The Forgotten Affairs of Youth

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She was not sure whether it was Virgil or Horace, but whoever had coined the phrase was being … She paused. Was it omnia vincit amor? One could so easily change the emphasis if one cleared one’s throat at the end, thereby by adding an em, and misremembered, or misheard, the verb. She smiled at the notion. Omnia vincunt amorem: all things conquer love. The problem with which Romeo and Juliet, and many other star-crossed lovers, had to contend. She smiled again as she drew the inevitable conclusion: don’t clear your throat when completing a pithy saying in an inflected language!

  Grace was staring at her. “Did I say something amusing?” she asked.

  Isabel shook her head. “Sorry. I was thinking.”

  Grace continued to stare at her, as if waiting for an explanation. Isabel knew that the other woman considered it rude to smile to oneself and not say why. Grace had once alluded to that when she remarked that secret jokes were unnerving to those who were not party to them. “People may think that there’s something odd about their appearance,” she had said. “They might think that the other person is laughing at them. Well, not laughing, actually, but smiling—and that can be as bad. You don’t want to walk down the street and see people smiling at you, do you?”

  “Don’t you?” asked Isabel. “I would have thought that it would be rather nice. Reassuring.”

  She thought for a moment. She had recently spoken to a politician friend, a member of the Scottish Parliament, who had said that he had decided that we should smile more at others as a matter of principle and should be readier to greet strangers in the street as a matter of courtesy.

  “Why should we lead our lives as if we’re surrounded by complete strangers?” he had asked. “If you go into the country or a village maybe you’ll find that people say good morning to one. They may not have a clue who you are, but they still say good morning, which is how it should be.”

  “Yes,” Isabel had said. “Of course.”

  And she wanted to add: but we are not moral strangers to those we see in the street. We are not.

  But her friend continued: “Mind you, it doesn’t always work.” He went on to explain, “I tried it out the other day in Morningside Road, which is in my constituency. As I walked down the street one morning I said good morning to everybody I encountered.”

  “And it didn’t work? Did you get a series of scowls in return?”

  He smiled at the recollection. “Two of them stopped, looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m not voting for you, you know!’ ”

  They both laughed. “And if you say good morning to a child,” she added ruefully, “it will scuttle off, or call the police. Such is our paranoia.”

  She had wanted to say to Grace, when she had raised the issue of smiling to oneself, that if one were completely secure, one should not mind if another smiled. But who among us was completely secure? Who would not naturally wonder, even for a moment, if one’s buttons were undone or whether one’s make-up had run, or, if one were a child, somebody had put a KICK ME sign on one’s back? Children used to do that to one another and think it hilarious, but of course now it seemed that the consequences could be draconian. Had not a nine-year-old boy been suspended from his school in New York for doing just such a thing? How absurd. Of course boys thought it funny to put KICK ME signs on others; there would be something wrong with them if they did not. In most cases it was not real bullying, although it could become easily that if the targets were subjected to regular indignities. But you could not stop boys doing things; boys threw snowballs too, and balanced books on the top of doors to fall on the heads of those who entered. That would seem extremely funny to a boy. And for adults to overreact to these childish pranks was to kill the fun of childhood stone dead.

  But now she was in the kitchen with Grace, who was clearly still waiting for an explanation.

  “It’s nothing to do with you, Grace,” said Isabel. “I wasn’t smiling at anything you said or did. I was smiling because I was thinking of the Latin expression amor vincit omnia, which is actually incorrect because it should be omnia vincit amor—at least, I think it should. And then I thought if you inadvertently added an em, through clearing your throat at the wrong time, you could turn the meaning of the phrase on its head. Provided you changed the verb to the third person plural.”

  “Love conquers all,” said Grace. “Love conquers all—em?”

  Isabel struggled not to smile at that. “Amorem,” she said.

