The Perils of Morning Coffee: An Isabel Dalhousie eBook Original Story

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Isabel looked about her. Nearby, an elderly woman, reaching out for a can of beans from her shelf, caught her eye. It was a look of sympathy. Beyond the woman, standing in front of a trolley laden with cans, a teenage shelf-stacker glanced at Roz and then continued to shift the cans onto the shelves. Isabel thought: He finds it strange that we people—we adults—have scenes like this in supermarkets. What have we got to cry about?

  Isabel moved forward to put an arm about Roz’s shoulder. Her gesture was not repelled but welcomed, it seemed, as Roz reached for Isabel’s blouse and held on to it. It was a curious, almost childlike gesture, but a reassuring one.

  “I’m sorry,” said Isabel. “I can understand how you must feel if you think your husband is having an affair. But it’s not with me. It really isn’t.”

  Roz muttered something between sobs, but Isabel did not catch it.

  “I didn’t quite …”

  “I said: I can see now it’s not you.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad.” She paused. “Are you sure that he’s seeing somebody?”

  Roz nodded, and then wiped at her eyes with a small square of tissue. “Yes.”

  “Because sometimes people imagine things. They worry about things that really aren’t happening.”

  Roz shook her head. “No. I know what’s going on. And it’s my fault.”

  “Why? Why’s it your fault? Men get to a certain age and then they … well, they stray.”

  Roz looked at Isabel. The hostility having dissipated, Isabel noticed her eyes, an unusual flecked green. “It’s because I asked for it. I was involved with somebody myself.”

  Any distrust that Isabel might have felt now disappeared. This woman was telling the truth, confirming what Millie had said.

  “I had an affair,” Roz went on. She hesitated for a moment. “I had more than one.”

  The window cleaner, thought Isabel. She said nothing.

  “And then, when George started to see another woman, I found that I regretted, really regretted what I’d done. It was odd: it was as if I thought one rule applied to me and another to him.”

  “People often think that,” said Isabel. And it was true. It was exactly what Kant had said we shouldn’t think: it was the categorical imperative. And here she was discussing it among the canned vegetables, the beans, the sweetcorn, the peas. Well, if philosophy had been obliged to descend into the marketplace, it was only a matter of time before it descended into the supermarket. Philosophy was not merely about abstract ideas of justice and duty, it was also about beans and sweetcorn and peas. And adultery.

  “Did he know about your affairs?”

  Roz did not answer for a moment. Guilt, thought Isabel; guilt and shame. But then: “Yes, I told him. I confessed it and I promised that I wouldn’t do it again.”

  “And he forgave you?”

  “I thought he did. But obviously he hasn’t.”

  “If he’s seeing somebody,” said Isabel. “And you don’t know that, do you?”

  It occurred to Isabel that Roz’s feelings of guilt were causing her to project behaviour onto her husband. If she felt bad about what she had done, then one way of assuaging her feelings of self-reproach would be to conclude that her husband was doing it too, that he was as much at fault as she was. This could easily have led her to imagine the possibility of George having an affair, and from there it would be a short step to believing that it was so. It required no great experience of human psychology’s surprising ways to believe that, thought Isabel.

  “You don’t think he is?” asked Roz. There was a slightly pathetic tone to her voice, as if she needed Isabel to convince her of her husband’s faithfulness.

  “I’m afraid I can’t say much more about that,” replied Isabel. “I know very little about your husband, other than that people seem to feel it unlikely that he’s having an affair. I can’t say much more than that. I really can’t.”

  She felt a growing sense of the almost theatrical ridiculousness of this conversation. She could not leave this woman to her misery; that was not how she had ever responded to the distress of others. And yet the morally duteous approach left her vulnerable, as she was now, among the canned vegetables.

  Roz looked at her with increased interest. “People? People are talking about it?”

  Isabel sighed. “One person. I spoke to one other person.”

  “Who was that?”

  Isabel realised that she should be careful. She was beginning to think that her earlier fears that Roz was paranoid might not be misplaced.

