“Bonnie Charlie,” said the woman, bending down to examine Charlie more closely.
Isabel took a deep breath. I am not going to cry, she told herself. I am not. But when the woman looked up, she saw the tears in Isabel’s eyes.
“My dear …”
Isabel reached in her pocket for a handkerchief. “It’s nothing. I’m all right.” She realised, as she spoke, how trite the words were. People said things like that without thinking, but it helped neither them nor the people trying to comfort them.
The woman placed a hand on Isabel’s arm. “It’s hard being a mother, isn’t it? There are so many things.”
Isabel nodded. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“If I can do anything to help?”
Isabel shook her head. “Thanks. I’ll be all right. I must get Charlie back for his sleep.”
They parted, although the singing teacher looked over her shoulder a few yards on. She saw Isabel continue her journey, walking more swiftly now, head down, as if to fight a wind that was not there, on this calm day, with its clear sky and darting birds.
CHAPTER NINE
THERE HAD BEEN PAINFUL DAYS in Isabel’s life, as there are in the lives of all of us. There had been days during her brief marriage to John Liamor when she had felt a blanket of despair about her—a dark, enveloping blanket that prevented her from doing anything, from thinking about anything other than her distress. And it brought with it self-pity, for which she had a particular distaste when she saw it in others, but which she nevertheless understood perfectly well. I shall not, she said to herself as she returned to the house. I shall not. No. But what was it that she would not do? Think Jamie capable of deception, of …? She could hardly bring herself to think the word, let alone mutter it to herself; but now she said it, the word escaping her lips in an almost inaudible whisper: Unfaithfulness. And then, the word still hanging in the air, she muttered: Affair.
She passed the photograph of her sainted American mother in its place on the hall table; her sainted American mother who, as she had subsequently discovered, had had an affair. She had learned this from a conversation with her mother’s cousin, Mimi McKnight, who had tried to protect her from the knowledge but who had had it drawn out of her. Mimi had put it as tactfully as she could, and had wanted Isabel to forgive her mother, which she had done, of course; forgiveness, Mimi pointed out, can be as powerful when it is posthumous as when it is given in life; perhaps even more so. This had intrigued Isabel, and she had realised that it was quite true: forgiveness of others allows us to adjust our feelings towards the past, assuages our anger. Our parents may disappoint us in so many ways: they could have done more, they made us neurotic, they should have insisted we learn the piano—and now it is too late; they were too strict, in big things or small; they were too poor, too ignorant, too rich and possessive. There are so many grudges we can hold against the past and for the love and approval that we did not get from it. But if we forgive, then the past can lose its power to hurt.
She looked at her mother. The photograph had been taken on a trip that she had made to Venice with a college friend whose name Isabel had now forgotten. The friend was in the background, clutching at a straw hat she was wearing; there was a breeze and there were flags fluttering in the background; St. Mark’s Square, and the outside of the Caffè Florian, which had been such a favourite with Proust, and had been portrayed in a glorious Scottish Colourist painting. She looked at her mother’s face; she was smiling, and now it seemed to Isabel that the smile meant, My dear, life is like this; there are so many disappointments; so many …
Isabel turned away. Charlie, whom she had taken out of his pushchair in the outer hall, was niggling. He was tired and would settle quickly, but now nothing would satisfy him. She picked him up as Grace came out of the kitchen, a tea towel in her hand.
“I heard you come in. I’ve just made tea. Would you like a cup?”
“He’s so tired,” said Isabel. “Tea? No thank you.”
Grace approached Charlie and picked him up. “Little darling. Tired? Tired now and ready for a nap?”
Charlie made a fist and struck Grace across the chin.
“No!” Isabel’s voice was harsh, and Charlie looked at her in wide-eyed astonishment.
“That’s all right,” said Grace. “Didn’t hurt.”
“It’s not all right,” said Isabel testily. “Don’t tell him it’s all right to hit people. Just don’t!”
Grace looked at Isabel, registering much the same surprise as did Charlie. “He didn’t mean it.”
