The Charming Quirks of Other

by Alexander McCall Smith

  "It's fine," said Isabel. "I'm just trying to deal with something that's worrying me."

  "What is it?"

  Isabel shook her head. "A private thing. You know how we all have worries--silly things. But they worry us."

  "And they usually are silly," said Grace. "Aren't they?"

  Isabel nodded silently. Not this one, she thought. This is not silly.

  "Go shopping," said Grace. "Treat yourself. Go to Jenners. Buy something."

  Isabel smiled weakly. "Retail therapy?"

  "Precisely. It always works."

  Isabel shook her head. "Not for me. It makes me feel guilty."

  Grace started to leave the room, carrying Charlie, who was waving a small hand at his mother. "You feel guilty about far too much," came her parting shot. "It's all that philosophy. How guilty they must all have felt, those people. Plato. Old what's-his-name. And the other one, the one who couldn't."

  She left. Isabel pondered: Which was the one who couldn't? It occurred to her a few moments later. Kant. But she could not smile at the thought, as she normally would have done. She couldn't.

  THE GATE OF WEST GRANGE HOUSE was open. Isabel, who had walked over from her house, looked up the gravelled drive and saw that Peter Stevenson's car was parked at the front door. But as she began to walk up the drive, Susie came out of the house holding a plastic shopping bag. She had clearly not been expecting a visitor, and gave a momentary start before she recognised Isabel.

  "You're going out," said Isabel. "Sorry--I should have phoned."

  Susie went forward to meet her. "Not at all. I was just nipping out to the supermarket and I can do that any time. No, I mean it. Come in."

  Reassured, Isabel followed her back into the house. Susie said that she would make coffee and they should both go into the kitchen. "Peter's in there. He'll be pleased to see you."

  "I'm sure you've both got things to do," said Isabel.

  "We haven't." They were making their way down the corridor that led to the kitchen, and Susie suddenly stopped. Lowering her voice, she asked Isabel if everything was all right. "Is there anything ..."

  "Yes," said Isabel. "There is."

  "I could tell," said Susie. "There was something in the way you looked." She gestured towards the door that led into the drawing room. "Would you prefer to be in there?"

  Isabel hesitated. It was, in a sense, woman's business, but she wanted to talk to Peter too. She shook her head. "Both of you," she said. "I wanted to talk to both of you. Do you mind?"

  "Of course not." She took Isabel's arm, gently. "Come on."

  Peter was surprised to see her, but immediately realised from Susie's manner that something was wrong. He had been sitting at the kitchen table filling in a form of some sort, and he rose to his feet as Susie and Isabel entered. "An unexpected pleasure," he said, folding the form and slipping it into a plain manila file on the table. "Bureaucracy. Forms. There are forms for absolutely everything these days. Permission-to-breathe forms."

  "Don't jest," said Susie. "There's probably some official drafting one right now."

  Isabel made an effort to smile. "I suppose that having so many bureaucrats, we need to find something for them to do."

  Peter agreed. "Work expands to fill the time of the people you employ to do it. It's ever thus. Coffee, Isabel?"

  Isabel sat down at the table. She was aware that both Peter and Susie were looking at her in a solicitous manner. For a few moments, nothing was said. Susie took the kettle and filled it under the tap; Peter moved the file on the table so that it lined up with a crack between two planks.

  It was Peter who broke the silence, clearing his throat and then, hesitantly, asking whether there was anything wrong. He did not want to pry, but he wondered ...

  Isabel looked down at her hands. "Yes, I'm afraid there is." She looked up and felt a sudden flood of gratitude to her two friends. In the lives of most of us there are a few people to whom one can go at any time, in any state of mind, and expect complete, unconditional sympathy. Peter and Susie were such for her.

  She started to tell them. She explained how Eddie had made the comment in an offhand, incidental way. "He was absolutely certain that it was Jamie," she said. "And I'm equally certain that Jamie said that he was rehearsing that night. I remember it very clearly because I asked him what they were playing and he said it was a dreadful programme that he couldn't stand and he didn't want to be there."

