The Perils of Morning Coffee

by Alexander McCall Smith

“All right. You went in for a screen test and they’ve just phoned to say could you come back, and bring your agent?”

  Eddie shook his head. “No, I’d never be an actor. I don’t like having my photograph taken.”

  She made a gesture of defeat. “I’m not going to get it, am I? You tell me, Eddie.”

  The young man leaned forward in his chair. “All right. Listen to this, Isabel. You know I’ve got this uncle?”

  She did not.

  “Well, I have. He’s called Donald and he’s my mother’s older brother. He used to have a wife, who was my aunt, and then she went off with this guy from Glasgow. It was her fault—my dad said that. So Uncle Donald was left by himself.”

  Isabel nodded. “Yes. These things are … well, they’re not very pleasant.”

  “He was really cut up over it for a long time. But he’s better now and he’s got a girlfriend—you should see her, Isabel—she’s amazing. Much better than his wife. So there’s Uncle Donald and he gets a letter one morning from a firm of lawyers in Dundee and they say that his cousin, who never married, has died and left him her house in Montrose. And her car. The car’s useless—Uncle Donald went to look at it and said that the gearbox was shot: it was the way she used to change gear, like stirring porridge, he said. But the house is quite nice. He doesn’t need it because he’s got his own place in Dalkeith, and he doesn’t even have a mortgage.”

  “So he’s going to sell it?”

  Eddie beamed with pleasure. “Yes. And he wants to treat me to a trip. He’s always said that he wanted to go to the United States and Canada. He’s never been, you see, but now he can afford to take a couple of months off and go all the way from Miami up to Alaska, with a bit of Canada in between. The Rockies and Vancouver. Him and me, in a car he’s going to rent. His girlfriend can’t get that much time off, but she’ll come for the first three weeks.”

  Isabel thought of driving across the Midwest and the experience of its sheer vastness. It would be like being at sea, she imagined.

  “That’s wonderful, Eddie,” she said. “All that way …”

  “Yes,” he said. “Places like Nebraska. Imagine going there. And the Grand Canyon. And Las Vegas.”

  Isabel thought. “Las Vegas …”

  “Yes,” said Eddie. “And Cat’s said that it’s fine. I’ve got a friend, you see, who can do my job here for me. He’s worked in a deli before. Cat has spoken to him and says that it’s all right.”

  Eddie finished and sat back in his chair, waiting for Isabel’s reaction to his news. She leaned across the table and patted him lightly on the forearm. She did not mean the gesture to look condescending, but she realised it did. He did not notice.

  She spoke warmly. “That’s marvellous, Eddie,” she said. “I think that’s just wonderful.”

  She did not, but that was not the point. It was wonderful for him, as it would be for any young man who had never been anywhere, other than a trip to London once and five precious, heady days in Spain as a teenager.

  He smiled at her. “America!”

  She nodded. “Yes. You know that I’m half American?”

  He expressed surprise, and she explained to him about her sainted American mother.

  “She was a saint? Really?”

  Eddie could take things literally—maybe a slight hint of Asperger’s, she wondered—but no, he was too sensitive in other ways for that diagnosis.

  “Of course not. Not in the real sense. I call her that be cause, well, because I thought she was a very good woman. She was kind, you see.”

  “Like you,” said Eddie.

  The compliment was not contrived; it came naturally, and Isabel felt its effect, like a shaft of warming sun.

  “That’s nice of you, Eddie. But I don’t think I’m particularly kind—or not any kinder than anybody else.”

  He said she was, and then Cat finished with her customer and returned to the counter to ring up the sale.

  Eddie sighed. “I’m almost too excited to work, but I have to, I suppose. Sinclair starts the day after tomorrow. I’m taking a week off before we go. We’re flying from Glasgow.”

  “Sinclair?”

  “My friend. You’ll like him, Isabel …” His voice trailed off, and Isabel realised that she would not like Sinclair.

  “I’m sure I will.”

  She thought: we have just expressed to each other the exact opposite of what we truly feel. And yet, in doing so, we have made our meaning perfectly clear. Isabel glanced at Cat, who was looking in her direction. If I don’t like Sinclair, she thought, then I can be absolutely sure that Cat will.

  On impulse, Isabel whispered to Eddie as he rose to leave the table, “This Sinclair … It’s a silly question, but tell me: Is he good-looking?”

  Eddie seemed bemused. “Well …”

  Isabel saw that Eddie was unwilling to discuss Cat’s love life and she could understand that.

