“I’m going to stay,” Isabel said to Cat. “I’ll stay and help Eddie.”
“You don’t have to do that,” said Eddie.
“I want to,” said Isabel.
For the first time since the incident, Eddie smiled. “Thanks,” he said.
She stepped forward and embraced him, realising, rather to her surprise, that she loved this young man, for all the unexpected things he said; she loved him as a mother might, or a sister, perhaps; she did not want him to be hurt, or disappointed, or frightened, or to feel any of the things that vulnerable young men might feel but be too uncertain, or simply too frightened, to say anything about.
* * *
—
SHE DID NOT SEE Jamie that evening until shortly after eight. He had a rehearsal at the Queen’s Hall, and by the time he came home the boys were fast asleep, dinner—a ratatouille, as Jamie liked aubergines—was simmering in the oven and Isabel had poured herself a glass of New Zealand white wine. She had taken to allowing herself a glass of wine on alternate days of the week, with one becoming two on a Saturday. Jamie followed suit, although he would sometimes go for a pint of beer with members of the chamber orchestra with whom he occasionally played. That evening the rehearsal had finished at six-thirty, but the session in the pub, a hard-bitten howff on Causewayside, had lasted an hour. The conversation there had focused on the puzzling ways of a guest conductor whose interpretation of a Maxwell Davies piece they were playing was idiosyncratic in the extreme. “Max just didn’t mean that,” said a flautist, a woman with whom Jamie had studied at the Conservatoire. “If he had, he would have written something quite different. But he didn’t.”
In the kitchen, seated at her table, with a glass of wine and Auden’s Collected Shorter Poems before her, Isabel exchanged with Jamie the news of the day.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I have had a rather eventful twelve hours.”
Jamie, having planted a kiss on Isabel’s brow, sat in the chair beside hers. He stretched out and rested a hand on her shoulder—a gesture of gentle companionship that she loved. It was always his hand upon her shoulder, rather than hers on his—which meant nothing, she decided, other than that was the way it was. “That’s the way it is” explained so much, she thought; it was a formula that could turn away impatience, disquiet, even wrath. That’s the way it is. End of argument. Finito.
“Me too,” said Jamie.
“You tell me then.”
Jamie grinned. “I had a word with Freddie—you know, who conducts the school orchestra. I spoke to him about Mark Brogan.”
Isabel laughed. “I thought you didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t. But…Well, I wanted to get you off the hook. If his mother came along and tackled you about it, you’d be able to say that I’d done what they wanted.”
“That was good of you,” she said. “You shouldn’t have, but thanks anyway.”
“And you won’t believe what happened,” Jamie continued. “He said that both of the bassoonists in the orchestra are leaving. One is going to transfer to a school in Glasgow because the parents are moving, and the other is giving up music until after her exams next year. So…”
“So, two vacancies?”
“Yes. Freddie’s heard Mark playing and he agreed that he’s pretty dire, but he said that he could do some special simplified arrangements of the bassoon parts that should make it easier for him. He’s going to take him.”
Isabel laughed again. “La Brosse will be pleased.”
He protested. “I thought that nickname was banned.”
“The ban’s been lifted.”
Jamie said, “I’ve already had a beer. But I wondered if…”
“Have a glass of wine. You deserve it.”
Jamie helped himself, and then asked Isabel about her day.
“First of all,” Isabel said, “Cat’s engaged. This morning. The ring was produced. And Leo too.”
Jamie winced. “So that’s still on?”
“It looks rather like it.”
Jamie took a sip of his wine. “I’ve never been too keen on him. I don’t know why.”
Isabel agreed. She had harboured reservations about Leo all along, although he had helped her when somebody had made an attempt to intimidate her. That help, though, had been unconventional, and had involved Leo making a counter-threat, which had left her feeling uncomfortable.
“What is it?” Jamie asked. “Why do we both feel a little bit…lukewarm, shall we say?”
Isabel thought about this. “A different Weltanschauung?”
Jamie was unsure. “Lots of people have a different world view, but you still don’t feel uneasy about them. You may think: Well, I don’t look at it like that, but you don’t think: You come from another planet.”
“Do you think that of him?” Isabel asked.
“He comes from…where was it? Kenya?”
“Yes. Not the real thing, of course. They were originally Scottish, I think—his grandfather was a professional hunter. And his father too, I think.”
Jamie pointed out that he had met several people of that background, and had found nothing wrong with them. “I tend not to mind where people are from,” he said. “They’re just people first and foremost. The background bit is secondary.”
“I agree,” said Isabel. “No, I think it’s his attitude. He’s one of these people, I suspect, who believes in barging. You barge through things. You’ve no time for doubt. You charge. You shout a bit.”
“Well,” said Jamie. “She’s made her choice. I suppose we’ll have to accept it.”
It was clear to Isabel that there was no alternative. You had to accept the choice of partner made by a son or daughter, or, as in this case, a niece. You had to. If you did not, then you lost that member of the family. That almost always happened when an unpopular choice was made: loyalty required that outcome.
