The Geometry of Holding Hands

by Alexander McCall Smith

  He was thinking about this when Isabel suddenly stood up. He looked up at her. Was she going to walk out too, even after what she had just said? “You aren’t going to—”

  She cut him short with a shake of her head. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  He watched as she crossed the room to the table where Throsby and the young man were seated. Because of the peculiar acoustic of the room, he heard every word of what was said.

  “Mr. Throsby,” Isabel began. “I’m sorry that you were subjected to that. It was discourteous. It was wrong.”

  It took Throsby a few moments to react. Then, he rose to his feet, inclining his head as he did so. “Thank you. I…I…” He spread his hands in a gesture that signified that he was at a loss for words.

  “I’m not saying that I sympathise with what you do—your financial dealings, shall I say—but I do not think you deserve to be publicly shunned like that.”

  Again, Throsby inclined his head. “It’s very good of you. Thank you. I appreciate your gesture—I really do.”

  Isabel nodded and turned on her heels to get back to her table. At neighbouring tables there was complete silence: everyone in the restaurant had followed the exchange. At one table in particular, an elderly man, seated in a party of four, watched open-mouthed. He stared at Isabel. A few minutes later, he called Lucca over and whispered something to him. Lucca replied. Isabel and Jamie saw none of this.

  Jamie said to Isabel, “I’m really rather proud of you, you know.”

  She smiled. “I’m proud of you too.”

  Jamie took a sip of wine. “I would never have done that. It wouldn’t have occurred to me. I’m not that brave.”

  “Really?” said Isabel. “I think you are, you know. I think you’re as brave as William Wallace himself.”

  Jamie laughed. “Braveheart? I don’t think so.” He paused. “But it’s good of you to say that. Nobody else ever has.”

  “Because the occasion has never arisen,” said Isabel. “You never know how brave you’re going to be—until the occasion arises.”

  “I’m not brave,” Jamie insisted. “I could never have flown a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain.”

  Isabel disagreed. “You can’t say that. And I suspect you would. I suspect you’d have been there, with the rest of them, doing what had to be done.”

  Jamie shook his head. “Some of them had only—what was it—twelve hours of training before they went up. Something like that.”

  “And they saved everything,” said Isabel. “Europe. The world, perhaps. It was close, wasn’t it?”

  Jamie nodded. “It was.”

  Isabel realised that she had never asked Jamie about his views on pacifism: the subject had never come up. And yet it was something very basic, a fundamental question—and you should know, shouldn’t you, what your own husband thought about that? Now she asked him.

  “You said you wouldn’t have been brave enough to fly a Spitfire,” she began, “but would you have flown it, if you had been a bit braver? Not that I think you wouldn’t be brave enough, but…”

  “Would I if I could?”

  “Yes.”

  He hesitated, but not for long. “Of course.”

  She was relieved by the answer. “So, you’d fight for a just cause?”

  He nodded. “Wouldn’t you?” He looked at her. “If somebody came along and threatened Charlie and Magnus—you’d…you’d kill them if necessary? If there was no other way of saving them?”

  She replied without thinking. “Yes. If there was no alternative. Yes, I’d do whatever needed to be done.” She returned his gaze. “You’d do the same, wouldn’t you?”

  “Without a moment’s hesitation.”

  She looked down at her hands. Hands were capable of that, and more. It was a hand that must have pulled the lever that released the bomb on Hiroshima. One human hand. But even that was not simple; had that hand not gone through that motion, then Japan might not have surrendered and there could have been millions more deaths in the invasion that followed. It was far from simple. There was a calculus of life and death with which politicians and generals had to wrestle, and whatever they did there were human costs.

  “It’s very complex,” said Isabel, but then added, “That antipasti was delicious, wasn’t it? It’s made me…” She hesitated. Suddenly she felt strangely, overwhelmingly happy. She was with the man she loved more than she had loved anybody ever before, and he was hers. At that moment, nothing else mattered to her—nothing. Was this what love really was? she wondered—a feeling of pure delight in the object of one’s love; the desire that the other person should just be, and that you, the smitten one, the faithful one, should in some indefinable way enhance that state of being. That that’s what was meant by the idea of loving another for himself alone.

  Jamie was the man she loved, she told herself—this is the person whom I love, although I could easily, I suppose, have ended up loving somebody else, or even loving an idea, a place, even something distant and unattainable. What was it that Auden said? Love requires an object—anything will do. Then he went on to say, When I was a child I loved a pumping engine, thought it every bit as beautiful as you…

  Those were beautiful lines, she thought, and they emphasised, quite rightly, what one might call the accident of love. There was a lot of chance in love—a lot of luck—but there was not too much point in thinking about that, other than to thank whatever gods one believed in, or blind fate if one believed in none, for the way things had worked out. And for her, they had worked out as well as she could possibly have hoped for.

  “What about the antipasti?” asked Jamie. “It’s made you what?”

