The Sunday Philosophy Club id-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Johnny swallowed his brown bread and salmon and licked at the tip of a finger. “Paul Hogg,” he mused. “Paul Hogg. Mmm. I thought that he was a bit of a mummy’s boy, frankly, and then he went and produced this eighty-four-horsepower bitch of a fiancée, Minty something or other. Auchtermuchty. Auchendinny.”

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  “Auchterlonie,” prompted Isabel.

  “Not a cousin of yours, I hope,” said Johnny. “I hope I haven’t trodden on any toes.”

  Isabel smiled. “What you said about her was roughly my own estimation, but perhaps a bit more charitable.”

  “I see that we understand each other. She’s as hard as nails.

  She works for that setup in North Charlotte Street, Ecosse Bank.

  She’s an absolute tart, if you ask me. She runs round with a couple of young men from Paul’s office. I’ve seen her when Paul has been out of town. I saw her down in London once, in a bar in the City when they thought that nobody else from Edinburgh was around. Well, I was there and I saw her. Hanging all over a rising star from Aberdeen who got his knees under the table at McDowell’s because he’s good at juggling figures and taking risks that paid off. Ian Cameron, he’s called. Plays rugby for some team or other. Physical type, but clever nonetheless.”

  “Hanging all over him?”

  Johnny gestured. “Like this. All over him. Nonplatonic body language.”

  “But she’s engaged to Paul Hogg.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And Paul, does he know about this?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Paul’s an innocent. He’s an innocent who’s taken up with a woman who’s probably a bit too ambitious for him. It happens.”

  Isabel took another sip at her wine. “But what does she see in Paul? Why would she bother?”

  “Respectability,” said Johnny firmly. “He’s good cover if you want to get on in the Edinburgh financial world. His father was a founding partner of Scottish Montreal and the Gullane Fund. If you were nobody, so to speak, and you wanted to become someT H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B

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  body, no better choice than poor Paul. Perfect. All the right connections. Dull Fettesian dinners. Corporate seats at the Festival Theatre, with opera supper. Perfect!”

  “And in the meantime she gets on with her own career?”

  “Absolutely. She’s interested in money, I would say, and probably not much else. Well, I correct myself. Men friends. A bit of rough like Ian Cameron.”

  Isabel was silent. Faithlessness, it seemed, was nothing unusual; the discovery of Toby’s conduct had surprised her, but now that she had heard this story about Minty, perhaps this was exactly what she should expect. Perhaps one should be surprised by constancy, which is what the sociobiologists were hinting at anyway. Men had a strong urge to have as many partners as possible in order to ensure the survival of their genes, we were told.

  But women? Perhaps they were subconsciously attracted to the men who were subconsciously ensuring the maximum chance of gene perpetuation, which meant that Minty and Ian were perfect partners.

  Isabel felt confused, but not so confused as not to be able to ask her next question in such a way as to make it sound innocent.

  “And I suppose Ian and Minty can engage in pillow talk about deals and money and things like that. Can’t you picture it?”

  “No,” said Johnny. “Because if they did it would be insider trading and I would personally take the very greatest pleasure in catching them at it and nailing their ears to the New Club door.”

  Isabel imagined the picture. It was almost as good as imagining Toby caught in his avalanche. But she stopped herself, and said, instead, “I think that is exactly what has been happening.”

  Johnny stood quite still, his glass halfway to his lips, but halted. He stared at Isabel. “Are you serious?”

  She nodded. “I can’t tell you exactly why I think this, but I 1 8 6

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h can assure you that I have good reason to believe it. Could you help me to prove it? Could you help me to track the deals? Could you do it?”

  Johnny put down his glass. “Yes. I could. Or I could try. I’ve got no time for financial dishonesty. It’s ruining the market. It undermines all of us—really badly. These people are a pest.”

  “Good,” said Isabel. “I’m glad.”

  “But whatever you do, you must keep this quiet,” added Johnny. “If you’re wrong, then we would be in serious trouble. You can’t make defamatory allegations about these things. They’d sue us. I’d look stupid. Do you understand?”

  Isabel did.

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  ON THE EVENING of that unpleasant afternoon when Isabel had voiced her fears in the face of Cat’s good news, Cat and Toby had gone to the restaurant earlier than they had intended, as a table had not been available later on. A meeting of the Franco-British Legal Association had been held by the Faculty of Advocates and many of the members had booked tables for dinner afterwards. It would be a good place to talk about the jurispru-dence of the Conseil d’Etat, and other matters, of course.

  Cat had left Isabel’s house in tears. Grace had tried to talk to her as she entered the kitchen, but she had not been prepared to listen. At that stage her emotions were entirely ones of anger.

  Isabel could not have made her feelings about Toby plainer; right from the beginning she had kept him at a distance, viewing him, she thought, with such distaste that she would not be surprised if he had picked up on it himself, even if he had never said anything about it. She understood, of course, that there were differences of outlook between them, but surely that was no reason for Isabel to be so dismissive. Toby was not an intellectual in the way Isabel was, but what difference did that make? They had enough common ground to meet somewhere; it was not as if he was a com-1 8 8

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h plete ignoramus, as she had pointed out to Isabel on more than one occasion.

