The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9)

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She looked at her watch. She was due to relieve Jamie of Charlie duties in two hours’ time, but if she stopped work now she would have time to go to her niece Cat’s delicatessen and buy something for lunch. Cat had a supplier who delivered freshly made onion tarts in the morning, which people picked up during their lunch break or on their way home from work. If she left now, she would be able to have her choice of the tarts, and still have time to finish reading the responsibility-to-future-generations paper—and make a decision too. It would be yes, of course; she already felt that.

  She closed her study windows, collected her shopping bag from the kitchen cupboard and let herself out of the house. It was even warmer outside than indoors, though tucked inside the shopping bag was her light jacket; the weather in Edinburgh was notoriously fickle, and even a day like this could suddenly turn hostile. There would be room for the onion tart too, and for some salad things—the bag was copious.

  She made her way into Bruntsfield. Halfway along the road, she saw a large For Sale notice on the railings of one of the houses. She stopped and looked up at the windows of the property. It was a large Victorian house that had been divided into flats, and it was one of these that was now on the market. She paused; she had been expecting its sale, as the owner, a quiet man whom people rarely saw, had died six months before. He had lived by himself, and it was thought that he had met somebody one evening who had stabbed him to death in his own hallway.

  Isabel stared up at the windows. Places where unhappy events have taken place are no different from anywhere else. The physical world—the world of stone and brick—is indifferent to our suffering, to our dramas, she thought. Even a battlefield can be peaceful, can be a place for flowers to grow, for children to play; the memories, the sadness, are within us, not part of the world about us. And yet this house, as she gazed at it, seemed bereft, seemed tragic and loveless, a reminder of the dark thing that had happened there.

  “Isabel?”

  She gave a start.

  “Sorry to give you a fright.”

  She turned and saw Martha Drummond. In Isabel’s life, Martha was one of those people who occupied that awkward territory between acquaintanceship and friendship; she saw her relatively infrequently, and they were not on dropping-in terms. If she had been pressed, Isabel would probably have confessed that she found Martha slightly irritating, and felt bad about this feeling. It was hard to put her finger on it: Martha meant well—whatever that meant—but had the habit of making intrusive remarks. There were some people, in Isabel’s view, who lacked social judgement, not picking up quite the same social cues as others did. “They don’t quite get it” expressed the notion exactly. They didn’t.

  Martha lived several streets away, in a house surrounded by a large rhododendron-filled garden. And the rhododendrons were a case in point: a few months ago, when Isabel had bumped into Martha in the supermarket, there had been an exchange that had left Isabel thinking distinctly uncharitable thoughts. Martha had let drop the fact that she had recently walked past Isabel’s garden and noticed her rhododendrons. “They don’t seem to be doing all that well,” she said casually. “My own rhododendrons are much more—how shall I put it?—luxuriant.”

  Isabel had stared at her mutely. “There’s nothing wrong with my rhododendrons,” she had eventually said. It was extremely tactless, she thought, to criticise another person’s rhododendrons and, anyway, such criticism in this context was objectively wrong.

  “They don’t look very healthy to me,” Martha persisted. “Perhaps you’ve got the wrong sort of soil.”

  Isabel smarted. That was another serious accusation: to suggest to somebody that they have the wrong sort of soil.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my soil,” she said coolly. “Or with my rhododendrons, for that matter.”

  It had been a ridiculous exchange, but it was typical of the direction in which a conversation with Martha could go. And it was for that reason that Isabel found it difficult to consider Martha as a friend, although she knew that friendship did not depend on seeing eye-to-eye.

  Martha, who was in her early forties and divorced, shared her rhododendron-surrounded house with her elderly mother, who, in her heyday, had been one of Scotland’s best-known artists. Isabel liked her work, and had one of her smaller paintings in a corner of her study.

  “Not the best of Mother’s works,” Martha had said when Isabel had shown it to her. “In fact, barely recognisable as one of her works at all.”

  That had led to another pointless exchange. “Others might not agree with you,” Isabel suggested through clenched teeth.

  “But others are not the painter’s own daughter,” retorted Martha. “I imagine that people don’t dismiss too readily the opinions of Paloma Picasso.”

  Isabel had quickly planned her reply to that. A painter’s family, she would suggest, were probably the last people to be asked for a judgement on their relative’s work—they were simply too close to it, too emotionally involved to be able to give an objective view. But she stopped herself, mainly because it would not be true. Members of the family were often the best of judges, just as her friend, Guy Peploe—to think of only one example—was the best judge of the paintings of his grandfather, S. J. Peploe. So she had said nothing.

  Now, standing in front of the For Sale notice, Martha asked after Charlie. “Where’s your little boy?”

  “Jamie’s taken him to nursery,” Isabel explained. She pointed to the notice. “I was thinking about this …”

  Martha sighed. “Very sad. Did you know him?”

  “I think I saw him,” said Isabel. “But no, I didn’t know him.”

  They were both silent for a few moments. Then Martha asked Isabel whether she was going to Cat’s delicatessen. “I thought you might be,” she said. “Something easy for lunch?”