  “It was a private conversation,” she said. “I’m sorry, but all I can say is that this person—who works with your husband—told me that she did not consider it at all likely that he was having an affair.” She paused. “Now, I think we should draw a line under all this. You and your husband need to talk more about this. You need to see …” She waved her hand airily, in the direction of the mayonnaise and stuffed olives, as it happened. “You need to see somebody. There are people who are there to help couples in your position. I gather they’re very useful. Why not arrange something?”

  Roz nodded. “Maybe,” she muttered. And then added: “You’re right.”

  Isabel felt a certain relief that the meeting was concluding on this note. “Good. Well, I’m sure we’ll bump into one another again sometime.” I really don’t want to, she thought.

  Roz looked at her earnestly. “I hope so.”

  Isabel was about to say that she hoped so too, but the words would not come. I cannot tell a lie. And then she wondered: How often is that statement made with regret?

  As far as Isabel was concerned, her unexpected and uncomfortable meeting with Roz MacLeod in the unlikely surroundings of the supermarket—a meeting from which she retreated thinking, Can that really have happened?—had at least one clear consequence: the unbesmirching of her reputation. Inasmuch as Roz had recognised that her charges were unfounded, Isabel felt vindicated. Nobody—not even the possibly paranoid Roz MacLeod—was pointing the finger at her and alleging involvement with a married man. With the allegation out of the way, Isabel felt able to forget the whole unpleasant episode. George MacLeod might or might not be having an affair, but it was no business of hers. Roz MacLeod might or might not reestablish a proper relationship with her husband, but again that was something with which Isabel need not concern herself. She hoped, of course, that the couple would sort out their difficulties, but she could not allow herself to lose sleep over the possibility that they might not. Indeed, it would be unhelpful, and possibly even hazardous, to interfere on one side or the other. In short, she decided, the matter was closed.

  She had told Jamie about the supermarket meeting and he had made his views clear. “Bad news,” he said. “People like that are bad news, Isabel.”

  She conceded that he was probably right. “Yes, but—”

  “No buts about it. You just can’t get involved with them. You can’t. Whatever you do, they’ll draw you in, especially her. She sounds really unstable, if you ask me.”

  She said nothing.

  “So?” asked Jamie.

  “So that’s the end of that,” she said.

  “Good.” He was looking at her intently. “Your trouble, you know, is that you’re just too kind. You need to be tougher. You have to stop helping people, Isabel.”

  She looked at him reproachfully, and he immediately relented. “I don’t really mean that, I suppose.” He reached out to take her hand. “I wouldn’t want you to be any different, you know. Not really. I’d hate you to be one of those hard-faced women who are interested in themselves and nobody else. I wouldn’t want that.”

  She blushed.

  “You know,” he went on, “I was walking down Dundas Street the other day and this car drew up. It was one of those open cars—you know, an expensive blue number, white leather seats and so on. And there was a chap I had been at school with. And there was this woman in the passenger seat, sunglasses, blond hair, silk scarf. Straight out of a fashi
on magazine. Can you picture her?”

  Isabel nodded. “Yes. Hard.”

  “That’s exactly the word I’d use. Hard.”

  “And?”

  “I hadn’t seen him for ages—not since school. He had gone off to work in Singapore with one of those London banks and must have done pretty well. Bonuses, or whatever. Anyway, he introduced me to the woman and said that she was his fiancée. She looked at me and smiled—sort of. It was a look of boredom. Just not interested. Too fashionable. Too bored. Too hard.”

  Isabel found it difficult to believe that any woman meeting Jamie would be completely uninterested. How could one be indifferent to … She stopped herself from enumerating his charms. Shall I compare thee … Shakespeare had written a sonnet to somebody not unlike Jamie.

  “And then I thought: What did he see in her? Did she amuse him? Did he find her conversation exciting? Did she spoil him?”

  Isabel frowned. “Sex?” she said.

  Jamie grinned. “Maybe.”

  “Sometimes that’s all there is,” said Isabel.

  Jamie looked thoughtful. “He was a bit like that,” he said. “He got into trouble for writing on a form that he wanted to study sex at university. The school wasn’t amused.”

