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

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The lawyer did not look at her as she answered. “I believe that the painting is in Scotland. I don’t know exactly where in Scotland, but it’s still here.” She paused. “Have I seen it? The answer to that is no.”

  “So how do you know that it’s in the country? How do you know that it hasn’t been destroyed?”

  The lawyer seemed to weigh these questions carefully. When she answered, she spoke slowly and guardedly. “I have taken what has been said to me on trust.”

  Duncan’s expression changed. He now looked angry, thought Isabel. “On trust from thieves?”

  Heather Darnt continued to move the papers in her hands, folding one and tucking it behind another. “It can be seen,” she said. “We can make arrangements for you to see it. The insurance company, I think, will want that to happen. It’s standard practice when there’s a reward.”

  Isabel looked enquiringly at Duncan. They had not discussed a possible reward. “Who’s offering a reward?” she asked. “Are you?”

  “No, certainly not me,” he answered. “The insurance company.”

  Heather Darnt seemed surprised that Isabel was unaware of this. “It’s very common,” she said. “That’s how paintings are recovered. By means of the reward.”

  Isabel wanted to make sure she understood. “And these people you’re acting for,” she asked, “they’re after the reward?”

  The lawyer answered the question with a nod.

  Isabel asked another question. “Who are they? The thieves themselves?”

  The lawyer shook her head. “No. They’re people who are in touch with the people holding the painting.”

  Isabel considered this. “What exactly does ‘in touch’ mean?”

  Heather Darnt gave her a look that was on the verge of pitying. “What it usually means. In touch. Speaking to one another.”

  “Seeing one another face-to-face?”

  The lawyer shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I can’t speak for them.”

  But that, thought Isabel, is exactly what a lawyer does, and if I were to be as sarcastic—and as rude—as you are being, that is what I might point out to you.

  She was blunt. “May I ask who’s paying you?” And quickly answered her own question. “I imagine it’s these people who know the thieves—the thieves’ friends.”

  The lawyer said nothing. An eye twitched slightly, but otherwise she remained impassive.

  “But the money really comes from the ransom, doesn’t it?” Isabel continued. “A slice of that ransom comes to you through the intermediary.” She paused. “You profit from the theft.”

  Duncan looked at Isabel nervously. He was about to say something when the lawyer spoke.

  “Any lawyer who does anything profits from the needs of another—or from misfortune.” She spoke slowly and quietly, as if explaining a simple truth to a young person who was having difficulty grasping it. “How do you think criminal lawyers are paid? Where do their fees come from?”

  Duncan interrupted. “I don’t think this is a particularly constructive line of discussion,” he said. He gave Isabel a warning glance. “I’d like to talk about how we are to see the painting. How is that going to be arranged?”

  The lawyer turned her attention from Isabel to Duncan. It was a deliberate—and very obvious—piece of body language. Isabel was now facing a half-turned-away shoulder and would have had to address that if she had had anything more to say.

  “We will arrange a place,” said Heather Darnt. “We’ll give you a time when you’ll get a telephone call telling you where to go. It’ll be somewhere in Edinburgh.”

  We, thought Isabel.

  “And you’ll bring the painting to …”

  “Not me. Them. They’ll bring the painting.”

  Duncan glanced at Isabel, then looked back at the lawyer.

  “Of course,” went on the lawyer, “if there is any question of the authorities being present, then they—the current holders of the painting—will be aware of that and the whole discussion will be off. They have indicated that if there is any involvement of anybody other than yourself and the insurance company, then the painting will be destroyed. It will be safer for them to do that than to risk … other consequences.”

  Duncan gasped. “They’ll destroy a Poussin … just like that? For nothing?”

  The lawyer spread her hands in a gesture of resignation. “These people are not aesthetes, Mr. Munrowe. They are—”

  “Art thieves,” interjected Isabel.