  And yet Isabel had remained distant, all the time comparing him adversely with Jamie. That was what irritated her more than anything else. Relationships between people could not be the basis of comparison by others. Cat knew what she wanted from a relationship, which was a bit of fun, and passion too. Toby was passionate. He wanted her with an urgency that excited her.

  Jamie had not done that. He talked too much and was always trying to please her. Where were his own feelings? Did none of that actually matter to him? Perhaps Isabel did not understand that.

  How could she? She had been disastrously married a long, long time ago, and since then, as far as she knew, there had been no lovers. So she really was in no position to understand, far less to comment on, something of which she had little inkling.

  By the time she reached the delicatessen, her immediate anger had abated. She had even considered retracing her steps and making an attempt at a reconciliation with Isabel, but if she was to meet Toby at six, as she had planned, she would have to get back to her flat quite soon. The shop was only moderately busy, and Eddie seemed to be coping well. He had been more cheerful over the past few days, which she found encouraging, but she did not want to count on him too much. More time would be needed, she felt—years, perhaps.

  She spoke briefly to Eddie and then made her way back to her flat. She was still preoccupied with her conversation with Isabel, but was now making a determined effort to put it out of her mind. Tonight was to be their private celebration for the engagement, and she did not want it ruined any more than it had been. Isabel was simply wrong.

  Toby was prompt, bounding up the stairs to her door and preT H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B

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  senting her with a large spray of carnations. In his other hand he was carrying a bottle of champagne, wrapped in tissue paper, but chilled. They went into the kitchen, where Cat prepared a vase for the flowers and Toby busied himself with opening t
he champagne.

  It had been shaken by his running up the stairs and the cork exploded with a loud report and the foam cascaded over the side of the bottle. Toby made a joke about this which made Cat blush.

  They toasted each other before moving through to the sitting room. Then, shortly before their taxi arrived, they moved through to the bedroom and embraced. Toby said that he loved the smell in her bedroom; he disorganised her dress, and she had to struggle to keep her composure. Never before have I felt so intensely, she thought; never.

  Over dinner they talked about mundane matters, about the wording of the announcement in The Scotsman, and about the reaction of Toby’s parents when he told them the news.

  “The old man seemed mighty relieved,” he said. “He said,

  ‘About bloody time,’ or something like that. Then I told him that I’d need a raise in pay, and that took the smile off his face.”

  “And your mother?” she asked.

  “She went on about what a nice girl you are,” he said. “She was pretty relieved too. I think she’s always been worried about my taking up with some awful scrubber. Not that she’s got any grounds to believe that.”

  “Of course not,” joked Cat.

  Toby smiled at her. “I’m glad that you said yes.” He took her hand. “I would have been pretty upset if you’d said no.”

  “What would you have done?” asked Cat. “Found another woman?”

  The question hung in the air for a moment. She had not thought about it, but now, quite suddenly, she felt something in 1 9 0

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h his hand, as if he had been given a small electric shock; a slight jolt. She looked at him, and for a second or two she saw a shadow pass, a change in the light in his eyes. It was almost impercepti-ble, but she saw it.

  She let go of his hand, and momentarily flustered, she brushed at the crumbs of bread around her plate.

  “Why would I do that?” said Toby. He smiled. “Not me.”

  Cat felt her heart beating wildly within her as Isabel’s warning, suppressed until now, came back to her.

  “Of course not,” she said lightly. “Of course not.” But the image came to her of Toby and that other girl, Fiona’s flatmate; and he was naked, and standing by a window, looking out, as Toby did when he got out of bed; and she, the other girl, was watching him, and she closed her eyes to rid herself of this thought, of this dreadful image, but it would not leave her.

  “What are we going to do?” Cat asked suddenly.

  “When? Do when?”

  She tried to smile. “What are we going to do now? Should we go back to the flat? Or shall we go and see somebody? I feel sociable.”

  “If anybody’s at home,” said Toby. “What about Richard and Emma? They’re always there. We could take them a bottle of champagne and tell them the good news.”

  Cat thought quickly. Distrust, like a rapidly creeping strain, egged her on. “No. I don’t want to go all the way down to Leith.

  What about Fiona? She’s your sister, after all. We should celebrate with her. Let’s go down to Nelson Street.”

  She watched him. His lips parted slightly as she began, as if he was on the point of interrupting her, but he let her finish.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “We can see her tomorrow at my parents’ place. We don’t need to go there now.”

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  “No,” she said, “we must go down to Fiona’s. We must. I really want to.”

  He did not protest further, but she could tell that he was uneasy, and he was silent in the taxi, looking out the window as they drove down the Mound and then over the ridge of George Street. She did not say anything, other than to ask the taxi to stop outside a late-night wine shop. Toby got out silently, bought a bottle of champagne, and then came back into the taxi. He made a remark about the man in the shop and then said something inconsequential about their planned visit to his parents the following day. Cat nodded, but did not take in what he was saying.

