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She had dared to hope that it would be Jamie, but she recognised Tom’s voice. “I’ve been meaning to call you to say thank you,” she said. “That was a wonderful weekend.”
He said that the pleasure was entirely his—and Angie’s of course—which Isabel doubted, as she was certain Angie would have been just as happy, or happier perhaps, had she not been there. There was a silence after this, but only a brief one. The Tom said, “We’re coming into town today. I don’t know how busy you are . . .”
She glanced at “The Ethics of Tactical Voting.” “I’d welcome an interruption,” she said. “If that’s what you were going to suggest.”
He sounded pleased. “I was. Could I drop by?”
Isabel hesitated, not through any unwillingness to see Tom, but through uncertainty about what he had in mind. Was Angie coming?
He answered the unspoken question. “Just me, I’m afraid.
Angie has a hair appointment and I believe that she has some shopping to do. So it’ll just be me.”
They agreed on a time, and Isabel went through to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. She was sure that Tom was not just calling for a casual chat; he had sounded as if there was something that he wanted to talk about. She was not sure what it was, though. Over the weekend they had conversed a lot together, and they had got on well, but it could hardly be a case of something being left unfinished. One did not come into town to discuss a point in an interrupted conversation.
She made her tea and returned, reluctantly, to her study. It would be three hours before Tom arrived, and in that time she could finish her editing of “The Ethics of Tactical Voting.” The other possibility was to let the paper go forward in its existing 2 3 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h form. That would please the author, she was sure, but it would involve a lowering of her own standards—not that anybody would read this particular article, anyway, and so perhaps nobody would notice. Or would they? There were people who thought about nothing other than voting behaviour; they liked this sort of thing. Psephologists. She sighed. There were psephologists.
TO M A R R I V E D at the house at three o’clock, exactly the time they had agreed upon. Isabel had just finished editing the article and was pleased with the result. What had been dull and unin-telligible had now become dull and intelligible, which was little achievement, but enough for the day. It was a warm afternoon and the air was still. They could sit out in her summer house, drink their tea, and Tom could say whatever it was he wanted to say. For a few moments she fantasised. He would say, “I’ve gone off Angie in a big way. I feel a bit bad about it. But I realized that . . . well, you were the one I really wanted. What about it?” And she would say, “Oh, dear, Tom, I’m so sorry. Bad luck for Angie, of course, but there we are. As for me, I’ve got a boyfriend at the moment and can’t take up your kind offer.
Thanks anyway.” She smiled at the ridiculous thought. Absurd fantasies were fun, provided one did not overindulge in them.
People could begin to believe their fantasies—she had known several who did. Her poor neurotic friend, Mark, who had been adopted, believed that he was really the son of a wealthy Glasgow shipowner who would come to claim him and induct him into his inheritance; he believed that in spite of the lack of any evidence.
“You’re dressed for tea in the garden,” she said to Tom when 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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he arrived. He was wearing a white linen jacket, open-necked white shirt, and loose beige trousers. She noticed the air of crumpled expensiveness about the jacket, and the belt through the loops of the trouser waist—a discreet, yachting-club stripe.
He laughed. “I have a Panama hat back home, but didn’t think I’d need it in Scotland.”
She led him into the garden, which seemed drowsy that afternoon. The summer house, which had been her father’s retreat, was at the end of the lawn, backed by rhododendrons and a high stone wall that gave the entire garden privacy from the neighbours. This was Brother Fox’s territory, of course, and one year he and his vixen, whom she never saw, had raised their cubs under the foundations of the summer house itself. She had heard them scratching there when she had been sitting in her chair, and she had thought of the warm, dark comfort of their den, and of the vixen, Sister Fox, she supposed, who might at that moment be licking the fur of her cubs with pride, and of their small eyes which even at that tender age were so full of fox knowledge and wisdom.
She poured the tea and passed him his cup. It had not occurred to her before that the Bell’s palsy might make it difficult for him to drink, but now she saw that when he raised the cup to his lips he had to turn it carefully to the side. He saw her watching.
“I have to be a bit careful,” he said. “When this first happened, I spilled coffee all over the place. I’m used to it now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to stare.”
He was quick to reassure her. “I really don’t mind. I remind myself that it really makes very little difference to the things I can do. And as for the disfigurement . . . well, we’ve all seen far 2 3 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h worse, haven’t we? People who have had bad facial burns. And dwarves. Imagine what they have to put up with. People embarrassed to look at them and not knowing how to speak to them.”
“But attitudes have changed, surely.”
He lowered his cup. “Maybe. Until this happened to me, though, I had no idea what people with . . . with disabilities have to put up with. The looks. The pity. Yes, that’s difficult to take.
