The woman was surprised. She turned to face Isabel. “Oh?”
she said. “Black what?”
“Blackadder,” said Isabel. “She lives here in Edinburgh.”
The woman looked back at the painting. “I like it,” she said.
“You know where you are with a painting like that.”
“Venice,” said Isabel. “That’s where you are.”
The woman was silent for a moment. She had been bending to look more closely at the painting; now she straightened up.
“How did you know that I was American?” she asked. Her tone was even, but it seemed to Isabel that there was an edge to her voice.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“I was over there when your . . . your husband spoke,” she said quickly. “I assumed.”
“And assumed correctly,” said the woman. There was no warmth in her voice.
“You see,” continued Isabel, “I’m half-American myself.
Half-American, half-Scottish, although I’ve hardly ever spent any time in the States. My mother was from—”
“Will you excuse me?” said the woman suddenly. “My friend was asking about a painting. I’m interested to hear the answer.”
Isabel watched her as she walked across the gallery. Not married, she thought. Friend. It had been abrupt, but it had been said with a smile. Although Isabel felt rebuffed, she told herself that one does not have to continue a conversation with a stranger. A minimum level of politeness is required, a response to a casual remark, but beyond that one can disengage. She was interested in this couple, as to who they were and what they were doing in Edinburgh, but she thought: I mean nothing to them. And why should I?
She went to look at another painting—three boys in a boat on a loch somewhere, absorbed in the mastery of the oars, the youngest looking up at the sky at something he had seen there.
The artist had caught the expression of wonderment on the young boy’s face and the look of concentration on the faces of his companions; that was how artists responded to the world—
they gaze and then re-create it in paint. Artists were allowed to do that—to look, to gaze at others and try to find out what it was that they were feeling—but we, who were not artists, were not.
If one looked too hard that would be considered voyeurism, or nosiness, which is what Cat, her niece, had accused her of more than once. Jamie—the boyfriend rejected by Cat but kept on by T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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Isabel as a friend—had done the same, although more tactfully.
He had said that she needed to draw a line in the world with me written on one side and you on the other. Me would be her business; you would be the business of others, and an invitation would be required to cross the line.
She had said to Jamie: “Not a good idea, Jamie. What if people on the other side of the line are in trouble?”
“That’s different,” he said. “You help them.”
“By stretching a hand across this line of yours?”
“Of course. Helping people is different.”
She had said: “But then we have to know what they need, don’t we? We have to be aware of others. If we went about concerned with only our own little world, how would we know when there was trouble brewing on the other side of the line?”
Jamie had shrugged. He had only just thought of the line and he did not think that he would be able to defend it against Isabel in Socratic mood. So he said, “What do you think of Arvo Pärt, Isabel? Have I ever asked you that?”
A F T E R S H E H A D F I N I S H E D her business in town, Isabel decided to walk back to the house. It was by then afternoon, and the sunshine of early June, now with a bit of warmth in it, had brought people out onto the streets in their shirtsleeves and blouses, optimistic, but resigned to being driven back in by rain, or mist, or other features of the Scottish summer. Her walk back, like any walk through this city, was to her an exercise in association. One would have to have one’s eyes closed in Edinburgh not to be assailed by reminders of the past, she thought—
the public or personal past. She paused at the corner of the 1 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h High Street where the statue of Edinburgh’s most famous philosopher, David Hume, had been placed. What a disaster, she thought. Isabel admired Hume and agreed with Adam Smith’s view that he approached as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will per-mit. But the good David was a natty dresser, interested in fine clothes (there was Allan Ramsey’s portrait to prove that), and here he was, seated in a chair, wearing a toga, of all things. And there were some who had voiced further objections. Hume was a reader, they said, and yet here he was merely holding a book, not reading it. But what, she wondered, would the statue have looked like if he had been portrayed in elegant clothes with his nose stuck in a volume of Locke? There would have been objections to that too, no doubt. This was the public past, about which we often disagree.
She walked back across the Meadows, a wide expanse of common ground on which people strolled and played. To the south, along the edge of the park, rose the high Victorian tene-ments of Marchmont, stone buildings of six floors or so, topped with spiky adornments—thistles, fleurs-de-lis and the like.
There were attics up there, rooms looking out of the sharply rising slate roofs, out towards the Forth and the hills beyond, rooms let out to students and later, during the summer, to the musicians and actors who flocked to Edinburgh for the Festival.
As she walked up towards Bruntsfield she could make out the door that led to the narrow hall and, up five long flights of stone stairs, to the flat where more than twenty years ago her school-friend Kirsty had at sixteen conducted an affair with a student from Inverness, her first boyfriend and lover. Isabel had listened to her friend’s accounts of this and had felt an emptiness in the T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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pit of her stomach, which was longing, and fear too. Kirsty had spoken sotto voce of what had happened, and whispered, “They try to stop us, Isabel. They try to stop us because they don’t want us to know. And then we find out . . .”
