The Comfort of Saturdays

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She thought about this. He was probably right. If you had enough, you were more likely to be liberal to others; except, of course, as was always the case, for some. ‘Possibly,’ she said.

  ‘And what if I came to you and said, “Isabel, please give me five hundred pounds.” What if I said that? Would you?’

  She studied his expression, trying to work out whether he was asking for money. She decided that he was not.

  ‘I’d give it to you. But I’d probably ask you first why you needed it. If you were in trouble, of course I’d give it to you.’

  ‘Not lend it?’

  ‘No. I’d give it.’

  She watched him. His mouth twitched slightly; just slightly, at the edges of the lips. ‘Eddie? Do you need five hundred pounds? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  She observed the pupils of his eyes; dark dots, but with light in them. She noticed that he had a mole, a tiny mole, just below his ear. Otherwise, he was perfect.

  His lips parted, a tiny bit of spittle. He mouthed the word yes.

  She whispered, as she did not want Jamie to hear, and she suddenly knew that Jamie was listening from Charlie’s room, through the open door.

  ‘Are you in trouble, Eddie?’

  He said nothing, but his head moved slightly: a nod.

  ‘And will you tell me what it is?’

  Again a movement of the head, this time a shaking.

  She made up her mind. Five hundred pounds was very little to her and would obviously make a big difference to Eddie in his difficulties, whatever they were. A fine? She thought that unlikely. Eddie was too timid to get into trouble with the law. Drugs? Debts to a pusher? There was no sign that he used anything, and she thought it unlikely; Cat had told her that he had expressed strong views against drugs some months before. So what did that leave?

  She leaned forward. ‘Will you need more? If I give you five hundred pounds, will you come back and ask for more?’

  He began to look indignant, but then stopped himself. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s all I need.’

  She made her mind up. ‘All right. We can get the money from the bank tomorrow.’

  She did not expect effusive thanks, and did not get them. But there was a whispered thank you as they went into Charlie’s room. Jamie was standing there, holding Charlie in his sleeper suit. He glanced at Eddie and nodded; then looked at Isabel. She let nothing pass between them, no acknowledgement of what had happened on the landing. It’s between Eddie and me, she thought. Private business. Eddie had told her not to give cheese away; would Jamie tell her not to give money away? It’s mine, she thought – although the cheese, strictly speaking, was not.

  Charlie saw Eddie and gave a welcoming gurgle.

  ‘He likes you,’ said Jamie.

  ‘Babies do,’ said Eddie. ‘My mum says . . .’ He trailed off.

  ‘She says what?’ asked Isabel.

  ‘She says they go by smell,’ said Eddie.

  Isabel took Charlie out of Jamie’s arms and passed him over to Eddie. ‘Jamie smells good,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure you do as well. Here.’

  Eddie recoiled at first, in fright, but checked himself. He was awkward, uncertain precisely where to place his arms, but Charlie helped by latching on to his sweater.

  ‘Support him,’ said Isabel, taking hold of Eddie’s right forearm. Bony. Was he eating properly? If he lived with his parents, then surely his mother should watch out for that. Or Cat should. She was his employer; she should notice these things. And there was no shortage of food in a delicatessen.

  ‘You’re nice and thin, Eddie,’ she said, patting the arm she had briefly held.

  ‘That’s because he walks everywhere,’ Jamie chipped in. ‘You do, don’t you, Eddie?’

  Eddie nodded. ‘It’s quicker,’ he said.

  ‘But you don’t want to be too thin,’ said Isabel.

  Jamie reached forward to tickle Charlie under the chin. ‘What do they say? You can never be too thin, nor too rich.’

  ‘Isabel’s too rich,’ said Eddie. ‘She just said so.’

  There was a silence, and Charlie, surprised, looked over Eddie’s shoulder at the people standing around him: there had been gurgles, he thought, those sounds that they made, and now nothing.

  Yet the dinner went well, at least until just before the end. Eddie was relaxed, and Isabel could tell that he enjoyed Jamie’s company. From the other side of the table, he looked at Jamie with a bright-eyed admiration, she thought, and this made her smile; many people looked at Jamie that way, and yet he did not appear to notice, or, if he was aware of it, did not think anything of it. The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from, having nothing to hide: the line from ‘In Praise of Limestone’ came to her unbidden – WHA again! But it was so apt.