  Isabel smiled, and nodded.

  “I’m headed there too,” said Martha. “I can’t be bothered to cook in this heat. And Mother eats like a bird. A couple of lettuce leaves and a slice—a very thin slice—of smoked salmon, and she’ll be complaining about being bloated.”

  “How convenient for you,” said Isabel.

  “I’m very lucky with my aged parent,” said Martha cheerfully. “But listen, I need to talk to you about something. About somebody I know who’s in difficulty.”

  Isabel looked up at the sky. People asked her to do things for them. She had no idea why they did, but they did. What did they think she was? A private detective? An agony aunt? Or simply a friend? And because of her particular sense of moral obligation, she felt that she had to do something, and that led to Jamie’s accusing her of not minding her own business. But I cannot do otherwise, she thought. I am no saint; I am no heroine; but how can anybody say no to a request for help?

  “Do you mind?” asked Martha. “We could have a cup of coffee and I could tell you about it.” She looked at Isabel enquiringly. “But only if you don’t mind.”

  Isabel shook her head. “I don’t mind,” she said.

  “Good,” said Martha. “Because I promised my friend I would speak to you and he was very relieved. He said ‘Thank God.’ ”

  They began to make their way together down the road. As they walked, Martha told Isabel about her latest letter from her former husband. “Do you know, he said that if he could turn the clock back, he would. Can you credit it?”

  “He wants to come back to you?” asked Isabel.

  “So it would seem.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “It’s the last thing I want,” she said. “I’ve gone right off men.”

  “Altogether?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “Except for your Jamie. I would willingly have him on my mantelpiece. Just to look at him, of course.”

  Isabel smiled. “Not possible,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “If I had somebody who looked like that,” mused Martha, “I would spend all day just gazing at him, drinking it in. Do you do that sometimes, Is
abel? Do you just sit there looking at Jamie and … and purring?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAT’S DELICATESSEN WAS unusually busy when they arrived and it was a good ten minutes before Eddie, who was single-handed behind the counter that morning, managed to serve them. Eddie had recently returned from a trip across the United States he had made with his uncle and his uncle’s girlfriend. The trip had been extended to include a four-month stay in Canada, during which Eddie had worked—underpaid, and illegally—as a waiter in a ski resort in Alberta. North America had changed him profoundly, boosting his confidence and pasting a healthy tan over his normally pallid Scottish skin. The tan was now fading, but the same could not be said of the traces of an affected American accent that Eddie had somehow miraculously picked up on his travels. His conversation was now littered with “sure thing”s and “you bet”s, so much so that Isabel had found it difficult to conceal her amusement. Eddie had noticed this, and had looked injured. Isabel was mortified; she was fond of Eddie and had always done her best to encourage him. Now she had hurt him.

  If offence had been taken, it was not long-lasting. Eddie greeted Isabel cheerfully and went to some trouble to select for her the best of the onion tarts.

  “I know you’re going to get the best tart,” Martha said over Isabel’s shoulder. “But could I at least have the second best?”

  Isabel drew in her breath. There was so much she could have said, including an observation that people got the onion tarts they deserved in this life; but that would have been childish. Martha simply did not know that virtually everything she said was inappropriate, and so there was no point in remonstrating with her. Isabel remembered the discussion with Jamie about the wiring. This was much the same issue. Those important brain circuits, the ones that enabled most of us to avoid saying the wrong thing, were simply not there in Martha’s case; or fired in the wrong order; or were short-circuiting. In other words, Martha Drummond was an electrical problem. And understanding people as electrical problems undoubtedly helped one to tolerate them.

  Once they had purchased their tarts, alongside one or two other things needed for their respective meals, Isabel and Martha sat down at one of the tables Cat kept for the serving of coffee. The customers were thinner on the ground in the pre-lunchtime lull, and Eddie had time to prepare and bring to their table two large, steaming cappuccinos.

  “Here we are, ma’am,” he said as he placed Martha’s cup in front of her. The intonation was contrived American, overlaid with a heavy dose of Scotland.

  Martha looked at him. “You from Glasgow?” she asked.

  Eddie looked down at the floor, humiliated.

  Martha smiled at Isabel, and winked conspiratorially.

  “Eddie has just spent quite a bit of time in America,” said Isabel quickly.

  “Yes,” said Martha, still smiling. “I suppose it must rub off eventually.”

  Eddie went back to the counter in silence.

  “That wasn’t necessary,” Isabel said quietly. “That young man has had a lot to put up with.”

  Martha looked towards Eddie on the other side of the counter. “Seems robust enough to me. And I was only joking.”

  Isabel wanted Martha to know the implications of her casual tactlessness. “Something bad happened to him some time ago. Something traumatic.”

  Martha looked interested. “What? What happened?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure.”

  Martha shrugged. “Dreadful things have happened to just about everyone,” she said. “It’s called growing up. You know the statistics …”

  Isabel decided to change the subject. She was not sure that she wanted to spend too much time with Martha—time that could be better spent making up the salad that would go with the onion tart. “You wanted to talk to me about somebody?” she said.

