The Geometry of Holding Hands

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She looked out after the figure of Iain, now retreating down the street. It was not too late to run after him and tell him she had changed her mind. She could do that quite easily, but…She faltered. There was no doubt as to where her moral obligation lay: it was to help this man who was trying to achieve something laudable, but needed assistance to do it. She could not turn down someone who had a short time to live: How could anyone do anything like that?

  Yet they did, she told herself, and the thought caused her pain. People were quite capable of being uncharitable, even merciless, to those whose mortality was writ large. And yet the bleakness was alleviated here and there by enlightenment. There were compassionate release rules that allowed terminally ill prisoners to be released to die in dignity. Isabel had received an article about the ethics of that issue: the peer assessment had been ambivalent, with one reviewer labelling the article “largely derivative.” That had moved Isabel to reject it, although she tried—as was her practice—to be as positive about it as she could. She said that she had read it with enormous interest: that was true, and she hoped that this might be some consolation to the disappointed author. Then, three months later, she heard from one of the author’s colleagues—a regular book reviewer for the Review—that the author of “Compassionate Release: Deciding When Is Late Enough” had herself just died, after a long battle with illness.

  That had been a coincidence, of course, and she had no reason to reproach herself. But there being no grounds for self-reproach did not mean an end to guilt. Feelings of guilt might be deserved, but, almost as often, might not be deserved at all—it depended on whether you were susceptible to guilt. Many psychopaths were happy for precisely that reason—they led guilt-free lives. Many saints, by the same token, felt guilty throughout their saintly lives. Isabel was aware of where she was on that particular spectrum: she felt far more guilt than she should, and she knew that she should do something about it. But she had not yet tackled the issue, and that, like the pile of books in her study, like the gym membership bought but not used, like the failure to like Leo in the way that she would like to be able to do—that certainly brought guilt. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and held it in before releasing it slowly through her nostrils rather than her mouth. Perhaps yoga was the answer.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ON MONDAY MORNING Jamie left the house early in order to be in Glasgow for a rehearsal at nine-thirty. Isabel took Charlie to nursery school at George Watson’s College, only a few streets away from the house, before delivering Magnus to the nearby playgroup where he occasionally spent the morning. Charlie had now settled into his nursery class, although it had not been easy at the beginning. Leaving him with the teachers had involved a programme of distraction and promises, during which time Isabel would slip away as discreetly as she could manage before Charlie realised she was not there.

  “He has a good set of lungs on him,” said one of the teachers, cheerfully. “And he always manages to land a few well-placed kicks.”

  Isabel was mortified by this comment, although she understood that Charlie was not the only four-year-old to throw uninhibited public tantrums. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “We try, you know.”

  “Of course you do,” said the teacher. “And we do want them to be little individuals, don’t we? It wouldn’t do to wring all the character out.”

  Isabel nodded. She was all for self-expression, except where the self so expressed would be better unheard. And there was still a duty incumbent upon parents to civilise their offspring—to make them fit for human society. There was nothing worse than an undisciplined little brat—not that Charlie was anywhere near that yet. She was trying to teach him not to bite other children, but it was not a lesson that he seemed particularly interested in learning.

  She had read in a child-rearing manual that a highly effective way of dealing with biting was to put mustard in the child’s mouth whenever it occurred. “This invariably works very well,” wrote the author, a paediatrician from Toronto, “but it is not a course of action that we can recommend. In fact, we completely dissociate ourselves from such practices—even if they are highly effective.” To which the publisher had added a note in these terms: Please note that this approach is not endorsed by the author of this book, nor by the Canadian Paediatric Association.

  Isabel had laughed. There were ways of giving people information while at the same time keeping one’s distance. Should you wish to blow open a safe, this is what you would do—not that we in any circumstances advocate safe-blowing…She had tried reasoning with Charlie, but had not got anywhere. She had tried a system of positive reinforcement, promising a small chocolate bar at the end of each week in which no biting incident was reported. That, too, had failed. And so she had decided that she would secretly put just a small dab of hot mustard in Charlie’s mouth when she saw him biting Magnus or the next time she received a biting report from school. And it had worked. He had howled and stamped his feet in rage, but the cause-and-effect message had clearly been received.

  She was embarrassed by this success of old-fashioned punishment. If she were reported to the authorities, she would no doubt be spoken to severely by the social work department or even by the procurator fiscal. She could be prosecuted, and the details of her trial splashed all over the front page of the Scotsman. She imagined the pleasure that would give Professor Lettuce, who would no doubt write to the other members of the Review’s board and offer to take over the chairmanship in the light of “Ms. Dalhousie’s most regrettable lapse of judgement and her subsequent conviction for violence.”

  Of course it could put Charlie off mustard for life, and only later, perhaps, the memory might come back to him of his mother approaching with a small teaspoon of yellow paste and forcing it through his gritted teeth like a medieval poisoner. He might even raise it with her, and draw her attention to the trauma she had caused him. “I know I’ve got a lot to be grateful for,” he would say, “but I’ve always felt that there’s something about mustard…”

  She would have to say sorry. She would say, “But you were a terrible biter, darling, and I had to stop it. You can’t go through life biting people—you just can’t.”

