“Yes.” She returned to his question. “Jamie? He worries. Not all the time, but sometimes.”
Peter said he was not surprised. “I can see why. You see, this man might not take kindly to somebody getting in his way. If he’s after this Connie’s money—and that’s a distinct possibility—then he’s not going to like you queering his pitch, is he?” He answered his own question. “No, he’s not. So he could do something unpleasant.”
“To scare me off?”
“Yes. Precisely.”
She thought Peter sounded a bit melodramatic, and told him so.
“In the cold light of day, perhaps,” Peter retorted. “But it does get dark, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, come on, Peter,” protested Isabel.
“Don’t frighten her,” said Susie.
They lapsed into silence.
Peter looked apologetic. “I didn’t mean to worry you,” he said. “But what I said is true, you know.”
“And I’m listening to what you say,” said Isabel. “I’ll be careful.”
“Very careful,” said Peter.
“Yes. Very careful. I promise.”
He smiled. “Another promise.”
Magnus started to cry.
“Back to you,” said Susie, handing the baby over.
Isabel cuddled him, his soft skin warm against hers, breathing in his milky, babyish smell. All animals, she thought—all mother animals know the smell of their offspring. He was hungry, and she would need to feed him. Like so many women, her life seemed to be all about the needs of others. Auden had said something about that, she reminded herself—something witty. We are here on this earth to help others, but he had no idea why the others were here.
—
SHE WENT OVER their conversation as she made her way back towards Bruntsfield. She valued Peter’s advice—over the years she had discussed various problems with him, and he had often got her to see things that she had missed. She was cautious in her assessments, of course, and tried not to leap to conclusions, but it suddenly occurred to her that she had often got things wrong. I am meant to be a philosopher, she reproached herself, and yet I must be ignoring some of the most basic rules about being sure that you really did know what you claimed to know. Perhaps I should take an introductory course in epistemology all over again; go back to school, remind myself of the basic rules of how to draw supportable inferences, how to question propositions, how to proceed from premises to conclusions in a way that did not offend any of the rules of logic. Perhaps I am just a failed philosopher…a failed philosopher who happens to have been in a position to get myself into an influential position as the editor of a journal of applied ethics by simply buying the journal.
It was a self-deprecating line of thought, but as she walked down the slope towards Holy Corner, the intersection where three churches surveyed three of the same sets of traffic lights, while Mammon, represented by a branch of the Bank of Scotland, glowered over the fourth, Isabel found herself wondering whether other people saw her as nothing more than a well-off dilettante. The thought lowered her spirits.
Sensing the negative direction of her thinking, she suddenly stopped, and stood immobile where she was on the pavement. A young man who had been immediately behind her had to swerve to avoid collision. As he walked past, he threw her an irritated glance. She muttered an apology that he did not hear. Apology changed to reproof—in her head: I’m entitled to stop walking if I wish. There’s no rule about standing where you happen to be and looking up at the sky or just breathing in and thinking…
She remembered something she had seen many years ago, on a visit to New York. She had been there with one of her aunts from the South, and she had noticed a street sign that said No standing anytime. The sign obviously referred to vehicles, but could be read just as easily by pedestrians, and she had been struck by its unintentional humour. What was one to do when confronted with such a sign? Was one to sit down immediately, right there on the New York sidewalk, obedient to the point of immobility?
There was no point in muttering at people in the street, she decided, and she resumed her walk. Magnus was asleep, but there was no sign saying No sleeping anytime. That, at least, was something that officialdom allowed us to do—even in a heavily regulated society one might drop off if one wished—other than when one was driving, or doing something else that required full awareness. Judges sitting in court were expected not to drop off to sleep during proceedings, although every so often one did, and this came out during an appeal. The fact that the judge, or indeed any member of the jury, had been asleep could be fatal to a conviction. And quite rightly so, Isabel reflected.
This curious line of thought stayed with her almost all the way to Holy Corner. Was it in any way wrong to go to sleep at the theatre? People did just that, of course; a glance at the audience, especially during a tedious play, would often reveal people who had nodded off, some superficially out for the count, but others clearly enjoying a fairly profound sleep. Nobody paid too much attention to that, as long as there was no snoring—that changed everything, and those sitting about the sleeping member of the audience were fully entitled to tap the offender on the shoulder or even to administer a dig in the ribs. The justification for that, thought Isabel, was our entitlement to enjoy the performance free of disturbance from those who noisily unwrapped mints or chocolates, or who started to snore.
It occurred to her that there might be sufficient ethical issues involved in sleep to justify a special issue of the Review. She saw the cover and its title—“The Ethics of Sleep: A Discussion.” This could be accompanied by a picture of somebody lying asleep in bed, or perhaps one of those representations of the sleeper in art—Michelangelo’s Night, for instance, or any of those sleeping nymphs the pre-Raphaelites liked to paint. The Victorians approved of those, because the Victorians liked the idea of the elegant swoon and were always aspiring to the well-timed and graceful collapse into unconsciousness.
