“I don’t know how to put this,” she said, “but those distinguished Scottish ancestors you’ve unearthed—they weren’t exactly angels, you know. They can’t have been; not if they were at all prominent. All the leading Scottish families were just a bunch of rogues. They plotted and raided and disposed of one another with utter abandon—utter abandon. The Sicilians could teach them nothing. Nothing.”
Tom stared at her, and for a moment Isabel regretted what she had said. We have to believe in something, and a belief in the goodness of the place from which one had sprung, or one’s ancestors had sprung, was one of the ways of arming oneself against the cold knowledge that it would all be over in a moment and was nothing anyway. Meaning—that’s what we need, and if it helps to be Irish or Scottish or Jewish, or anything, for that matter, then we should let people believe in these scraps of identity.
“Of course one shouldn’t make too much of it,” said Isabel.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“Not everybody was ruthless. There were saints too—lots of them. It’s just that it’s difficult to find many figures in Scottish history who didn’t have blood on their hands. You mentioned Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart.”
“She was wronged,” said Tom quickly. “And she didn’t kill her husband.”
“Darnley? No, there’s no evidence that she blew him up.
But since you mention him, let’s not forget that he was himself a murderer. He was in on the plot to kill Mary’s Italian secretary, wasn’t he? And when his friends came into the room he grabbed Mary and pinioned her while they dragged Rizzio away from her.
He did. That’s on the record. Which makes him a murderer.”
It was not one of Edinburgh’s most successful dinner parties, she thought. Mary Stuart had invited her guests to a room off her bedroom in the Palace of Holyrood. The guest list was small: her illegitimate brother, Lord Robert Stewart, and his wife; the Laird of Creich; Sir Arthur Erskine; and, at the other end of the table, David Rizzio. Rizzio was dressed in a gown of fur-trimmed damask, a doublet of satin, and velvet hose.
He wore a cap, too, by permission of the Queen, which was resented by those who had to remove their headgear in the presence of the monarch (everybody else, except Darnley, who was married to Mary). The loutish Scottish lords came into the room and seized Rizzio, who burst into Italian, and then French, in his desperation. Giustizia! Giustizia! Madame, sauve ma vie! She could not; she was just the half-French queen of a nation of boisterous men. They stabbed him again and again, again and again.
Tom pointed to the top of the hill, which still looked far away. Now they would have to leave the path, a glorified sheep track, as it followed the contour of the hill and they needed to 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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climb. They set out, making their way slowly over low heather. A female grouse broke cover suddenly, cackling in alarm, running along the ground, head lowered, to avoid what she thought would be her murderers. Isabel looked at her in pity, and felt a sudden tenderness, brought on by love. Love paints the world, she thought, enables us to see its beauty, its vulnerability, its preciousness. If we are filled with love, we cannot hate, or destroy; there is no room for such things. She closed her eyes for a moment, a dizzying moment, and she was back in that room, with Jamie beside her and the half-light of the summer sky outside, and her heart full of that very love she felt now.
“Are you all right?” Tom had stopped and was looking at her with concern. “Tell me if this is too steep.”
She reassured him that she was fine, that she had only been thinking of something and had closed her eyes because of that.
“I’m perfectly all right with this. I walk a lot in town, you know.
I’m fit enough.”
“Not everyone can climb a hill,” said Tom. “We’re so used to our cars. Our legs . . . well, we’re forgetting how to use them. Or that’s the way it is in Dallas. I try to walk as much as I can. I have a place out near Tyler. A nice bit of land. I’ve never managed to get the house as I want it. It’s in the wrong place, but my hands are tied. I’d like to knock it down and build again, but it was left to me and my sister jointly. Her husband won’t let her agree.”
“And Angie? Does she do much walking?” asked Isabel.
Angie had not been mentioned, and this was a chance to bring her into the conversation.
“She mostly drives,” said Tom. “But she plays tennis from time to time. She’d like to do more of that when we’re married.”
“I see,” said Isabel. She looked up at the sky; the rain was 2 1 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h holding off, but was there in the distance, in the heavy purple clouds over East Lothian and the sea beyond. “Have you known her for long?” The question was innocent, even banal; casual conversation on a walk between two friends who wanted to get to know each other better.
“A year,” said Tom, appearing to think. Sometimes we inflate times to make things seem better for us. “Or not quite.”
“You must have a lot in common,” said Isabel.
Tom did not answer immediately. Then he said, “Some things.”
Isabel made light of this. “Well, that’s a start. You’ll develop fresh interests together, no doubt. That’s so important in marriage. Without interests in common, well, I’m not sure what the point is.” That was as far as she could go, too far perhaps. Tom just nodded. He did not say anything.
When they reached the top of the hill, the view was as Tom had said it would be. There were blue Border hills in the distance and there, in the other direction, were the Pentland Hills, with Edinburgh just beyond, Arthur’s Seat a tiny, crouching lion. They sat down to get their breath back and Isabel laid back, looking up into the empty sky. The world is in constant flux, said the Buddhists, and she thought of this as she looked into the blue void; she imagined she could see the particles in the air, the rushing, swimming movement, the passage of the winds. Nothing was empty; it only appeared to be so. And then she thought: I am in a state of bliss. I am in love. Again. Finally.
