The Geometry of Holding Hands
Page 14
Eddie was not impressed. “Food’s different,” he said. “You mustn’t let germs get on food.”
“Some germs, yes. But others…if you had no germs on food, then we’d all have allergies and would end up being able to eat hardly anything.”
Eddie shrugged. “My cousin can’t eat anything. He’s allergic to milk and anything to do with milk. And wheat too, I think. He just eats chips and burgers without the rolls. And Irn-Bru. He drinks four litres of Irn-Bru a day.”
Isabel winced. Irn-Bru was the most popular of Scottish sugary drinks—a pale orange concoction tasting like liquid chewing gum, but an established part of Scottish urban mythology.
“Anyway,” Eddie continued, “anyway, here he comes.”
Isabel followed Eddie’s gaze out of the window. A taxi had drawn up outside, and the passenger emerging was Leo.
“She didn’t say he was coming in,” muttered Eddie. “And he never helps when he comes here. He just sits and drinks coffee and offers advice.”
Isabel was uncertain what to do. She had not seen Leo since the announcement of the engagement, and she would have to invite the two of them round to celebrate. It was already going to seem a little late to do so; she could not put it off any longer. She began to peel off the gloves she had just put on.
Eddie frowned. “I thought you were going to do the peppers…”
“I shall,” said Isabel. “But I need to have a quick chat with Leo. Sorry, Eddie—I won’t be long.”
“He’s a waste of space,” said Eddie. “A complete waste of space.”
“Don’t be too hard on him, Eddie,” said Isabel. “We’re going to have to live with him.”
“Not me,” Eddie muttered. “He’s nothing to do with me.”
Leo came into the deli. He did not close the door behind him, and this brought a loud “Do you mind closing the door?” from Eddie.
Leo smiled. “Born in a tent,” he said, reaching behind him for the door handle. Noticing Isabel behind the counter, he waved cheerfully to her. “Isabel! I thought it was you.”
“Who else would it be?” muttered Eddie sotto voce.
Isabel gave Eddie a discouraging glance and made her way out from behind the counter to greet Leo. He seemed pleased to see her, leaning forward to kiss her on both cheeks. Her natural reaction was to freeze, but with an effort she conquered that, giving his upper arm a quick, friendly squeeze.
“I’m so happy for you,” she said. “For both of you, of course. It’s very good news.” How easily, she thought, come the untruths; how effortless the hypocrisy. And she thought, for a moment, of Immanuel Kant. And George Washington, for that matter, if we imagined that he really did say, “Father, I cannot tell a lie.” How would a Kantian greet an unwelcome engagement? With silence?
She felt his lips on the skin of her cheek, a brief, slightly abrasive touch, complicated by stubble. She noticed that he had a smell about him that was really quite strong when close up—a dusty sort of smell; sandalwood and the smoke of a woodfire. It was not unpleasant, but it was nonetheless strange. It’s the smell of lion, she suddenly thought. This was what a lion smelled like—a tawny smell, a smell of the dry bushveld. Absurd. Absurd. But she drew in the scent again and she saw the landscape from which it emanated: savanna, golden grass, acacia trees.
She drew back. “I’m sorry I wasn’t in touch earlier. Jamie and I have been talking about having you both round to celebrate. We must arrange it.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgement of the invitation. “That would be nice. Really nice. I’ll bring the Prosecco.”
Isabel smiled. “We might run to the real thing.”
Leo looked across the counter. “Hear that, young Eddie? Real champagne. How about that?”
Eddie turned away in distaste, but Leo did not seem to notice.
Isabel suggested they sit down for a cup of coffee at one of the tables. Leo agreed, and she asked Eddie if he would mind making coffee for them. He looked at her, his upper lip quivering, and then, grudgingly, said that he would bring it over.
At the table, Isabel asked about their plans. “Is this going to be a long engagement?” she asked.
Leo laughed. “Do you mean: Is it going to last long?”
“No, of course I didn’t mean that. I meant: When are you planning to get married?”
Leo shrugged his shoulders. “A month. Maybe two months from now.”
“Fairly soon, then.”
“Oh yes, as soon as we can get things sorted out. I don’t know if Cat told you—we’re going to buy a boat.”
Cat had not said anything about a boat.
“I didn’t know you sailed,” said Isabel.
“Yes, I have my Yachtmaster’s certificate. I want to do more of it in the future. So Cat and I have decided—we’ll get rid of this place and buy a boat on the west coast. Oban or somewhere near there. There’s a place at Port Appin that could suit us. We’d get a mooring.”
Isabel struggled to take this in. “You mean you’ll live on the boat? All the time?”
Leo nodded. “Yes. We’ll live on her in the summer, while we take people out to the islands. We’ll do skippered charters—you charter the yacht and the skipper, so you don’t need to know how to sail. People like it.”
Isabel still struggled. “A big boat, then?” she asked.
Leo made fun of her question. “A big boat? Yes, a big boat all right. Sixty-two feet—at least. Six cabins.”
