“Because I’ve decided to try to see things through your eyes,” he said. “I try to think of—what is it you call it?—moral proximity. And once I do that, I realise that you have no alternative, Isabel. You have to help this woman.”
She said nothing, but reached out and put her arms about him, under the sheet. She moved closer. She felt his breath upon her shoulder, his hair against her skin. I have so much, she thought; I have so much, and Jane, it seems, has so little, although that, she saw, was an assumption that was both unsupported by fact and condescending in its implications. Jane was not to be pitied: why should she be? She was an attractive woman who had an enviable job; the fact that she appeared to have no boyfriend or husband was neither here nor there; for all Isabel knew, she might want none. And if she did not know who she was, that was true only in one sense; in every other sense, Isabel thought it likely that Jane knew exactly who she was.
Yet she would still help Jane because she had asked her to do so, and that, for Isabel, was grounds enough. Ask and ye shall receive. Yes. But then there was the line that followed, or came soon afterwards: Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
Isabel was feeling drowsy. “Some knowledge is a fish,” she muttered. “Some is a serpent.”
Jamie, half asleep too, grunted. She was talking about fish. Was she still on evolution? Fish, he thought. Fish. And then his mind became pleasantly blank and soporific, but aware of the weight of her arm across his naked chest, of the closeness and completeness of their being together in this most intimate of retreats, their bed, their human nest.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT DAY, a Sunday, passed in contented idleness, but by Monday Isabel could no longer put off attending to the pile of papers that had been growing steadily on her desk. It seemed to be by osmosis, as if the papers were washed up by some tide that lapped across the floor. Of course it was Grace, and her co-conspirator, the postman, who were responsible; Grace took pleasure in receiving large piles of mail from the postman and drawing Isabel’s attention to just how many letters there were.
Isabel spent the first part of Monday morning going through submissions for the journal. Her refusal to read on-screen was the subject of mutterings, but subdued ones: as she was the editor, the boot was on Isabel’s foot, and though she was careful not to abuse the power that her editorial role gave her, she was adamant that she needed hard copy to give a paper its due.
The issue of editorial power was a sensitive one. Professor Lettuce had shown her how not to conduct herself as an editor. As chairman of the Review before Isabel’s successful putsch, he had frequently interfered with her editorial discretion and continued to do so, on occasion going so far as to reject articles that authors had mistakenly submitted to him rather than to the editor.
“I take it that you don’t object to my saving you the effort,” he had recently written in a note to Isabel. “A few articles have ended up in my in-tray and I’ve sent most of them back. People will insist on sending stuff to me because they see my name at the top of the editorial board list. Anyway, I rather like one of these papers, and have accepted it for publication. I’ll send it on to you in due course.”
There were procedures for this, and he had ignored them. And the article that he had unilaterally accepted—to Isabel’s open-mouthed astonishment—was by a young post-doctoral student, Max Lettuce.
“This Max Lettuce,” she wrote back. “Forgive my asking, but is he any connection? It’s an unusual name, and I just wondered.”
She had wanted to write It’s a ridiculous name but had stopped herself.
“As it happens,” Lettuce replied, “Max Lettuce is my nephew. He took a very good degree at Oxford and is now a post-doctoral fellow in my own department. His work is quite exceptional, as you will see from the paper he submitted. Indeed, we are fortunate to have it.”
The paper was not exceptional in any way.
Isabel wrote again:
Dear Professor Lettuce,
How fortunate your nephew is to have you for an uncle! And how good of you to support his endeavours in this way. Many people would be concerned that others might think them guilty of nepotism; nepos, as you’ll know, of course, translates so very neatly into nephew! You, however, have shown that such base imputations should in no way influence the decision as to what should be published or should go unpublished. I really take my hat off to you for resisting any such considerations and for seeking out good and meritorious work even in the efforts of your own family.
But she did not post the letter: there was no point. Lettuce would never change, would never accept that he had acted wrongly. And Max Lettuce, for all Isabel knew, was blameless, no doubt believing that his achievements—the post-doctoral fellowship and the acceptance for publication—were no more than his due.
And there was another reason: sarcasm could be fun, but Isabel felt that it should be a private vice, not one practised in public. It was like swearing: a private expletive, muttered in anger or irritation, could be cathartic and was harmless, unless it reached the point of corrupting the attitude of the person who uttered it; public swearing drew others into one’s circle of anger at the world, exposed them to one’s antipathy or rage, and invited them to share both it and the view of the world it reflected. That was a different matter altogether.
The morning passed quickly. Jamie, who was at home that day, was going to collect Charlie from playgroup, leaving Isabel free until such time as she chose to break for lunch. By twelve the pile of papers was considerably diminished, even if many of them had been given only a cursory initial glance in anticipation of fuller attention later on.
Several letters had been typed on the word processor and printed out for signature, and a crucial contract with the Review’s printers had been read and signed. Printing charges were going up, and sooner or later the cost of subscriptions would have to be raised. She knew what this meant, though: cash-strapped academic libraries, which formed the bulk of the subscribers, would have to consider whether they could afford the new charges. Some would cancel; others would cancel other journals to allow the Review to be continued.