Isabel half turned away. “He did. He hit you.” She turned back and looked at Charlie. “You mustn’t hit people, Charlie. Wrong. Bad.” She thought, inconsequentially and absurdly: I speak as the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, not just as your mother. Wrong. Bad.
Grace was stroking Charlie’s cheek, and the little boy was smiling in response. “Grace put you to bed?” said Grace. “Grace tuck you up?” She looked to Isabel for confirmation.
“Yes,” said Isabel. “If you wouldn’t mind. I have …” She gestured towards the study door. “I have work to do … Or rather, I have to …”
“If you need to go out,” said Grace, “I’ll look after our wee friend here. I’ve done all the ironing—it’s all stacked away. I could take him to Blackford Pond later on.”
“Ducks,” shouted Charlie.
“You see,” exclaimed Grace. “Clever boy. Clever, clever boy! There are indeed ducks in Blackford Pond.”
“On it,” muttered Isabel.
“What?”
“On the pond. There are ducks on the pond. There are fish in it.” Even as she spoke, Isabel had no idea why she was being so pedantic, and she looked at Grace apologetically. But Grace, perhaps not noticing the correction, in her turn simply corrected Isabel. “There are no fish left,” she said. “The ducks have eaten them all.”
“I don’t think ducks eat fish,” said Isabel, her testiness returning. “They eat weed and things like that. Bits of … of sludge.”
Grace was tight-lipped. “I’ll take him upstairs.”
“Thank you,” said Isabel. “And look, I’m sorry. I’m upset about something.”
Grace looked at her with concern. “Is everything …”
“It’s fine,” said Isabel. “I’m just trying to deal with something that’s worrying me.”
“What is it?”
Isabel shook her head. “A private thing. You know how we all have worries—silly things. But they worry us.”
“And they usually are silly,” said Grace. “Aren’t they?”
Isabel nodded silently. Not this one, she thought. This is not silly.
“Go shopping,” said Grace. “Treat yourself. Go to Jenners. Buy something.”
Isabel smiled weakly. “Retail therapy?”
“Precisely. It always works.”
Isabel shook her head. “Not for me. It makes me feel guilty.”
Grace started to leave the room, carrying Charlie, who was waving a small hand at his mother. “You feel guilty about far too much,” came her parting shot. “It’s all that philosophy. How guilty they must all have felt, those people. Plato. Old what’s-his-name. And the other one, the one who couldn’t.”
She left. Isabel pondered: Which was the one who couldn’t? It occurred to her a few moments later. Kant. But she could not smile at the thought, as she normally would have done. She couldn’t.
THE GATE OF WEST GRANGE HOUSE was open. Isabel, who had walked over from her house, looked up the gravelled drive and saw that Peter Stevenson’s car was parked at the front door. But as she began to walk up the drive, Susie came out of the house holding a plastic shopping bag. She had clearly not been expecting a visitor, and gave a momentary start before she recognised Isabel.
“You’re going out,” said Isabel. “Sorry—I should have phoned.”
Susie went forward to meet her. “Not at all. I was just nipping out to the supermarket and I can do that any time. No,
I mean it. Come in.”
Reassured, Isabel followed her back into the house. Susie said that she would make coffee and they should both go into the kitchen. “Peter’s in there. He’ll be pleased to see you.”
“I’m sure you’ve both got things to do,” said Isabel.
“We haven’t.” They were making their way down the corridor that led to the kitchen, and Susie suddenly stopped. Lowering her voice, she asked Isabel if everything was all right. “Is there anything …”
“Yes,” said Isabel. “There is.”
“I could tell,” said Susie. “There was something in the way you looked.” She gestured towards the door that led into the drawing room. “Would you prefer to be in there?”
Isabel hesitated. It was, in a sense, woman’s business, but she wanted to talk to Peter too. She shook her head. “Both of you,” she said. “I wanted to talk to both of you. Do you mind?”
“Of course not.” She took Isabel’s arm, gently. “Come on.”
