The Charming Quirks of Others id-7

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I know it is.”

  She smiled. “I suppose you people see all of life in your cabs—and then some.”

  “Aye, we do.”

  They were now approaching the Dean Bridge; beyond it, the dizzy terraces perched on the edge of the ravine. Edinburgh was called a precipitous city, and it was.

  “So I shouldn’t feel bad about thinking the worst of somebody I love?”

  The driver was clear on the point. “Not in the least. As long as you’re ready to admit you’re wrong.”

  “I was wrong,” said Isabel.

  WHEN SHE RETURNED, she found Jamie at the piano. She came into the room behind him, quietly, and it was a few moments before he became aware of her presence. He turned round, his hands on the keys, and looked at her. She nodded.

  “You spoke to her?”

  “Yes.” She crossed the room so that she was standing immediately behind him. She placed her hands gently on his shoulders. “I think it’s over.”

  He sighed. “Poor girl. It’s very unfair, isn’t it?”

  “What’s unfair?”

  “That she’s so ill. That sort of illness—it’s unfair, isn’t it?”

  Isabel wanted to laugh. “Yes, if it’s genuine.”

  She felt him react. He twisted round to face her. “What?”

  “Prue isn’t dying at all,” she said. “I spoke to her sister. There’s nothing wrong with her—at least not in the physical sense. Mentally, it’s a different matter.”

  Isabel explained to Jamie what had happened and what Prue’s sister had told her. He listened in astonishment that slowly turned to anger.

  “Forget all about it,” she said.

  “I hate her for this.”

  Isabel bent down to kiss him. “You mustn’t. Don’t hate her. I don’t think it’s ever the right thing to do to hate somebody.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  She thought. Righteous anger? Yes, there was a place for that. Hatred? Could that ever be right? “What’s hatred? Wishing ill for others? Wanting their utter negation, their death?”

  “Yes. That, and …”

  “And what?”

  “Wanting to see them suffer.”

  She stroked his cheek. “And do you want that for her? Do you really want her to suffer?”

  He shook his head. He nestled against her. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

  She thought: Hatred shrivels you up inside. It’s like stoking a fire to burn the other person and all the time it’s burning you yourself. She knew that she would have to remind herself of this, because she had found it so easy to hate Jamie when she had first heard of the cinema outing with Prue. She had shocked herself over that.

  “I interrupted you,” she said.

  He turned back to the piano and began to play. She recognised the song and she mouthed the words silently. I shall build my love a bower / By yon pure crystal fountain / And upon it I shall pile / All the flowers of the mountain.

  All the flowers of the mountain. All the flowers of the mountain. She would gladly bring him all the flowers of the mountain. Gladly, however long it took. Songs did not exist in a world of reality; they made such feats quite possible. Ten thousand miles was not far to walk in a song. Nor was Eternity a long time to endure.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WITH ALL THE BRISK ENTHUSIASM of one who has at last successfully tackled one awkward task, Isabel set about disposing of the second. She had telephoned Alex Mackinlay to arrange to see him and tell him what she had found out and what her views were. She could not give him a firm answer to his problem, but could reveal what she knew about the three candidates and leave him to reach his own conclusions. She did not relish voicing her suspicions about Gordon, but she felt that she had no alternative. She would put it in as objective a way as she could manage: he might, just might, have written that letter, and the board might care to bear that in mind. She had no grounds for attributing the letter to him, yet somehow she felt that this is what had happened. There was something in their conversation that had made her think so: some sixth sense had prompted her to this conclusion. But should one pay any attention to a sixth sense?

  When it came to John Fraser, he might have behaved less than heroically on a mountain, but once again she was unsure about exactly what had happened. She knew that she should have talked to the family of the other climber, but she had not done so. They had moved to London and were difficult to contact; she had not pursued the matter.

