The Comfort of Saturdays

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She entered Cat’s office and switched on the lights. Cat had left a list of things to be done, and Isabel now went through it. There were to be several important deliveries, including a large one of Parmesan cheese, two wheels of it. Could she cut that up, Cat asked, and vacuum pack it with the vacuum pack machine? Eddie knew how to operate that, Cat explained, although sometimes it made him anxious. She thought about this: why should anyone be anxious about a vacuum-pack machine? She remembered her psychiatrist friend, Richard Latcham, telling her that free-floating anxieties could settle on anything – anxiety, like love, needs an object, and that could be anything.

  A tempting smell of freshly ground coffee reached Isabel through the open door of the office. She put down Cat’s list and joined Eddie at the counter. The coffee was for her.

  ‘Do you eat breakfast, Eddie?’ she asked, as she cradled in her hands the warm mug he had passed her.

  Eddie shook his head. ‘No. Never. I have a cup of coffee when I come in here and one of those biscotti things.’

  She looked at him. He was wiry, flat-stomached; there was no spare flesh. Eddie was good-looking, she thought, in a very boyish way, with his close-cropped light brown hair and the freckles that dotted his cheeks. He could have been a Scottish version of a boy from a Norman Rockwell poster, Isabel thought; one of those boys who delivered newspapers from his bicycle or dispensed sodas in the drug store, open-faced Midwestern boys who belonged to an altogether more innocent era. There was an innocence about Eddie – a sense of being slightly surprised by the world. And the world had surprised him, she remembered – surprised him badly.

  ‘You should eat breakfast, Eddie,’ she found herself saying. ‘You need it.’

  The young man shrugged. ‘I’m not hungry in the mornings.’

  Isabel looked at him again. If he lost a few more pounds he would begin to look anorexic. But did young men suffer from anorexia, as young women did? She vaguely remembered reading somewhere that they did, although much less frequently. Perhaps that was changing as boys became more like girls.

  It proved to be a busy morning, and when Isabel next looked at her watch it was almost one thirty. Things slackened off slightly then, and they each took a quick lunch break. Then in the early afternoon, a dishevelled man came in and stood in front of the counter, staring at the cheese. Eddie asked him if he could help him, but was brushed away. He looked to Isabel for assistance.

  As Isabel approached the man he raised his eyes and met her gaze. ‘I want some cheese,’ he said. ‘I want some cheese.’

  Isabel smiled encouragingly.

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘That one,’ he said, pointing to a large piece of gorgonzola.

  Isabel peeled on a plastic glove and reached down to extract the gorgonzola.

  ‘I haven’t got any money,’ said the man.

  She paused. Her hand was just above the cheese. Eddie, standing behind her, nudged her gently.

  She hesitated. The man had a cadaverous, hungry look about him, but it was not her job to feed him. This is a delicatessen, she thought; it is not a soup kitchen. But then, on impulse, she lowered her hand, took hold of the cheese, and lifted it out of the cabinet.

  Eddie watched her as she began to wrap the cheese in greaseproof paper. He was glowering at her. ‘Cat wouldn’t . . .’ he whispered. ‘Cat . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Isabel replied. ‘I’ll pay for it.’

  ‘Don’t bother to wrap it,’ the man said suddenly. ‘I want to start it now.’

  She let the wrapping paper fall away. She had noticed that the man had the lilting accent of the Western Islands.

  ‘Where are you from?’ she said, as she handed the cheese over the counter.

  ‘Skye,’ he said. And then added, ‘A long time ago.’

  She smiled at him as he took the cheese, and watched as it stuck to his fingers, which were stained and dirty. He licked at his fingers, and then took a bite out of the cheese. She watched him, and thought of the place from which he had come, a place of mountains and green pastures, of a green sea coming in from the Atlantic, the edge of Scotland, the outer limits of a world. What had brought him here, from that place – a failed croft, a mothballed fishing boat, enlistment in the army? And now this penury and hunger in a prosperous city that had no place for him.

  ‘It’s better with biscuits,’ said Isabel, reaching for a packet of water biscuits off the shelf behind her. ‘Take these too.’