  Isabel waited for him to say more.

  “He used to bring girlie mags to school. He slipped them into his maths folder.”

  “As boys have always done.”

  “Girls didn’t do that sort of thing?”

  Isabel tried to remember. “I didn’t. But now that you come to mention it, there was a girl called Tricia Colquohon. Yes. She had a male pin-up on the inside of the lid of her desk. She thought it very daring, very outré.”

  She smiled at the memory. “And then she eventually got married. I remember seeing a photograph of her wedding in the Evening News. She married the weediest-looking man. He was tiny, and had sloping shoulders. Poor Tricia. What do you think happened?”

  “There were no other offers?”

  “Maybe not. I thought that too. But then somebody explained to me: this weedy-looking man was heir to a whisky company—a large one.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. It explains a lot, doesn’t it? It doesn’t matter in the slightest what a rich man looks like.” She paused. “I must confess I couldn’t help but picture him in a swimming costume. With his spindly legs and sloping shoulders. I feel bad just to think about it. We do so many things we regret, don’t we?”

  He was noncommittal. “Maybe.”

  “Well, in my view we do. When I think of all the times I’ve had uncharitable thoughts about other people.”

  Jamie seemed unwilling to explore that; the conversation was touching on a sensitive issue. “It does matter what a poor man looks like, then?”

  Isabel thought for a moment. “Yes, it does matter. A poor man who’s good-looking stands a very good chance of improving his position in life. Haven’t you noticed? Look at women who are high-status in their own right. Look at their boyfriends. They’re usually good-looking. The man who married that Swedish princess. He was a personal trainer or something like that; he was pretty ordinary, but very handsome. There are plenty of other examples.”

  “Maybe they’re just nice and good-looking.”

  “Or nice because they’re good-looking. Good-looking people grow up with people being interested in them, being attentive to them. They respond in kind. If the world is nice to you, then you’re nice to the world.”

  It occurred to her, even as she spoke, that this might be true of Jamie himself. Had anybody ever been dismissive of him when he was a boy? Or had he become used to looks of interest, to smiling indulgence, because of his beauty? And was it that which made him so benign, so at one with world? She could never ask him, of course, but it was, she thought, a real possibility.

  “Handsome is as handsome does,” she muttered.

  “What was that, Isabel?”

  She looked away. “Nothing. Or nothing of any significance.”

  He smiled. “You were thinking again.”

  “Possibly.” Handsome is as handsome does was an intriguing expression. She assumed that it meant that handsome—or good—deeds were what counted. But it could mean something else, as these expressions sometimes did. One thing was clear: it meant that to be handsome was desirable in a moral sense, and she was not sure about that. She would have to think a bit more about it; but not just yet.

  The new issue of the Review of Applied Ethics just made its deadline at the printers. Isabel always breathed a sigh of relief when the proofs were signed off, but knew that any feeling she had of now having time on her hands was deceptive. She could allow herself a week, perhaps, in which she gave little thought to the next issue, but after that the next deadline would make itself felt and the whole process would begin again. Most jobs were like that, though, she told herself; one piece of work is finished and the next one has to be started. That, quite simply, was how everything worked, and always had: a farmer sold a cow and started to rear another one; a cobbler finished a shoe and then put the next one on his last; a baker took one batch of bread out of the oven and put in the next. Those rhythms were eternal, she realised, but were sometimes lost sight of in a world in which people had become part of much more complex arrangements; a world in which it was easy to lose sight of where we fitted in, and it had become rare for us to know much about where things came from and who made them. “They come from China,” Jamie had said when Isabel had discussed this with him.

  “Exactly,” said Isabel. “So that means that our things—the bits and pieces of our lives—never have any local association. Your bassoon, for instance …”

  “Germany,” said Jamie. “Herr Schreiber’s soloist model.”

  “And the reeds you put on it?”

  “A man in Glasgow. Herr Macdonald.”

  She smiled. “Would you feel the same about a reed from some unknown factory in China? The Great Shanghai Bassoon Reed Company, for instance?”