The pity. It’s well meant, but we don’t want it, you know. And it also made me realise something that I never thought about. Dallas is part of the South, in its own way, and I never thought very much about what it was to be black in a white world. Now I think I know a little bit about what that might have been like. A bit late to get that education. This thing—this illness, just a virally damaged facial nerve—gave me wisdom. How about that? The wisdom of the facial nerve.”
She did not say anything, but she knew exactly what he meant. To be able to imagine the other, and the experience of the other, was what wisdom was all about; but nobody talked about wisdom very much any more, nor virtue, perhaps because wisdom was not appreciated in a world of glitz and effect. We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television—grey, lined, thoughtful.
Tom picked up his cup again and looked into it. “Coming to Scotland has been important for me,” he said. “We almost went to France, but decided that it would be Scotland this year.”
“Tarwhinn is a lovely place. You must be happy there.”
He took a careful sip of tea. “Oh, the house is fine. But it’s not really that. It’s just that I’ve been able to do some thinking.”
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She listened attentively. The sun had moved to fall through the open doors of the summer house, against the side of his trouser leg and on his left hand, which was resting on the arm of his chair. She noticed the signs of early sun damage on his skin, a dryness and freckles—Dallas, of course, and the harsh Texas summers.
“I don’t know how to say this, Isabel.”
She was about to pour more hot water into the teapot, but she stopped.
He took a deep breath. “Everything’s wrong,” he blurted out. “Everything.”
She did not know what to say. It was the engagement, obviously. He had made a mistake. People found out about other people when they went on holiday with them, and perhaps that was what had happened; it was a simple falling of scales from the eyes. And sometimes it took different surroundings to reveal a person’s inadequacies. Angie may have been fine in Dallas, wher
e she made sense, but out there in Peeblesshire, amongst those hills, she could well seem strident, brittle.
Tom continued, “I can’t help myself. When I met you, I realised what sort of person I should really be looking for. Somebody like you.” He looked at her, gauging her reaction. She smiled, but her smile was weak and uncertain. He was sufficiently encouraged, though, to go on. “I suppose that I’m a little bit smitten with you. In fact, I’m downright smitten. There you are. I’ve said it. Sorry. It’s very rude of me.”
This was not welcome, but his manner was so formal, so polite, that it somehow seemed not in the least threatening. She reached across and placed her hand on his forearm. The linen of the sleeve was rough to the touch. “Tom, you don’t have to apologise. You—”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h He interrupted her. “I agonised over telling you, but then I decided I had to. I know that it’s ridiculous—”
“It isn’t.”
“Yes, it is,” he insisted. “You’ve got your friend, Jamie. I’m an engaged man, and I’ve got this . . . this face. I know that nothing can come of it. But I couldn’t bear just sitting there with this knowledge about myself and not being able to talk to anybody about it. That’s why I had to come and speak to you. I shouldn’t have.”
Her relief showed. He was not going to press her. “Of course you should.”
He looked at her. There was anxiety in his face. “You don’t mind?”
“Of course I don’t. I’m flattered. I really am. But, as I’m sure you’ll agree, it really doesn’t have much of a future, does it?”
He appeared to think about this for a moment. And Isabel, for her part, controlled the urge to smile at the thought of how this meeting had followed the script of her fantasy, thus far at least, although there had been no direct mention of Angie.
“And what about Angie?” she asked.
For a while he said nothing. Then, speaking quietly, he said,
“She doesn’t really care for me. In fact, I think she’d be quite happy to get rid of me.”
He looked at her to see her reaction. If he had expected her to be shocked, then she disappointed him, for she was not. It was as she had thought. She had known all along, in the way that one knows some things that cannot be explained, beliefs of unknown aetiology. She had just known that, and had felt embarrassed when she expressed the fear to Mimi. And Tom had known it too.
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She spoke very carefully. “How do you know that?” She would not tell him about her dream; it would be too melodra-matic. But she would make it clear that she did not think that what he said was outrageous.
He joined his hands together in a gesture that seemed close to hand-wringing. “I think she tried. We went to the Falls of Clyde. I was trying to get a photograph, right at the edge, from a place where I suppose one shouldn’t go because there was a sheer drop just a foot or so away, and suddenly I felt that I had to turn round. And I did, and Angie was right behind me.”
“And she tried to . . .”
He shook his head. “No. I lost my balance, and I started to go backwards. It was very strange. I was teetering, I suppose. It must have looked as if I were going to go over.”
“And?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if reliving the scene.
“She didn’t do anything. She just looked. She didn’t reach out.”
Isabel had felt a knot of tension within her, which now dis-sipated. It was that old favourite of the moral philosophers, the act/omission distinction. Was it as bad to fail to act as to act, if the consequence in each case was the same?
“You think that she should have done something?”
“Of course she should.” He paused. “I know that one might panic in such circumstances, one might freeze. But when that happens the eyes show it. I looked into her eyes and saw something quite different.”
“Which was?”
