The Lost Art of Gratitude

by Alexander McCall Smith

  But that was on the lawn and this was in Charlotte Square. She looked at her watch again. The meeting with Jock Dundas had resolved itself well—in a handshake that had amounted to an act of reconciliation. Yet in another sense it had left her angry and disturbed. She had been used by Minty Auchterlonie, and had she not gone to see Jock Dundas, she might never have discovered that fact. It should not surprise her, of course. Peter Stevenson had spelled it out for her: Minty was, quite simply, wicked. Of course she would use people, as she had just used Isabel.

  As she began to walk round the square, thinking of having lunch somewhere but not yet decided, Isabel found her anger mounting. Anger was like that, she knew: one did not necessarily feel at one’s angriest in the first few minutes after some act of provocation by another—one’s anger slowly grew as the implications of what had happened sank in. And there was a physiological basis to this too: levels of noradrenaline peaked in the system some time after the event. Anger of the moment was often less vivid than the anger that came later, once one got home and reflected on what had happened.

  She stopped walking and stood quite still, closing her eyes. I am a philosopher, she told herself. I shall not allow myself to be overcome by this emotion of anger. I shall not. She opened her eyes. She took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled. Her heart rate slowed. That’s better, she thought. That was the way to deal with noradrenaline. Minty is … Minty is nothing. But she was not nothing. There was no comfort to be obtained in thinking something so patently false. No, she is not nothing, she is simply a manipulative psychopath. But even that was not very satisfactory; labelling another may help, but not always. A label which one can preface with the word poor is capable of putting things in perspective and defusing antagonism, but we did not say poor psychopath.

  She took another deep breath and began to walk again. She was now outside the National Trust for Scotland café on the south side of Charlotte Square. It was just what she needed: the National Trust stood for stability, for reason, and for conservation of what had gone before. The Trust looked after castles and gardens and stretches of coastline. It was synonymous with peace and calm, and Isabel decided she would order a bowl of soup in the café—there was nothing quite like soup as a comfort food—and she would have a sandwich or two and perhaps a glass of wine. All of which, she imagined, would remove any remaining traces of anger-inducing noradrenaline as surely as a glass of something rich in antioxidants will mop up circulating free radicals.

  She went in and took a seat at one of the tables. She looked about her. A waitress was coming towards her, smiling, bearing a menu, and behind her was another waitress holding a plate of food. She looked in the other direction. The café was not crowded; only one or two tables were occupied as it was not yet the lunch hour. But the table next to hers was taken, and at it was sitting Minty Auchterlonie.

  IT IS HARD to ignore the other people in a room when there are only a few of you. You can try, of course, and some people make a passable job of acting as if others are just not there. Grace had once recounted such an experience when she had found herself in a small room with two other candidates for a part-time job in a hotel. One of the others had acknowledged her presence and smiled encouragingly; the other woman, “putting on airs” said Grace, pretended that nobody else was in the room and looked everywhere but at her companions—up at the ceiling, at the pictures on the wall, at her wristwatch. Isabel relished the thought: Grace in combat was glorious.

  “And what happened?” asked Isabel.

  “When I walked past her I stood on her toe,” said Grace. “Deliberately.”

  Although Isabel would have preferred not to encounter Minty in the National Trust café, the other woman was none the less there, and was looking in Isabel’s direction.

  “Isabel!”

  Isabel looked up from her feigned scrutiny of the menu; it had been upside down anyway.

  She smiled at Minty, who rose from her table and crossed the floor towards her.

  “Are you by yourself?” Minty asked brightly.

  Isabel had no alternative but to welcome Minty to the empty seat on the other side of her table.

  “I very rarely come to this place,” said Minty. “I usually have lunch at my desk. I send my assistant out for a sandwich. Of course there are business lunches, and I have my places for those. What about you?”

  Isabel waved a hand airily. “Oh, just like you. A sandwich. A bowl of soup. Mostly at home.”

