainly take the view that Roderick’s best interests would be served by his remaining with Minty and the man whom he had been brought up to believe was his father. In any event, Jock stood to lose.

  It would have been simplest to disengage altogether, to wash her hands of them both. And she almost did; but not quite. It was moral proximity again: this man standing before her was not a moral stranger to her—he was asking her for help and she could not turn him away. She simply could not. “All right, I’ll talk to her,” she said. “But I really don’t see any solution that’ll help you.” She broke off as they went through the door. Now, out in the sunlight, feeling cooler and more comfortable than in the artificial warmth of the hothouse, she said, “Mr. Dundas, I think that you may just have to accept that Roderick can never be yours.”

  He stared at her. There was nothing firm or confident in his manner now. He was like a man facing sentence. And this made Isabel all the more certain: this was not a man who had been threatening anybody.

  “Do you know how I feel?” he asked. His voice was low and unsteady.

  “I think I do,” said Isabel.

  “It’s like being dead,” he said.

  He spoke quietly, each word chiselled out with complete clarity. Of course he was right—that is what such a loss felt like. Stop all the clocks, as WHA had said in that harrowing poem of his. Yes, that is how she herself would feel if somebody came to her and said, “You may never see Charlie again.”

  She could not think of anything to say to that, and indeed she did not want to; any gloss on his remark was unnecessary. The feeling behind the death analogy was perfectly vivid. This poor man had made a terrible mistake in becoming involved with Minty Auchterlonie in the first place, probably an ill-thought-out, regretted fling. And then it had brought these dreadful, painful consequences. But who had seduced whom? She him, Isabel imagined; he would have been an entertainment for Minty, as men can be for predatory women, a bit of variety to relieve her of the tedium of the worthy—but wealthy—Gordon. And now she had the result of that, a little boy who very clearly was loved to distraction by his natural father, who, through him, had been given a vision of fatherhood, only to see it abruptly snatched away.

  Most problems, Isabel had always believed, could be solved by the telling of the truth. This, though, was not one of them. She saw no solution here other than the denial of the love that Jock had for his son. She wished that she could have found some words of comfort for him, but she could not. There were none.

  Minty was the one who was responsible for this, she felt. She had brought this anguish to this man because she had thoughtlessly engaged in an extramarital affair. She paused. Of course Jock might have been responsible too: an affair, after all, always involves two—only complete narcissists are capable of having an affair with themselves. Here, though, it was easy to imagine Minty as Siren, luring Jock on to the rocks. So she was to blame for that, and, while one was about it, she had had no right
to bring Isabel into the situation with those invented stories of threats and danger.

  Isabel would speak to her and decisively wash her hands of the whole business. Jamie was right—again. She should not get involved in the affairs of others, especially when the other person reveals herself as manipulative and ruthless, ready to use people where and when it suited her. Jamie was also right in another respect. He did not like Minty; how astute he was, how acute his judgement. Minty Auchterlonie, she now decided, was in that category of people who did nothing but bring trouble into the lives of others, whatever they did. The only way of dealing with them was to keep out of their way, to isolate them as bearers of a dangerous infection who must be stopped from going out into a city with their burden of germs. But who was there to stop Minty Auchterlonie? Isabel?

  She made to take her leave of Jock.

  “You’ll talk to her?” There was anxiety in his voice.

  She nodded. “Yes. But, as I’ve said, I don’t see it making the slightest bit of difference to anything.”

  “But please do it anyway. Please.”

  “I shall. I said I shall.” She paused. Minty had told her to offer him money; now it seemed quite unnecessary, and quite inappropriate. And yet, it was there in the background, and might just move the situation on; one never knew.

  “There’s something else,” she said. “I don’t know whether I should even mention this. You may feel very insulted. I suspect you will.”

  “What?”

  “Money. She told me that she would … would compensate you for dropping your claim on Roderick.”

  He was quite still; he did not move. But she saw that something was going on in his mind. He turned his head away.

  “I’m sorry even to have raised this,” she said.

  He shrugged. “You were an emissary. I’m a lawyer and I know that you have to say unpalatable things when you’re acting for somebody else.”

  She was relieved that he did not appear to be angry. But if he was not angry, then what had he been thinking when she made the offer?

  “Minty mentioned a figure of fifty thousand pounds,” she continued.

  He did not meet her gaze. He was looking at a bee orchid, now in flower: a blaze of gold. So are we all reduced by money, thought Isabel; so are we all corrupted.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ISABEL HAD TRIED not to think about Christopher Dove, ignoring him as one studiously avoids looking at an ominous rain-cloud spotted on a country walk. But such acts of self-delusion provide only temporary relief, and she knew that sooner or later she would have to answer his letter and the charge it contained. She was not a prevaricator by nature and she would get round to it, but it seemed at the time that there were just rather too many unpleasant or delicate duties waiting to be performed.

  She would have to write to Christopher Dove; she would have to speak to Minty Auchterlonie; she would have to buy Cat an engagement present and make a further effort to like Bruno; she would even have to bring herself to watch Oil so that she could tell him that she had seen him on the screen. He would like that, Isabel thought, and it might be a way of building a relationship between them, which she knew she had to do. She had to do so many things, and most of them, it seemed to her, were things that she did not really want to do. That, though, was what life was like for most of us: doing things that we would probably not do if we really had any choice in the matter.