Isabel tried to envisage sixty-two feet. In her mind’s eye she saw Leo, wearing frayed trousers, barefoot, climbing up a mast, his mane of leonine hair ruffled by the wind.
“And then in the winter,” Leo went on, “we’ll sail her over to the Caribbean to do the season there. Antigua. Saint Vincent. Those places.”
Eddie came over with their coffee.
“That’s the stuff, Eddie boy,” said Leo, as Eddie put the cup before him. And then he added, “Fancy a job as a cabin boy?” He laughed. “Only joking.”
Eddie glowered.
“Thank you, Eddie,” said Isabel gently. Then, to Leo she said, “I didn’t realise that Cat was keen on the sea.”
“She is,” said Leo. “She came over with me to look at a boat that’s on the market over at Ardfern. It’s a beauty. We’re getting a marine surveyor to look at her early next week. He’ll do a very thorough job.”
Isabel took a sip of her coffee. It was too hot. “Oh yes?”
“Yes. He’ll probably take a look at the engine oil to see if there’s any evidence of metal fragments. That’ll tell him a lot about the gearbox. And the hull—they go over that with a fine-tooth comb to look out for blistering. Osmosis. Damage that’s been painted over. Not that this one should have much of that—she’s only been in the water for two seasons.”
“She sounds lovely,” said Isabel.
“Expensive,” said Leo. “But you know something, Isabel? You get what you pay for. If people only bore that in mind, they’d avoid a whole shovel-load of trouble, I’m telling you.”
“Probably,” said Isabel. She was wondering how expensive was expensive. She toyed with her coffee. “Do you mind my asking, how much do these things cost?”
“New?” asked Leo. “Or second-hand?”
“Well, new, I suppose.”
“This is a Swedish boat,” said Leo. “You’d pay about eight hundred thousand for it new. Second-hand…” He hesitated. “Half a million, if it’s almost new. And this one is.”
Isabel drew in her breath. “Half a million? That’s rather a lot.”
“But remember, you make money with charter fees.”
“Even so,” she said.
“Even so,” he agreed. “But we’ll sell this place, and Cat says that there’s a trust that can help her with her business expenses. The boat will be a business asset, don’t you think?”
“Well,” prompted Leo. “What do you think? If they’d advance, say, one hundred grand, that would make all the difference. I’ve had this place valued, and we should get four hundred grand for it.”
Isabel stared at the tablecloth. Cat’s deli had been part of her life for some time now, and there was Eddie to think about too. What would happen to Eddie? He had never worked anywhere else, and it was clear to Isabel that the deli was his life.
“What about your own contribution?” Isabel asked. “Will you be putting anything into it?”
Leo grinned. Bending his arm, he pointed to his bulging biceps. “Muscle,” he said. “That’s what I bring to the party.” He paused. “And planning, of course.”
Isabel said nothing for a few moments. Then, looking over towards the counter, where Eddie was serving a customer, she said, her voice lowered, “Does Eddie know?”
Leo shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll tell him. We’re getting somebody round to prepare to market the business. We’re ready to sell it as a going concern, but they’ve told us we may get more from somebody wanting to turn it into a full-scale coffee bar. There’s not much margin on deli products, you know.”
Isabel bit her lip. “He likes his job, you know. It’s very important to him.”
“Him?” Leo nodded curtly in Eddie’s direction. “He’ll get something else. He’s a bit wet, but he should find something.”
“Is your mind made up?” asked Isabel. “Is this definitely going to happen?”
Leo looked surprised that anybody would doubt him. “Yes, of course it is.”
“Oh well,” said Isabel, resignation in her voice. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
Leo smiled. “You’re a philosopher, aren’t you? Isn’t that what you like?”
* * *
—
AFTER THEY HAD FINISHED their coffee, Leo retreated to Cat’s office, to wait for her there. “I have a whole stack of emails to deal with,” he said. “Boat stuff mostly. I’ll keep out of your way.” Isabel returned to work, and by the time Cat returned from her visit to the egg supplier, she had replenished most of the cold prepared food that would be needed for their lunchtime customers. Eddie was largely silent, sulking over Leo’s presence. Isabel glanced at him from time to time, but he turned away, avoiding contact. She wanted to talk to him, but she was not sure what to say. They could discuss Leo, and how important it was for Cat that this should work out, but now that Leo had revealed their plans to Isabel, any such discussion seemed a bit pointless. If the deli was going to be sold, as looked likely, then Eddie’s job would become uncertain—at best. The purchaser, whoever it might be, could keep him on, perhaps, but in such circumstances he was just as likely to replace him. Eddie would not come across well in an interview. He was hard-working—Isabel knew that—but he liked to handle things his way and did not take well to being told what to do.
Cat was in a good mood when she arrived.
“Leo’s in the office,” Isabel told her. “We had coffee together.”
Cat kissed Isabel warmly. “You’re such a star, Isabel—you really are.” Glancing at the refrigerated counter, she went on, “And look at what you’ve done. Everything’s fantastic. You’re a star.”
Isabel wiped her hands on her apron. “Oh well,” she said.
“Where are the boys?” asked Cat.