“And?” Isabel had said. But Kirsty had become silent and looked out of the window. This was the private past; intimate, unquestioned, precious to each of us.
Reaching Bruntsfield, she found herself outside Cat’s delicatessen. She could not walk past without going in, although she tried not to distract Cat when she was busy. That time in the afternoon was a slack period, and there was only one customer in the shop, who was in the process of paying for a baguette and a tub of large pitted olives. There were several tables where people could sit and be served coffee and a small selection of food, and Isabel took a seat at one of these, picking up an out-of-date copy of Corriere della Sera from the table of newspapers and magazines beside the cheese counter. She glanced at the political news from Italy, which appeared to be a series of reports of battles between acronyms, or so it seemed. Behind the acronyms there were people, and passions, and ancient feuds, but without any idea of what stood for which, it was much like the battle between the Blues and Greens in Byzantium—meaningless, unless one understood the difference between the orthodox and the Monophysites who stood behind these factions.
She abandoned the paper. Eddie, Cat’s shy assistant, to whom something traumatic had happened that Isabel had never fathomed, took the money for the baguette and the olives and opened the door for the customer. There was no sign of Cat.
“Where is she?” asked Isabel, once they had the shop to themselves.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Eddie came over to the table, rubbing his hands on his apron. His nervousness in Isabel’s presence had abated, but he was still not completely at ease.
“She went out for lunch,” he said. “And she hasn’t come back yet.”
Isabel looked at her watch. “A long lun
ch,” she remarked.
Eddie hesitated for a moment, as if weighing up whether to say anything. “With her new boyfriend,” he said, adding, after further hesitation, “Again.”
Isabel reached for the folded Corriere della Sera and aligned it with the edge of the table, a distracted gesture, but one which gave her time to absorb this information. She had resolved not to become involved in the question of her niece’s boyfriends, but it was difficult to remain detached. Cat’s short-lived engagement to Toby had led to a row between Isabel and her niece—
a row which had been quickly patched up, but which had made Isabel reflect on the need to keep her distance on the issue. So when Cat had gone to Italy to attend a wedding and had been followed back by an elegant Italian considerably older than she was, Isabel had refrained from saying very much. Cat decided not to encourage her Italian visitor, and he had responded by flirting with Isabel. She had been flattered in spite of herself, and tempted too, but he had not really meant it; flirtation, it seemed, was mere politeness, a way of passing the time.
The only boyfriend of Cat’s of whom she approved was Jamie, the bassoonist, whom Cat had disposed of fairly quickly, but who had continued to hanker after her in the face of every discouragement. Isabel had been astonished by his constancy to a cause that was clearly hopeless. Cat had told him bluntly that there was no future for them as a couple, and while he respected her and kept his distance, he secretly—and someT H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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times not so secretly—hoped that she would change her mind.
Isabel could not understand why Cat should have abandoned Jamie. In her view, he was everything, and more, that a woman could want. He was striking in appearance, with his high cheek-bones, his dark hair that he tended to wear short, and his Mediterranean, almost olive complexion; unusual colouring for a Scotsman, perhaps, but one which in her eyes was fatally attractive. And he was gentle too, which added to his appeal. Yet Cat spelled it out to Isabel in unambiguous terms: I do not love him, Isabel. I do not love him. It’s as simple as that.
If Cat was not prepared to love Jamie, then Isabel was.
There was a gap of fourteen years between them, and Isabel realised that at Jamie’s age this was significant. Would a young man in his twenties want to become involved with a woman who was in her early forties? Some women of that age had younger lovers—and there was nothing shameful about it, but she suspected that it was the women who started such affairs, rather than the young men. Of course, there might be some young men who would be looking for the equivalent of a sugar daddy, and who would seek out an older woman who could pay the bills and provide some diversion, but most young men were not like that, unless, as sometimes happened, they were looking for their mother.
Isabel could never have Jamie; she could never possess him, precisely because she loved him and she wanted what was best for him. And what was best for him was undoubtedly that he should meet somebody his own age, or thereabouts, and make his life with her. Of course that was best for him, she told herself. He would be a good father, he would be a good husband; he did not need to anchor himself to somebody older than him.
He did not. But she still loved Jamie, and at times she loved him 1 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h achingly; but she controlled that, and only occasionally, in private, did the tears come for what just could not be. At least she had his friendship, and that was something for which she felt grateful. She did not have his love, she thought. He is fond of me, but he does not return what I feel for him. Let the more loving one be me, wrote Auden, and Isabel thought, Yes, that is what I feel: let the more loving one be me. And it is.
She would not interfere, but who was this new boyfriend?
She looked up at Eddie. Could he be jealous? she asked herself.
The tone of his voice had sounded resentful, and she supposed that it was quite possible that he saw the arrival of a new man as being in some way a threat to his relationship with Cat. She was kind to him; she encouraged him; she was the ideal employer.
Eddie could not expect to amount to much in Cat’s eyes, but at least he was there, in her life, somehow, and he would not want that to come to an end.