  She was surprised: she had not expected Grace to know the meaning of the Latin phrase, but she immediately realised that her assumption was condescending. It was as if she had said to herself: housekeepers don’t know Latin. And in general, they did not, but it was wrong to imagine that somebody who happens to have such a job in life should not know such things. And that, surely, was what education was all about: it should make it possible for everybody to have the consolations of literature—and Latin, too—to accompany them in their work, whatever it turned out to be. The bus driver who knows his Robert Burns, the waitress who reads Jane Austen or who goes on her day off to look at an exhibition of Vermeers: these are the quiet triumphs of education, Isabel thought. It’s why education was justified for its own sake, and not as a means to some vocational end.

  “I was wondering whether love really does overcome everything,” Isabel continued. “Do you think it does, Grace?”

  Grace, who had been wetting the corner of a towel under a tap in order to wipe Charlie’s face, shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe in a very general sense, in that good overcomes bad in the long run. Maybe then. But otherwise, no. There are plenty of cases where people never get the person they want because things are stacked against them. There’s an aunt of mine, for instance. And then …”

  She did not complete her sentence, and Isabel understood that Grace had been thinking of herself; and her heart went out to her, and she wanted to put her arms about her and comfort her, but did not, because it would have embarrassed Grace. Regret is sometimes best left unspoken.

  “Oh well,” said Isabel. “These are big issues, and Charlie will need his lunch. I’m going to give him sardines, I think. He’s discovered that he likes mashed sardines, and he can’t seem to get enough of them.”

  At the mention of sardines, Charlie gave an excited yelp. “Yes. Yes. Charlie’s sardines.”

  “Charlie’s sardines indeed,” said Isabel.

  AFTER CHARLIE was put down for his nap, which he took reluctantly that day as he had his own plans for the afternoon, Isabel went into her study. She had done no work that day, she reminded herself, and if she allowed herself to do the Scotsman crossword, three o’clock would come and she would have made no progress on the papers that had piled up on her desk. She glanced at the newspaper, aware of the temptation, and thought that if she did just one clue she could start on her real day’s work a few minutes later and feel virtuous at having resisted the diversion.

  Five down: He enjoys female company and gives authority (8). That took two minutes, and then “mandates” came into her mind. He was like Cat, she thought; she liked dating. How would one compose a clue for Cat? Feline plays the role of prize, we hear; her love life is certainly this! (11). Catastrophe.

  She immediately felt guilty. Compiling crossword clues like that about her own niece showed, she feared, a great lack of charity. She should support Cat, rather than make up crossword clues about her. So she tried something different: Give feline a pick-me-up, she thought, the opposite effect! (9). Catatonic. Bed for a feline, a use for string (4-6). Cat’s cradle. As many appendages as it has lives, punishing! (3-1-4-5). Cat-o’-nine-tails.

  Hours might be wasted like this, she thought, and she put the newspaper down firmly on a table. Now, to work …

  She eyed the stack of manuscripts. There was only one way to deal with it, and that was to mine one’s way through the pile. Sighing, she picked up the first one and read the title out loud: “On Good and Bad Diversions.” She looked at the synopsis that the author had typed on the title p
age.

  “There are some leisure pursuits that are intrinsically bad,” he had written. “They may not have consequences in the real world, but they encourage character traits that could well have deleterious results. The playing of electronic games that simulate the death of others is one example.”

  Isabel sat down. This intrigued her. Of course amusing oneself with the death and destruction of others was bad for the character, and yet that is precisely what electronic games were all about. She glanced at the author’s name: William Blandford. He was courageous to make the point; people mocked those who spoke in favour of gentleness and the virtues. And the moment there was a whiff of censorship … Yet how could one stop the peddling of these things, if not by banning the sale of games that glorified and rewarded violence? The makers were incorrigible; millions of pounds were at stake and if the market wanted cruelty and death, then that was what they would provide.

  “So what should society do?” asked William Blandford towards the end of his paper. “Do we not have an obligation to help people to become better? And if we shrug our shoulders over the corruption of so many minds by violent entertainment, then are we not failing in this duty? Civilisation involves moral effort—on our own behalf and on behalf of others. Without that moral effort, there can be no civilisation.” On that note he concluded.