  “You’re so lucky,” said Minty. “Not to have a job.”

  Isabel’s eyes narrowed; she would not be condescended to by Minty. “Actually, I do have a job. As you know, I edit a journal.”

  Minty seemed hardly to hear the reply. This was not a real job as far as she was concerned. “Of course.”

  Isabel glanced at the menu. The soup was Tuscan bean. “Tuscan bean,” she began to point out, but was cut short by Minty. “I was going to phone you this evening,” she said. “This is fortuitous.”

  Isabel looked at Minty evenly. “Yes, I wanted to talk to you too.”

  “Well, here we are,” said Minty breezily. “Tell me, how did—”

  Isabel decided that it was her turn to interject. “I’ve just seen Jock Dundas,” she said. “I went to his office.”

  Minty was silent. Isabel saw a muscle on the side of her face twitch slightly; it was almost imperceptible, but she saw it.

  “Yes,” Isabel continued. “I went round to McGregor, Fraser and talked to him.”

  “A good firm,” said Minty. “We occasionally use—”

  Isabel was aware that any conversation with Minty was a struggle for control. Again she cut in. “He told me something quite extraordinary. He said that Margaret Wilson had been speaking to him.”

  Minty frowned. “Margaret Wilson? The Margaret Wilson at the bank? That one?”

  “Yes. Your Margaret Wilson. And what she told him has effectively frightened him off.”

  Minty shook her head in puzzlement. “I’ve never mentioned you to Margaret. Never.”

  Isabel watched her. Minty would have no difficulty, she thought, in denying any knowledge of this. But she was determined to persist.

  “Margaret Wilson is a friend of yours, I believe.”

  “She isn’t,” snapped Minty. “She works at the bank, yes, but I don’t know her all that well. And let me repeat what I’ve just said—she and I have never discussed anything to do with you. We just haven’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Isabel. “I’m afraid that I think that you have. The significant thing is that she told Jock Dundas that you had set me on to him and that I was some sort of … ‘enforcer.’ She said that my job would be to ruin him.”

  Minty’s eyes opened wide. “What?”

  “And Jock Dundas believed her. He’s very concerned about a partnership in the firm. He thought he wouldn’t get it if a scandal blew up.”

  Minty seemed to be listening very carefully. “Even if …”

  “Even if that means giving up Roderick.”

  Minty sat back in her chair. Isabel found herself feeling surprised over her adversary’s reaction. She had anticipated a flat denial from Minty, which she would simply discount. But what she saw now was something quite different. There had been an initial denial—at least with regard to Margaret Wilson—but that had been followed by a reaction that was altogether more calculating.

  Minty now leaned forward. “Well, I must say that this is very satisfactory, Isabel,” she said. “At least from my point of view. As for this … this ridiculous story that Jock came up with—who knows where he got that from. He probably made it up.”

  “Why? Why would he make it up?”

  Minty shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea.” She paused for a moment. “To get back at me? Probably. A parting shot. Yes, why not? People get pleasure from harming others … after it’s all over. Hell hath no fury—you know the expression.”

  “Like a woman scorned,” Isabel continued. “That
saying rather focuses on women, as I recall.”

  Minty laughed. “Oh, come on! Men are just as bad as we are. A man can be as vituperative as a woman any day. Are you telling me that men don’t go in for revenge?”

  “They do, I suppose.”

  “Well,” said Minty. “There you are.”

  Isabel needed to find something out. “I take it that you ended the affair? It wasn’t the other way round?”

  Minty did not answer immediately; she glanced away. “It was me. Yes. I became a little bit bored, frankly. Some men—these good-looking ones—are really rather, how shall I put it delicately, disappointing. You’ll know that, of course.”

  Isabel caught her breath at the naked effrontery. Minty had seen Jamie and was obviously including him in this category of disappointing good-looking men. You’ll know that, of course.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said icily. “Perhaps I’ve just been luckier.”