  They ate salmon terrine, followed by a risotto, from a recipe which Isabel had taken from Mary Contini’s book, and then grapes. Jamie wanted coffee, but Isabel and Eddie did not; so Isabel made a small espresso for Jamie, and while she was doing this, the two of them at the table and she at the worktop, Eddie said: ‘I can hypnotise people now.’

  Jamie looked at him oddly, like an older brother faced with a younger sibling who has made a bragging claim. ‘Oh yes? Since when?’

  ‘Since a week ago,’ said Eddie. ‘Officially. I got my certificate then. My Part One certificate. I still have to do Part Two and Part Three.’

  Jamie appeared puzzled, and Eddie explained about his course. ‘It’s hard work,’ he said. ‘Quite a few people dropped out.’

  ‘Well done, Eddie,’ said Isabel. ‘You must be pleased—’

  ‘Hypnotise me, then,’ Jamie interjected.

  Eddie looked at him anxiously. ‘You serious?’

  Jamie glanced at Isabel. She wanted to shake her head, to say no, but could not; she was careful about telling him what he could or could not do. She was not his mother. He turned back to Eddie. ‘Yes, why not? It would be interesting, don’t you think, Isabel?’

  ‘It’s not a game,’ said Eddie.

  Isabel was concerned. She did not want Jamie to be hypnotised. She did not want anybody to be hypnotised in her kitchen. She would change the subject. ‘Of course it’s not. Not like one of those games you play after dinner. You know, the six degrees of separation game. Things like that. Can you get to the Pope through five friends?’

  ‘Two,’ said Jamie. ‘In my case.’

  Eddie looked blank.

  ‘Right,’ said Jamie. ‘I know the cardinal, the one who lives over at Church Hill, in that house with the green copper dome. He must know the Pope. Two degrees of separation from me to the Pope.’

  Isabel wanted to encourage this new line of discussion. ‘So you’re three degrees away from the Pope, Eddie. You know Jamie. Jamie knows the cardinal. The cardinal knows the Pope. Three degrees.’

  ‘And the president of Bulgaria?’ suggested Jamie.

  Isabel frowned. ‘I suspect that he has a lot of friends,’ she said. ‘So I suspect that we’d get there within six links.’

  ‘He has a lot of friends?’ asked Eddie. ‘How do you know?’

  Isabel shrugged her shoulders. Eddie could be very literal. ‘In order to become president of anywhere, even Bulgaria, you have to have friends. You have to know lots of people and cultivate them. He’ll be a networker, the president of Bulgaria. A big networker.’

  She looked to Jamie for support, but he was looking at Eddie. The president of Bulgaria was not getting the attention he deserved. ‘Go on, Eddie,’ said Jamie. ‘Hypnotise me. I’m ready. What do I have to do?’

  ‘The president of Bulgaria,’ Isabel said. ‘Now let’s think. I know Malcolm Rifkind, and he used to be Foreign Secretary. So, he may . . .’

  ‘Do I just sit here?’ asked Jamie. ‘Do we need to turn the lights off ?’

  Eddie shook his head. They were sitting at the kitchen table, where casual meals were taken, and the lighting was low anyway. ‘It’s best not to be distracted,’ he said.
‘That’s why it’s sometimes a good idea to turn down the lights. But it’s not very bright in here.’ He stood up and moved round the table to sit down on the chair next to Jamie’s. ‘I’m going to sit here. You turn round a bit, so that you’re looking at me.’

  Isabel brought Jamie’s cup of coffee over to the table and put it beside him. ‘Are you going to drink this before you go under, or afterwards?’

  He smiled, but said nothing, leaving the coffee untouched. She went back to her seat.

  Eddie had fixed his gaze on Jamie. He leaned forward very slightly. ‘I want you to listen to my voice. Just listen. Hear nothing else. All right?’

  Jamie nodded.

  ‘And as you listen to me, you’re going to feel yourself getting drowsier and drowsier. Your eyelids will be getting heavier, like lead. That’s it. And all the tension is going out of you. Flowing away. You can feel it going down your arms and out of your fingertips – draining away like water. That’s right. Don’t struggle against it.’