Peter was surprised to see her, but immediately realised from Susie’s manner that something was wrong. He had been sitting at the kitchen table filling in a form of some sort, and he rose to his feet as Susie and Isabel entered. “An unexpected pleasure,” he said, folding the form and slipping it into a plain manila file on the table. “Bureaucracy. Forms. There are forms for absolutely everything these days. Permission-to-breathe forms.”
“Don’t jest,” said Susie. “There’s probably some official drafting one right now.”
Isabel made an effort to smile. “I suppose that having so many bureaucrats, we need to find something for them to do.”
Peter agreed. “Work expands to fill the time of the people you employ to do it. It’s ever thus. Coffee, Isabel?”
Isabel sat down at the table. She was aware that both Peter and Susie were looking at her in a solicitous manner. For a few moments, nothing was said. Susie took the kettle and filled it under the tap; Peter moved the file on the table so that it lined up with a crack between two planks.
It was Peter who broke the silence, clearing his throat and then, hesitantly, asking whether there was anything wrong. He did not want to pry, but he wondered …
Isabel looked down at her hands. “Yes, I’m afraid there is.” She looked up and felt a sudden flood of gratitude to her two friends. In the lives of most of us there are a few people to whom one can go at any time, in any state of mind, and expect complete, unconditional sympathy. Peter and Susie were such for her.
She started to tell them. She explained how Eddie had made the comment in an offhand, incidental way. “He was absolutely certain that it was Jamie,” she said. “And I’m equally certain that Jamie said that he was rehearsing that night. I remember it very clearly because I asked him what they were playing and he said it was a dreadful programme that he couldn’t stand and he didn’t want to be there.”
Peter listened carefully. In the background, Susie measured coffee grounds into the pot, her head half turned from her task in order to catch what Isabel was saying.
“So you’re saying that he said that he would be at a rehearsal and wasn’t. Is that all?”
Isabel frowned. “All? He was at the cinema with somebody …”
Peter held up a hand. “Hold on. Hold on. All you know is that he was at Filmhouse, or wherever, and that he saw an Italian film. That’s all that Eddie said.”
Isabel replied that people did not go to the cinema by themselves—or not very often. “Why would he? And if he did—if for some reason he decided on impulse to go—then surely he’d tell me. And he didn’t.”
Susie, pouring boiling water into the pot, spoke over her shoulder. “Not necessarily. Married couples—and you’re virtually that—don’t give each other every detail of their day-to-day lives. Didn’t you tell me once—I’m sure you did—that you and Jamie both give each other room for a personal life? You did say something like that, didn’t you?”
Isabel had, and she admitted it. “But not something like this. I wouldn’t go off to a film with somebody and not tell Jamie.”
“With somebody?” interjected Peter. “You don’t know that, Isabel. You don’t know for sure that he was with somebody else.
“And what if it was just a friend—a male friend? Somebody from the orchestra.”
“Men don’t do that,” said Isabel flatly. “They don’t go off to the cinema with their male friends. Women do. Men don’t.”
Peter did not contradict her. She was right, he thought. But it seemed to him that this was a misunderstanding rather than a deception, and he put this to Isabel. She listened, but as he spoke she started to shake her head.
“I just have a feeling about this,” she said. “I just feel that there’s something wrong.”
“Then talk to him,” said Peter flatly. “Ask him.”
She shook her head. It would not be possible; she simply could not do it. What would it be, anyway? An accusation. Where were you last Wednesday? Somebody saw you, you know!
Peter listened. When Isabel stopped, they looked at one another across a gulf of disagreement. Peter glanced at Susie, exchanging a look that Isabel knew meant that they had discussed something before. They must have talked about me, she thought; about my problems.
Peter shifted in his seat. “Come on, Isabel. This could just be a simple misunderstanding. The rehearsal might have been cancelled, and Jamie might well have gone to the cinema on his own or with an orchestra friend, although it is a little odd he didn’t tell you afterwards.”