  They stared at each other. Isabel felt her dislike for Minty well up; simple, pure dislike. Is this what hate is? she asked herself. Or is hate something even stronger? Is hate the desire to annihilate, to stamp out—to annul the other? She could not recall hating in that sense—ever—but perhaps this is how it started.

  The intensity of her antipathy worried her, and she briefly closed her eyes. Unbidden, a line of poetry came to her: Let hatred not distort us / nor make crooked our ways. She could not place it; it was dredged from some deep place in her memory, detached from its reference, its anchor. But she would heed it, wherever it came from.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “I suppose he might wish to harm you.”

  Minty sensed a small victory. “Yes,” she said, simply. “As I told you.”

  Yet it still seemed implausible to Isabel—why would Jock Dundas bother? And she remained puzzled by Minty’s reaction. If Minty had indeed set the whole thing up, then surely she would have taken more trouble to protest her innocence. She had not even bothered about that, as if she did not care at all whether or not Isabel believed her.

  Isabel’s appetite had disappeared, and even had she still felt hungry and in need of soup, she could not face the prospect of lunch with a triumphant Minty. She looked at her watch. “I’m not sure that I have time for lunch after all,” she said. “I have to see somebody.”

  Minty smiled sweetly, almost conspiratorially “Somebody interesting?”

  “Very,” said Isabel. I’m married, she thought. Or almost—and you know it. It was Charlie—she would go home and wait for him. She would make him a warm chocolate drink, which he loved, even on a sunny day. She would settle him for his afternoon rest and hold his hand while he went to sleep. Charlie belonged to a world of innocence and truth—not to the world of lies and deception inhabited by Minty.

  “I’m grateful to you,” said Minty. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am. Everything’s changed now. You helped, and I owe you.”

  Isabel looked at her watch once again—unnecessarily—and began to rise from the table.

  “I really am grateful,” Minty said. “If there’s ever anything …”

  Isabel tried to smile. “Thank you,” she said. “One never knows.”

  “No,” said Minty. “One doesn’t.”

  Isabel started to leave, but Minty suddenly stood up and reached out for the sleeve of her jacket; she felt her fingers around her arm, surprisingly tight.

  “A final thought,” said Minty.

  Isabel moved her arm slightly, causing Minty’s grip to loosen.

  “You know something? I think that Jock had no real interest in Roderick at all. None at all.”

  Isabel waited for her to continue, although she wanted to leave now; she felt that she was becoming entangled in an unpleasant end-of-affair squabble. Shots were being exchanged, recriminations, and all the parties wanted in such circumstances was to enlist your support, to hear you say: “Yes, you’re right, how terrible, how badly you’ve been treated.”

  Minty seemed to warm to her theme. “He doesn’t care, does he? This business with Roderick was just to put me on the spot, to exert pressure on me. And then, when push comes to shove, he drops the claim like that—just like that. No man who really loved his son—really loved him—would choose professional promotion over the boy himself. He just wouldn’t, would he?” She pressed her hands together in a curious gesture that Isabel could not interpret.

  Isabel said nothing. Her earlier belief that Minty had lied was now being undermined by the apparent logic of what Minty said. What Minty said could be true. In fact, as she thought about it, it seemed to her that she was very probably right. But if this was so, then she had misjudged Minty again, and that conclusion made her feel foolish. It was as if she was swithering this way and that, quite unable to make up her mind—a reed blown in the wind. “Don’t you think I’m right?” asked Minty.

  Isabel started to leave again. But not before she said, “Yes, you may be.”

  GRACE WAS LATE in bringing Charlie home, but was apologetic. “Annie didn’t draw breath,” she said. “That woman! Talked and talked, which meant that lunch was late. I was getting hungrier and hungrier.”

  Isabel thought of the contrast with her own lunch.

  “Mind you,” Grace continued, “she had a lot to say. It was very interesting.”

  “She’s seen something, has she?”

  Grace nodded. “She said there’s going to be trouble.”