  They stopped outside the flat in Nelson Street. Toby paid off the taxi while Cat waited on the steps. There were lights inside; Fiona was in. Waiting for Toby, she rang the bell, glancing at him as she did so. He was fiddling with the paper in which the bottle of champagne had been twist-wrapped.

  “You’ll tear it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You’ll tear the paper.”

  The door opened. It was not Fiona, but another woman. She looked at Cat blankly, and then saw Toby.

  “Fiona . . . ,” began Cat.

  “Not in,” said the other woman. She moved forward towards Toby, who seemed for a moment to back away, but she reached out and took his wrist. “Who’s your friend?” she said. “Toby?

  Who—”

  “Fiancée,” said Cat. “I’m Cat.”

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E

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  ISABEL HAD POSTED her letter of apology to Cat the day before the Really Terrible Orchestra concert and Cat had responded a couple of days later. The reply came on a card bearing Raeburn’s picture of the Reverend Robert Walker skating on the ice at Duddingston Loch, a picture as powerful and immediately recognisable, in its local way, as The Birth of Venus. Great art, she felt, had a calming effect on the viewer; it made one stop in awe, which is exactly what Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol did not do. You did not stop in awe. They stopped you in your tracks, perhaps, but that was not the same thing; awe was something quite different.

  She turned the eighteenth-century clergyman on his back and read Cat’s message: Of course, you’re forgiven. You always are.

  Anyway, something has happened, and it has proved that you were right. There, I thought that would be so difficult to say, and I suppose it was. My pen almost ground to a halt. But anyway come and have coffee in the shop and I can let you try this new cheese that’s just come in. It’s Portuguese and it tastes of olives. Cat.

  Isabel felt grateful for her niece’s good nature, even if an aspect of that same nature was a lack of judgement when it came T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B

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  to men. There were many young women who would not so readily have forgiven the intrusion; and of course there were fewer still who would have admitted that an aunt was right in such a matter. Of course, this was welcome news, and Isabel looked forward to finding out how Toby had been exposed; perhaps Cat had followed him, as she herself had, and had been led to a conclusion by that most convincing of evidence—the evidence of one’s own eyes.

  She walked into Bruntsfield, savouring the warmth which was beginning to creep into the sun. There was building work in Merchiston Crescent—a new house was being crammed into a small corner plot, and there was a bag of cement on the muddy pavement. Then, a few steps later, she saw gulls, circling above roofs, looking for a place to nest. The gulls were considered pests in the neighbourhood—large, mewing birds that swooped down on those who came too close to their nesting places—but we humans built too, and left cement and stones and litter, and were as aggressively territorial. The review was planning an environmental ethics issue the following year and Isabel had been soliciting papers. Perhaps somebody would write about the ethics of litter. Not that there was much to say about that: litter was unquestionably bad and surely nobody would make a case in its favour. And yet why was it wrong to drop litter? Was it purely an aesthetic objection, based on the notion that the superficial pol-lution of the environment was unattractive? Or was the aesthetic impact linked to some notion of the distress which others felt in the face of litter? If that was the case, then we might even have a duty to look attractive to others, in order to minimise their distress. There were interesting implications to that.

  And one of these implications presented itself to Isabel a mere fifty paces later, outside the post office, from which emerged 1 9 4

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h a young man in his mid-twenties—Jamie’s age, p
erhaps—with several sharp metal spikes inserted into his lower lip and chin. The sharp metal points jutted out jauntily, like tiny sharpened phal-luses, which made Isabel reflect on how uncomfortable it must have been to kiss a man like that. Beards were one thing—and there were women who complained vigorously about the reaction of their skins to contact with bearded men—but how much more unpleasant it would be to feel these metal spikes up against one’s lips and cheeks. Cold, perhaps; sharp, certainly; but then, who would wish to kiss this young man, with his scowl and his discouraging look? Isabel asked herself the question and answered it immediately: of course numerous girls would wish to kiss him, and probably did; girls who had rings in their belly buttons and their noses, and who wore studded collars. Spikes and rings were complementary; after all. All this young man would have to do was look for the corresponding plumage.

  As she crossed the road to Cat’s delicatessen, Isabel saw the spiky young man dart across the road ahead of her and suddenly stumble at the edge of the pavement. He tripped and fell, landing on a knee on the concrete paving stone. Isabel, a few steps behind him, hastened to his side and reached out to him, helping him to his feet. He stood up, and looked down at the ripped knee of his discoloured denim jeans. Then he looked up at her and smiled.

  “Thank you.” His voice was soft, with a hint of Belfast in it.

  “It’s so easy to stumble,” said Isabel. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. I’ve torn my jeans, that’s all. Still, you pay for ripped jeans these days. I got mine free.”

  Isabel smiled, and suddenly the words came out of her, unbidden, unanticipated. “Why have you got those spikes in your face?”

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  He did not look annoyed. “My face? These piercings?” He fingered at the spike which projected from his lower lip. “It’s my jewellery, I suppose.”

  “Your jewellery?” Isabel stared at him, noticing the tiny golden ring which he had inserted into an eyebrow.