She listened, but as he went on she started to shake her head. “I just have a feeling about this,” she said. “I just feel that there’s something wrong.”
“Then talk to him,” Peter repeated quietly. “Say that you heard from Eddie that they had met at the cinema, and let the facts unfold gently. There may well be a simple and unexciting explanation.”
Again she shook her head. No. She could not talk to him about it.
Peter seemed to hesitate, and Isabel could see that he was considering carefully what to say next “Listen,” he said. “This isn’t perhaps about something completely different, is it?”
Isabel stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we like Jamie very much and we think it’s wonderful that you are so happy together … but we have asked ourselves occasionally …” He looked at her cautiously, gauging her reaction. “Occasionally we’ve asked ourselves if the real threat to your relationship might not be Jamie falling for a younger woman, but your finding out that aside from physical attraction, Jamie did not bring enough to the relationship to keep you interested.” He paused. “Is that what this is really about? Are you finding yourself drifting apart from Jamie?”
She felt herself blushing. He was wrong, and he should not have said it; there were boundaries in friendship and one of those, she felt, had just been crossed. “No, not at all,” she said. “And, frankly, that’s not what one expects even a close friend to say.”
“Close friends,” replied Peter, “are there to risk saying these things, if only to get them out of the way. So you’re quite clear you want your relationship with Jamie to continue? You definitely want to marry him?”
“Yes, of course I do. Jamie and Charlie are … well, everything, as far as I’m concerned.”
Peter nodded. “All right, but let’s get our feet firmly back on the ground. You firstly have to find a way of speaking to Jamie about the visit to the cinema. You can’t let it fester in your mind. If he is having an affair, which I think unlikely, you and Jamie need to discuss what it says about Jamie’s feelings for you, and what Jamie is going to do about it.”
She started to speak, but he continued. “Then, if you establish that it is the misunderstanding I suspect it is, you really are going to have to try to be more at ease with the relationship which you have with Jamie. How often have we talked about this?”
He answered his own question. “You’ve constantly spoken and agonised about the age gap, haven’t you? A
nd what has everybody said to you—us included? Don’t make such a big thing of it. Relax and enjoy your good fortune.”
He glanced at Susie for confirmation, and she nodded. “But it’s continued to eat away at you. And you’ll remember that on many occasions I’ve told you to loosen up, and to stop thinking about it so much. But you’ve gone on seeing yourself as a foolish older woman who has taken up with a toy boy. You’re going to have to come to terms with fact that it’s an unusual relationship, but one which seems to work.”
He stopped and looked at her, as if assessing whether she could take any more. He decided she could. “I’m sure there’ll be stresses and strains as you both get older. It could be that his youthfulness will become an issue—I don’t know. It might not. But you’ll manage, I think.”
Susie pointed to Isabel’s cup. “More?”
Isabel shook her head. She looked out of the window. Halfway across the lawn a large cedar tree bore its spreading branches with dignity. The morning light on the foliage revealed green beyond green. She had heard from her friends exactly what she imagined she would hear, and what they said was, of course, completely right. We need others to say what we really think. We need them to do that, she thought, because we often cannot utter the words that in their blindingly obvious nature do just that: blind us.
PETER OFFERED TO DRIVE HER back to the house, but she said no, she wanted to walk. She chose her route back along Church Hill, past the furniture shop and the shop where the photographer used to have his premises. J. Wilson Groat, the business used to be called; and she remembered having her first passport photograph taken there, by Mr. J. Wilson Groat himself, who had peered from behind a cumbersome-looking camera and enquired after the teachers at her school, whom he had photographed, he explained, over the years, going back … oh, a long time, of course, when Edinburgh had so many photographers to make a record of the life of the city. J. Wilson Groat was such a marvellous name, Isabel thought, not unlike the name of the fish merchant who used to call at her parents’ house in his van with a picture of fish on the side and his name in large letters: J. Croan Bee. The slogan beneath the name had been simple and memorable: From the sea to your tea, with J. Croan Bee.
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