  She returned to the house. Grace would go to collect the children at half past two, and this gave her almost five uninterrupted hours in which to deal with the backlog of work in her study. She had a long list of emails to send, a pile of books and papers to send out to reviewers—Isabel insisted on sending hard copy—and several future contributors to contact. The printer’s bill had to be settled, and a few other random invoices attended to. Five hours would not be enough for all of this, but it would enable her to make a start.

  Of course she knew that a coach and horses could be driven through her plans if Cat should suddenly phone up from the deli with a request for help. And she had decided to be firm in dealing with that call, if it came, and to say, “I’m sorry, I’d like to help, but I’m just too busy.” The words were ready, but it was not just finding the right words that was required—it was summoning the resolve to utter them in the face of one of Cat’s pleas.

  When the phone rang, it was not Cat, though, but Hamish MacGeorge. In her relief at not hearing Cat at the other end of the line, Isabel greeted Hamish particularly enthusiastically. “It’s really nice to hear from you,” she said.

  The lawyer seemed taken aback by the greeting. “Well,” he said in his slightly prissy accent, “I would say the same to you, except it is I who am calling you, rather than you calling me.” She heard him drawing a breath at the other end of the line. In the background she thought she could make out office noises—a printer starting up, the drawer of a filing cabinet being slammed shut.

  She waited.

  “We need to have a meeting of the trustees,” he said. “And sooner, rather than later.”

  She felt a sudden tug of concern. The market was a fickle place; the value of investments
could go up in smoke before fund managers could do a thing. Computers, operating sales according to their own plans and logic, could wipe out whole enterprises simply by issuing an instruction to sell. This had not happened to the trust before, but she occasionally reminded herself that it could.

  “Is the market misbehaving?” she asked.

  “Oh no,” said Hamish. “Far from it, in fact. The market is doing very nicely and we are very well balanced—for the most part. No, what I think we need to discuss is a request I’ve had from your niece. She’s put in an application for funding.”

  Isabel relaxed. “Yes,” she said. “I encouraged her to do that.”

  This brought silence. Then, “To put in this particular application?”

  Isabel tried to remember what exactly Cat had said. It was “something for the business,” she seemed to recall. A new refrigerator unit, she thought; the existing one was making a labouring sound and would shortly need a new compressor, she imagined. It would be easier to replace it than to arrange an expensive repair.

  “She didn’t tell me exactly,” she said to Hamish. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s for a new fridge.”

  There was another silence. Then Hamish said, “I see.”

  Isabel frowned. Had Cat chosen a particularly expensive refrigeration unit? They could cost thousands.

  Hamish continued. “A Porsche Cayenne,” he said. “Turbo. New. Out of the box, if that’s what these expensive toys come from.”

  Isabel caught her breath. Then she said, “That’s a car, I take it.”

  “Yes,” said Hamish. “It’s a very expensive SUV. In fact, I’ve looked at the price list and I see it comes in at just over one hundred and ten thousand pounds.” There was outrage in his voice—Presbyterian outrage that went right back to the seventeenth century.

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Isabel.

  “That’s why we need to meet,” said Hamish. “And we need to meet this morning, I think, because Cat tells me in her message that her new fiancé, a certain…” His voice trailed away as he consulted his papers. “A certain Leo has booked a test drive this afternoon and is keen to do the deal by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  Isabel closed her eyes. She tried yogic breathing: inhale through one nostril, exhale through the other. But there is a limit to what yogic breathing can achieve, and she found herself thinking, absurdly, of a yoga master’s car that would inhale air though one exhaust and exhale it through the other. But the shock she felt was too much for such levity, and she put the thought out of her mind.

  * * *

  —

  THEY MET at the lawyers’ office shortly after eleven. When Isabel was shown into the client meeting room, Hamish and Gordon were already there, poring over a file of papers. A tray of coffee was produced by the receptionist who had accompanied Isabel to the room. A plate of shortbread fantails was already on the table.

  “Our firm used to act for a big biscuit manufacturer,” said Hamish, offering Isabel the plate. “We continue to have their shortbread available.”

  Isabel took a piece. There was something quintessentially Edinburgh about this meeting, with the two rather old-fashioned and pernickety lawyers, and the plate of shortbread.

  “I’m sorry about the lack of notice,” said Gordon. “But, as Hamish explained, we’ve been rather bounced into this.”

  “Or rather,” said Hamish, “there has been an attempt to bounce us into something.” He looked down at a paper in front of him. “One hundred and ten thousand pounds. One hundred and ten!”

  Gordon shook his head. “That rather nice car of yours, Isabel—I wonder how much that’s worth.”

  “My green Swedish car?” She shrugged. “Five thousand, perhaps. Although I think that cars like that eventually start to appreciate. Some of these vintage cars are astronomically expensive.”

  “They certainly are,” agreed Gordon. “Our executory department recently had a valuation for a car they found in a deceased client’s garage. Seventy-five thousand for an MG sports car that didn’t even start.”