  Martha looked at Isabel over the rim of her coffee cup. “I did. Of course I don’t want to impose …”

  Isabel cut her short. “Don’t worry.”

  Martha lowered her cup. “You’re very good, you know. Everybody knows that you help people in all sorts of ways. Where does it come from?”

  Isabel squirmed with embarrassment. “I’m no better than anybody else,” she said. “I have all the usual faults and flaws.”

  “And you’re modest too,” said Martha.

  Isabel said nothing, waiting for Martha to continue.

  “So,” said Martha. “This problem: Do you know somebody called Duncan Munrowe?”

  She did not give Isabel time to answer. “You might have read about him. He crops up in the Scotsman from time to time. He does a lot for charity.” Martha paused, but only briefly. “He’s the sort of person everybody hears about but doesn’t really meet very much. That’s not to say that he hasn’t got any friends. He has quite a few actually.”

  Isabel waited until it looked as if she would be allowed to speak. “I’ve heard of him. I get him mixed up, though, with those other Duncan Munroes.”

  “They’re Munro with an o. He’s Munrowe with a w and an e at the end. Not to be confused with all those Munros that are mountains over three thousand feet.”

  “I see,” said Isabel. She decided to be brief; sometimes people like Martha, who spoke at excessive length, eventually exhausted themselves. The problem then was that they lacked the energy to listen to what you had to say.

  Martha continued. “These Munrowes—Duncan’s lot—are originally from Wigton or somewhere near there. I’ve always thought of that part of Scotland as being virtually Ireland, it’s that close.” She looked at Isabel with sudden interest. “Have you got any Irish blood in you?”

  “On my mother’s side there was some, I think. Irish and Acadian. They drifted down to the South generations ago. The Acadian part of the family was from Nova Scotia, I believe.” She thought: My sainted American mother, who would have been patient even with somebody like Martha. And I must try.

  “You’ve probably got a temper then,” said Martha, almost to herself.

  Isabel sipped at her coffee. Martha was impossible—risible, really.

  “Not that I’m one to talk,” Martha went on. “There are some things that make me see red. I have to watch myself.”

  “We all do,” said Isabel. Watching yourself, she thought. It was the essence of the moral life. Watch yourself; evaluate. The examined life; the watched life. “Duncan Munrowe? You were telling me about him.”

  It was as if Isabel had introduced an entirely new topic of conversation. “Oh yes,” said Martha. “Duncan would very much like to meet you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because something has happened up at his place.” Although there was nobody near them, Martha lowered her voice. “Duncan’s family used to be pretty well-off. They had rubber plantations in Malaya. And they were something to do with Hong Kong—I have no idea what, but they were. So when they came back to Scotland there was plenty of money.”

  Isabel remarked that this was not an unusual story. The Scots had profited greatly from the British Empire; they did not always like to admit it, but they had. There were numerous families that had done well out of things like jute in Calcutta or wool in Australia and had returned to Scotland to buy landed estates. It sounded as if the Munrowes were in this category.

  Martha leaned forward. “They were discreet about it, but one of them, Duncan’s grandfather, had a very good eye. He was rather like that shipping man in Glasgow—what was he called?”

  “Burrell?”

  “That’s him. He put that great collection together, didn’t he? Well, Duncan Munrowe’s grandfather had the same sense not only of what was what in the art world, but also of what would be what. He anticipated fashions.”

  This began to sound familiar to Isabel. “And he lent paintings to the Scottish National Gallery?”

  Martha nodded. “Yes. You might have seen some of the Munrowe collection there. It’s not quite as impressive as the Sutherland collection, but it’s still pretty good. He was particularly stro
ng on the Post-Impressionists. Bonnard and so on. He picked those up by the dozen in Paris, as you could in those days.”

  Isabel had seen them. She remembered the wording on the labels: On loan from the Munrowe Collection. The galleries, with their tiny acquisitions budget, increasingly relied on such generosity. She tried to bring to mind particular Munrowe paintings, but could not. There were the Titians, and that whole roomful of Poussins, but they belonged to the Sutherlands. Was there a Bonnard of a woman sewing, or was that Vuillard? And was it part of the Munrowe collection?

  “They still have some of the paintings in the house,” Martha continued. “They live near Doune. It’s a rather shy house. I call it shy because it’s tucked away and you’d not know it was there until you turn a corner and there it is next to some woods. And a hill. It has a hill directly behind it—straight up. It’s an odd place to put a house, but there we are.”

  Isabel was keen to hear what had taken place. “You said something happened. What was it?”

  “They have all these paintings in the house, as I’ve said. Maybe they’re not quite as good as the ones in the Gallery, but they’re still pretty special. There’s a whole room of seventeenth-century French and Italian paintings, and the dining room has got a Toulouse-Lautrec in it—not a big one—and a Vuillard, I think.”

  “They’re very fortunate,” said Isabel. “Imagine being able to look at paintings like that over your boiled egg in the morning.”