  He took the biscuits and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and turned to leave the shop.

  Eddie glared at Isabel. ‘Cat wouldn’t like that,’ he said.

  Isabel remained cool. In the past she had hoped that Eddie would become more assertive, but she had not imagined that he would assert himself against her. ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eddie. ‘You can’t give food away to just anybody who comes in and asks for it. This is a shop, you know.’

  Isabel raised an eyebrow. She wanted to say: this is my business, and nothing to do with you. But it was not in her to be abrupt to Eddie; not to this injured boy. ‘How much should I put in the till?’ she asked calmly. ‘Five pounds?’

  Eddie turned away. Isabel could sense his anger in his voice. ‘I don’t care. It’s up to you.’

  She quickly forgot about the cheese incident, but it appeared that Eddie did not. Halfway through the afternoon, Isabel suggested that he take a break; trade was light, and she could watch the counter. No, he said, he did not need a break.

  ‘You’re still cross with me?’

  Silence.

  She waited, but there was no response. ‘Look, Eddie, I’m sorry. I know it was wrong of me. You have to work here all the time and you obviously can’t have people coming in and asking for free food.’

  He glared at her. ‘No.’

  Isabel tried to explain. At least he had said something, even if it was only no. And sometimes the word no is all that one will get, as at the famous occasion on which Proust and James Joyce had been brought together, and all that Proust had said was non. ‘I shouldn’t have done what I did,’ she said. ‘I acted on impulse. You know how sometimes you do things without thinking much about the implications of what you do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She persevered. ‘So now I’m saying sorry to you. I’m apologising. And . . .’ She tried to look him in the eye, but his gaze slipped away, as it often did. ‘And I really think that you should accept my apology.’

  A customer pushed open the door and made her way over to the pasta shelves.

  ‘Eddie?’

  ‘All right. I accept your apology.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Isabel dusted her hands on her apron. Another impulse seized her. ‘And why don’t you come and have supper with Jamie and me this evening? Nothing grand. Kitchen supper.’

  At first he did not know how to respond to this suggestion. She saw him hesitating, and she pressed home the invitation. ‘Come on, Eddie. We’ve known one another a long time and you’ve never been round to the house. Not once. You like Jamie, don’t you?’

  ‘Jamie? I like him.’

  ‘Well then, say yes.’

  ‘All right. I’ll come.’ He paused. ‘And thanks. Thank you for inviting me.’

  Isabel slightly regretted the invitation, not because she did not want to entertain Eddie, but because it meant that she would lose an evening that she had mentally earmarked for work. There were still four weeks before she would need to send the next issue of the Review off to the printers, but she knew from past experience how quickly those weeks could pass. What she wanted to avoid was a frantic last few days during which she would have to deal with matters that could have been sorted out well in advance. But today could be written off – a day devoted to Cat’s interests, and Eddie surely came into that category.

  Jamie was in the house when she got home. He had arrived at four and had taken over Charlie duties from Grace, though not without a battle, it seem
ed.

  ‘She was very unwilling to go,’ he complained to Isabel. ‘She more or less implied that I was being disruptive.’

  Isabel grimaced. ‘You’re only his father, after all.’

  Jamie smiled. He did not bear grudges. ‘That’s more or less what I said. Anyway, Charlie and I have been having a great time.’ He pointed to a clutter of toy vehicles on the floor: a fire engine, a tractor. ‘He’s going to be a mechanic, I think. Or an engineer.’

  Charlie started to crawl away, and Isabel intercepted him. ‘Not a musician?’

  ‘Who would be a musician?’ Jamie said, beginning to pick up the toys. ‘Years of practising. Awful hours. No money . . .’

  Isabel was cuddling Charlie. ‘But you do what you love doing,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘How many people can say that?’

  ‘Quite a few, I suspect,’ said Jamie. ‘Most doctors like doctoring, don’t they? And most lawyers like arguing – or at least the ones I know do. And you hear about pilots saying that they get a real high from being up there above the clouds. And you . . .’