  John Fraser was the victim of a campaign of whispers, but perhaps, just perhaps, with good reason. Which left Tom Simpson, a man considered to be none too intelligent by Alex Mackinlay himself. Well, what did that mean? His assessment of the candidate could be based on personal animosity. Sometimes people had strong views on the question of who would be their successor. Harry Slade might have conveyed his dislike of Tom Simpson to Alex and this might have led him to question the genuineness of Simpson’s claim to a master’s degree. But again this sounded like tittle-tattle, and did the board want even to consider it?

  Isabel had expected that Alex Mackinlay might offer to come to the house to hear what she had to say, but he did not.

  “We’re having a meeting at the school tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “It’s the end of term. We’re meeting through lunch and should be finished by three. If you would care to come out, I could show you round, and then you and I could have a private conversation.”

  She was on the point of saying that this would not be convenient and would he mind coming in to see her, but she did not. It was convenient, as it happened; Grace wanted to take Charlie to tea with one of her friends in Trinity, and Jamie was rehearsing. She had wanted to see what the school was like, and this would give her a chance. So she replied that she would be happy to come out.

  “And do you have an answer for us?” asked Alex.

  Isabel hesitated. “Some answers come more in the form of questions,” she said.

  He laughed. “That sounds very enigmatic.”

  “Some situations are inherently enigmatic.”

  She was not sure whether he would appreciate that. He was a businessman, she remembered—a doer—and he probably thought in terms of certainties. But he appeared intrigued. “Then let us de-enigmatise them.”

  Isabel laughed. “Indeed.”

  The next day, she left the house shortly after two. It would not take her much more than half an hour to get to the school, but she thought that she might walk round the grounds before she had the meeting with Alex. The school had a well-known garden that had been stocked with rare rhododendrons brought from the Himalayas in Edwardian times, and Isabel wanted to see this. There were sculptures too—a renowned sculptor who lived not far away had donated some of his unusual works to the school: there was enigma enough there, she thought, in the messages the sculptor carved into the stone.

  On the drive out she stopped just after Silverburn to watch a bird of prey hunting over the lower slopes of the Pentlands. It was a large hawk, waiting to swoop down on its victim. She drew up at the side of the road and watched as it was mobbed by a flock of smaller birds and ignominiously chased away. The small birds, like tiny spitfires in some unequal, heroic Battle of Britain, twisted and turned in dizzying aerial combat; the hawk, outnumbered and irritated by the onslaught, suddenly flew off towards higher ground and disappeared. Isabel sat for a moment, the engine of the green Swedish car idling, before she resumed her journey. This little battle was so close to the city and yet belonged so completely to another world—as did the man feeding his cattle in the field a mile further along the road, emptying a sack of food into a metal hopper while the cattle thronged about him, jostling for position at the trough.

  She knew West Linton, where her friend Derek Watson had his tiny bookshop. She resisted the temptation to call on him; there would be time for that on another occasion. Driving through the village, she followed the smaller road that led into the hills and after a few hundred yards came to the gates of the school. Bisho
p Forbes School, an Independent Boarding School for Boys Aged 8 to 18. Eight, she thought, was terribly young to be sent away from home. She tried to imagine sending Charlie off to boarding school in just over six years’ time, his possessions packed in a small suitcase. No, she could never do it, no matter what people said about the character-building and the sense of independence fostered by such schools. Those could be developed at home, she felt. She would socialise Charlie—she and Jamie—not some stranger.

  She followed a sign to the car park, where she left the car. Behind this, beyond a stand of oak trees, she saw the main building of the school, a large stone structure, Palladian in spirit, with several wings stretching out on either side. There were wide lawns around it, with, at their edges, clusters of other, more modern buildings—what looked like a gym, hostels, a chapel. Here and there small groups of boys moved from doorway to doorway, books under their arms, going, she thought, from lesson to lesson. From somewhere further away the wail of pipes split the afternoon air: band practice.