“Pleasure,” he said. “Or perhaps one might describe it as excitement.”
She thought about this, and then asked Tom whether he 2 3 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h had said anything to her about it. He replied that he had not, and the reason for this was that he could not be sure. It was a terrible thing to accuse anybody of, and he found that he was not able to do it.
“But you can’t stay with somebody if you think that she’s capable of that,” said Isabel. “You can’t do that.”
He spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. “I’m engaged to her. All Dallas knows. I can’t turn round and . . . and end it just on the basis of a suspicion.”
Isabel felt a growing anger within her. “You can’t? Of course you can. People break off engagements all the time. That’s why we have them. A trial period.”
He looked at her helplessly. “I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t tell her.” He sighed. “And maybe I’m wrong anyway.
Maybe the whole thing is my imagination.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think it’s that. But the point is, surely, that you don’t want to marry her. You’ve just told me that meeting me made you feel that. You did mean that, didn’t you?”
He nodded vigorously. “I did. Yes, all that was true. This other thing—the thing at the falls—that’s something on top of it. An extra difficulty. But—and I know this sounds weak—I just can’t bring myself to break it off. She would be devastated.” He met her gaze, as if pleading. “I just can’t decide. I know I have to, but I can’t.”
“Why would she be devastated if she wants to get rid of you?”
Tom sighed. “I don’t know. I just don’t.”
Isabel decided. “Do you want my advice?”
“No. I have to make my own decision.”
“But you’ve just told me you can’t do that.”
Now he looked anguished. “I’d be a coward if I let somebody else do my dirty work, do my thinking for me.”
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“Yes,” said Isabel. “It would be cowardly. But all of us are cowards from time to time. I certainly am, and just about everybody else is, if they’re honest with themselves.” She looked at him searchingly. “One thing occurs to me, though. I take it that if she wants to get rid of you, she would want to do so after your marriage, not before. For financial reasons.”
He shifted in his chair, as if the question made him feel uncomfortable. “She stands to benefit from my death, even now.
I have already made arrangements. My lawyers advised it when we got engaged.”
“I see.” She picked up a small silver teaspoon from the tea tray and began to play with it between her fingers. “Do you think she might accept a settlement?”
“You mean that I should pay her off?”
“Yes. Because if she doesn’t really like you, then why is she engaged to you?”
“Money?”
“It looks that way,” said Isabel. “Don’t you think?”
Tom said something that Isabel did not catch. But then he repeated himself. “How horrible to have to put it that way,”
he said.
Isabel thought so too. Human affairs, though, were reduced to monetary calculation all the time, and marriage had traditionally been about money every bit as much as it had been about love.
He was staring at her. “Should I do that? Should I offer her money?”
“What do you think?”
“No,” he said. “I’m asking you what you think.”
“All right. Yes, I think that you might offer her something.
You don’t have to, but if it’s important to you that she releases 2 4 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h you, so to speak, then do it.” I should not be interfering, she thought. I have resolved not to interfere in the affairs of others, and now I’m doing this. But he had asked her, had he not? He had pressed her to give her advice,
and she had done so. Did that amount to interference? She was not sure.
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JAMIE TELEPHONED. He did so shortly after Tom’s departure, when Isabel had stacked the teacups in the dishwasher and returned to her study to work. He wanted to have dinner with her, he said, if she was free. Of course she was, although she tried not to say so too quickly. But she was quick enough.
At Jamie’s suggestion, they met in a pub, the St. Vincent Bar, on his side of town. It was a small bar tucked away near the end of a wide Georgian thoroughfare that went down the hill from George Street. This road came to an architectural full stop at an imposing, high-pillared church on St. Vincent Street; beside it was a much more modest Episcopal church, also known as St.
Vincent’s, in which high rites were celebrated. This was the home, too, of a slightly eccentric order, the Order of St. Lazarus, the members of which paraded in ornate uniforms and claimed descent from Templar-like chivalrous organisations; harmless enough, thought Isabel, and evidently satisfying two deep-seated male desires—to have secrets and to belong.
The afternoon weather had held, and as Isabel made her way down the hill from George Street the high northern sky was still filled with evening light. It was shortly after eight, but it 2 4 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h would not get dark until well after ten, and even then the darkness would be attenuated by a lingering glow, the simmer dim as they called it in the far north of Scotland. The air was warm, too, but with that touch of freshness that reminded one that this was Scotland after all.
The door of the bar was wide open and there were several people sitting on the stone steps outside, enjoying the warmth.
Jamie was already there, sitting at a table just inside the doorway, a glass of beer on the table in front of him. When he saw Isabel his expression lightened. He rose to his feet and took her hands. Then he leant forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Isabel felt herself trembling, like a schoolgirl on her first date. He has obviously had no regrets, she thought; he feels now as he felt over the weekend.
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