“Well, Eddie,” said Isabel. “That’s interesting news. I hadn’t heard. Who is this new man?”
“He’s called Patrick,” said Eddie. He put his hand a good six inches above his head. “He’s about so high. Maybe a bit less.
Fair hair.”
Isabel nodded. Cat inevitably went for tall, good-looking men. It was all very predictable. “This Patrick,” she asked, “do you like him?”
She studied Eddie’s reaction. But he was watching her too, and he grinned. “You want me to say that I don’t,” he said.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? Because you won’t like him.”
We all underestimate Eddie, thought Isabel. “I’ll try to like him, Eddie,” she said. “I’ll really try.”
Eddie looked sideways at her. “He’s not bad, actually. I T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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quite like him, you know. He’s not like the others. Not much, anyway.”
This interested Isabel. Perhaps Cat was breaking the pattern. “Why?” she asked.
The door opened and a woman with a shopping bag came in. Eddie glanced over his shoulder at the customer and gave his hands a last wipe on his apron. “I’m going to have to go,” he said.
“I’ll make you a coffee, if you like. After I’ve served this person.”
Isabel glanced at her watch. “I’m going to have to go too,”
she said. “But I’ve got time for a quick cup. And then you can tell me about him. You can tell me why you like him.”
A S I S A B E L WA L K E D B AC K along Merchiston Crescent, back to her house in one of those quiet roads that led off to the right, she thought about what Eddie had told her. In their brief conversation he had opened up more than he had ever done with her before. He had told her why he had disliked Toby, who condescended to him, who made him feel . . . “Well,” he said, “he made me feel not quite a man, if you know what I mean.” Isabel did; she knew precisely what Toby would have thought of Eddie and how he would have conveyed his feelings. And then Eddie had said, “Patrick is more like me, I think. I don’t know why, but that’s what I feel. I just feel it.”
That intrigued Isabel. It told her something—that Patrick was an improvement on Toby—that was information of some significance, but she still could not visualise him. Eddie had thought that Patrick was more like him, but she found it difficult to imagine that Cat would deign to look at somebody really like Eddie. No, what it did convey was that there was more of 2 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the feminine in Patrick than there had been in Toby, or any of the others. Another possibility, of course, was that Patrick was simply more sympathetic than the others, and Eddie had seized on this. One can be masculine and sympathetic, and that, perhaps, was what Patrick was.
She turned the corner and started to walk down her road.
Walking towards her, having just parked his car in the street, was one of the students who attended lectures in Colinton Road nearby. Isabel caught his eye as they passed. He was masculine and sympathetic. But then she thought: I have no evidence for that conclusion—none at all; apart, perhaps, from the fact that he smiled at me, just a hint of a smile—and the smile was one of those little signals we flash to one another: I understand. Yes, I understand.
C H A P T E R T W O
E
ISABEL CALLED GRACE a housekeeper. She used that term because it was frankly kinder than the other words on offer: to call somebody a cleaner suggested that the job was a menial one—a matter of dusting and polishing and mopping up. And the words daily and domestic were adjectives used as nouns, and whether or not it was this that gave them a dismissive ring, she thought that they sounded that way. Housekeeper, by contrast, implied a job of respons
ibility and importance—which it was.
One kept a house, just as one might keep a zoo, or indeed a collection of paintings. To be the keeper of anything, thought Isabel, was an honourable calling; she had no time for the tendency to look down on jobs involving physical labour. Lawyers and accountants had a good conceit of themselves, she felt, but why should they consider themselves superior to bus drivers and the people who kept the streets clean? She could see no reason. So Grace, who came to Isabel’s house every day to clean and tidy and put things back in their place, was called a housekeeper by Isabel, and generously paid. Isabel’s father, for whom Grace had worked during his final illness, had asked Isabel to ensure that Grace was looked after, and Isabel had given her 2 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h word that she would be, even to the extent, now, of setting out to buy a flat for her. Grace rented, which Isabel thought was a waste of money, and subject to the vagaries of landlords. But when she had raised the matter with Grace, and offered to buy a flat, she discovered a curious inertia on Grace’s part. Yes, it would be very nice one day to have a flat, and yes, she would look, but nothing was ever done. So Isabel had decided she would do it. She would look for something suitable and set Grace up in it.
She could easily afford to do this. Isabel was discreet about her financial position, but the Louisiana and Gulf Land Company, a large part of which she had inherited through her mother, had done and continued to do well. There was no shortage of funds, as the quarterly statement of assets from the Northern Trust revealed. These statements came from an alien land—from the land of money, a world of figures, of profit-earnings ratios, of bonds, of projections that meant little to Isabel. But she understood very well this world’s siren call, and she resisted it. Money could claim one’s allegiances very quickly; this happened all the time. It was like a drug: the hit faded and more was needed for the same high. So she did not think about it, and she quietly gave away much of her income, unnoticed, uncomplimented; she was often the anonymous at the end of lists of donors; that was her.
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