  The lawyer began to turn back to face Isabel, but clearly thought better of it. “The world is as it is,” she said quietly, addressing her response to Duncan but evidently intending it for Isabel. “People may think that we live in a world where moral boundaries are very clearly delineated, but lawyers know otherwise. Nothing is that straightforward, is it? For the most part, great concentrations of wealth are in the hands they are in because somebody, a few generations back, was rapacious.” She paused. “I don’t wish to be rude, Mr. Munrowe, but I’d like to point out that the fact that there are certain very well-off families in Scotland—people living in big houses in the country and all the rest—merely reflects the successful thefts of the past. The Highland Clearances made some people very rich indeed. That was based on burning people out of their homes—yes, burning them. Or profiting from the back-breaking labour of men down the pits or in the steel works. The big Glasgow shipowners—who built the ships? Who was blinded by the flying rivets? Who died at thirty-eight, forty? Not the shipowners.”

  Isabel lowered her eyes. All of this was true, but she was not sure that it justified the stealing of a Poussin that was destined for the National Gallery of Scotland.

  Duncan could not conceal his embarrassment. “You clearly feel very strongly,” he said. “And I understand your argument.”

  “Do you?” said Heather Darnt sarcastically. “Do you indeed? Well, that’s good.”

  Duncan rose to his feet. “I think we’ve covered everything,” he said decisively. “Although I imagine the insurance company will have something to say about its conditions. They’ll want to satisfy themselves that the painting is undamaged, and so on. But that, I suppose, can be sorted out later—after I’ve met with these … these people.” He paused, looking down at Heather Darnt with an expression that revealed his distaste. “Will you let me know when I’m to be in Edinburgh to expect—and act on—that telephone call?”

  The lawyer stood up. She did not look at Isabel. “I’ll phone you later today and tell you what day it will be. Expect a call from me at about four this afternoon—maybe a little later.”

  Now she turned to Isabel. “It was good to meet you,” she said.

  Isabel tried to raise a smile. The niceties had to be maintained, even in extremis—sometimes they were all that stood between us and the collapse of civil discourse. “Yes,” she said. “I enjoyed our meeting.”

  How easy it was to lie, she thought, not only about Proust, but about other, more important things. It was the simplest thing in the world to utter words that bore no relation to one’s true feelings or intent. That was something that was well known to tyrants and their spokesmen. They could stand there and say “The people are on our side” in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. And they did say that, even as the mob reached their palace gates; even as their henchmen defected and forswore the cause; even as the bombs rained down on their last redoubts. The people are on our side.

  Heather Darnt was trying a similar tactic. She was asserting the rightfulness of what she was doing, whereas it was, for all her attempted justification, manifestly wrong; perhaps she had succeeded in convincing herself—people did that, repeated an excuse or a rationale until they believed it. But surely she should have refused to act for a client who was obviously in league with the thieves; surely she, or any other reputable lawyer, should have refused to have anything to do with the negotiation of a ransom. And as Isabel thought this, it occurred to her that the insurance company should do the same and r
efuse to pay ransom. If they paid, then the principle would be established that you could demand a ransom with impunity—and expect to be paid it. Their solution was to call it a reward, but what, Isabel wondered, was the distinction?

  Heather Darnt was shown out to her car and drove off down the drive. When Duncan came back in, he looked slightly apologetic. “What an unpleasant woman,” he began, and then checked himself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t really—”

  Isabel cut him short. “Shouldn’t? Why not? You’re absolutely right: she is unpleasant. And …”

  He looked at her expectantly.

  “And, frankly, I don’t see the distinction between her and the thieves. She’s obviously in pretty deeply with them. Of course, there’s all those references to clients and intermediaries and so on, but do you know what I think?”

  He was watching her closely. “Tell me.”

  She had not formulated this until a few moments ago, but now it seemed to her to be so obvious: “She’s one of them—one of the thieves.”

  As she spoke, Isabel found herself thinking of the power of words. A single word, a phrase, a sentence or two could have such extraordinary power; could end a world, break a heart or, as in this case, consign another to moral purdah.

  “I think you may be right,” he said. “I did not like her.”