“I’ll make an effort,” said Isabel. “In fact, I tried to be as welcoming as I could. You should have seen my insincerity—it was a breathtaking performance on my part. Academy award standard.”
“Well done,” said Jamie.
“And then,” Isabel continued, “champagne was produced to mark the happy event, and that’s when things went seriously wrong.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. “Somebody had too much? Things were said?”
Isabel shook her head. “It was even more dramatic than that. Leo shook the bottle before he opened it…”
Jamie let out a groan. “Why do people do that? What a waste!”
Isabel agreed and continued, “The cork came out like a bullet and hit Eddie in the eye—or just above it.”
Jamie winced at this. He was squeamish about eyes, Isabel had noticed, and hated it when she asked him to put drops in Charlie’s sticky eye. “Eyes are too close to where we are, if you know what I mean,” he had said. “We’re located somewhere just behind our eyes. In there, I think.”
She told Jamie about the outcome; about the trip to the Infirmary and the conversation in the taxi. She said that Eddie was having difficulty in seeing the incident as an accident.
“Well, it wasn’t entirely accidental,” Jamie said. “It would have been different if he hadn’t shaken the bottle and the cork had still come out too fast. That would have been a real accident.”
Isabel accepted that there was a distinction, but she still maintained that if a consequence was not foreseen, then it might properly be described as an accident. Jamie listened to this, but was clearly not convinced. “I still think that Eddie has a right to feel angry,” he said. “Leo caused the injury. He should have been more careful. Even if he didn’t think that he could injure somebody, he should have thought about the possibility.”
“Of course, he didn’t handle the consequences very well,” Isabel conceded. “To begin with, he laugh
ed.”
Jamie wrinkled his nose. “He’s a pain, that guy. He’s just so pleased with himself. Imagine laughing…”
“I thought it insensitive,” said Isabel. “I don’t think he intended to laugh.” She paused. She was conscious of sounding a bit like a philosophy professor lecturing a class—but how else could one talk about philosophy? “Laughter is something we don’t necessarily have control over.”
Jamie looked doubtful. “Oh? Why not?”
“Because it’s like a yawn…or a hiccough. Try controlling a yawn. Or a sneeze. And, anyway, look at the words we use—we burst out laughing. The word burst says it all. Laughter bursts out of you—you can’t help it.”
Isabel need not have worried about lecturing Jamie—he was enjoying this. “You can stop yourself laughing,” he said. “I do it all the time when somebody like Mark Brogan plays the bassoon.” He remembered something. “I once saw a clip from a Belgian television show. It was about people who had had unfortunate things happen to them in surgery. This poor man was being interviewed—he had a really peculiar voice, like Donald Duck’s. Something had gone wrong in a throat operation. And the interviewer burst out laughing. And then somebody from the studio audience objected—in another very funny voice—and that made it worse. The interviewer collapsed in uncontrollable giggles.”
Isabel smiled. It was a smile of sympathy, à la Adam Smith.
“The interviewer lost his job,” said Jamie. “But apparently it was only an episode of a comedy show—not real life. Everyone was acting.”
Jamie was grinning now at the recollection; and she was too. We can’t help it, she thought. The misfortunes of others are often amusing. They just are, however much we know we should not find them so.
“I suppose we can’t help ourselves,” Isabel said. “A lot of humour involves nasty things happening to people. We laugh, although we shouldn’t.” She paused. “I was reading about the Rector of Stiffkey the other day. And I found myself laughing.”
“What was so funny?”
“He was an eccentric English clergyman. He was very famous back in the 1920s and ’30s for his mission to young actresses and showgirls in London. He took them back to his rectory in Norfolk for pyjama parties.”
Jamie smiled. “A very kind man, obviously.”
“Yes. Eventually he took to the stage at various seaside shows and circuses. He had an act that featured lions. They were tamed by young women he employed.”
“Wonderful,” said Jamie.
“Certainly colourful. But then he went into the ring one day and shouted at one of his lions—a lion called Freddie. Freddie objected, bounded over and started to eat the Rector of Stiffkey. And that was the end of him.”
Jamie laughed. “In real life?”
Isabel nodded. “Nobody was acting.”
Jamie laughed again.
“You see?” said Isabel.
“But that really is funny,” Jamie said.
“Although very unfortunate.”
Jamie agreed. “Yes, I suppose so.” He became serious. “So, Eddie’s in a huff?”
“He was. Whether he will remain in a huff, I don’t know. But it’s been an eventful day.”
Jamie rubbed his hands. “Oh well, there are some things you can change, and some you can’t. So, let’s eat.”
Isabel took the ratatouille out of the oven. She had been generous with the garlic, and it was obvious. But that suited Jamie, who could not get enough garlic, whatever the consequences.
“Do you mind if I smell of garlic?” he asked.
She did not, and so she answered his question with a request. “Will you play ‘My Funny Valentine’ after dinner? On the piano?”
“I could,” he said. “But why?”
“Because of the words,” she said.
He frowned. “Are they so special?”
“They’re about somebody being just right,” she answered. “The singer asks his valentine not to change a hair. He says she’s perfect as she is, with all her imperfections.”