  Peter listened carefully. In the background, Susie measured coffee grounds into the pot, her head half turned from her task in order to catch what Isabel was saying.

  "So you're saying that he said that he would be at a rehearsal and wasn't. Is that all?"

  Isabel frowned. "All? He was at the cinema with somebody ..."

  Peter held up a hand. "Hold on. Hold on. All you know is that he was at Filmhouse, or wherever, and that he saw an Italian film. That's all that Eddie said."

  Isabel replied that people did not go to the cinema by themselves--or not very often. "Why would he? And if he did--if for some reason he decided on impulse to go--then surely he'd tell me. And he didn't."

  Susie, pouring boiling water into the pot, spoke over her shoulder. "Not necessarily. Married couples--and you're virtually that--don't give each other every detail of their day-to-day lives. Didn't you tell me once--I'm sure you did--that you and Jamie both give each other room for a personal life? You did say something like that, didn't you?"

  Isabel had, and she admitted it. "But not something like this. I wouldn't go off to a film with somebody and not tell Jamie."

  "With somebody?" interjected Peter. "You don't know that, Isabel. You don't know for sure that he was with somebody else.

  "And what if it was just a friend--a male friend? Somebody from the orchestra."

  "Men don't do that," said Isabel flatly. "They don't go off to the cinema with their male friends. Women do. Men don't."

  Peter did not contradict her. She was right, he thought. But it seemed to him that this was a misunderstanding rather than a deception, and he put this to Isabel. She listened, but as he spoke she started to shake her head.

  "I just have a feeling about this," she said. "I just feel that there's something wrong."

  "Then talk to him," said Peter flatly. "Ask him."

  She shook her head. It would not be possible; she simply could not do it. What would it be, anyway? An accusation. Where were you last Wednesday? Somebody saw you, you know!

  Peter listened. When Isabel stopped, they looked at one another across a gulf of disagreement. Peter glanced at Susie, exchanging a look that Isabel knew meant that they had discussed something before. They must have talked about me, she thought; about my problems.

  Peter shifted in his seat. "Come on, Isabel. This could just be a simple misunderstanding. The rehearsal might have been cancelled, and Jamie might well have gone to the cinema on his own or with an orchestra friend, although it is a little odd he didn't tell you afterwards."

  She listened, but as he went on she started to shake her head. "I just have a feeling about this," she said. "I just feel that there's something wrong."

  "Then talk to him," Peter repeated quietly. "Say that you heard from Eddie that they had met at the cinema, and let the facts unfold gently. There may well be a simple and unexciting explanation."

  Again she shook her head. No. She could not talk to him about it.

  Peter seemed to hesitate, and Isabel could see that he was considering carefully what to say next "Listen," he said. "This isn't perhaps about something completely different, is it?"

  Isabel stared at him. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, we like Jamie very much and we think it's wonderful that you are so happy together ... but we have asked ourselves occasionally ..." He looked at her cautiously, gauging her reaction. "Occasionally we've asked ourselves if the real threat to your relationship might not be Jamie falling for a younger woman, but your finding out that aside from physical attraction, Jamie did not bring enough
to the relationship to keep you interested." He paused. "Is that what this is really about? Are you finding yourself drifting apart from Jamie?"

  She felt herself blushing. He was wrong, and he should not have said it; there were boundaries in friendship and one of those, she felt, had just been crossed. "No, not at all," she said. "And, frankly, that's not what one expects even a close friend to say."

  "Close friends," replied Peter, "are there to risk saying these things, if only to get them out of the way. So you're quite clear you want your relationship with Jamie to continue? You definitely want to marry him?"

  "Yes, of course I do. Jamie and Charlie are ... well, everything, as far as I'm concerned."

  Peter nodded. "All right, but let's get our feet firmly back on the ground. You firstly have to find a way of speaking to Jamie about the visit to the cinema. You can't let it fester in your mind. If he is having an affair, which I think unlikely, you and Jamie need to discuss what it says about Jamie's feelings for you, and what Jamie is going to do about it."