  Eddie continued in this vein for a further five minutes. Jamie remained still, and Eddie did not take his eyes off him as he talked. If Isabel had looked at Jamie, she would have seen that a smile played about his lips; it was almost imperceptible, but a sign of what he was thinking. Yet she did not see this, because her own eyes were firmly closed. She was breathing deeply.

  Jamie suddenly turned his head and looked at Isabel. He signalled to Eddie, who stopped what he was saying and followed Jamie’s gaze. Eddie was silent for a few moments. Then: ‘Isabel. I’m going to ask you to do something. Afterwards, I’m going to snap my fingers and when I do that you’ll wake up. Do you understand?’

  Isabel did not open her eyes, but she moved her head slightly to indicate assent.

  ‘Right,’ said Eddie, winking at Jamie. ‘Now when I tell you to open your eyes, you’ll see somebody come into the room. This is a person you really, really want to see. Somebody you know well and you want to see again. They’ll come in just to say hallo and then they’ll go out again. But you’ll tell us who it is. All right?’

  Again, Isabel nodded.

  ‘So,’ said Eddie. ‘The door’s opening. And your eyes too.’

  Isabel’s expression left no doubt that she was looking at somebody. Here was surprise, astonishment perhaps, and then an anguished cry: ‘John. No, don’t go. Don’t go!’

  Eddie rose to his feet. He snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. Then he snapped them again, more loudly this time. Isabel’s head turned sharply.

  Jamie leaned across the table and took her hand. ‘Are you all right?’

  Isabel looked about her. ‘Of course I’m all right. Eddie, weren’t you going to . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Eddie. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glancing anxiously at Jamie, as if for reassurance.

  ‘Some other time,’ said Jamie. ‘Not now.’ He picked up his small cup of espresso and drained it.

  ‘I should be going home,’ said Eddie awkwardly.

  He said goodbye to Isabel quickly and Jamie showed him to the door. Then, returning to the kitchen, Jamie found Isabel facing him.

  She looked bemused. ‘Something happened, didn’t it?’

  He looked down at the floor. He felt embarrassed to speak about it, but he could hardly refuse to answer her question. ‘He was trying to hypnotise me, but you somehow got in the way. You went under,’ he said, ‘like that. I remained wide awake, but you . . . It was very quick. I wondered whether to stop it, but I thought it might be risky.’

  She gasped. ‘I went under?’

  ‘Yes. You must be very . . . what do they say? Susceptible?’

  ‘And what happened?’

  He looked embarrassed, and she caught her breath. ‘Do you really want to know?’

  This, she thought, is how a drunk must feel when he wakes up the next morning and has no recollection of the night before. What did I do? She felt instinctively for her clothing; it was still there. And surely Jamie would not have allowed anything untoward to happen; he would have stopped her from disgracing herself.

  ‘You saw John Liamor,’ he said quietly. ‘You saw him come into the room and you cried out to him.’ He could tell that she was aghast. ‘No, you didn’t say very much. You just shouted out his name and told him not to go. That was all. Then Eddie clicked his fingers and you came out of it. Nothing more than that.’

  She leaned forward, her head in her hands. She had tried so hard to forget John Liamor, the man she had married; the man who had broken her heart, once, twice, over and over again. He meant nothing to her now, nothing – consciously, at least.

  ‘I’m not still in love with him,’ she muttered.

  Jamie came to her and put his arm about her. ‘Of course you aren’t. Of course.’

  He had Cat to forget; he knew what an effort it cost. ‘Let’s think of the president of Bulgaria,’ he said.

  9

  Not thinking about something can be hard, as Isabel discovered the next day. She had decided to put the incident in the kitchen out of her mind, but it kept coming back. Did she really want to see John Liamor again? Did he still mean something to her? Did what one said under hypnosis have anything to do with what really was going on in the subconscious mind? Surely the mind was full of all sorts of old memories that were really of no significance for how one felt; they merely knocked about in some deep region, like the detritus at the bottom of a lake. And if they surfaced from time to time, that did not mean very much.