  He placed the toys in a large open hamper filled with Charlie’s things: soft animals, a teddy in a kilt, building blocks in primary colours – a world of shapes, surfaces, textures. Then he stood up. Charlie was nestling into the nape of her neck, his back turned to his father, his mother’s arms about him. Jamie stepped forward; his face was close to Isabel’s and she looked at him in surprise. He kissed her suddenly, with an urgent passion. ‘I love you very much,’ he said.

  Her pleasure showed. ‘Well, thank you, and I love you too.’

  ‘Let’s go away,’ he said. ‘You, me. Charlie. Let’s just go away.’

  His eyes were locked into hers. She bent forward again and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Where?’ she asked. ‘Go where?’

  It was as if he had expected her to say no and was excited to find her saying yes. ‘Anywhere you like,’ he said. ‘Somewhere in the west. Ireland even.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  She moved away. Charlie was becoming heavy. ‘We can’t. There’s the delicatessen. Remember? And you’re busy this week, aren’t you? I thought you said that you had the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.’

  ‘We’ve both got things on,’ he said. ‘But Charlie’s free.’

  Isabel laughed. ‘They get social diaries at a very early age these days,’ she said. ‘I was reading about some mothers in a fashionable part of London who keep social diaries for their children. The kids have dinner parties. Dancing lessons. And so on.’

  ‘I want Charlie to learn Scottish country dancing,’ said Jamie. ‘He’s almost old enough. Once he can walk properly.’

  They both laughed. Then Isabel looked at her watch. ‘We’ll have to get Charlie settled in good time,’ she said. ‘Eddie’s coming for dinner.’

  Jamie took Charlie from her. The little boy held on to her blouse, reluctant to let go. She laid a hand gently over his tight-ened fist; the tension went out of it and his fingers opened.

  ‘Bath time,’ said Jamie. ‘Why do you think they love bath time so much?’

  ‘It’s a return to the womb,’ said Isabel. ‘It’s how we felt once and how we want to feel again.’

  She had not thought about it, but it sounded right, and was probably true. The living of our lives involved loss; loss at every point. Perhaps Charlie really did remember the comfort of the womb; it was not all that long ago, in his case. And what did she want to recover? Did she want her mother back, her sainted American mother? Or her father? Or the feeling of freedom and excitement she had experienced when first she went to Cambridge?

  She looked at Jamie as he left the room, heading upstairs to the bath that he would run for Charlie. There would come a time, no doubt, when she would think back to these moments and regret them; not in the sense of wishing they had never been, but regret them in the sense of wishing them back into existence.

  She followed Jamie upstairs. A line came to her, a snatch of poetry: John Betjeman, of all people, a snuffly romantic, who could write about love, though, with heart-stopping effect. There had been his Irish Unionist’s farewell to the woman he loved; Irish Unionists, she thought, have not had their fair share of poetry – all the best lines were claimed by the republican-minded Irish. But Irish Unionists fell in love and suffered for love in the same way as everybody else did, and could feel that they were in danger of drowning in love, as anybody could, and as she felt now.

  8

  Eddie seemed a different person. The blue jeans had been replaced with black ones – formal wear, thought Isabel wryly – and the tee-shirt had yielded to a roll-top sweater in the green that Isabel’s father had always described as British Racing. His face looked scrubbed, his hair combed and damp, as if freshly sprinkled with water.

  ‘You’re looking very smart, Eddie,’ she said as she let him in the front door.

  The compliment pleased him. He had looked uncertain when she had opened the door; now he smiled.

  ‘I saw a fox, you know,’ he said as he stepped into the hall. ‘Right outside. On the path. That far away from me. Just that far.’

  ‘Brother Fox,’ said Isabel. ‘He lives somewhere around here. We are in his territory. Did he look at you?’

  Eddie nodded. ‘He didn’t seem frightened. He looked at me like this.’ And here he made a face, narrowing his eyes. How like Brother Fox he looks, thought Isabel.

  ‘He watches us,’ said Isabel. ‘And he keeps other, less friendly foxes away.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes I wish I could introduce him to the Duke of Buccleuch. He has a fox hunt, you know, down in the Borders. They need to talk.’