  She thought about this as she sat at her desk the following day. Jamie had caught an early train from Haymarket to Glasgow, to play in a recording session—lucrative work that came his way occasionally and that he enjoyed. Grace had taken Charlie for a walk down Morningside Road, where there was household shopping to be done, and that left her with the time to get through the mail that had piled up again on her desk. But no sooner had she started than the telephone rang.

  For a moment she toyed with the idea of not answering. It was a delicious feeling, ignoring the phone, a feeling of freedom almost wicked in its intensity. Why, she asked herself, should we be so enslaved by such instruments?

  She looked at the telephone on her desk, struggling with the temptation to let it ring itself out. How many rings would that be? If it was Jamie on the line he would let it ring and ring because he would know that she was somewhere in the house. But if it was a stranger it might ring only five or six times before the caller gave up.

  After eight rings she reached forward and lifted the receiver.

  “Miss Dalhousie?”

  The man’s voice was one that she had heard before, but not for some time and she could not place it.

  “Lettuce speaking.”

  Her hand tightened about the receiver. Of course, that was it; those precise, rather pedantic tones were familiar because it was Professor Lettuce, former chairman of the editorial board of the Review, professor of moral philosophy, author of Living Strenuously and, most significantly, friend and mentor of Christopher Dove.

  “How nice to hear from you, Professor Lettuce.” The words came out before she could stop them. It was a lie, and she should not have uttered them. It was not nice to hear from Professor Lettuce—it never had been. Lettuce: what a ridiculous name, she thought. Poor Lettuce: his salad days were over. She smiled; a secret joke, even such a weak and childish one, made it so much easier.

  “And I am pleased to be talking to you, Miss Dalhousie.”

  Are you really?

  “I happen to be in Edinburgh, you see,” Lettuce went on.

  Isabel tried to sound enthusiastic. “Well, what a pleasant surprise. Shall we meet up?”

  She did not want to meet him but felt that she had to say it.

  “That would be a great pleasure,” said Lettuce. “I’m giving a paper this afternoon. The philosophy department at the university is running a series of seminars and they very kindly invited me up to say something about my new book on Hutcheson.”

  Isabel caught her breath. “Hutcheson?” Realising that she sounded surprised, she corrected herself. “I didn’t know you were working on him. I knew of your interest in Hume, of course.”

  Professor Lettuce chuckled. “Yes. It would be more logical, of course, to move on from Hutcheson to Hume. I have done things the wrong way round. But there we are. The point is this: Would you by any chance be free to meet me for lunch? I know it’s no notice at all, but I wondered.”

  Isabel looked at her watch. It was almost eleven and she had accomplished virtually nothing that morning. If she went off for lunch now, then she would probably not get back to her desk until well after two, when Charlie would wake up after his afternoon sleep and she would want to spend time with him. The next issue of the Review would have to be ready for the printer in six weeks’ time and that meant …

  “I do hope you can make it,” urged Lettuce. “I have something fairly important I’d like to discuss with you.”

  Isabel tensed. It would be difficult now to decline Lettuce’s invitation as she knew that he would not talk about anything important on the telephone. He had always been like that when he had chaired the editorial board, alluding to information which he was party to but nobody else knew, or could be admitted to. “He’s talking as if he were the head of Secret Intelligence,” she had once whispered to a colleague at the annual meeting of the Review’s board.

  “Perhaps we should call him C,” came the reply. “Or M, or whatever it is that these people call themselves.”

  “L,” whispered Isabel. L suited Lettuce so well, just as one would have thought that D might have fitted Dove—but did not. Christopher Dove was a perfect name, in Isabel’s view; it had the ring of Trollope to it, every bit as suited to its bearer as was Obadiah Slope. She had always felt that people could grow into their names, just as we brought about self-fulfilling prophecies once we realised they applied to us. Obadiah Slope might have become a schemer because his childhood companions expected him to be one. Professor Lettuce must have gone through his childhood being the butt of mockery from other boys—fort
unate boys not named after vegetables—simply because of his unusual name, and perhaps for this reason his character had developed in the way it had. There was always a reason for wickedness, she was convinced—a reason to be found in the classroom or the playground, or even earlier, in the crib, when the mother failed to love, or the father withheld his approval, or something else dark and unhappy occurred. There was inevitably an explanation for the coldness of the heart that years later could be so damaging in its effect. Let that never happen to Charlie, she thought. Let him never be loved too little … or too much.

  “Are you still there?” asked Lettuce, somewhat peevishly.

  “Yes, I am. And yes, I’ll be happy to meet you for lunch.”

  “Good,” said Lettuce. “Something light, I think, if I’m to do Hutcheson justice this afternoon. A salad perhaps.”

  Isabel could not resist the temptation. “That would be very appropriate,” she said.

  Lettuce did not notice. “Good,” he said quite evenly, and, once they had agreed where to meet, they brought the call to an end.

  The telephone rang again almost immediately. This time it was Jamie, who was on a coffee break halfway through the recording session and wanted to chat. “This conductor is a slave-driver,” he said sotto voce. “We’re being given an eight-minute break. Eight minutes!”

  Isabel made sympathetic noises and then told him about the call she had just taken. “You’ll never guess who’s just been on the phone,” she said. “Professor Lettuce. He’s invited me to lunch.”

  Jamie laughed. “Perhaps he’s turned over a new leaf.”

  Isabel smiled. There was something very reassuring about weak humour; it took the tension out of a situation, made children of us once more. But such humour was only possible when shared with the closest of friends and with those whom one loved; they always knew that you were capable of better.

  “Poor Professor Lettuce,” she said.

  “Don’t give him a dressing-down,” said Jamie.