  The rhododendron garden was reached by a path that led away from the car park. She followed this, and after a few minutes found herself standing before a small notice that explained the history of the garden and listed some of the varieties it contained. Some of the shrubs had lost the blossom of early summer; others were still a brilliant flourish of colour. The paved walkway snaked its way through the shrubs, and she made her way along it, pausing from time to time to read the small nameplates at the side of each plant.

  She reached the far end of the garden and found, to her surprise, that she was on the edge of a cricket pitch. Cricket was not a Scottish game, but was played at schools such as this; a sign of English influence. She knew a few Scottish cricket players, and it seemed to her that they took a perverse pride in playing an arcane game that was a matter of such little interest to the vast majority of their fellow Scots. And here were boys being initiated into just such an attitude.

  Not far from where she was, a couple of benches had been placed under the shade of a tree, and it was here that the members of the batting team were sitting. Around them was a mess of pads and other cricket paraphernalia: bats, white jerseys with the arms tied in knots, a large blackboard on which the score had been written in chalk. She walked over; the boys acknowledged her politely, one raising his cap in greeting.

  She spoke to a boy who was standing at the edge of the group. He was a smallish boy, as they all were—it was clearly a junior team, made up of boys of ten or eleven.

  “How’s the game going?”

  The boy replied politely. “Very well. We’re going to win.”

  “And how many runs have you made yourself?”

  He looked down at the grass. “I was out for a duck. None. Bowled. Macdonald did it. He’s a fast bowler.”

  “Bad luck.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to bowl to Macdonald when they go in. I’m going to get him.”

  She pointed to a couple of deck-chairs that were a little way away from the group. “Who’s sitting there?”

  The boy shrugged. “Two of the teachers. They’ve gone back in. You can sit there if you like.”

  “Would you sit there beside me and tell me what’s going on on the pitch? I don’t really understand cricket.”

  He hesitated, but then agreed. “If you like.”

  They moved over to the deck-chairs.

  “You have to be careful with deck-chairs,” Isabel said. “They can collapse and catch your fingers.”

  “That happened yesterday. A boy called Brodie. He got his fingers caught and he had to go and get plasters put on them. Served him right.”

  Isabel smiled. “Oh? Did he deserve it?”

  “He’s a bully,” said the boy.

  “Ah. And does he bully you?”

  “Yes.”

  Isabel looked at the boy’s face. He had freckles and green eyes. She noticed a small scar on his chin—a recent scratch, nothing serious. Boys were always scratching and cutting themselves, breaking things too.

  “Can’t you do anything about it?”

  He shook his head. “You can’t clype on him. If you do that, they hit you.”

  “Who?”

  “Other boys.”

  It was a jungle. Of course it was. A jungle for boys between eight and eighteen.

  “Are you happy here?” she asked.

  He thought for a moment. “Yes. A bit.”

  Then she asked, “And are you going to miss Mr. Slade when he goes?”

  He frowned. “He’s going to Singapore.”

  “Yes. To a school a lot like this one, I believe. Lots of cricket there.”

  “I like Mr. Slade. I’ll be sorry when he goes.”

  She smiled. “So you will miss him then?”

  “Not as much as Miss Carty will. She …”

  Isabel waited for him to finish his sentence, but something had happened on the pitch and his attention was diverted. A batsman had hit a ball in the air and a fielder was running towards it. There was a groan from the field as the catch was dropped.

  “A near thing,” said Isabel. “But tell me, who’s Miss Carty?”

  “She’s the school secretary. We call her Tarty Carty.”

  Isabel tried not to laugh. “Not very polite. And may I ask why?”

  “Because she’s a tart.”

  Isabel drew in her breath. He looked so innocent—and probably was. He probably had no idea what he was saying.

  “That’s not very kind. Do you think you should say that?”

  “She’s in love with Sladey.”

