The Geometry of Holding Hands

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “It’s true,” said Eddie. “I saw an article about her in a magazine. She has one cow and a whole flock of geese. She lives on Westray.”

  Isabel located the small package of cheese, wrapped in greaseproof paper, and handed it to the customer. “I’ll find the smoked almonds,” she said.

  As she began to leave the counter, she felt Eddie tug at her sleeve.

  “Over there,” he said, nodding in the direction of the two young women. “Rosie’s nicking something.”

  Isabel looked up sharply. The two young women were standing in front of a display of expensive Belgian chocolate bars. Isabel saw a quick movement of the hand as another chocolate bar was slipped into a canvas tote bag.

  “I’ll deal with this,” she said to Eddie.

  The woman to whom she had given the cheese had seen what was happening. “Wee thieves,” she said. She did not lower her voice, and Rosie Mclaurin spun round.

  “Youse calling us what?” she shouted.

  They turned away, flustered. Isabel approached the young women.

  “Don’t you call us thieves,” spat out Rosie. And then, to Eddie, “You been talking about us, Eddie? You spreading lies again, you wee minger?”

  “I think you may have inadvertently slipped something into your bag,” said Isabel. “Give it to me and I’ll ring it up.”

  “Don’t you accuse me,” spat Rosie. “Heather, come with me—we don’t have to stand here and hear all this…”

  She did not finish. Cat came through the door, accompanied by Leo. She was smiling broadly. Sensing that she was outnumbered, Rosie and her friend walked quickly towards the door. Cat, not realising what was going on, held it open for them.

  “She’s stealing!” Eddie shouted out. But it was too late—the two young women had disappeared out onto the street.

  Isabel shrugged. “I did my best,” she said. And then, to Cat, she said, “You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you until after lunch.”

  Cat held out her left hand. “Engaged,” she said.

  Isabel took a deep breath. She had to smile, and she did so. “Well,” she enthused, “congratulations, both of you.” She paused. “That’s very happy news.”

  She looked at Leo, who was, like Cat, smiling broadly. In his case she thought she saw something beyond a response to her congratulations: she saw pride; she saw self-satisfaction, perhaps even triumph. He looks like the lion who got the cream, she thought. The idea made her laugh.

  “Yes, it’s great news, isn’t it?” said Leo. “And I reckon I’m one of the luckiest guys in Scotland.”

  Isabel caught Eddie’s eye.

  “I put some champagne in the fridge,” Cat said, still holding out the ring for admiration.

  “I’ll open it,” said Leo.

  Isabel watched as Leo extracted the champagne and before he took the foil from the cork shook it vigorously, in the way of racing-car drivers celebrating a victory. There would be champagne all over the place as a result. Why do people do these things? Isabel asked herself. And then she rephrased the question: Why do they get engaged to people called Leo, who look like lions, and who shake perfectly good champagne bottles before they open them, in the misguided belief that shaking a champagne bottle is what one does?

  But then she thought: Don’t be so stuffy. You may not shake champagne bottles, but others did, and what was there to say that you were right and they were wrong? Nothing, she thought. Good form—whatever that might be—disapproved of just about everything; it was a paralysis of politeness. And what did it matter if Leo was a bit…a bit rough and ready? If he made Cat happy, then that was what counted. He was marrying Cat, not her. The important thing was whether he would be a good husband to her niece.

  It was the positive correction she needed. Now, taking a step towards Cat, she embraced her. “I’m very pleased for you,” she said, willing herself to believe in the words she uttered. “I really am.”

  The champagne opened with an explosive pop, sending the cork flying through the air. Eddie dodged, but not fast enough, and the cork, with its restraining scaffold of wire, hit him just above the socket of his right eye. With a cry of surprise, Eddie doubled up, his hands shooting up to the site of his injury. Champagne and carbon dioxide spurted out of the bottle, drenching Cat and Leo and a customer who had come into the deli behind them. The customer let out a small scream of alarm as she saw a trickle of blood seep through Eddie’s fingers.

