The Careful Use of Compliments id-4

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Walter saw her eyes move to them. “Yes,” he said. “Those are McInnes, too. They’re quite early ones, actually. I think that he did those when he first started going to Jura. That was before he married. He was fresh out of art college, but already he had that very mature style. That’s what got him noticed.”

  Now that he had drawn attention to them, Isabel felt that she could move over and look more closely at the paintings. Other people’s possessions were an awkward thing, she thought; one should not snoop too obviously when one went T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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  into a room—a close examination of one’s host’s books always seemed to be too much like an attempt to judge their tastes—

  but pictures were different. The reason for hanging them on the wall was for people to see them—and that included guests.

  Indeed, many collectors wanted one to see their paintings, which was why well-known painters fetched higher prices. They gave no greater enjoyment, necessarily, than others; but they were evidence of wealth. There were people for whom the whole point of having a Hockney was that those who did not have Hockneys could reflect on the fact that you had one and they did not. Isabel did not care for this; she had no desire that others should see what she had.

  She approached the paintings to look at them more closely.

  One was of a group of people cutting and stacking peats: a man and a woman worked with the stacks of dark blocks, while behind them, seated on the edge of the cutting, a young woman unwrapped a packet of sandwiches. It was a compelling picture, with a certain sadness about it, although she could not understand why it should be sad. That, perhaps, was why McInnes was considered such a good painter: he captured the moment, in the way in which a great painter must; a moment when it feels that something is about to happen, but has not yet.

  And what was about to happen in this painting was sad, inexpressibly so.

  She turned to the other painting. This was a landscape, with the unmistakeable mammary hills, the Paps of Jura in the background. There was nothing in the subject matter which made it exceptional—so many artists had painted the western isles—

  but again there was that quality of attenuation of light, of sadness, that made the painting stand out.

  She became aware that Walter was standing directly behind 1 1 0

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h her. She heard his breathing and she straightened up. His physical presence was powerful in a way which she would not have been able to define; but it was there.

  “That one of the peat cutters is one of my favourites,” he said. “The tones are almost sepia, don’t you think? Like an old photograph.”

  Isabel agreed. “When I look at old photographs,” she said, “I often think of how the people in them are all dead and gone. It’s a thought, isn’t it? There they are in the photographs, going about their business without much thought to their mortality, but of course it was there all the time.”

  Walter was intrigued. “Yes, of course,” he said. “There’s a photograph which really affected me, you know, when I was sixteen or seventeen. We had a book of poetry of the First World War—Owen, Sassoon, people like that—and there was a photograph in it of five or six men in the uniform of a Highland regiment—kilts—standing in a circle in front of the local minister. They were about to leave the Highlands to go off to the war.”

  He paused, and his eyes met Isabel’s. “When I first saw it, I stared at it for quite some time. Half an hour or so. I just stared and wondered which of those men, if any, came back to Scotland. It was an infantry regiment, as the Highland regiments were, and their chances must have been pretty slim. They were slaughtered, those men. I remember looking at the faces, looking at the detail, thinking, You? Did you come back? Did you? ”

  They were both silent for a moment. Then Isabel said,

  “Rather like those pictures of the young men sitting on the grass around their Spitfires, waiting to be scrambled. How many of them lasted more than a few weeks?”

  “Not many,” he said. “No. Awful. But have you noticed how those young pilots seemed to be smiling in so many of the phoT H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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  tographs? Whereas those Highlanders just looked sad, uncom-prehending, I suppose. It seems somehow different.”

  Walter took a step back and looked at Peter. “You’ve explained to . . .”

  “Isabel.”

  “Yes, of course. Well, perhaps you’d like to have another look at the painting. It’s in the dining room.”

  They followed him into the adjoining room. The painting was propped against a wall, half in shadow, and Walter moved it out, leaning it against the back of a chair. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  Isabel looked at the painting. “I can understand why people were so sorry about his death,” she said. “He would have been a very great painter. When did it happen, by the way?”

  “About eight years ago,” said Walter. “It was all over the papers at the time. It made the front page of The Scotsman; even The Times deigned to notice it. He fell foul of the Corryvreckan.

  It’s a bad bit of sea off Jura. People call it a whirlpool, but it’s more than that.”

  There was silence. Walter pointed to the painting. “Just round the corner from that point. He’d taken to putting out lobster pots and so he had a small boat which he took out in the wrong conditions. Exactly what happened to Orwell, or just about. Orwell survived, and finished 1984. McInnes didn’t.”

  Peter, who had been staring at the painting, looked up. “I’ve seen it. We were up on Islay once and went for a cruise round Jura. We stopped some way away from the Corryvreckan itself, but we could hear it. It was like a jet—a roaring sound. And there were amazing high waves rising and falling.”

  “If you get the tides right,” said Walter, “you can sail right through it. It’s like a millpond at slack water. Then, when the tide turns, it hits a submerged mountain of some sort under the 1 1 2

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h surface and all hell breaks loose. That creates the whirlpool effect.”

  As Isabel listened, her eye wandered back to the painting.