  “Where?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  Isabel was silent for a moment. “But there’s always going to be trouble, isn’t there? Whichever way one looks at it? It’s like saying it’s going to get dark tonight. It always does. It’s the same with trouble. It’s always brewing.”

  Grace put on a pained expression. She had explained these things to Isabel on numerous occasions, and her employer just did not seem to grasp them.

  “It’s just that if people like Annie,” Isabel continued, “would be a bit more specific in their predictions it would be helpful. But they tend to vagueness, don’t they? Look at Nostradamus. He’s so opaque: those strange quatrains can be interpreted to cover anything. Why don’t these people say things like: ‘Next Tuesday at four in the afternoon there’ll be an earthquake’? Why do they have to be so Delphic?”

  Grace sighed. “When you see something, you don’t see the details,” she explained.

  “Why?” asked Isabel. “If one has good eyesight in this dimension, so to speak, then why should one’s eyesight be different in the other dimension?”

  “You’re not taking it seriously,” said Grace.

  “I am,” protested Isabel. “Look, I am. It’s just that …” She trailed off. There was something else that she wanted to ask Grace. “Do you mind if I change the subject?”

  Grace made an indistinct gesture of assent; in her view, Isabel would never understand these matters—how could one ever see something that one was determined not to see?

  “Do you think,” began Isabel, “that a man who loved his son would agree never to see him again? Let’s say that he had to choose between his career and his son?”

  Grace gasped. “Jamie?”

  “No, certainly not. Not Jamie. Somebody else.”

  Grace looked out of the window. “Well, I’m glad it’s not Jamie. But if you want to answer that question, just apply it to Jamie. Imagine that it’s Jamie you’re thinking about. We know how much he loves Charlie. Would he do that?”

  Isabel answered immediately. “Of course not.”

  “Then there’s your answer,” said Grace.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EVERY BIT THE ANGEL OF DEATH, Billy McClarty, scourge of foxes, chairman of the Dalkeith and Bonnington Model Railway Association, father and husband, stepped out of his van and made his way down the driveway to Isabel’s front door. He was carrying a metal-barred cage, heavy enough to give him a curious, unbalanced gait. The cage was surprisingly small if it were to accommodate a fox, but not built f
or comfort, of course. For most foxes finding themselves trapped within, this would be the condemned cell in which they would be incarcerated with their last meal—half a chicken, perhaps, or, if Billy’s advice had been heeded by the householder, a gamy portion of pheasant.

  It was five o’clock, and Grace had gone home. Jamie had just returned and was having a shower, while Charlie and Isabel were playing with a set of building blocks that had been passed down to Charlie from a boy over the road who had outgrown them. Charlie was learning to balance one block upon another, three high, and then knock them down. He appeared to find this endlessly amusing; not much different, thought Isabel, from slapstick humour, from the antics of silent-film actors, from those flickering scenes where people stood up and then fell over, and we all laughed.

  When the bell rang and she realised that it could be Billy McClarty, Isabel lifted Charlie and deposited him in his playpen with a couple of his bricks for diversion.

  Billy McClarty was wiping his shoes when she opened the front door. Isabel glanced at the cage. “Mr. McClarty.”

  “That’s me,” said Billy. “Sorry I’m a bit later than I thought, but there was a wasp bike in Morningside—a big one—and I had to get up on someone’s roof.”

  Isabel assured him that it did not matter. As she spoke, she noticed the tattoo across his right forearm—the Hand of Ulster, with Ulster is British in shaded lettering beneath it. It was well executed, the hand itself in red and the motto in blue. I was right, she thought: Billy McClarty is an Orangeman, a follower of William of Orange, who had put the Catholic James VII to flight. That might have happened in the dying years of the seventeenth century, but it was not too long ago to be a very live issue for some, the symbol of the securing of a Protestant monarchy. And that, in due course, became all tied up with freedom from being told what to do and think by priests—a cause that at least was about liberty, at any rate from Billy McClarty’s perspective. Catholics, of course, thought otherwise.