And what would go into the special issue on sleep? She was less sure of that than she was of the cover; there were issues, she imagined, around entitlement to sleep: there could even be a right to sleep set out somewhere in the list of recognised human rights. If we had a right to a reasonable amount of leisure—which we certainly did—then surely there was a right to get our necessary seven hours, or whatever it was, of sleep each day. That meant that employers could not expect their employees to work long hours that prevented their getting adequate sleep. That was a real problem, she knew, because there were many instances where people were expected to work ridiculously long hours or follow work rotas that must disrupt normal sleep patterns.
The ethical issues, she thought, were flooding in, and she was now thinking of the wording of the announcement and call for papers. Ever since Edison invented the electric light bulb, human sleep patterns have been under threat…She wondered whether that was too melodramatic, and decided that it was not. Electric light had changed everything; without it we were creatures of the cave, housebound by darkness, unable to do all the nocturnal things that we now took for granted. So that wording was not too extreme—human sleep patterns were indeed under threat, even if Edison might not have foreseen that when he first flicked that switch of his. But then at the time of invention people often failed to see the implications of the things they had dreamed up. The Wright brothers would not have foreseen the massive movement of peoples that would result from their invention, nor aerial combat, nor the living hell endured by those who had their homes directly under airport flight paths. Nor would Marie Curie have imagined Hiroshima.
She had reached Holy Corner. Her thoughts about sleep had lifted her spirits, and the doubts that had assailed her after her conversation with Peter were dispelled. She would return home, feed Magnus, cuddle Charlie—if he was back from nursery and in a mood to be cuddled—kiss Jamie, put out the recycling bin for collection, and sit down at her desk to draft the announcement of the special issue. That was quite enough for anybody, and if she
had any thinking to do about this difficult situation that Bea Shandon had dropped her into, then those thoughts could be put off for a while. She would decide what to do the next morning, and would allow herself two days, at the most, to do whatever needed to be done. That was the key to dealing with matters like this—as indeed with most matters: you set a time limit and then you stuck to it. In theory.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PUTTING CHARLIE TO BED that night took longer than anticipated as there had been numerous questions about the bedtime story. Why, Charlie asked, did people not like porridge that was too cold? He saw nothing wrong with cold porridge, and were these Scottish bears, because Scottish bears would probably not like to put sugar on their porridge. And then there was the question of beds: Did bears really sleep on beds or did they prefer to sleep on the floor? She answered patiently until eventually Charlie allowed her to turn out the light, give him his goodnight kiss and go downstairs, the door having been left slightly open, for light and comfort.
Jamie was in the music room, experimenting with chords at the piano. He looked up as Isabel put her head round the door.
“Do you like this?” he asked.
He played a chord, followed slowly by a second, and then a third.
“Is it meant to be going somewhere?” asked Isabel.
Jamie nodded. “It resolves like this.” Two more chords followed, and the music died away.
She asked him what it was.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Just notes.”
She came into the room and stood beside him. He reached up and touched her arm gently. She put her hand on his. He looked down.
“Every piece of music is just notes,” she said.
“Yes. But put them together, give them shape, and it becomes something different. It then says something.”
She moved her hand to his shoulder. “Do you remember that song you sang recently—a couple of weeks ago?”
He frowned. “What song?”
“It was a folk song. A modern folk song. Something about a tortoise that regretted a hare. I forget how it went.”
Jamie smiled in recognition. “Oh, that’s by James Yorkston. He’s Scottish, you know. It’s called ‘Tortoise Regrets Hare.’ It’s all about the end of a love affair.”
“That must be one of the commonest themes, surely.”
Jamie agreed. “Yes, loss. Do you know what loss sounds like? I’ll show you.”
He played a few notes. They were in a minor key, descending, fading away.
“That’s loss,” he said, grinning.
Isabel smiled. “This tortoise…”
“I suppose it’s about incompatibility. Hare has gone off with somebody else—she’s the fast one. Poor tortoise is left behind and regrets his lost lover.”
Isabel caught her breath. For a moment she thought, I could be tortoise. I’m fourteen years older than him. He’s my beautiful, lissome hare.
His hand moved to the keyboard, and he began to sing. She closed her eyes. Tortoise regrets hare; fox takes hare. Who would be the fox to take her hare?
He did not finish the song.
She looked at him. “Is that all?”
He shook his head. “No, there’s more. But I don’t want to sing it.”
She understood, and she moved to be closer to him. She leaned forward and put both her arms about him. She realised that he was crying.
“Jamie…”
She felt his shoulders heave beneath her. He was making an effort to stop his tears.
“Why, Jamie? What’s wrong?”
He spoke indistinctly, the words half swallowed. “I went to see the doctor today.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “You didn’t tell me.” It was not what she had intended to say, but these were the words that emerged—and they sounded like an accusation. She did not mean to reproach him, but she could not imagine why he had not told her. They concealed nothing from each other—or so she liked to believe, but perhaps she had been naïve.