  Perhaps that was what made these paintings sad for her—the knowledge that McInnes would die in the very place he painted so lovingly. But this, she thought, was not a McInnes. If one looked at the two paintings on the wall, and then at this one, it just felt different. They were not by the same hand.

  “WELL?” SAID PETER as they walked back along Hope Terrace.

  “That was interesting,” said Isabel. “Thank you for arrang-ing it.”

  Peter stared at her quizzically. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

  Isabel looked up, at the thin layer of high white cloud that was moving across the sky from the west. Cirrus. “No, I’ll say more if you want, but I’m not sure where to start. Him? Walter himself? A surprise. The way you’d spoken I thought of him as being much older. And there he is, living in that rather muse-umish house . . .”

  “With his mother,” added Peter.

  Isabel was surprised. “Really? I thought you said . . .”

  “I thought that the parents were dead, but I was wrong.

  She’s still with us, he told me. When you went out of the room to go to the loo, he said something about her. I was astonished.

  I’ve never seen her, but she’s there apparently. She’s only in her early seventies, but he says that she doesn’t go out much.”

  Isabel thought for a moment. Did that change anything?

  The idea of Walter Buie living in that house by himself, with his ill-tempered dog—whom they did not meet—intrigued her simply because she wondered why he chose to live by himself.

  What did he do about sex, or was he one of those asexual T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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  people—there were some, she knew—who did not care one way or the other, for whom sex was
nothing too important, a minor itch at most. Was he gay? She found it difficult to tell these things, and often misjudged, particularly in the case of feminine men who were also resolutely straight. Or, finally, was it simply nobody else’s business, and therefore none of hers? That was true, but she decided to allow herself one final speculation. If his mother was still alive, was he there by choice, or because he was under pressure to stay? Some parents held on, and made it difficult for their offspring to leave. Walter Buie could be an emotional prisoner, the victim of a retentive—very retentive—

  mother. And in that case, it was just possible that he was being made to sell the picture by his mother, who might be refusing to come up with the money that he thought he would be able to get from her. In that case, her conclusion that there was something wrong with the painting might be unjustified, and it might simply be a case of Walter’s needing to sell it.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she muttered.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” said Peter. “You’re under no obligation to him—nor he to you.”

  Isabel smiled—not to Peter, but to herself. Peter was conscientious, but he was practical too. He made things work, whereas she could not help but be the philosopher. You and I are never going to agree on this, she thought. We are all under obligation to one another, deep obligation. I to you. You to me.

  Walter Buie to us, and we to Walter Buie. And we are even under obligation to the dead, whose serried ranks in this case include one Andrew McInnes, painter, husband, our fellow citizen, our brother.

  But she said none of this. Instead, she said, “Look at that cirrus uncinus up there. Just look at it.”

  Peter looked up at the sky, at the wisps of cloud, and at first 1 1 4

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h said nothing. He wondered what the relevance of cirrus uncinus was. None, he thought.

  “I would have described it as cirrus fibratus, ” he said quietly.

  And that, he thought, should put her in her place. He liked Isabel, but every so often she needed to be reminded that she was not the only one who knew Latin.

  Isabel turned to Peter and smiled. “The nice thing about you, Peter,” she said, “is that when you remind me not to be so obscure, you do it so gently.”

  C H A P T E R N I N E

  E

  WITH THE INTIMACY of a married couple—which they were not—but with the sense of novelty and awe of lovers—

  which they were—Isabel and Jamie prepared for their dinner with Cat. Isabel sat on the edge of her bed half dressed, examining a black cocktail dress and wondering whether it was the right thing for her to wear to Cat’s; Jamie came out of the bathroom wearing only a white towel wrapped round his waist, his hair wet from the shower, tousled, small drops of water on his shoulders and forearms. She looked up at him and then looked away again because she did not want him to see her looking upon him. That was a wonderful expression, she thought; looking upon somebody suggested that one was devouring the other.

  One looked upon with lust, or with something akin to lust, and one would not want to be seen looking upon one’s lover in the way in which a gourmet, sitting at the table, would look upon an enticing dish.

  Jamie moved over to the dressing table and picked up a brush. Bending down to look into the mirror, he brushed his hair roughly, but it sprang back up, as it always tended to do.

  “Don’t worry,” said Isabel. “It looks nice like that. Your hair 1 1 6

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h sticks up naturally. Lots of women would commit murder for that.”

  “It annoys me,” says Jamie. “Sometimes I think I’ll go to that place in Bruntsfield, you know the barbers near the luggage shop, and get a crew cut or one of those totally shaved styles.

  What do they call them? A number one, I think.”

  “You couldn’t,” said Isabel flatly. “It would be a crime.”

  He turned to face her. “Why? It’s my head.”

  She wanted to say, No, it’s not, it’s mine too, but she stopped herself. That was what she thought, though, and even as she thought it, she realised that Jamie was on loan to her, as we all are to one another, perhaps.

  She picked at a loose thread on the cocktail dress. “I think it would be a pity to look shorn. And don’t you think that deliberately shaved heads look aggressive?”

  “I’m not serious.” He paused. “Do you think I should get a tattoo?”