  “That’s right,” added Hamish. “One of our trainees tried to get it going—he knows about these things. But everything had been seized, I think. Yet that was the evaluation for inheritance tax purposes.”

  “I would never pay that for a car,” said Isabel. “I don’t see the point.”

  “Rarity,” said Gordon. “If something is rare, people want it and will pay what’s needed to get it. It has nothing to do with utility.”

  “Which brings us to the topic in hand,” Hamish said. “This application from your niece.” He gestured towards a typed letter in the file.

  Isabel asked to see it, and quickly scanned the single page. Cat had not wasted her breath. “I would like to apply for funding from the trust for a business purpose,” she wrote. “I currently have no vehicle to use for the deli. As Isabel will confirm, I have to collect foodstuffs from time to time and also visit my suppliers at their premises. I think, therefore, that an SUV will be best suited for this purpose. I have looked at the various models and feel that a Porsche Cayenne Turbo is probably best for me. It is a very functional car.”

  She put down the letter. “Well!” she exclaimed. “She makes the point succinctly—you have to give her that.”

  “But, my goodness, a Porsche!” objected Hamish. “She needs a Ford Transit van. That’s what businesses like hers use.”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “That would be more sensible. But then…” She hesitated. This was family business, and she was not sure whether she wanted to involve Hamish and Gordon in a discussion of her misgivings. But she decided that she would have to.

  “Far more sensible,” Hamish repeated.

  Isabel sighed. “As you know, Cat has just become engaged.” She paused again.

  Hamish glanced at Isabel and then said, in a tentative tone, “Might we assume that an engagement could be a sign of her settling down—which is good, of course, bearing in mind…” He waved a hand vaguely, signifying, Isabel imagined, Cat’s past, with its landscape of discarded boyfriends.

  “I’m positive about it,” said Isabel, thinking, Yes, I am: I’m positive because I’ve decided to make the best of this, and because I have no alternative. But then she thought: A Porsche Cayenne?

  It was obvious whose idea that was. And, what was more, it was unambiguously suggestive of gold-digging. Leo must correctly have worked out that somewhere in Cat’s background there was money, and this was his opening gambit.

  She cleared her throat. “I said I’m positive—perhaps I should have said I was positive about her engagement. This, I’m afraid, changes the picture completely.”

  Both Hamish and George understood exactly what she meant.

  “This young man,” said Hamish. “Do you know anything about him? About his background?”

  Isabel told them what she knew. “He was brought up abroad,” she said. “His father lived—still lives, I think—in Kenya, but he was, I think, a Scot. Leo went to school in Cape Town, I think, or somewhere like that, and then ended up back in Scotland.”

  It was obvious to Isabel that neither Hamish nor Gordon approved of this. Leo’s background made him an unknown quantity to them—somebody well outside the normal experience of bourgeois Edinburgh.

  “Some of these chaps,” Gordon said, “can be a bit wild, so to speak. They’re used to wide open spaces and so on.”

  Isabel had to suppress a smile as she imagined an encounter between Leo and Gordon. “That’s true, I suppose. But I don’t think we should put too much store by stereotypes.”

  Both Gordon and Hamish were a picture of injured innocence. “Of course not,” said Gordon. “One must be open-minded.”

  “Exactly,” said Hamish.

  They looked at Isabel expectantly. She thought: But, Hamish and Gordon, you are such wonderful st
ereotypes yourselves.

  “It seems that this request,” she said, “has been inspired by Leo. It looks as if he has decided that this is his chance to get hold of a fancy car at somebody else’s expense.”

  Hamish shook his head. “It’s the sort of thing trustees have to be particularly vigilant about.”

  Gordon agreed. “We have our battles to fight, believe me. Youngsters make outrageous requests to family trusts every day of the week. Trustees have to be firm.”

  “So, we say no?” asked Isabel.

  Hamish looked at Gordon, and then at Isabel. “Would you like us to do the necessary? We can tell her formally that the trust hasn’t approved the request.”

  Isabel considered this, but then she decided that if there was dirty work to be done, then she should not pass it off. As if anticipating this response, Gordon assured her that this sort of thing was no trouble to them. “It’s what we’re paid to do. We can dress a refusal up in all sorts of legal language.”

  “We can throw in a few Latin phrases too,” added Hamish. “That usually silences people. Ceteris paribus, animus contrahendi, etc.”

  Isabel laughed, and there was a relief of tension. “No, I’ll speak to her directly. I’ll tell her that we thought the vehicle in question inappropriate for a variety of reasons. But I take it I can say that the trust would be prepared to buy her a modest van?”

  “Yes,” said Gordon. “Let’s say something up to the value of eighteen thousand pounds.”

  “Sixteen,” suggested Hamish. “And preferably second-hand.”

  “And the timing?” asked Isabel. “They haven’t given us much time.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Gordon. “He’s only going for a test drive. He can’t do the deal until the funds are assured. So perhaps we needn’t worry too much about that.”

  Isabel rose to leave. Gordon looked at his watch. “A glass of sherry?” he asked.