  “Not a good idea,” said Leo, and laughed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ISABEL TOOK Eddie to the Infirmary at Petty France, travelling with him in the back seat of a black cab. The taxi driver had arrived quickly, in response to her call, and was solicitous, even if he looked slightly concerned that blood might drip on his upholstery. He offered a box of tissues, but Isabel already had a large white handkerchief across which a red stain now spread like a tiny map of an island.

  “Been in the wars?” the taxi driver said, looking in his rear-view mirror.

  It was Isabel who answered. “A cork,” she said. “He was hit in the eye by a cork.”

  The taxi driver shook his head. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve driven to hospital over the years for that reason,” he said. “Twenty? Maybe more. Comes with prosperity.” He paused, and looked in his mirror again. “Champagne cork?”

  Isabel nodded. “Not his fault,” she said.

  Eddie looked up from under the blood-stained handkerchief. “It definitely wasn’t,” he muttered. “It was him.” And then for the benefit of the taxi driver, he said, “A real idiot called Leo. He’s pure mental.”

  The taxi driver said nothing. Isabel touched Eddie’s shoulder gently. “It was an accident, Eddie. I don’t think Leo thought for a moment he might hurt anybody.”

  Eddie sat back in his seat, his right hand still pressing the handkerchief against his wound. He did not look at Isabel as he spoke. “That’s what everybody says.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Everybody says that when they do something stupid that hurts somebody else—even kills them. They say, Oh, it was an accident. It wasn’t my fault.”

  Isabel was cautious; Eddie was distraught, and so she simply nodded. But then she added, “Try not to be too hard on him, Eddie. I think he probably feels pretty bad about it.”

  Eddie spun round to face her. With one eye covered, he blurted out, “Then why did he laugh?”

  Isabel had to admit that Leo’s initial reaction had been inappropriate. “Yes, that wasn’t very nice. But then I think that people sometimes laugh out of nervousness. It’s an odd human response to something that takes them by surprise. They don’t mean it.”

  “He did,” snapped Eddie. “He meant it.”

  “You’re upset,” said Isabel. “And understandably so. I think we shouldn’t discuss it at this point. I’m sure that Leo will be very anxious about you.”

  It was no use. Eddie shook his head at this, causing a few spots of blood to fall on the seat. Surreptitiously, Isabel wiped them up with her own handkerchief. The driver, though, did not notice; he was coping with the traffic, and they were now approaching the turn-off to the Infirmary. “I’ll drop you outside A&E,” he said. “You can go straight in.”

  Isabel thanked him. Like many of the city’s taxi drivers, he was a social worker, psychologist and now ambulance driver all rolled into one. Suddenly he became more than that, and said, as he drew up outside the Accident and Emergency Department, “You have to give the other guy the chance to say sorry, you know.”

  Eddie did not respond, but Isabel smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “And, yes, you’re right.”

  “He can keep out of this,” muttered Eddie, just loud enough for Isabel to hear him, but not the driver.

  “Mind how you go, young man,” said the driver.

  They went into the Accident and Emerg
ency Department. Lines of chairs filled most of the reception room; beyond these was a counter where the paperwork was done. Isabel led Eddie there, and gave the young nurse behind the counter his details.

  “You’re a relative?” asked the nurse.

  Isabel briefly wondered what she was. Employer’s aunt? Friend? “I work with him,” she said.

  The nurse noted something down. “What happened?”

  Eddie found his voice. “A cork,” he said. “Somebody hit me with a cork.”

  The nurse looked up. “An assault?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “No,” said Isabel, as firmly as she could. “It was an accident. Somebody was opening a bottle of champagne and the cork hit him in the eye.”

  The nurse looked from Isabel to Eddie. “If this is a criminal injury, we have to note it down. There’s a policeman on duty—you can have a word with him.”

  Isabel turned to Eddie. “Listen, Eddie,” she said, “if you get the police involved in this, you’ll just be making everything much more complicated.”

  Eddie shrugged, but remained silent.

