“It’s the place I wanted to be this weekend,” said Jamie. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”
Isabel was not sure what to say. “Good,” she said at last.
“You see,” Jamie continued, struggling to release his seat belt, “I’ve never been invited to a house party. Not once. I almost went a few years ago when some friends rented a cottage up near Aviemore for a weekend, but they miscalculated the numbers and two of us had to drop out. There were strict limits on the number of people who were allowed to stay, and so I didn’t go. That was my house party.”
Isabel laughed at this. She thought for a moment: This is where it shows, those years between us. He’s excited. And was she? She had been to house parties before—there was nothing new in that from her point of view. But was there something else? Yes, she did feel it. She felt an anticipation, especially when she thought of what Jamie had said. This was something special for him; not just being here, but being here with her.
Could she dare to think that?
They got out of the car. Jamie took both cases out of the back of the car—he had only a small weekend bag—and they 1 8 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h walked over the gravel towards the door. Isabel looked up at the house, which seemed much taller when one was right up against it like this. These Scottish houses were really towers, small castles, and they must have seemed impregnable to their attackers. Of course there was always the possibility of a siege; it was all very well being behind three feet of solid stone, but food had to be brought in from somewhere. And then there was fire, and disease, and all the other hazards of having something to defend in lawless times.
Tom appeared as they reached the front door. “I was watching you from one of those little slots in the wall,” he said. “Very useful, those. I can look all the way down the drive and see who’s coming up to lay siege to me.”
Isabel smiled at the joke, but then the thought came to her: What if the threat is already inside? Tom noticed how her expression changed suddenly, and he said, “Everything all right?”
“Yes,” said Isabel quickly. “Yes. It is.”
“Good,” said Tom. He glanced over his shoulder—they were standing in the hall, and he looked towards a back door. “There’s somebody who looks after us here. She comes with the house.
Mrs. Paterson. She’s made up your rooms and will show you to them.”
Mrs. Paterson appeared, emerging from the doorway behind Tom. She was a middle-aged woman with a broad, weather-beaten face—the sort of face, thought Isabel, that one doesn’t see in towns any more, where pallor reigns. She greeted Isabel and Jamie courteously in a Border accent and indicated for them to come upstairs.
They followed her into a corridor. “You’ve not been in this house before?” she asked.
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“I visited the garden once,” said Isabel. “Some years ago.
But not the house itself.”
“Oh, aye,” said Mrs. Paterson. “I remember that. An awful lot of folk came out from Peebles to see the gardens. They should open them again some time. But I think that people who rent the house don’t always like it. They want privacy—and who can blame them?”
“That’s reasonable enough,” said Isabel. “I’m not sure if I would want people traipsing through my garden, such as it is.”
Mrs. Paterson made a sound that seemed like agreement.
The corridor ran the length of the house, but because of the square shape of the house, it was not particularly long. Now they were at the end of it, outside a door of light, stripped pine, which Mrs. Paterson pushed open. “Your room,” she said to Isabel.
She went in. Jamie stayed outside.
“You can come in too,” said Mrs. Paterson, turning to Jamie.
“Your room is next door. Through here.” She pointed to an inter-connecting door.
Jamie came in, looking embarrassed, thought Isabel. She turned away. It was a large room, with painted wood wainscot-ing around the walls and two windows. The floor was wooden, with wide, old boards, and there were faded Oriental rugs here and there. An ancient wardrobe, oak and irregular, stood against a far wall and there was some sort of chest of drawers opposite it. On the walls there were small, dark oil paintings of inde-terminate country subjects: a hare at the edge of a field; stooks of wheat in a field; a winter landscape. There was a large double bed.
“I hope everything is all right,” said Mrs. Paterson. “If you 1 8 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h need to make tea or coffee or anything, the kitchen’s off the hall you came in. You’ll find everything you need there, even if I’m not around. And there’s a bathroom two doors down the hall—
we passed it. The hot-water pipes make a noise, but there’s lots of hot water, all the time.” She turned, smiled briefly at Isabel, and then left.
Isabel put her case down on the floor. Jamie had taken his case through to his room and had reappeared at the doorway between the two rooms. Now he moved over to her window and looked out.
“There’s a rooks’ nest in that tree,” he said. “Look at them.”
Isabel glanced at the tree. “It looks as if we’re sharing a bathroom,” she said.
Jamie looked round. “Fine,” he said. He returned to the window. “We could be a hundred miles from Edinburgh out here. We could be in Argyll. It’s amazing. Forty-five minutes from town.”
She joined him at the window. She looked out. Behind the trees, the hill rose up sharply, green on the lower slopes and then, as the heather took over, purple and purple-red. Sub specie aeternitatis, she thought: In the context of eternity, this is nothing, as are all our human affairs. In the context of eternity, our anxieties, our doubts, are little things, of no significance. Or, as Herrick put it, rosebuds were there to be gathered, because really, she thought, there was no proof of life beyond this one; and all that mattered, therefore, was that happiness and love should have their chance, their brief chance, in this life, before annihilation and the nothingness to which we were all undoubtedly heading, even our sun, which was itself destined for collapse and extinction, signifying the end of the party for who-soever was left.