JA M I E BO U G H T Isabel a jar of honey. It had been his only purchase in Peebles; a jar of honey which he placed in her hands with a smile. “Made by bees,” he said.
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Angie was watching as he did this. Her face was impassive.
She had found an antique dealer and bought a small, marble-topped French table, which Jamie had uncomplainingly carried to the car—it had been heavy—and one of those Victorian bottles filled with coloured sand to make a striped effect.
“What’s the point of that?” Jamie had asked.
“None,” replied Angie. “It’s a bottle with sand in it.”
Tom showed a polite interest in Angie’s purchases, but Isabel could see that they meant nothing to him.
“We’re going to ship a lot of things back at the end of the summer,” he said. “Angie’s going to redecorate the house.”
Angie stared at Isabel, as if expecting her to contradict this.
“I’m sure it will be very attractive,” said Isabel. “And you’re choosing the things yourself. Some people . . .” She almost said some rich people but stopped herself in time. “Some people get decorators to choose everything for them. Furniture, paintings—the lot.”
“I couldn’t live with that sort of thing,” said Angie. “Another person’s taste.”
Isabel wondered if she was going to get rid of all of Tom’s possessions when she moved in. And she thought that he might be thinking this, too, as he began to say something but was interrupted by Mimi, who started to talk about somebody in Dallas whom they both knew who had spent a year, and a fortune, searching for old possessions that had been mistakenly thrown out. He had tracked them down eventually and taken them back to the house. “Such loyalty,” she said. “It was like old friends being reunited.”
The conv
ersation drifted off in other directions. They were all in the drawing room, drinking tea, which Mrs. Paterson had brought in from the kitchen and placed on a sideboard. As she 2 1 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h did so, she turned to Isabel and whispered, “May I have a quick word with you, please?” She nodded briefly in the direction of the door and then left. Isabel, standing near the sideboard, took a few sips of her tea and then put down the cup and saucer and followed Mrs. Paterson.
The hall was empty, but the door that led off down the kitchen corridor was ajar. Isabel went through it and walked down the corridor. A child’s rocking horse and a small, old-fashioned pedal car had been stored in the passageway. The rocking horse, with tangled mane, was painted off-white and was scratched with use; the pedal car was British racing green, with red leather seats. Both looked dusty, as if abandoned a long time ago by the children who had once loved them. Children, like cats, made a house into a home, and the echoes of their presence lingered.
Mrs. Paterson was standing near the large kitchen window, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She turned round when Isabel came into the room.
“Thank you, Miss Dalhousie,” she said. “I couldn’t speak to you through there. And when I looked for you this morning, you had already gone.”
“Tom and I went for a walk,” she explained. “There’s a wonderful view from the top of that hill. We saw for miles and miles.”
Mrs. Paterson nodded. “Willy liked that,” she said. “My late husband. He was the factor here when this place was run as a proper estate. Though calling him the factor sounds a bit grand.
There was only one other man working here, who looked after the sheep. Willy did the forester’s job, too, because everything was so run down. Then when he died they stopped doing anyT H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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thing and just let out the land to the sheep farmer down the road, and I look after the house for the owners.”
“You do a very good job,” said Isabel, looking about the well-ordered kitchen, with its rows of gleaming copper saucepans and well-blacked skillets.
“I try my best. But it’s tough work when we have the short lets. The Bruces are no trouble, because they’re here for so long.
And they’re easy people to get on with.”
Isabel nodded. “But you wanted to talk to me about something . . .”
Mrs. Paterson put down the dish towel. “I’m so embarrassed about this,” she said. “You see, Angie asked me this morning to put some bottled water in your rooms. She said that there should be a bottle in your room and one in that young man’s room too. Jamie, isn’t it? Well, I said that you were sharing now.
I didn’t think, I just said it. And she was very surprised. I thought I shouldn’t have mentioned anything. You see, when I made up the room . . .”
Isabel shook her head. “Don’t worry about that,” she said.
“It’s not important. It really isn’t.” She paused. “Being in adjoin-ing rooms proved very convenient.”
Mrs. Paterson looked up sharply. “Oh?”
Isabel shrugged. It was too late now to sidestep the issue.
“Well, I suppose I’m just telling you the truth. We have to do that, you know. I could lie to you and pretend that I was embarrassed but I wasn’t. It provoked a conversation between us, you see. And he stayed. Last night was the first time we were together.”
Mrs. Paterson made a gesture with her hand which Isabel could not interpret. Was this shock? she wondered. A gesture of 2 1 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h disapproval? People in Edinburgh might tolerate things which people in the more conservative Scottish countryside would not. Taking a younger lover might be just the sort of thing of which Mrs. Paterson might have a low opinion.