“With Jamie at Craigie’s Farm. They love going there.”
Cat nodded. “They have pigs, don’t they? Jamie always said he liked pigs.”
This surprised Isabel. Jamie had never said that to her. “Did he?” she asked, almost automatically.
“Oh yes. Has he never told you? He told me that he used to dream about pigs.”
Isabel frowned. Why would anybody dream about pigs? Unless, of course, you kept pigs: if pigs were part of your daily life, then your dreams, she imagined, might revolve around pigs. But Jamie?
She looked at Cat. She wanted to talk to her about her conversation with Leo. If she and Leo were thinking of selling the deli, then she had a right to know about that. She had helped Cat with the business for some years now—entirely without pay—and that gave her a right, she felt, to be kept informed if there were to be any major plan for it. It was wrong of Cat—quite wrong—to keep her in the dark about something as fundamental as that: she had a right to know.
She began to feel resentment well up within her. This was what it must feel like to be a worker in a company whose future was being planned far above one’s head. This was what it must be like to be a tiny, helpless part of a vast machine, knowing that you have no control over your very means of earning a living. You may have worked in a job for thirty years, given it your all, and the owner suddenly decides that you, and the job you have been doing, are no longer necessary. And that’s it. Of course, Isabel knew that the analogy was far-fetched: she was not dependent on the deli; she was not even on the paid staff. If it were closed tomorrow, it would make not an iota of difference to her material situation. But Eddie was different. Eddie would be affected.
She could not contain herself. Drawing Cat aside, she whispered, “Leo told me about the boat.”
Cat did not respond immediately, but glanced over Isabel’s shoulder towards Eddie, who was wrapping ham for a customer. Then she said, “I haven’t told Eddie yet.”
“I assumed so,” said Isabel. “And you hadn’t told me either.”
Cat gave a start. “You? I was going to. We’ve only just decided.”
“You might have kept me informed,” said Isabel. “I…I…” She struggled to work out what she wanted to say. Then, “I resent it, you know. I really do. I help you as much as I can, Cat, and you’d think you’d at least let me know about something like this.” She paused, before adding, “So it’s definite then?”
Cat seemed unmoved by the reproach. “Yes. It’s going on the market at the end of next week. There’s an agent called Tom Something—I forget his other name. Leo knows him from the gym.”
Isabel closed her eyes. She saw Leo in the gym, in a loincloth, swinging, like Tarzan, from a rope. She wanted to say, “Does Leo swing on ropes?” but she did not. Instead she said, “And does this Tom Something think there’ll be buyers?”
“Oh, heaps,” said Cat. “This is in a good position, you see. As you know. In retail it’s all about position. Ten yards can make the difference between success and bankruptcy. Footfall. That’s what you need, footfall.”
“Heaps of people will want to buy it as a deli?”
Cat shook her head. “Not necessarily. Apparently, Tom told Leo that he already has somebody interested who wants to make it into a hair salon. There’s this guy called Jonny Mustique. No h in the Jonny, and Mustique as in the island. That’s his business name, of course. He’s probably really called Davey Macdonald, or something like that. He has four other salons in Edinburgh, and they all do pretty well. I think I may have met him, actually, at a wedding last year. He’s friendly with Kirsty Dawes—remember her?—I was at school with her. She married that man from Perth—the one who had the gliding accident.”
Isabel’s ir
ritation grew. “This Jonny Mustique—how serious is he?”
“Very, according to Tom. That’s what Leo says, anyway.”
Isabel took a deep breath. “And you don’t mind if it stops being a deli?”
Cat seemed puzzled by this question. “Why should I mind what happens?”
Isabel looked at Cat despairingly. Where did one begin with somebody who had that attitude? Surely this was at the heart—the very heart—of how we treated the world. We minded what happened after us.
She decided to try. “People are often concerned about what happens to their businesses. They spend years building them up and so it’s natural to want them to…to keep going, I suppose.”
Cat looked uninterested. “What difference does it make?”
Isabel gritted her teeth. Unaware privilege, she thought. “It can make a big difference to some people.”
“Which people?” Cat asked. “And why? Why should it matter if one business closes and another opens?”
Isabel felt her anger mounting. “People need a certain amount of stability in their lives,” she said. “If people lose a local shop, they miss it. They may not be able to get what they need.”
Cat made a careless gesture. “They can get things online.”
“And there are jobs too. Online businesses don’t create many jobs. And look at the conditions of the people they do employ. Haven’t you read about that?”
Cat smiled. “You’re talking as if that’s something to do with me. It isn’t. I don’t pay starvation wages.”
“So you don’t care what happens?”
Cat sighed. “This is only a building, Isabel, for God’s sake. What difference does it make if it’s a deli or a hair salon?” She paused. “And I have to think of myself. You think of yourself, don’t you?”
She stared at Isabel, who lowered her eyes. She was hating this. She hated this sort of conflict.
But Cat was getting into her stride. “You go round lecturing other people but you’re all right, aren’t you? You’ve got that house of yours and Grace to look after it for you. And you’ve got your sexy husband, which is all very nice…for you.”