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But she knew, even as she thought this, that we cannot lead our lives as if nothing really mattered. Our concerns might be small things, but they loomed large to us. The crushing underfoot of an ants’ nest was nothing to us, but to the ants it was a cataclysmic disaster: the ruination of a city, the laying waste of a continent. There were worlds within worlds, and each will have within its confines values and meaning. It may not really matter to the world at large, thought Isabel, that I should feel happy rather than sad, but it matters to me, and the fact that it matters matters.
She decided to stop dwelling on that, because that was a question of meaning and philosophy, and philosophy and its concerns seemed so far away here.
C H A P T E R S I X T E E N
E
THEY DID NOT SEE Joe and Mimi until they all met before dinner in the drawing room on the ground floor. This room had been sited without thought to the sun, and was north-facing, but there was a log fire in the grate—even in summer—which took the chill out of the thick stone walls. It was perfectly square, with a moulded ceiling displaying a cornucopia at each corner and four angelic heads about the central light. The furniture was right for the house—falling short of grandeur, but amounting to more than that which one might expect in a farm-house, even a prosperous one. There was a cabinet of china, a revolving bookcase, a thin-legged walnut bureau, commodious sofas, silk cushions with chinoiserie motifs, pictures of dogs and children; the accoutrements, Isabel noted, of the Scottish country gentry. On the outer wall was what must have been the largest window in the house, under which there was an enticing window seat and a low table of glossy magazines of a rural nature, Country Life, Scottish Field, Horse & Hound.
Isabel imagined how quickly one might slip into such a life, content with the small rhythms, impervious to the strife and anxiety of the outside world. And could one be happy in such a 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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life if one came from outside? She suspected that one could—
and many were. One might be like Horace, perhaps, leaving Rome for the consolations of his Sabine farm: the making of wine; the writing of poetry; the anticipation of the harvest. But, of course, it meant that one was entirely isolated from the life of the majority of one’s fellow citizens: a life of worry over all the things that people had to worry about—crime, money, noisy neighbours. It was better, she thought, to be of this world than to be detached from it.
She glanced at Tom, who was standing near the drinks trolley with Joe, engaged in conversation, forgetting for a moment Angie’s request that he serve the Martinis that she and Mimi had asked for. She wondered why they had chosen to come here, into this world so far from Dallas. It was summer in Texas, and Dallas was impossibly hot, but they came from an air-conditioned world, did they not? They might not wish to remain inside, of course, and then there was the sheer romance of Scotland, this soft, enchanting landscape with its pastel greens and blues and its cool air. That was what they wanted; or what he wanted; she was not so sure about Angie, about whether she fitted in. She’s more London, Isabel thought: Bond Street, Mayfair, the highly refined and expensive pleasures.
Tom gestured to the drinks trolley and detached himself from Joe. He had seen across the room, as Isabel had, the sign from Angie, a mime of a glass tilted to the lips; not as discreet, she thought, as the signs she had heard the Queen gave to her staff: a slight twisting of a hand which would swiftly bring a gin and tonic, part of an elaborate and tactful system of communi-cation that enabled life to proceed. She had heard, too, that the Queen liked to eat banana sandwiches, and that staff were trained to make such sandwiches in just the right way; an 1 9 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h endearing touch to a public life, she thought, human simplicity in the midst of state fuss.
Tom brought Isabel’s drink over to her and stayed to talk.
She had worked out, now, how to look at him without having her eyes drawn to the painfully lop-sided face and to the grimace which Bell’s palsy produced. By looking at the eyes, or just above them, the rest of the face became less important.
“I’m sorry about this face of mine,” he said suddenly. “I know that it’s hard for people.” Isabel opened her mouth to protest, but he continued. “It looks very uncomfortable, you know, but it isn’t. I’m aware of it, there’s a certain muscular strain, but after a while it’s nothing much. And I count myself lucky it’s not worse.”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “And, really, it’s nothing . . .”
He laughed. “It’s not nothing. It certainly isn’t. I can’t bring myself to look at my photograph, you know. I say to myself, ‘Oh no, that’s not me, is it? I don’t look quite that bad.’ But then I gather that there are lots of people who can’t stand looking at their own photograph, who prefer not to be seen. Probably most people, if it comes down to it.”
“I’m one,” said Isabel.
Tom looked surprised. “But you . . . Well, I would have thought that you would be proud of how you looked. Surely you don’t have to worry.”
“You’re very kind, but I do. I’ve always thought that I’m too tall, for a start.”
“Nonsense. Tall women are really attractive. I much prefer tall women.”
Isabel glanced at Angie. She did not think about it, but her eyes flicked over, and then she looked back at Tom again, quickly, realising what she had done. Angie was not tall.
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If Tom had noticed, he was too polite to let it show. “Tell me,” he said, “do you like living in Edinburgh?”