  Isabel shrugged. “But that, I suppose, is neither here nor there. If we want the painting back, then I suppose we do what we have to do: pay the ransom.”

  “Well, it’s the insurance company that will be paying. But, yes, that’s what it amounts to.” He paused, as if engaged in the process of weighing choices. “What should our priority be? Money, or a beautiful painting?”

  Isabel thought: This is why I’m here; this is why he wants to involve me. It was all very well being the editor of a journal of applied ethics; you could deliberate to your heart’s content on the rightness or wrongness of actions, but none of it was real; not until somebody actually came up to you, as Duncan now was doing, and said: “Tell me what to do.”

  “It amounts to paying ransom,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “No matter how you dress it up.”

  “I know,” he said. “And surely that’s wrong.”

  She made a gesture of hopelessness. “Put yourself in the position of a person who has to pay ransom to get a relative back from a kidnapper. Think of those people—and there are quite a few of them right now—who have relatives being held by pirates in Somalia.” It sounded ridiculous to be talking about pirates in the twenty-first century, but that was exactly what they were. There were still pirates in the world, just as there were still slaves. We imagined that our world had gone beyond all that, but it had not.

  “Oh, I’d pay,” said Duncan. “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Governments,” answered Isabel. “Governments won’t negotiate with terrorists, will they?”

  Duncan said that he understood why they took that position. “If they did,” he said, “then it would just get worse and worse.”

  Isabel nodded. “And art thieves? If we negotiate with them? If we pay the ransom they demand, then they’ll simply be encouraged.”

  He was silent for a while. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” he said.

  She had not intended him to reach this conclusion quite so quickly. And she was not entirely sure that this was the position at which she would herself arrive.

  “I wouldn’t necessarily reach that conclusion,” she said.

  He looked at her with interest. “But you implied …”

  “I was voicing a general doubt,” she said. “Individual situations may differ. Everything depends …” She looked at her hands. I am not being helpful, she said to herself. He wants guidance, and I am giving him doubt.

  “You should save the Poussin,” she said decisively. “If that’s what you want, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t participate in the business of arranging the ransom. Artistic value trumps the general social interest in this case, I think.”

  He seemed relieved. “I hoped that you’d say that.”

  She smiled at him. “I can see what that painting means to you. I understand.”

  “I’m glad you do. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me—whether I’ve become excessively attached to it, but then, when I think it through, I come to the conclusion that great art really is as important as we say it is. It’s nothing to do with material value—money just complicates the matter. It’s what art stands for.”

  She inclined her head. “Of course.”

  The decision made, they were both relieved to be able to allow their conversation to become more general, more relaxed. Duncan wanted to talk about Poussin, and Isabel sensed that this was helpful for him.

  “There’s something that particularly interests me about Poussin,” he said. “He was a landscape painter as much as he was a figurative painter, you know.”

  She did know that. “Yes. I saw that exhibition Poussin and Nature a few years back. He had a lot to say about the natural world.”

  “Exactly,” said Duncan. “He may paint something dramatic, something fairly intense in human terms, and yet there it is, shown in a natural setting.”

  “And a calm one at that,” said Isabel.

  “Yes. Classical landscapes always have that air of peacefulness about them. Do you know the Poussin in the National Gallery in London? The one of the man killed by a snake?”

  She remembered being in a room full of Poussins in the National Gallery, but it had been a long time ago.

  “It’s a very powerful painting,” Duncan continued. “That poor man lying on the ground with the snake coiled around him. And the man who has discovered him running up the path to report the matter—too late.”

  Suddenly she recalled it. “There’s a boat, isn’t there? Men fishing somewhere nearby.”

  “Yes. Poussin makes the point, doesn’t he? Normal life goes on in spite of tragedies occurring all around it.”

  She smiled in recognition. Auden had said exactly that. “About suffering, they were never wrong, / The Old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position …”

  “That’s vaguely familiar,” he said.