  He scratched his head. “I’m not sure what I feel about my reeds. I suppose it’s good to know who made them. But do I bother all that much about my shirts? They come from the Philippines, I think. But do I care about my shirts?”

  Isabel touched him. “I care about your shirts.”

  He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “And I care about your clothes too.”

  They grinned at one another, and then Jamie burst out laughing. “Cue the violins.”

  “But not bassoons?”

  Jamie shook his head. “Bassoons are very unromantic. Wistful, yes. But not really romantic—in that sense, at least.”

  “You mean erotic?”

  “Yes.”

  Several weeks passed. The summer, which had earlier been unpromising, now became more confident. A large and benevolent zone of high pressure from Iceland moved lazily over Scotland, and decided to remain comfortably where it was. Scots basked in its effect, hardly daring to believe that the weather gods, normally angry with Scotland for some reason—perhaps for some ancient slight that would take aeons to get over—were looking so kindly upon them. In Edinburgh, the Festival season began, with a riot of concerts and theatre and exhibitions. Jamie was busy; he had a big concert at the Usher Hall as well as a number of other, lesser engagements. And even Charlie had a programme worked out for him: beginning with a puppet show, a circus and a talking dog—all of which he received with enthusiasm. The talking dog, which had been trained to open and close its mouth in time with a voice that emanated from behind a curtain, proved to be an unexpected Festival success, not only with the three-year-olds for whom the show was intended, and tickets sold out for all its shows. The dog was interviewed by the press and expressed satisfaction at this turn of events, commenting on the lack of cats with shows of their own. We want dogs to talk, thought Isabel. That’s why we talk to them so much. We want them to talk.

  Because of his playing commitments, Jamie was out of the house on most evenings during the Festival. Isabel un
derstood, but missed him and looked forward to life’s returning to normal. Grace was always happy to babysit, which enabled Isabel to go out, but Isabel found that her pleasure in attending concerts was diminished if Jamie was not with her.

  “I’ll take you out to dinner,” he promised. “The moment all this is over.”

  They did manage one outing together, though, and that was to an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy. Jamie had an early evening concert in George Street, which meant that he would be free by seven and could join Isabel in the gallery.

  “And dinner afterwards?” she suggested.

  Jamie was keen. “Somewhere uncrowded.”

  “Home?”

  “Not that uncrowded. Café St. Honoré?”

  Isabel agreed, and made a babysitting arrangement with Grace, who would arrive in time for the bath and the story. This was a treat for Charlie, who had worked out that he could prolong those precious moments at the end of the day by refusing to settle and by shouting, “More!”—or at least that he could do so when Grace was in charge, his parents being made of sterner stuff.

  So when Isabel left that evening, Charlie waved goodbye with undisguised enthusiasm.

  “Don’t let him stay up,” said Isabel.

  “Of course not,” said Grace, her tone slightly resentful of the implication that she could be manipulated by Charlie. “I never let him do that.”

  Isabel said nothing. Grace had many merits, but awareness of her own failings was not one of them. And there was nothing unusual in that, Isabel conceded; our own failings were invisible to most of us, or, if we did see them, they often appeared rather minor.

  She caught a bus in Bruntsfield, from the bus stop opposite Cat’s delicatessen. The traffic moved slowly as the Edinburgh Military Tattoo was on that night and there were streams of visitors making their way to the Castle. The pavements were also thronged with theatre-goers, who spilled out into the roads from time to time, making progress for vehicles difficult. From where she sat, Isabel could just make out the expression of the bus driver, one of egregious patience, like the look depicted by an artist on the face of a medieval saint sorely tried by his oppressors. A modern hagiography—if anybody were ever to bother with such a thing—would surely feature bus drivers and nurses and the people who took the fare at bridge tolls: toilers all at vital occupations, often showing good humour in the most difficult of circumstances. And they did it for years, thought Isabel, year upon year, and were badly rewarded compared to the hedge-fund managers and bankers who played the system to such evident advantage—to themselves.