  She started to speak, but he continued. "Then, if you establish that it is the misunderstanding I suspect it is, you really are going to have to try to be more at ease with the relationship which you have with Jamie. How often have we talked about this?"

  He answered his own question. "You've constantly spoken and agonised about the age gap, haven't you? And what has everybody said to you--us included? Don't make such a big thing of it. Relax and enjoy your good fortune."

  He glanced at Susie for confirmation, and she nodded. "But it's continued to eat away at you. And you'll remember that on many occasions I've told you to loosen up, and to stop thinking about it so much. But you've gone on seeing yourself as a foolish older woman who has taken up with a toy boy. You're going to have to come to terms with fact that it's an unusual relationship, but one which seems to work."

  He stopped and looked at her, as if assessing whether she could take any more. He decided she could. "I'm sure there'll be stresses and strains as you both get older. It could be that his youthfulness will become an issue--I don't know. It might not. But you'll manage, I think."

  Susie pointed to Isabel's cup. "More?"

  Isabel shook her head. She looked out of the window. Halfway across the lawn a large cedar tree bore its spreading branches with dignity. The morning light on the foliage revealed green beyond green. She had heard from her friends exactly what she imagined she would hear, and what they said was, of course, completely right. We need others to say what we really think. We need them to do that, she thought, because we often cannot utter the words that in their blindingly obvious nature do just that: blind us.

  PETER OFFERED TO DRIVE HER back to the house, but she said no, she wanted to walk. She chose her route back along Church Hill, past the furniture shop and the shop where the photographer used to have his premises. J. Wilson Groat, the business used to be called; and she remembered having her first passport photograph taken there, by Mr. J. Wilson Groat himself, who had peered from behind a cumbersome-looking camera and enquired after the teachers at her school, whom he had photographed, he explained, over the years, going back ... oh, a long time, of course, when Edinburgh had so many photographers to make a record of the life of the city. J. Wilson Groat was such a marvellous name, Isabel thought, not unlike the name of the fish merchant who used to call at her parents' house in his van with a picture of fish on the side and his name in large letters: J. Croan Bee. The slogan beneath the name had been simple and memorable: From the sea to your tea, with J. Croan Bee.

  She thought about this as she crossed the road and made her way up Albert Terrace, on the brow of the hill that fell away sharply to the south, down into deep Morningside, with the Pentlands beyond, veiled now in a drifting mist that had not yet quite reached Edinburgh itself. It was a terrace of well-set Victorian houses, on the roof of which, at either end, a large stone heron was perched. She and Jamie used to walk that way when they took Charlie to the supermarket, and she used to point out the herons to Charlie, who looked up but saw only clouds, she suspected ... She stopped. She felt too raw to think about that. Used to; what if that became the tenor of all her memories of Jamie, as it must do to all who have been deserted by somebody? Used to. I used to be happy, she thought. I used to have a lover who was mine and mine alone. I used to think that ... Unbidden, the line of Auden returned to her. It was from "Funeral Blues," that poem of his that had become so well known after being declaimed in a popular film: I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

  CHAPTER TEN

  GRACE MET HER at the front door. "He's fast asleep," she said, nodding in the direction of upstairs. "Exhausted. Out for the count." She rolled her eyes heavenwards. "I wish I could sleep like that. The benefits of a clear conscience, perhaps."

  "Or no conscience," said Isabel.

  Grace, who had started to go back into the kitchen, stopped sharply and turned round to face Isabel. "Why do you say that?"

  Isabel did not feel like engaging in a discussion; she felt weary and defeated. But she had to explain herself, and so she told Grace that in her view Charlie did not yet understand right and wrong, and that she very much doubted whether he would be plagued by conscience, were he to do something wrong. "Or not just yet," she added. "A child that small doesn't really understand the feelings of others. Charlie can't see the world from our point of view."