  “It’s Auden’s poem about Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus,” she said. “You may know the painting—there’s a ploughman tilling a field in the foreground and a ship sailing out of the bay below. Icarus can be seen falling into the water—his legs disappearing—but everybody gets on with their business in spite of the tragedy. The ship has somewhere to sail, the man has his field to plough. If they notice, they don’t pay much attention.”

  Duncan was silent for a moment. “I suppose that’s true. I suppose that even as we sit here talking, somebody, somewhere in the world, is facing imminent execution—about to be shot or given a lethal injection—something brutal, some piece of licensed awfulness like that. And we sit here and talk about art and its meaning and think of a dinner that awaits us this evening, or a conversation with friends, or anything, really.”

  Isabel looked at him, and he held her gaze for a few moments before looking down. It was as if he had unwittingly shown to her something of himself that he would rather not have revealed—for all his earlier talk of an appropriate reticence. She felt an urge to reach out and touch him, to reassure him that he could be honest with her, that there was no need for him to shelter behind the identity that he otherwise presented to the world—that of the countryman, the gentleman farmer. But she did not: there were limits to the intimacy that had suddenly grown up between them, and she knew that if she infringed these limits, he might retreat again. So she was silent, and looked at her watch. He nodded. “I understand,” he said. “You must get back to Edinburgh.”

  “Will you let me know when they get in touch?” she said.

  “I will.” He hesitated before continuing. “I take it that you’re happy to come and see the painting?”

  “I want to do that,” she said.

  “I’m glad. I’ll feel less exposed with you there
.”

  He saw her to her car.

  “I’ll say it again, that really is a very good car. I love Swedish cars,” he said. “In fact, I love everything Swedish.”

  She knew what he meant. There were many in Scotland who felt that their country had somehow been misplaced—that it should have been closer to Scandinavia.

  “Perhaps one day,” she said.

  He laughed. “Scotland will become more Swedish?”

  She made a gesture of mock despair. That would never happen. We would have to change everything, she mused—ourselves, the way we thought, our attitudes and our clothes.

  JAMIE COOKED DINNER that evening using a recipe for a vegetable paella that he had read in the Scotsman weekend magazine, cut out and then stuffed into a pocket of his jacket. He was an enthusiastic cook but a sporadic one, and would often only announce to Isabel in the late afternoon that he would cook that evening—if she wanted him to. By then she would have made her plans for their meal, but would readily shelve them in order to have the evening off. There would be Charlie’s supper to prepare, but that was simplicity itself: his tastes ran to macaroni cheese, spaghetti and a curious mixture of cauliflower and olives that he had named cauliolives and always devoured with gusto. Oddly, for a child, he seemed to have little interest in sweet things, apart from ice cream: macaroons, irresistible to other children, would be left untouched, and marzipan, if ever he encountered it, spat out in disgust.

  While Jamie cooked, Isabel read Charlie his bedtime story. He had discovered A. A. Milne—or that writer had been discovered for him—and loved to hear the poems in Now We Are Six, especially the lines about King John, who was not a good man—who was not spoken to for days and days and days, but was miraculously given the present he so yearned for. “Good boys get presents,” said Charlie, looking up at his mother with a mixture of challenge and hope.

  “They do, Charlie,” said Isabel. “And give them too.”

  He had nodded wisely; he understood, she suspected, about reciprocity—or at least had some glimpse of what it meant, but probably only in the crudest, most elementary terms. Plenty of people gave gifts to get gifts back, and Charlie at present was among them. That would change, of course—unless he remained one of those who never grew into altruism. And they existed. Her mother’s cousin, Mimi McKnight in Dallas, had told her once about one of the Mobile aunts, an ancient Southern lady, all powder and eau de cologne, who had been famous for being incapable of giving anybody anything at all, not even on important birthdays, when a homemade card was all that she would rise to. On her death, a sealed will was discovered in a drawer, stating that there was nothing to leave and therefore there would be no legacies. It was not true; she was comfortably off, but could not bring herself to acknowledge that fact, nor the claims that any of her family might have on her.