  At first it was awkward with Eddie. He avoided her when he came into the delicatessen the next morning, but Isabel made a point of speaking to him. ‘Eddie, what happened last night is nothing. I don’t feel bad about it, and neither should you.’ She took his arm. Again that feeling of thinness. ‘Don’t look away from me, Eddie. Come on now.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ he mumbled.

  She reached out and put her hand against his cheek. He looked at her in surprise. ‘Come on, Eddie. You don’t have to be sorry about anything. John Liamor was my husband. I shouted out his name because I obviously still think about him subconsciously. Maybe I still care for him. I thought I didn’t.’

  She moved her hand away, and she felt him relax. She let go of his arm. Holding Eddie was like holding a cat who does not want to be held.

  ‘I’m still sorry,’ he said. ‘They told us that we should be careful about what we did with it.’

  She laughed. ‘Well, that’s one way of learning that. And there was no harm done anyway.’

  He rubbed the place on his arm where she had held him, as if he had been bruised. ‘You seemed very upset about seeing him. About seeing John Whatsisname.’

  ‘He hurt me,’ said Isabel.

  Eddie looked up sharply. ‘Beat you?’

  ‘Not that. No. But there are lots of other ways of being hurt. And they can be as bad.’

  Eddie was silent. I could say something now, she thought. I could say to him: I know that you’ve been hurt too, badly. But she did not. Instead, she said, ‘Are you all right, Eddie? You know that I’m going to go down to the bank today.’ She looked at her watch. ‘In fact, I’ve got two things I have to do. Do you mind being in charge for a while a bit later on?’

  He did not. But he did not say anything about the bank, and so Isabel persisted. ‘I’m going to get that money I promised you. Remember?’ She paused, watching him. He bit his lip. ‘You said you were in trouble, Eddie. Are you sure that you don’t want to tell me what it is?’

  ‘I don’t,’ he muttered.

  ‘All right. You don’t need to. But if you change your mind about that and want to talk to me, I promise you that I wouldn’t tell anybody else. All right?’

  He nodded his assent and crossed the room to get his apron from its hook. One act, she thought; one act of violence, one act of callous gratification, and a young life was made into this.

  The bank was the simple part. They had the money ready for her in a white envelope and slipped it to her across the broad wooden
desk. She wondered whether people who worked in banks thought about what their clients did with their money, or whether such interest quickly faded. Money was very mundane, really, and the question of who had what was hardly riveting. Or did she feel that way, she asked herself, because she had more than most? She felt no envy when she read, as one occasionally did, of people earning large salaries or bonuses. But others hated this, and muttered darkly about higher taxes and obscene profits. What was obscene about earning a lot of money? One could not put that reaction entirely down to simple envy; there must be something more to it. Unfairness, perhaps. It was unfair that one should have so much when so many had so little. And it was, she thought. In which case, should she divest herself further? She gave a lot to various causes, and one of these charities had written to her recently in a way which spoke of an appeal – a very tactfully put appeal, but an appeal none the less.

  She caught a taxi in Charlotte Square and gave the address of the Café Sardi, a small Italian restaurant in the university area. It had been convenient for the old medical school before it moved out to the new infirmary, and there were still some doctors who used it to meet for lunch. He had to be in town, he said, and they could meet there.

  She was the first to arrive, and was led to a table near the window that gave her a view over the road to Sandy Bell’s. She looked up. There was a picture of Hamish Henderson on the wall of the restaurant; he had been an habitué of Sandy Bell’s all those years ago and must have eaten here too. She had heard him singing in Sandy Bell’s from time to time, that tireless collector of Scottish folk songs with his great lumbering frame and his toothy smile.

  She sought to invoke the memory. Yes, the first time she had heard him he had sung ‘Freedom Come All Ye’ while she sat at a table at the back of the pub with her friends, utterly arrested, unable to do anything but watch that curious rumpled figure and hear the words that cut into the air like the punch of a fist: Nae mair will our bonnie callants / Merch tae wer when our braggarts crousely craw. No more will Scottish boys march off to war to the skirl of the pipes. And at the end she had cried; she had been unable to say why, beyond feeling that what she had witnessed was a heartfelt apology for what Scotland had done to the world as part of the British Empire, for all the humiliation of imperialism.