The older woman turned away for a moment and stared out of the window. Then she turned round again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Your private affairs are none of my concern.”
“But I mentioned them to you,” said Isabel.
Mrs. Paterson nodded. “That’s true, I suppose that you did.”
She paused. “May I ask you something, Miss Dalhousie? Would you mind?”
Isabel wondered what the question might be. It was probably Jamie’s age that she was interested in finding out. “Of course you can ask me.”
“I know I’m older than you,” began Mrs. Paterson. “But . . .
but do you think that if I went to Edinburgh I might be able to find a young man like that? Do you think I’d have a chance?”
“Would you like me to help you?” asked Isabel. She burst out laughing, as did the other woman. They both knew that neither was serious, but Isabel thought, What if she said yes? How would I do it? And that question prompted another in her mind.
How on earth had she found Jamie? How had that marvellous, improbable event happened? It was luck, surely, on the same scale as winning the lottery, or any of those things that were against wild, impossible odds, but which happened from time to time and made one believe in the operation of providence.
She returned to the drawing room. Joe and Mimi had gone for a rest before dinner; the country air, Mimi said, made one feel sleepy. Isabel agreed. She could have gone to sleep, she thought, on top of the hill when she had been lying there look-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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ing at the sky. She had done that once in Ireland one summer, with John Liamor, at the end of a long walk; they had lain down exhausted in a field one evening and woken up when it was dark and the sky was filled with stars. They had both been so struck by the beauty of the experience that they had said nothing about it, and now, strangely, when she thought about it she thought of John without that bitterness that had accompanied her memories of him.
Jamie was paging through a magazine. Tom and Angie were seated on a sofa.
“Well,” said Jamie, putting down the magazine. “I’m going upstairs.”
Isabel stayed where she was. Angie, she noticed, was watching her. She could not leave the room behind him—not now.
“Dinner is at seven-thirty,” said Angie, transferring her gaze to Jamie. “Drinks at seven.”
As Jamie acknowledged the information, Isabel, who had poured herself a fresh cup of tea, fiddled with her teaspoon.
Then Angie said, “Is everything all right up there? Are you comfortable enough?”
Jamie was on the point of leaving the room. He stopped.
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Yes, it’s fine.”
“I’ll come up and check on everything,” said Angie. “I’ve left the arrangements to Mrs. Paterson, but I should see that everything’s all right.”
Jamie threw a glance at Isabel, and she looked at him helplessly.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s fine. Mrs. Paterson has looked after us very well.”
“Yes,” said Isabel. “Very well. You’re lucky to have her.”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Angie looked at Isabel, but only for a moment before she turned away, as if Isabel’s intervention was hardly worth noticing.
She put down her cup and rose to her feet. “I’ll come with you.”
Tom appeared uninterested in this conversation. He said to Isabel, “Do you know the Falls of Clyde?”
“The Falls of Clyde?” She was thinking of what Angie might do when she went upstairs. Did it matter at all that she had been told that her guests, whom she thought were merely ac-quainted, were occupying the same room? What business was it of hers? None, Isabel decided. In fact, it would probably do her good to be reminded of this, as it might lessen the eyeing up of Jamie which was going on. Was Tom completely unaware of that? Had he not noticed?
Jamie left the room, with Angie just behind him. Poor Jamie, thought Isabel. He’s embarrassed about this. I have no need to feel awkward, but it must be different for him. She thought of the reason for this. It was the way that people looked at these th
ings—from the outside. The younger man was seen as being used. Always. That’s the way people thought.
She was not using him. And she would not hold on to him; she knew that there would come a time when one of them would need to let go—and it would be him. When that time came she would not stop him. But it was not yet. And it did not matter what the world thought of her. If people wanted to talk of cradle-snatching, they were welcome to do so.
C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N
E
ON MONDAY, back in Edinburgh, she spent three hours at her desk and made a good dent in the submissions pile. There was an awkward letter to deal with, too, which took almost an hour: a letter from a member of the editorial board expressing concern about the direction the Review was taking. Since they had appointed this new member, a young professor from the University of British Columbia, he had written to Isabel four times. Normally she did not hear from the members of the editorial board, some of whom she suspected were only dimly aware that they were members and who never raised any issues.
But this professor took his membership seriously and had a keen eye for what he saw as deviations from the main purpose of the journal. We are a journal of applied ethics, he wrote to Isabel. There are plenty of journals that cover moral theory— our job is to look at the application of ethics to concrete situations: the real problems of real people doing real jobs.
At his suggestion they had devoted an entire issue to lifeboat ethics. The discussion had been concerned with the deci-sions that one had to make in a lifeboat about who was allowed in and who should remain on the sinking ship if there were not 2 2 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h enough seats. And then, once the lifeboat was launched and began to ride too low in the water, who would be thrown out.
Should the oldest go first? How would one choose between the loafer and the hard-working doctor? And what if the people in the boat became really hungry and had no alternative but to eat one of their number?
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