  Eddie looked at Isabel, puzzled; she said some very strange things, he thought. And her house . . . he looked about in awe.

  ‘You’ve got a big place,’ he said.

  She thought of Eddie’s circumstances. Cat had said something once about where he lived; he was still with his parents somewhere, she believed, somewhere down off Leith Walk. Eddie’s parents were elderly, she now remembered; he had been something of an afterthought.

  ‘It’s just a house,’ she said.

  He looked at her, as if expecting her to say something more.

  ‘I mean, I’m used to it,’ she went on. ‘I suppose it’s too large for me, but I’m just used to it. I don’t think of it as being big.’ She sounded foolish; she should have said nothing. Those who live in big houses, she thought, should not apologise; it only makes matters worse.

  ‘I wouldn’t know what to do in a place like this,’ said Eddie. ‘I’d get lost.’

  ‘Well, maybe.’ She touched Eddie’s arm lightly. ‘Charlie would like to see you, I think. He’s just had his bath. Jamie’s with him.’

  She led him upstairs. Eddie glanced at the paintings on the stair and on the landing. ‘Are these all . . . all real?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, they’re real. If you mean they’re actual paintings. Real paint. Not prints.’

  ‘That’s what I meant.’

  They were standing in front of a Peploe landscape. In the background she heard Charlie gurgling as Jamie uttered some nonsensical mantra. Eddie reached out as if to touch the painting, but checked himself.

  ‘You can touch it if you like,’ said Isabel. ‘It’s quite dry now.’

  ‘Why are the hills blue like that?’ asked Eddie.

  She thought: yes, that is a reasonable question to ask of the colourists, who saw the world in strong colours. Mull, and its hills, were blue, seen from the blue shores of Iona. ‘Because hills are often blue. Look at them. It’s the effect of the light.’

  Eddie looked more closely at the picture. ‘Is this worth a lot of money?’ he asked.

  Isabel was momentarily taken aback. But she quickly recovered. She would have to be honest. ‘Yes, anything by Peploe is quite expensive these days. He’s a very highly sought-after artist. That’s what determines the price. Like Picasso. There’s nothing very special in a Picasso drawing, say, bu
t it will still cost an awful lot of money.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Picasso? Oh, well a drawing – a few lines dashed off on a sheet of paper – might be ten thousand pounds.’

  ‘No, not that. This painting here. This Pep . . . Peploe.’

  Isabel laughed, as much to cover her embarrassment as for any other reason. ‘I don’t think you should ask questions like that, Eddie. People don’t . . . don’t expect to be asked what things cost.’

  She spoke gently, but her words silenced him. He looked down at the floor, and she immediately regretted what she had said.

  She felt that she needed to explain. ‘Sorry, Eddie. You can ask me; of course you can ask me. It’s just that . . . well, you wouldn’t normally ask somebody else, somebody whom you didn’t really know.’

  He bit his lip.

  ‘I’ll tell you, if you like. Of course I’ll tell you. Although . . .’ What would be the effect of his knowing? Envy? ‘I didn’t buy that painting; it belonged to my father. And he didn’t pay a great deal for it. Not in those days.’

  He was still looking at the floor. She reached out and held his arm. ‘All right. If that went into an auction now, it would fetch over one hundred thousand pounds. That’s what somebody told me, anyway.’

  He looked up sharply. The offence that he had taken at her mild censure was now replaced by astonishment. ‘You could sell it for that? For over a hundred thousand?’

  She explained that she did not want to sell it.

  ‘Why not? Think what you could do with a hundred thousand pounds.’

  ‘Frankly, I can’t think of anything I’d spend it on. What do I need? I don’t want a new car. I’ve got a house. I’m lucky. I don’t need a hundred thousand pounds.’

  She spoke freely, but as the words came out, again she felt that she was making a mistake. She did not need anything, but he did. He had no car, she assumed; and he certainly did not own a flat. I’m making it worse, she thought. But no, Eddie had not taken it in that way at all; he was thinking of something else. ‘So is that why you gave that man the cheese this afternoon? Because you don’t need to worry about money?’