  “Happy,” said Isabel. “Just happy. You and the antipasti, that is, have made me happy.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  GRACE STAYED OVERNIGHT, as she often did when babysitting. That suited Isabel and Jamie, as the boys, waking up to Grace’s presence in the house, shot excitedly into her room, bounced on her bed with all the exuberance that only small boys can muster and insisted on a story. Parents, in such circumstances, were of no real interest, and this gave Isabel and Jamie a leisurely start to the day, further assisted by the fact that Grace, rather than Jamie, would be taking Charlie to school. Jamie was teaching that day, which meant that he would spend the entire day, from ten onwards, at the Edinburgh Academy, on the opposite side of the city. That day he had the worst of his students. “Mark Brogan,” Jamie announced, with a groan. “That boy destroys every piece he tries to play. He has no sense of timing at all—none. He just can’t count.”

  Isabel smiled. She had met Mark’s parents at an Academy concert, and they had expressed pride in their son’s performance. “And just think,” remarked Mrs. Brogan, a woman with a hairstyle of tight blonde curls, “here are Jim and I with absolutely no musical talent between us, not a scrap, and there’s Mark getting on by leaps and bounds.”

  Mark’s father had expressed a similar view, but had gone further. He wondered why it was that their son had not been offered a place in the school orchestra. Could Jamie do anything about that? Not that they were asking for any favours—“We wouldn’t want to put you in a spot”—but that Macleod boy, the one who played the trumpet, was not very good at all and he, somehow or other, had been accepted into the orchestra. Did Isabel not think that was odd, especially given that Mark, who practised so hard, was denied a place?

  Isabel had replied, as gently as she could, that she really had nothing to do with the school orchestra, and that Jamie, although he was a member of the Academy’s music staff, was only a part-time tutor. “I don’t think he has anything to do with who gets picked for the orchestra,” she said. “If he did, he might be able to do something, but I don’t think it works that way.”

  Mrs. Brogan had smiled sweetly. “Of course, of course. But sometimes a word in the right quarter—you
know what I mean—might just help. We’re the last ones to be pushy parents—the very last ones, I assure you…”

  This had brought a nod of agreement from Mr. Brogan, who said, “Absolutely. Absolutely the last.”

  This conversation had occurred during the school concert interval, and Isabel had been relieved at this stage by the sounding of a bell; the second half of the concert was about to begin. “Oh well,” she said, “I’m sure that Mark will make progress. Jamie says that he works hard at his bassoon.” She gestured to the drift of parents making their way back to their seats. “I suppose we’d better be getting back in.”

  Mrs. Brogan seemed satisfied with the exchange. “It’s so kind of you to take it up,” she said. “Sometimes schools are a bit—how shall I put it?—a bit impersonal when it comes to these things. Talented children, like Mark, can get left behind.”

  This had alarmed Isabel, who was punctilious when it came to moral obligation. It would not do for somebody to believe that she had agreed to do something that in reality she had not agreed to do. She would need to spell it out again.

  “I don’t think Jamie can do anything about the orchestra, Mrs. Brogan. I really don’t.”

  But Mrs. Brogan appeared not to hear this; she had broken off to have a word with another mother whom she had recognised in the crowd.

  And now, as Jamie prepared to leave the kitchen, his mention of Mark Brogan reminded her that she had not told him about this conversation at the concert.

  “That boy,” she said, frowning. “I forgot to tell you about his mother.”

  Jamie groaned. “La Brosse?” he said. “That’s what the piano teacher calls her. The Brush. Her hair—those curls…”

  Isabel suppressed a smile. Jamie was naturally kind—and tactful—but he seemed to delight in nicknames. He never invented these himself, but he was not averse to using ones created by others. La Brosse was perhaps a bit uncharitable—and Jamie was certainly not that by nature. Isabel wondered whether she should point out to him—gently, of course—that one could not help curly hair, and it would presumably be hurtful to Mrs. Brogan if she heard that her son’s music teacher called her the Brush. But she did not. She never lectured him, even if he occasionally told her what he thought one should do, or, more often, what one should not do, namely, not interfere in the lives of others, even if they asked you to do exactly that. So now, of Mrs. Brogan and her curly hair—which did look rather like a brush—she simply said, “Yes, her.”

  “Her hair,” said Jamie. “Do you think she puts it in curlers? Or is it natural?”

  Isabel had no idea. “Some people have naturally curly hair, I suppose. She might be one.”

  “It’s amazing,” Jamie mused. “Imagine looking like that.”

  Isabel frowned. Yes, imagine looking like another person. Perhaps that was what we should do more often. Put yourself in their shoes was a familiar piece of advice, but it might be particularised into Imagine looking like her. That brought it home, because that was often the issue with how the world treated people. If you stood out, you were vulnerable. If you were excessively overweight, or very small, or if you walked in an odd way, then people treated you differently from the way they treated those who were none of those things. They might not do that so readily if they could imagine what it was to be you. And although there was no reason why the way you looked should be you, that was the way in which the world tended to see things. The way you looked could be taken as you, whatever was going on inside.

  “Anyway, what about her?”

  “She said something at that concert. She implied that I’d agreed to speak to you about getting her son into the orchestra.”

  Jamie snorted in astonishment. “The Foghorn?” he exclaimed. “Put the Foghorn in the school orchestra?”