It was economic pain of the sort that the politicians had been warning everybody about. Nobody was immune: not even the remote groves of academe in which enterprises like the Review of Applied Ethics flourished—or tried to flourish.
Isabel sighed. She would pay the difference out of her own funds if it came to that—she was fortunate enough to have the money, even if the principal source of it, the funds left her by her sainted American mother, were feeling the pinch.
“There is always fat,” Peter Stevenson had once said to her. “There is always something that can be trimmed.”
Yes, thought Isabel, and for a brief irreverent moment imagined Professor Lettuce, who was considerably overweight, having a diet imposed on him. “There must be cuts,” they would say, “and, alas, your waistline has been identified as a suitable target.” Not as fanciful as it appeared: she had read somewhere of a very overweight Polynesian monarch—the last king of Fiji, she seemed to recall, who had decided to go on a diet—and had proceeded to put the whole nation on a compulsory diet at the same time. That had happened and quite recently.
Thoughts of money reminded her of the note she had scribbled a couple of days ago. It was still there on her desk, where she had left it. West of Scotland Turbines. She picked it up, examined it, and then put it down again. What if the medium were right? What if West of Scotland Turbines was indeed about to do well; and what if she bought a holding in it and then, when the shares went up in value, sold them and … and used the money to offset the impact of the increased printers’ bills for the Review? That would mean that she could avoid any raising of the subscription, and if the shares did really well, then she could actually lower the subscription price. Great would be the rejoicing, then, in those struggling university libraries. A reduced subscription! The news would spread like wildfire, texted from one librarian to another,
from one threatened philosopher to another facing the same fiscal axe. Beacons would be lit on hills to convey the good tidings …
She reached for the small blue-bound book in which she kept telephone numbers. Gareth Howlett, who managed her investments for her, was at his desk. His arrangement with her was not to bother her with day-to-day decisions, but to manage things quietly in the background, following a set of ground rules they had established at the outset. No shares in tobacco companies; no shares in fast-food companies; no shares in arms concerns; no shares in the empires of a small list of press barons—a position that Gareth cheerfully described as “broadly ethical.”
“Good shares can do just as well as bad shares,” said Gareth. “Often they do better. Virtue, you see, has its rewards, Isabel.”
Although she left most of the decisions to Gareth, occasionally she contacted him with a particular request. She had suggested an investment in a small company that made disposable syringes—she had read about them in the Scotsman and had approved. She had also bought shares in a company floated by a friend—not a good investment, as it turned out—but one that loyalty at least dictated.
“West of Scotland Turbines?” Gareth asked. “Those people over in Paisley?”
“I’m not sure where they are,” said Isabel. “But Paisley sounds about right. They make … well, I believe they make turbines for hydroelectric schemes.”
“Indeed they do,” said Gareth. “As it happens, I know the company slightly. They’re small—listed on the alternative market rather than the main exchange. We’ve been looking at their shares. Solid enough, I think, but nothing spectacular.” He paused as he typed details into his computer. “In fact, Isabel, I would say that they were rather dull for you. You’ve always gone for slightly quirkier things—those disposable syringe people, for instance. West of Scotland Turbines is an engineering company. They … well, they make turbines. I’ve actually seen pictures of their products in one of their brochures. Big metal boxes. The water comes in a pipe and goes out another. The turbine is the bit in between.”
Isabel listened as Gareth went on to discuss the price-to-earnings ratio of the turbine shares—he had brought the details up on his screen and had the figures at his fingertips.
“They’re priced round about right, I would have thought, which fits with what I said before: nothing special, solid; a reasonable choice if you’re feeling conservative.”
“As opposed to feeling reckless? Risky?”
Gareth laughed. “I can’t imagine you feeling reckless. It doesn’t quite fit with being a philosopher.”
“I’m quite capable of throwing caution to the winds,” said Isabel. “It makes such an exhilarating sound, when you toss caution into the wind. It’s a sort of whooshing …”
“Isabel? Are you all right?”
“Sorry. Just speculating.”
“Well, speculation is something I don’t really recommend—when discussing investments. If you’re on the lookout, I can come up with a much more interesting option. We had a meeting here the other day—my colleagues and I—and we talked about a company that runs cruise liners. Somebody has come up with a formula to track the relationship between obesity levels and the profitability of cruise lines. Apparently the heavier people get, the better cruise lines do. Interesting.”
Isabel laughed. “These are dark arts you practise, Gareth.”
Gareth responded that dark sounded better than the sobriquet normally given to economics—dismal—and the conversation returned to West of Scotland Turbines.
“You’d like me to put some of your funds into them? Are you sure?”
“Everybody needs electricity,” said Isabel. “And hydroelectricity is as green as it gets.”
Gareth agreed. “Well, there’s no real reason for me to advise you against it, and so I’ll go ahead. How much?”