  Isabel tried another tack. “Bear in mind what Cat will think. Is she going to thank you for accusing Leo of assault? She was there, remember; she knows it was an accident.”

  Eddie bit his lip. “Okay. I don’t want to speak to the police.”

  The nurse looked at him intently. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “In that case,” said the nurse, “take a seat. A doctor will look at you as soon as possible.”

  They found a place in the front row of chairs. Isabel was angry with Eddie, for his obduracy in blaming Leo for what had happened. Negligence, or even stupidity, might deserve some blame, but not the same measure of opprobrium that intentional wrongdoing merited. But she reminded herself of just who Eddie was, and why she should control her irritation. Eddie was vulnerable—a young man who had been damaged in a way that had never been made clear. He had made a great deal of progress—his confidence had grown by leaps and bounds—but there was a residual anxiety in his manner that could go some way towards excusing his reaction to what had happened. It had been an immature response, the sort of reaction one might expect of a child who could not distinguish between the intended and the unintended.

  Eddie nudged her. He had lowered the handkerchief, and she forced herself to look at the wound. It was a laceration immediately above the eye, not far from the eyelid. She felt her own eyes water as she looked at it—a sympathetic response. Sympathy—the sentiment that lay at the very heart of the moral impulse, according to Adam Smith. This was the doctrine of sympathy that the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers had stressed; this watering of the eyes was the physical manifestation of the intellectual understanding of the pain of others; this was it, manifested right here in the Accident and Emergency Department of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. It was exactly that.

  She stopped herself. This was not the time for philosophy—or was it? Might it not be that times of stress or suffering were precisely when philosophical issues became clearest?

  Eddie nudged her again. “Look over there,” he whispered.

  “Where?”

  He inclined his head in the direction of a man sitting a couple of rows behind them. “That guy with the jersey that says ‘SCOTLAND.’ Him.”

  Isabel looked. “What about him?”

  “Look at his nose,” Eddie said.

  Isabel stared. It did not seem impolite—in the circumstances, everybody in the waiting room was staring at the misfortunes of others.

  Eddie was amused, and seemed to be struggling to contain himself. “He’s got something stuck up his left nostril. Can you see it?”

  Isabel could. From where she was sitting it looked like a large key—the sort of key used to wind a clock.

  “It’s a key, isn’t it?” Eddie asked.

  “It looks like it,” said Isabel.

  “How do you get a key stuck up your nose?” Eddie asked.

  Isabel smiled. “Somebody might have been winding him up.”

  Eddie did not see the joke.

  “Winding him up as in irritating him,” Isabel explained. “You wind somebody up when you keep saying—”

  “I know what that means,” Eddie interjected.

  “I’m sure you do,” said Isabel. “And then that woman over there—see her? She keeps crossing and uncrossing her legs.”

  “Drugs,” said Eddie. “She’ll be needing a fix.”

  He was right, thought Isabel. With her sheltered background, she had seen little of that, but Eddie would have, she reminded herself. Eddie came from a very different Edinburgh.

  “Poor woman,” said Isabel.

  “Junkie,” said Eddie.

  “Yes, but we don’t know how she ended up like that, do we?”

  “She took drugs,” said Eddie. “Simple.”

  “Yes, but…” She looked at Eddie. “Don’t you feel sorry for people whose lives are a mess?”

  “Yes, sure.” He felt gingerly at his wound, provoking a further trickle of blood. “But the mess might be their own fault. Nobody made her take drugs, did they?”

  “No, but—”

  “So, there you have it. She did it herself. Now it’s too late.”

  Isabel sighed. Eddie came from a disadvantaged background, and in such a place it was not uncommon to find unforgiving views on right and wrong. Perhaps it was only a prolonged education, coupled with the security it brought, that encouraged nuanced thinking. Isabel sometimes wondered whether liberalism was most enthusiastically practised by those who could afford it: you could be generous to others if the likelihood of your ever wanting for anything was remote; you could be kind to asylum seekers if they would never take up resources you would need yourself; you could be tolerant of crime if there was not much of it in your neighbourhood. And so on; and yet that was to dismiss the real arguments that the liberal position might muster—arguments that were nothing to do with self-interest, but were based on principle.