  Isabel said nothing. Miss Carty was in love with Mr. Slade. Nonsense. Schoolboy fantasy. Boys made things up; shocking stories dreamed up with no regard to the truth or even to feasibility. They made them up. But then she thought: Miss Carty, unhappy school secretary, in love with Mr. Slade, handsome headmaster. Headmaster announces his departure for Singapore; Miss Carty pleads with him not to go. He says he must. She thinks: If I stop them making an appointment, then he might stay, even for a few months longer. And anything can happen in a few months …

  She watched the boy. He had taken a tube of peppermints out of his pocket and had peeled one off. “Would you like a mint?”

  She shook her head. “How do you know that Miss Carty is in love with Mr. Slade?”

  He answered nonchalantly. “I saw him kiss her. He didn’t know I was there. I had lost a ball under one of those bushes back there.” He gestured towards the rhododendron garden. “I was looking for it when they came along the path. They didn’t know I was there. I saw him kiss her. Tarty Carty. Yuck! Disgusting. I wanted to be sick right there. Yuck!”

  ISABEL FOUND THE SCHOOL OFFICE by asking a boy where to go. He pointed to a staircase that gave off the main entrance hall. “Up there. There’s a white door that says Headmaster. That’s the school office.”

  She climbed the stairs and reached a broad landing. There were several chairs placed around a glass-topped coffee table, and beyond that the door marked Headmaster. Slightly below, there was a sign saying Knock and enter.

  She knocked and pushed open the door to a spacious room in which there were several desks, a bank of filing cabinets, and a pinboard covered in notices and aides-memoires. At the far end of the room, a woman sat at a desk under a window. She had streaky blonde hair and was wearing a red shift dress. Tarty Carty, Isabel thought.

  The woman turned round in her seat when Isabel entered. She looked at her watch. “Miss Dalhousie?”

  Isabel nodded. “Mr. Mackinlay …”

  “Yes, he’s expecting you. He’s in the Governors’ Room—I’ll take you there.”

  Isabel followed the secretary out of the room and along the corridor, which was lined with photographs of sports teams. Under-15s Rugby, First Tennis Team, Swimming Team. All schools were the same. This took her back to George Watson’s Ladies’ College and the headmistress in her black bombazine and the smell of chalk and …

  “You have wonderful grounds here,” s
aid Isabel. “I walked through the rhododendron garden.” What do I expect? she asked herself. Blushes at the memory?

  “It’s very pretty,” said Miss Carty. “I like it a great deal.”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. And then, her heart racing at her effrontery, she went on: “You’ll all miss Mr. Slade when he goes off to Singapore.”

  She was ready for Miss Carty’s reaction—any reaction—but there was none. “A great loss,” the secretary said evenly. “But that happens in schools. Popular teachers move on. One gets used to it.”

  “You must have worked closely with him.”

  “Of course. But no doubt we’ll get a good replacement.”

  Isabel nodded. “It’s a good field,” said Miss Carty. “Or so I’m told. I have nothing to do with the appointment process, of course. But I’ve heard that we’ve got some strong candidates, whoever they are. I’ll be interested to find out when they come for interview.”

  “I’M SORRY,” said Isabel to Alex Mackinlay. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to sort out my thoughts.”

  They were alone in the boardroom. Miss Carty, after having shown Isabel in, returned a few minutes later with a tray of tea, and then went back to her office.

  “She’s a pillar of this place,” said Alex as the secretary closed the door behind her. “She’s been here for fifteen years or so. She’s become the institutional memory.”

  “Useful,” said Isabel.

  Alex began to pour the tea. “You said that you needed to order your thoughts. Do you want me to leave you for a while to do that?”

  Isabel shook her head. “Do you mind if I think aloud?”

  Alex handed her a cup of tea. “Not in the slightest.”

  Isabel took a sip from her cup. “I’ve found out a certain amount about two of the candidates,” she began. “John Fraser and Gordon Leafers.”

  “Yes?”

  “John Fraser is a climber.”

  “I know that.”

  “And do you know that he’s lost a couple …”

  Alex raised a hand. “Let me save your time. John Fraser is no longer a candidate. We don’t need to bother about him.”