  She laughed, and he did too, and the towel round his waist fell down. Isabel felt herself blushing involuntarily, but stood up and went to pick up the towel before he could do so himself.

  She dried his shoulders with it, and then his chest. Jamie was not hirsute; he was like a boy, she thought, still.

  They dressed. He said, “Will Charlie wake up, do you think?”

  She did not think it likely. Grace was babysitting for them, and ensconced in the morning room, where Isabel kept the television. Charlie had been fed for the evening, and Isabel thought he would sleep through until midnight at least. “I doubt if we’ll be all that late,” she said. She left the reasons for this unsaid, but Jamie guessed what she meant. He was beginning to wonder whether he should have accepted Cat’s invitation. It might T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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  have seemed churlish to have refused, but now that he had accepted he felt a strong sense of anticipation over the meeting.

  He decided to confide in Isabel. “I feel a bit jumpy about this,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just have these butterflies in my stomach.”

  Isabel tried to reassure him. “The best way to deal with an old flame is to treat him or her as an old friend, or a cousin, maybe.”

  He thought about this for a moment. “That’s all very well, but I don’t feel like this when I’m going to see an old friend. This is a different feeling.”

  “Just don’t worry,” she said. “Just stop thinking about it.”

  She reached out and took his hand. “Look, why don’t we go downstairs and have something before we go? A . . . gin and tonic.”

  “For Dutch courage?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Although I must say that that expression has always seemed to me to be a bit unkind.”

  “Are the Dutch naturally brave?”

  “I suspect that they’re the same as anybody else. Some are brave, some aren’t. But it’s got nothing to do with the Dutch themselves. It’s the gin they made.” She squeezed his hand.

  “Don’t let Cat intimidate you.”

  “Why has she asked us?” he asked. “Why?”

  Isabel could not answer the question, and did not try to.

  They went downstairs and into the drawing room, where she started to prepare the drinks while Jamie went into the morning room to speak to Grace. When he came back he said, “I’m going to call a taxi for Grace. She has a migraine coming on.”

  Grace was prone to the occasional migraine, and would need to go to bed for twenty-four hours to ward it off. Isabel 1 1 8

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h handed the preparation of the drinks over to Jamie. “You do this,” she said. “I’ll phone for a taxi and get her organised.”

  “Will we call off?” Jamie said. There was no disappointment in his voice.

  Isabel, halfway out the door, gave him a look of mock surprise. “Why? Charlie can come in his carry-cot.” And why shouldn’t he? she thought. Cat could no longer pretend that Charlie did not exist; she had been cool towards him, barely acknowledging him, but that could not go on.

  Grace kept a migraine pill at the house. She had taken it, and was feeling slightly better, but Isabel insisted that she should go home and bundled her into a taxi. Then she returned to the drawing room, where Jamie handed her her glass.

  She raised it to him and took a sip. “Strong,” she said, making a face.

  Jamie grinned. “We’ve got a long evening ahead of us.”

  There was a frisson to the drinking of a strong gin and
tonic, but Isabel felt that she needed this. Jamie felt the same, and by the time he had drained his glass he felt more confident about the encounter with Cat; but that feeling still lingered, that anticipation, which he realised now was sexual excitement. He looked away from Isabel, as if she might see it in his eyes.

  CAT H A D R E C E N T LY moved to a flat in Fettes Row. It was on the third floor of a Georgian block, reached by a winding common stair that connected the landings of each flat. They had travelled across town by taxi, with Charlie obligingly asleep in his carry-cot on the floor of the cab, and now Jamie was carrying him up the last few steps to Cat’s door. Isabel, standing behind T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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  Jamie, bent down and looked at her son. “How can she dislike him?” she muttered.

  Jamie reacted sharply. “Who?” he asked. “Who dislikes him?”

  Having kept off the subject of Cat with Jamie, Isabel had never mentioned to him the animosity that she had picked up in Cat’s reaction to Charlie; and she had not intended to do so now. Her muttered words, thoughts inadvertently expressed aloud, had not been meant for his ears, but they would not be easily retracted now. But she tried nonetheless.

  “I don’t know if she does,” she said apologetically. “I sense something in her attitude, but perhaps I shouldn’t go so far as to say that she dislikes him.”

  Jamie frowned. He cast a glance down the stairs. “We could go home, you know,” he said, in a lowered voice. “We have a perfectly reasonable excuse, with Charlie. Babies and dinner parties don’t mix.”

  Isabel thought that she saw anger in him, which surprised her. Jamie was normally of a markedly affable temperament, but this appeared to have riled him. Of course he was a father, she reminded herself, and any parent, especially a newly besotted one, resents the thought that somebody else might find fault with his child; our children are perfect, especially when they have just arrived and not disclosed their hand. But she and Jamie had come this far, and she thought it likely that Cat had even heard the front door being opened and the sound of their coming upstairs. For a few moments Isabel imagined how it would be to leave now, to begin sneaking downstairs again, and then for Cat to open the door and look down at their retreat-ing heads. A hostess might have cause to reflect on such a scene and to wonder why it was that her guests should feel compelled to leave before arriving, but would Cat do that? Isabel thought 1 2 0