  She was thinking of this when the nurse came over to call Eddie.

  “We’ll see you now,” she said.

  “I’ll wait here,” said Isabel.

  Eddie hesitated, but then said, “I’d like you to come.”

  Isabel was touched. He was not much more than a boy, this young man; not much more than a boy who had had something traumatic happen to him in the past and who needed love and support.

  “Of course,” she said. And to the nurse, “May I?”

  The nurse understood. “Absolutely,” she said. “We like to have friends or family around. Everyone needs somebody.”

  They were led to a cubicle. A young man—a medical student, Isabel thought—took Eddie’s blood pressure and asked him about any medicine he was taking. Then he made a few notes and left. Somewhere in the background, in another of the curtained cubicles, a woman groaned.

  “Is she having a baby, do you think?” Eddie whispered.

  Isabel said she thought it unlikely. “A baby can be an accident, but they’re usually not delivered in the Accident and Emergency Department,” she said.

  Eddie looked puzzled. “An accident?”

  Isabel smiled. “An old-fashioned way of putting it. Never mind.” She remembered what he had said of Rosie Mclaurin and her becoming pregnant in the cinema. That had been an accident, no doubt. Although one only became pregnant a little while after the event, she remembered being told in biology lessons at school: six or seven days, even more, she recalled. So Rosie Mclaurin might have embarked on the road to pregnancy during a showing of a Star Wars sequel, but the moment of conception could have been days later. Since she worked there, it might have been while she was serving popcorn, or it might have been later, when she was shoplifting with her friends in a supermarket. There were many
unedifying possibilities.

  “What’s funny?” asked Eddie, as they waited for the doctor to come into the cubicle.

  Isabel did not explain. It was too complicated, and anyway, Eddie did not find the same things amusing as she did.

  The doctor came in. He did not speak to Isabel, and was brisk in his examination of Eddie.

  “What did this?” he asked, as he examined Eddie’s eye socket.

  “A cork,” said Eddie.

  The doctor made a sound that seemed to express a mixture of distaste and resignation. “This happens too often,” he said. “People should be more careful.”

  “That’s what I think,” Eddie said.

  Isabel felt she had to say something. “It was an accident.”

  The doctor ignored this. “We’ll take an X-ray,” he said. “I want to check that there isn’t a fracture of the orbit.” He touched Eddie’s face gently. “That’s this bit here—around your eye. Fortunately, the eye itself seems fine, but we’ll need to check there’s no haematoma behind the eye—that’s bruising.” He stood up. “They’ll take you to X-ray. If the report is clear, you can go home. We’ll put something on the wound, but it looks clean enough.”

  Isabel waited in the reception area while Eddie was taken off to the X-Ray Department. Half an hour later, he emerged from another door, a small dressing taped across his right eye.

  “They said I can go home now,” Eddie said. “But I want to go back to the deli.”

  Isabel was concerned. “Do you think you should?”

  “They didn’t say anything about not working.”

  She did not argue, but summoned a taxi on her phone. It arrived almost immediately, and they were back at Cat’s deli about fifteen minutes later.

  Cat was there, but Leo was not. Isabel was relieved about this, as she thought it better for Eddie and Leo to say what they had to say to one another a little later on. Cat, though, had an apology to transmit. “Leo is really, really sorry,” she said to Eddie. “He would be here to tell you that himself, but he had to go to see somebody. He asked me to tell you.”

  Eddie stared at the floor. It was obvious to Isabel that what she had said to him had not made the impression she had hoped. For her part, Cat waited for Eddie to say something, but when he did not, she frowned. This, thought Isabel, was not going to go away too quickly. She glanced at Cat, who raised an eyebrow enquiringly. Isabel made a gesture that she hoped conveyed the message that Eddie should be left to get over it in his own time.