  Isabel sighed. “Is that what you call him? Really, Jamie, nicknames are all very well, but aren’t they a bit childish sometimes?”

  Jamie smiled. “All right. No nicknames—although I didn’t invent that one. That’s what I heard one of the boys calling him. Obviously Mark’s bassoon-playing reminded him of a foghorn. Quite accurate, I thought.” He made a serious face. “But I won’t call him that. I shall be completely professional—I promise you. So, young Mark Brogan…What am I meant to do?”

  “She wanted you to get him into the orchestra. She wanted me to speak to you about it. I tried to tell her that it was nothing to do with you, but I don’t think that sunk in. And then she went off to speak to somebody else, and I didn’t have the chance to explain to her that there was nothing I could do.”

  Jamie sighed. “But now you have spoken to me. You’ve done what she asked you to do.” He paused, and gave Isabel a stern look. “Isabel, I know that you’re a philosopher. I know that you worry a lot about moral obligation. I know that. But you aren’t responsible for everything.” His stern look became one of frustration. “You don’t owe La Brosse…I mean Mrs. Brogan, anything. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  At one level, Isabel knew that he was right. She had given Mrs. Brogan no grounds for thinking that she could do anything to help her, and they were, in that respect, moral strangers. Or were they? You could owe a duty to people who imagined they had a claim on you—that could be the case if you knew that they were relying on you and you allowed that reliance to continue. She would have to make it clear to Mrs. Brogan, perhaps, that she should not think Isabel could do anything. Perhaps it would have to be spelled out.

  For Jamie, the matter was settled. He looked at his watch. He would have to go if he were not to be late for Mark Brogan’s lesson.

  He moved round to Isabel’s side of the table and kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry about these things,” he said. “Life’s too short. I’ll speak to her next time I see her. I’ll tell her that there’s zero chance of Mark getting into the orchestra.”

  “But she’s so keen…”

  Jamie sighed. “I’d like to get into the Berlin Philharmonic,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

  Isabel smiled. “Do you want me to have a word with the conductor’s wife?”

  This brought a laugh from Jamie. “Or his mother?”

  The telephone rang. Jamie answered, and passed the receiver over to Isabel. It was Cat.

  Isabel knew what was coming. When Cat phoned at breakfast time it was because there was a staffing issue at her delicatessen in Bruntsfield. Eddie would have slept in, or the woman who helped on Fridays had had to go off to Aberdeen to visit her sick mother, or something of that sort. And Isabel would inevitably reply that she would be only too happy to help and would be there within the hour, and Cat would say, “I really don’t know what I would do without you,” and Isabel would reply, “I don’t mind, you know. I really don’t mind.” On this occasion, it was Cat who had to be out of the shop between ten and lunchtime. Eddie would be there, she explained, but they were likely to be busy and would need two people.

  The telephone call over, as he left the room Jamie said, “The usual?”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “But Grace is here and she’s going to be taking the boys to nursery and to school. I did have some editing to do, but…”

  “Which you won’t be able to do?”

  “Evidently not.”

  Jamie hesitated. “She takes advantage of you, you know.”

  Isabel made a gesture of acceptance. “Family.”

  “Yes,” said Jamie. “But she could offer to pay you, don’t you think? And she should also bear in mind that you have a life to lead.”

  Isabel knew the arguments. It was probably true that Cat was rather too ready to call on her for help, but she had a business to run, and if there was nobody else to assist, then Isabel was happy enough to step in. And she enjoyed working in the delicatessen, even if it could be exhausting. Slicing Parma ham and ladling stuffed olives into small cardboard containers was very different from
running the Review of Applied Ethics, but therein, she thought, lay the charm of such pursuits. If you had no philosophical review to edit, then perhaps the shine would go off ham and olives; but if you did, then the world of the delicatessen could seem exotic.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said to Jamie. “I know how to handle Cat.” Even as she spoke, she wondered whether that was, in fact, the case. The truth of the matter was that she handled Cat with kid gloves, tiptoeing round issues that she knew to be sensitive. She rarely turned down any request from Cat, nor criticised her for what she did. Even when Cat chose to involve herself with unsuitable men—and that had very much been the pattern of her niece’s emotional life—Isabel was careful about expressing a view. Cat, she believed, did not want to hear what Isabel thought about the men in her life, and so it was best not to say anything. None of that, she thought, amounted to knowing how to handle Cat.

  Jamie cast his eyes upwards. He, too, thought Cat difficult. He had been in love with Isabel’s niece once—a long time ago—and he was pleased that was no longer the case. “Just don’t let her browbeat you,” he said. “Help her today, but tell her that she will need to get somebody else tomorrow. You can’t give her all your time—you have your own job to do, your own life to lead.” He hesitated at the door, as if uncertain about whether to say more. But he had to go: Mark Brogan would be waiting for him.

  Isabel blew him a kiss, but did not say anything. The kiss said, You’re right, and he was, but he was not the one who had to deal with Cat. She did—and it was never as easy as it sounded in theory, particularly when it came to working out where to start. And that, perhaps, was why so many difficult people got away with it: other people simply did not know where to start.

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