Isabel felt a momentary irritation with him over this question. It was something one should not ask another, because it was either mundane to the extent of pointlessness, or tactless. If somebody did not like living where they lived, then that meant that they were trapped, either by marriage or some other domestic circumstance, or by a job, or by sheer inertia. Whatever the reason, if the answer to this was no, the background to that answer would be one of regret.
And there was another side to it. She had noticed that there was a tendency on the part of some Americans to believe that everybody, deep inside, wanted to live in America, and that it was inexplicable that people who could do so did not. And here was Isabel, half-American, and therefore in a position, one might assume, to live in America, living, instead, in Scotland.
Was Tom one of those Americans? she asked herself.
“Of course I like it,” she said. She hoped that her answer had not revealed her irritation, but she decided that it probably had, as he drew back slightly. She reached out to touch him. “Sorry. That sounds rather defensive. I do like it. But I’d be happy living in other places, I suspect. New York. Charlottes-ville, Virginia. To name just two. I’m sure I’d be happy there.”
Her reply had the desired effect. “You might have thought that I was implying it was an odd decision to live in Edinburgh,”
he said. “Anything but. I’d love to live somewhere like that.”
“Well, let me ask you, then, are you happy living in Dallas?
Or even, why do you live in Dallas?”
His reply came quickly. “Because I’m from there, which is the reason most people live where they live, isn’t it? Isn’t that so all over the world?”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“It probably is. Most people don’t choose to be where they are. They’re just there.” She paused. “But what about my other question? Are you happy there?”
This time his answer was slower in coming. He stared down into his glass, and Isabel knew that she should not have asked him.
“I’m sure you are,” she said, before he could answer. “And I can understand why. It’s comfortable. It’s safe. There are things to keep you busy. Your friends are there.” She knew, though, that true as those factors might have been, they were outranked by something else. And that, she thought, is not the usual thing—
an unhappy marriage; it was that less common phenomenon—
an unhappy engagement.
They talked about other things. He asked her about Scotland, and she realised that he had read widely on Scottish history, more widely, perhaps, than she had. One could not do everything, she thought defensively; it was difficult enough keeping up with what was being written in her branch of philosophy, let alone in other areas.
She looked over to the other side of the room, where Joe and Mimi were standing with Angie and Jamie. Mimi was saying something to Angie, and Joe, she saw, was staring at the picture above the fireplace. He did not look bored—he was too polite for that—but Isabel could not help smiling at Joe’s expression. He looked as he did when he wanted to be elsewhere: slightly bemused. And he would have stood through many pre-dinner conversations with Dallas women, thought Isabel, and he would have been scrupulously courteous through all of them.
Angie, she saw, was studying her glass as Mimi spoke and 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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then, just briefly, she looked at Jamie, sideways—away from Mimi, but Isabel noticed.
“So,” said Tom. “What do you think about that? I’d be interested to hear your views, since you live here.”
Isabel had not heard the question. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was away with the fairies.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. That’s a Scottish expression. It means that my thoughts were elsewhere. People used to talk a lot about the fairies in Scotland, especially in the Highlands. You probably wondered what I was going on about.”
She saw his mouth shift, almost painfully, but
she realised, from his eyes that he was smiling. “One would be careful about that expression back home,” he said. “It might be misunder-stood.”
“Of course,” said Isabel. “Two countries separated by the same language.”
They lapsed into silence. Isabel was aware that he was staring at her, as if studying her, and she looked away in her embarrassment. Mimi had turned to Joe and he was saying something to her; Angie was now facing Jamie and was looking up at him.
There was no mistaking her interest, Isabel decided; the body language was too obvious. She felt a pang of jealousy, primitive and acute, but then she thought: That is how any woman would be in the presence of Jamie. It could be expected from anybody, but certainly from somebody like Angie, who was obviously interested in men. She was a woman who would appreciate male beauty—of course she would—and she would not have met anybody like Jamie before, with his gentleness, that special Scottish gentleness. Texan men were not usually like that. But, 1 9 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h but . . . she imagined herself facing Angie and saying, Sorry, he’s mine, you know; he’s not available. Sorry.
Angie suddenly looked at her watch and announced, so that all might hear, that dinner would spoil if they did not go through.
Tom put down his glass. He nodded to Isabel and crossed the room to whisper something to Angie. Isabel watched Angie’s expression. It changed, and then changed again as she listened to Tom. And what human emotions, she wondered, were written there? Boredom. Duty. Frustration. She paused. And resentment? Yes. Resentment that the wrong man was at her side.
For a moment Isabel felt sympathy for Angie. There were so many women—and, one might assume, men—for whom that could be said. So many of us had the wrong person at our side, and lived a life of regret at the fact. Loyalty kept people together—loyalty, and money, and sheer emotional inertia. But then, these were relationships which started with optimism and love and conviction that they were right. This, by contrast, was one which was starting, Isabel thought, through calculated greed and social ambition. And that, she felt, was undeserving of a great deal of sympathy. Angie should get out of it now. She should be honest with herself, admit her motives, and then say goodbye to Tom and to her ill-placed ambitions. But she has no intention of doing that, thought Isabel. She has something very different in mind.
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