  Eddie grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. He’s been a model in his spare time, you know. I saw a picture of him in an ad once—an ad for jeans. I think he’d like to do it full time.”

  Isabel said nothing; Cat was coming over to the table as Eddie returned to work. The information that Eddie had just imparted was not at all welcome. Cat did not need a young man who posed as a model for jeans; not in the slightest.

  “Jeans,” she muttered under her breath.

  Arriving at the table, Cat looked puzzled. “Jeans?”

  “Just thinking,” said Isabel.

  Cat sat down. “Eddie’s told you his news? He’s as high as a kite about it.”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “He’s pretty excited. And who wouldn’t be?”

  “Not me,” said Cat. “That uncle of his—I met him, you know. He came in here once, and …”

  Isabel waited for Cat to finish. Her niece could be uncharitable.

  Cat lowered her voice. “Seriously dull. Terminally boring. And … well, there’s no way round it: he’s got these most dreadful teeth—all crooked, and half of them look rotten. I couldn’t be in a car for five thousand miles, or whatever it is, with teeth like that sitting next to me. The Americans are going to freak out—you know what they’re like about teeth.

  They’ll probably cart him off to an emergency dentist the moment he opens his mouth. Or they won’t let his teeth into the country. They might say, ‘Look, you can come in, but teeth like that stay out.’ ”

  Isabel did not want to smile, but could not help herself. “He’ll be all right. I don’t think Eddie notices teeth.”

  Cat shrugged. There was not much more to be said about the uncle, and her conversation now went off in another direction. “I gave your telephone number to somebody,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Oh?”

  Cat went on to explain, “There’s a woman who’s been dropping in here for coffee over the last week or so. She’s staying in a flat in Forbes Road. She’s one of you.”

  “Of me?”

  “A philosopher. I got speaking to her and she told me she’s over here on sabbatical. Four months, or six months, or whatever it is. She’s working on something or other—she told me what it was, but I forget. She’s Australian. She’s called Jane—I don’t know her other name. She told me, but it went in one ear and out the other.” Cat paused. “I thought that she seemed a bit lonely and so I asked her whether she’d like to meet you, since you were a philosopher. She said she’s heard of you—she reads that journal of yours.”

  “One of the two thousand four hundred and eighty-seven,” said Isabel. That, she explained, was the number of readers that each issue of the Review of Applied Ethics was calculated to have.

  Cat listened to the explanation. “That’s tiny. You could probably invite all the readers to tea.”

  “Very funny,” said Isabel. “And, actually, it’s not a bad figure at all—at least as far as academic journals go.”

  She did not have to say this to Cat; she did not have to justify herself, but she contin
ued, as one who is made fun of

  will make fun of another to distract attention, “I have a friend who edits a journal that has a circulation of fifty-eight. And he wrote a book—on the nature of existence—that sold thirty-two copies.”

  Immediately she felt ashamed and disloyal. I should defend him against people like Cat. And if books on existence did not exist, then …

  Cat glanced out of the window. “Do you ever wonder whether what you do is worthwhile? I’m not saying it isn’t—I’m just asking.”

  Isabel gave an answer that Cat had not expected. “All the time,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  Cat frowned. “Me? Ask myself whether what I do is worthwhile?”

  “That’s the question,” said Isabel.

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, maybe you should,” said Isabel. “Maybe everybody should—even you.”

  “I sell cheese and Italian sausages,” Cat retorted. “I don’t have time to think. Most people don’t. They do what they have to do because they need to eat.”

  So life was reduced to cheese and sausages, thought Isabel; that was what really counted. Such reductionism was hardly attractive, but Isabel felt that Cat was probably right about people not having the time or energy for philosophy. Self-doubt was a luxury, as, perhaps, was the examined life. And yet the examined life, as the adage had it, was the only life worth living.

  She looked at Cat. Ontology, self-doubt, cheese, sausages—it would be best to leave these for the time being.

  “This Australian woman,” she said. “She’ll get in touch, will she? I could ask her round. It can’t be much fun being in a strange place by yourself.”

  “She said she’ll phone you,” said Cat. “And now, I’d better go.”

  Isabel nodded. “You’ll miss having Eddie to help you. But I gather you’ve got somebody lined up. I was hearing about Sinclair … You’ve met him?”

  Isabel tried to make the question sound innocent, but it was not, and Cat’s manner revealed that she knew this. Her reply was guarded. “Yes. Once. He’ll do.”

  Isabel held Cat’s gaze. Something had passed between them; an unspoken mutual understanding that came from having known one another for so long. There’s something there, thought Isabel. And then she said to herself: Here we go—again.