  Grace listened with what seemed to be growing impatience as Isabel trailed off with a half-hearted reference to the Swiss psychologist Piaget and his theories of moral development in children.

  "Charlie understands more than you think," she said grimly.

  Isabel shrugged. "It's not really about understanding things. It's about empathy."

  Grace was not to be put off. "I'll give you an example," she said. "When I took him to see the ducks at Blackford Pond once, there was a horrible little boy there. He was five or so; bigger than Charlie. A horrible, vulgar little boy. And he picked up a rock and threw it at one of the ducks. Do you know what Charlie did?"

  Isabel noted the use of the word vulgar. Grace could get away with saying such things; she could not. She shook her head. "What did he do?"

  "He screamed with rage and then ..." Grace paused. "And then he shouted Mine, mine!"

  "Well ...," Isabel began.

  "So he was cross because that other boy had done something to his duck. Charlie knew it was wrong, you see, and he protested."

  Isabel was lost in thought. She thought of Jamie, and then she dragged herself back to where she was: standing in the hall discussing ducks and conscience with Grace.

  "I'm not sure if he knew that it was wrong," she said. "Charlie shouts Mine! when other children touch his toys. I think he was cross because the other child was doing what he would have liked to do, had it occurred to him." She looked at Grace half apologetically, aware of how disloyal it must sound to be attributing to her own son so base a motive. "I'm afraid that Charlie would love to throw a stone at a duck."

  There was an audible intake of breath from Grace. "No. You're wrong."

  Isabel shrugged. "I don't think we need to get ourselves all het up over it. All I'm saying is that very small children don't really know what's right or wrong. He'll learn, but not just yet."

  Grace moved off towards the kitchen. "And by the way, ducks do eat fish. I looked it up on the Internet. It said that the diet of ducks includes weed and fish."

  JAMIE RETURNED to the house shortly after one, carrying his bassoon case. Isabel was in her study when she heard the front door open, and the sound made her heart lurch. She rose to her feet, and then sat down again. She had tried to work since she had returned from her visit to Peter and Susie, but she realised that she had done very little other than read through a few pages of the proofs of the new issue of the Review. She kept losing her place as her mind wandered, and had read and re-read the same bit of text several times. It was not an interesting article, she decided, and she wondered why she had accepted it for
publication. "Citizenship and the Duty to Vote": Should criminal law be used to ensure that everybody who could vote did in fact do so? It was a potentially interesting subject, but the author, she felt, rendered it ineffably dull: Rights, as the classic Hohfeldian analysis of jurisprudence reminds us, exist in a close relationship with corresponding duties, one of which is to do that which gives the right its basis ... She had checked up the spelling of Hohfeld; did it have a second h? And did the author need quite so large a footnote--twelve lines--to explain who Hohfeld was when his relevance to the main thrust of the paper was so tangential? And what exactly was the main thrust of the paper, anyway? That you should vote and could be obliged to do so? But was that not intolerant of those who might not like the choice available at a particular election? Should the ballot paper provide None of the Above as an option for the reluctant voter?

  She pushed the proofs to one side and waited. She could hear Jamie outside in the hall, and then the door of her study opened and he came in. She held her breath. She suddenly felt that she hated him; she hated this man coming into her study. It was so easy, so very easy.

  He smiled at her. "Busy?"

  How dare you smile? she thought. How dare you? She looked away.

  "Isabel?" He sounded anxious.

  "Yes."

  He immediately picked up the coldness of her tone. "Is something wrong?"

  She opened her mouth intending to say that nothing was wrong, but that was not what came out. Instead, she said, "Did you enjoy that film?"

  He looked puzzled. "What film?"

  "That Italian film." Her voice faltered.

  The effect was immediate, and dramatic. "Oh God ..." He moved quickly towards her, and then stopped. He had been carrying an envelope that he had picked up off the hall table, and now he dropped it. He did not bend down to pick it up. He said, "Oh God ..."

  He was now standing close to her. He reached out, but she avoided his touch.

  "Eddie told you," he said simply.