“No, I didn’t.”
She waited, but he did not say anything more. He lowered his head.
“Jamie, darling, what’s wrong?”
“They have to do some more tests. He took some blood.”
She gasped. She was light-headed; there was a strange, whistling sound in her ears, as if somebody, somewhere, was blowing across a pipe or a tube.
She asked him again what was wrong, but he simply shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But you must. You can’t say something like that and then not tell me.”
He shook his head. “I really don’t want to. It could be nothing.”
“But there must be some reason why you went.” She paused. “Did the doctor say why he needed to do a blood test?”
He had his hands folded in his lap, and he was looking down at them intently. For a moment she wondered whether it was something to do with his hands; that would be serious for a musician. What went wrong with hands? Arthritis?
She tried another tack. “Why won’t you tell me? Is it something…something private? Something embarrassing?”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Then why won’t you speak to me about it? We don’t have any secrets from one another, do we?”
She kept nothing from him and she had always assumed that this was the same for him—but had she assumed too much? For a moment she felt something rather like anger. His failure to be open about this was insulting to her; it was as if he did not trust her with this secret—if that was what it was—about his health.
He was struggling to say something. She let him try for a few moments before she spoke again.
“I can’t understand why you won’t tell me about it. Is it something awful? Is it?”
She was pleading with him now, her heart cold within her. It was; it was something terrible, something untreatable, and she was going to lose him. Everything, everything was going to come to an end, as we all secretly feared, because we all knew, in our heart of hearts, that the thread by which life hung was such a thin and tenuous one. It did not take much to snap it—a few cells deciding that they would multiply in the wrong place, in the wrong way, and the whole body, resilient until then, would start its inexorable dissolution. We were tenants, not owners, even if we had no idea what the term of our lease would be.
He was saying something.
“What was that?”
He repeated himself. “It’s not something awful. I’m not going to die.”
She held him closer. She was in an awkward position, half beside him, half behind him, and he was still seated on the piano stool. He moved his hands to the keyboard, and several notes, unconnected and discordant, sounded. She clutched at the lifeline.
“So it’s nothing serious?” she stuttered.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.
She released him. She did not know what to think. At least he had told her that whatever it was—and now she knew that it was not what she feared—was not going to kill him. At least he had said that. She looked at him, looked down on the top of his head. What was he thinking of to give her such a fright? He was normally so considerate, and yet here he was being almost unbelievably thoughtless…
“Can we talk about it over supper?” she asked. “It’ll be ready in half an hour.”
He did not answer.
“Did you hear me, Jamie? Can we talk a bit later?”
Now he shook his head. He stood up and faced her. She saw the reddened eyes, and her anger abated.
“Do you mind if I don’t have dinner?” he asked. “I think I’ll just go and listen to something. I don’t really feel like eating.”
All she could think of to say was, “Listen to what?”
“Stravinsky,” he said.
He held her gaze, and she saw in his eyes something like agony. He was not telling her the truth, she decided; it was serious.
She turned to leave the room. As she did so, he reached out to her and caught h
er by the forearm. She felt the tightness of his grip.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I’ve been so stupid.”
She spun back to face him. “Oh, Jamie, this is so ridiculous…”
“Of course it is. I’ve been really stupid.”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve been upset. You’re human, that’s all…But you need to speak to me about it—whatever it is.”
“He thinks it’s gout.”
For a few moments she was speechless. Then, when she had recovered her composure, she blurted out, “You?”
“Yes, me. Gout.”
She was unsure what to say. She had been imagining something infinitely more serious—a cancer that had already widely metastasised; some other disease about which nothing could be done. Now she had to adjust to a disease that seemed utterly unlikely—a disease that some people even seemed to treat as comic. Gout was something that men—and it seemed to afflict men more than women—had in their sixties and beyond, a condition associated with excessive consumption of red wine, or particularly of port. It had all the wrong associations for somebody like Jamie, who was young and active, and who actually avoided port because it gave him a headache.
Jamie was now describing his symptoms. “I had this really painful big toe,” he said. “On my right foot.”
Isabel stared at him. “Toe?”
“Yes, my big toe. It was as if somebody was putting needles into it—it was that sore. Red-hot needles.”
She could not help herself: she was smiling. “Your big toe?”
Jamie’s frustration showed. He looked at her reproachfully. “It’s not funny.”
She struggled. Toes had always struck her as vaguely comic appendages, even if she knew how important they were for balance and for walking. She understood, too, that there were some people for whom toes had an erotic charge; she had never been able to understand that—but that was the whole point about the various fetishes that people entertained; they thrived in corners of the mind that were beyond the comprehension of others.
“No, it’s not at all funny,” she said, and then laughed. She could not help herself.
A Distant View of Everything Page 10