A brief discussion ensued. Isabel found it awkward to talk figures: she had not asked for all this money, she felt, and she had no intention of letting it dictate the course of her life. She could give it away, of course, but …
And there she recognised the contradictions in her position. She did not like to think that she needed the money, but she did. She had the house to maintain. She had to pay Grace. She had all the expenses connected with Charlie—the playgroup charged fees; her green Swedish car would need major surgery, she had been told—possibly a new transmission. There were taxes to pay, insurance, local rates: the list seemed endless. So although she gave generously to a number of causes—Scottish Opera, in particular—she had to keep something.
They decided on one hundred thousand pounds, and the telephone conversation came to an end. Rising from her desk, Isabel crossed the room to stare out of the window. She asked herself what she had done. It was absurd, even shameful. She—who had often criticised speculators who played with the currencies and assets of others, those manipulators who did not think for a moment of the victims of their economic games, those financially concupiscent bankers who rewarded themselves with immense bonuses—had behaved exactly the way they did: shifting money about with a view to a quick profit. Shame on you, she muttered. Shame on you.
JAMIE BROUGHT CHARLIE HOME shortly after twelve. The little boy ran into Isabel’s study—or tottered, as his running was still a headlong, almost uncontrolled projection—launching himself into her arms.
“And what happened this morning?” she asked, kissing him as she spoke.
He grimaced and wiped his cheek; she could imagine him thinking, I’m not a baby! but not yet having the words to express the thought. Boys grew away from their mothers, she understood—but did it start this early? Small boys needed love and cuddles; there would be time enough to be masculine, and lonely, later on.
Charlie seized one of the bulldog clips that Isabel kept on her desk and set about forcing it open. The spring was initially unyielding, and his little fingers were barely up to the task, but he succeeded eventually, fastening it to Isabel’s blouse—much to his amusement.
Standing behind Charlie, Jamie signalled to Isabel. “We need to talk,” he whispered, adding: “out of range of juvenile ears.”
Distracting Charlie with a piece of paper and a red pencil, she rose to her feet and joined Jamie at the doorway of the study. Charlie seemed indifferent to the presence of his parents; a red pencil, applied with force to a blank sheet of paper, was far more interesting.
“What is it?”
Her first thought was of head lice. Every so often a note would come back from the playgroup informing parents that there had been a case of head lice—lice letters went with the territory of being the parent of a small child, people said, and it was no reflection on hygiene: the letters always stressed that clean hair was more attractive to lice. Of course they did not say whose hair was affected, much as some parents would have relished getting that information—provided it was not their child, of course. There should be no shame, and yet inevitably there was; one did not advertise the fact that one’s child was lousy, in the same way as people did not talk about their colonoscopies or haemorrhoid surgery. In general we love to share our medical conditions with our friends—but not all medical conditions.
Jamie read her mind. “No, it’s not lice,” he said, his voice lowered. “It’s swearing.”
Isabel gave a start. “Swearing? Charlie’s been swearing?”
Jamie nodded. He was trying his best to be serious, but there was a smile playing about his lips. “Mrs. What’s-her-face at the playgroup—the other one, the helper—she said—”
“Mrs. Macfie.”
“Yes, her. She drew me aside and told me that Charlie had used what she described as ‘a very bad word.’ She said it had surprised her and she thought that perhaps she had misheard. But then he said it again. He was grabbing some toy from one of the other children and he uttered this unspeakable word.”
Isabel’s eyebrows shot up. “Good heavens. Do you have any idea what the word was?”
“I asked her, actua
lly, and she blushed to the roots of her hair. She said it was unnecessary for her to repeat it but she could write it down for me. Which she did. Here’s the piece of paper.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. At the top of the paper was the name of the playgroup and its address: Little Sunbeams Playgroup, Merchiston. And underneath was written a word in common usage among builders, soldiers, teenagers and novelists.
“Where on earth did he learn that?” asked Isabel. “You haven’t been … No, of course not.”
Jamie never used even mildly scatological language. He just did not. Neither did Isabel.
“Not me,” said Jamie. “Maybe I’ve thought it on occasion; who hasn’t? But—”
“The Pope?” interjected Isabel.
“The Pope?”
“You asked: Who doesn’t occasionally, even very occasionally, think such words? I said: the Pope.”
“You’d be surprised,” retorted Jamie. “Presumably the air turns blue in the Vatican when things get really difficult.” He smiled wryly. “Well, perhaps not … But whatever the Pope does or does not say, I don’t really use language like that, especially around Charlie.”
Isabel thought for a moment. “Grace?”
Jamie shook his head. “She doesn’t use strong language. It’s highly unlikely it was her.”
“Then he must have picked it up from one of the other children. Maybe it was …”
They both reached the identical conclusion at the same time.
“Algy,” said Isabel.
Jamie nodded his agreement. Algy was Charlie’s special friend at playgroup—or as close to a special friend that children of that age will have. Friendships at that stage in life are notoriously fickle, and friends will be readily jettisoned over the smallest of things. Algy and Charlie, though, appeared to get on well and their friendship had survived several disputes and the throwing of sand from the sandbox.
“It must be him,” said Isabel. “His mother is an actress.”
The Forgotten Affairs of Youth Page 6