“What’s that got to do with smelling of garlic?”
“Everything,” said Isabel.
After dinner, they went into the music room and Jamie sat down at the piano. He played “My Funny Valentine,” and Isabel, a hand resting lightly on his shoulder, did her best to sing it. The words made her want to cry because they went to the heart of what it was to be in love: you thought the person you loved perfect as he was, she told herself, and in her case it happened to be true. Don’t change a hair, Jamie—not a hair—not if you really care.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT DAY Isabel went for her dental appointment. Her dentist appeared to enjoy her visits, as he was a keen reader of a popular magazine, Philosophy Now, and would seek Isabel’s view on some question raised in the latest issue. His current concern was the revival of interest in Stoic ideas. Did Isabel think that the Stoics were right in their cultivation of acceptance? Had she read Marcus Aurelius? Did she think that mindfulness was no more than a pale echo of ideas that the Stoics had long advocated? It was difficult for Isabel to answer, as a dental patient is always at a disadvantage in any discussion with the dentist, but she mumbled a few non-committal responses before he completed his check-up and issued a clean bill of health.
Her walk home after the appointment took her directly past Cat’s deli, but she did not stop. Through the window she glimpsed Eddie engaged in serving a customer; the door of Cat’s office was ajar, and Isabel imagined that she was at her desk. Eddie turned as she passed and caught sight of her outside; he waved cheerfully, and pointed to his eye. There was no sign of the dressing and she assumed that all was well. She waved back, gesturing to her watch to make the point that she did not have the time to call in. Eddie gave a friendly thumbs-up sign.
Back at the house, Grace had finished giving Magnus his lunch and was about to put him down for his early-afternoon rest. When she was in charge of the children, Grace made entries in a small notebook to record what had happened. Isabel glanced at this in the kitchen. Charlie at school, she read. Magnus in bad mood. Kicked me on the shins. Told off, but didn’t seem to care. Such a pity. Ate half an apple and almost an entire croissant. Nose a bit runny. Cleaned up.
Isabel smiled as she read. Grace’s narratives were pithy but managed to convey her feelings on the small events—the moods and desperations—of a young child’s life. Such a pity was a particularly powerful comment, concealing a whole hinterland of disapproval. It would be Isabel’s fault, Grace implied, that Magnus was impervious to the telling-off he had received, and if he grew up into a selfish adult, then it would not be hard to find the reason and blame accordingly: it would be Isabel’s fault. Similarly, the fact that his nose was runny was not just a matter of report—it was a comment on the entire sanitary regime of Isabel’s household. Children who came from better-ordered homes, it was implied, did not have runny noses or, if they did, those noses were better tended. Cleaned up would have been written with a sigh. The unspoken comment there was Of course I’m the one who had to clean him up—yet again, because if I didn’t do it, then it would never be done.
She read the note, and smiled. Then, before she replaced the notebook in its customary place on a shelf of the Welsh dresser, she turned to an earlier entry at random. This had been written a few weeks earlier, when she and Jamie had been at a concert in Glasgow and Grace had babysat overnight. There had been an entry that she had meant to discuss with Grace, but that had slipped her mind. Now she was reminded.
Charlie wanted extra syrup at dinner. Gave him a small amount. Warned him that he would get fat and that fat boys could not play football. Isabel smiled at that. One did not say that to a child—at least not nowadays—but Grace was old-fashioned, to put it mildly. Then came an unexpected entry. Charlie keeps talking about a friend called Tommy. I don’t think Tommy exists. Has he s
poken to you about him? He went on and on through bath-time. Tommy this, Tommy that.
Isabel had meant to talk to Grace about this. She had not heard of Tommy, and was interested to know about him. He would be an imaginary friend, she thought—children often invented such people. She had forgotten about it, though, and made a mental note to raise it with Grace. What, if anything, did one do about imaginary friends? Did one encourage them, even to the point of joining in, or were they a private preserve of the child—a place into which adults should not intrude?
She made her way into her study. There was a pile of books for review, stacked up on her desk, each concealing between its pages a folded letter from the publisher. These letters followed a familiar formula: I thought I might send you the enclosed book for review. This is an author that we are very honoured to have on our list and I am sure that you will enjoy this new look at this subject as much as I do. Isabel dreaded these letters. Column space in the Review of Applied Ethics was limited, and in each issue she might be able to fit in, at most, four full reviews along with perhaps five or six “Briefly Noted” references to new books. That meant ten books in total might be mentioned, and since the Review was quarterly, that would make a total of forty books a year. Yet the number of books touching on philosophy published by the major English-language academic publishers in each year would far exceed that. How many? she wondered. Four hundred? And each of these would be the result of possibly years of work on the author’s part; how much love and laughter and enjoyment of life would have been sacrificed for even one such book to appear? And then, when the book was eventually published and sent out to the editors of journals, there might be nothing but a deafening silence. Some books were not reviewed at all: nobody said anything about them, nobody put them on a list of recommended reading, nobody mentioned them on radio discussion programmes. There was just silence.
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