  Isabel read the comments that had been attached to the paper by the two members of the editorial committee who had read it. “A stout defence of the paternalist position,” wrote one, “but lacking, perhaps, an adequate justification of paternalism itself.”

  The other comment was more succinct: “The author refers at many points to we. We must do this; we must do that. But who, may one ask, are we? The author in the plural?”

  While Rome burned, thought Isabel, putting the paper to one side. While Rome burned, philosophers fiddled with concepts. The reference at the end to civilisation had caught her attention. Few philosophers spoke about it now—few people spoke about it—perhaps out of embarrassment. In the past, talk of civilisation had perhaps been too frequently accompanied by guns pointed at those on whom it was being imposed. But had there ever been any civilisation of note that had not been based, at least in the beginning, on force? Civilisation required organisation and cooperation—the works of Bach could never have come into existence in chaos—and without authority, which was usually ultimately based on force, would people ever be organised and cooperative?

  She rose to her feet and walked over to the window. There was a garden outside, and a garden was, in a sense, a tiny corner of civilisation, or at least an allegory of it. Gardens were all about the imposition of order through force. There were weeds to be rooted out. There were paths to be made. There were shrubs to be planted, lawns to be nurtured. All of this involved hacking and pulling and forcing into shape. Lines written by Robert Burns about ploughing up the home of a field mouse came to her. It was there in her memory, deeply buried, as it was in the minds of so many Scots who had learned Burns as children.

  I’m awful sorry man’s dominion

  Has broken Nature’s social union …

  Exactly. Force. Somebody, somewhere, has to believe in something sufficiently to force it upon others. If that belief was in justice and human flourishing, then, well and good: that produced civilisation. Or well and good—but only to an extent. Civilisations expanded by suppressing other, weaker societies. There were plenty of ruined temples and cities that, if one looked for them, reminded us of Darwinian rules in this respect. One person’s vision of the good lost out when a more confident vision of another good came along.

  She sighed. She was not an historian; she was a philosopher, and that was quite difficult enough without adding to the intellectual tasks it entailed. And yet everybody had to be an historian, at least to some degree, because life was a long … What was the metaphor, she wondered: a long narrative? A long film? Yes. Human life is a long film, which can be fully understood only if one looks at what went before. It was no good looking at a single still picture, or even a few frames; one would end up scratching one’s head over that; as one did when one turned on the television—not that Isabel possessed one—and found oneself in the middle of a scene in a film that one simply could not understand. Why were the characters in that particular room, saying those particular things? Why was there an air of menace?

  A movement in the garden distracted her. Clearly visible from her study window was a large clump of rhododendron bushes, the home of the fox she knew as Brother Fox. He was a shy creature, not as emboldened as some urban foxes had become, and he did not flaunt himself. This appealed to Isabel. A friend who lived in another part of Edinburgh had told her of their local fox, who was, she said, redder than other foxes and altogether more dashing.

  “He walks down the street in broad daylight,” she said. “In his fine red fur. Extremely well turned out—as if he’s going down to Princes Street to do some shopping. Very pleased with himself.”

  A nouveau riche fox, Isabel had thought, but did not say it. Her friend lived in a street that was full of rather flashy houses, and it was not at all surprising that they should attract a fox like that.

  Brother Fox would never approve of such conduct, she decided. He was a fox of the old school, and appreciated the importance of keeping to the shadows and the undergrowth. Foxes should never be too visible, she pictured him saying. We are not dogs, after all. But they were, she thought, although she would not argue that point with him, of course, because he could simply end the discussion by saying: “Whose categories, Miss Dalhousie?” That was how she imagined he would address her if he were ever given the power of speech. He would be formal, and perhaps use slightly old-fashioned, gamey expressions like “old chap” or even the wonderful, now largely retired expression, “old bean.”

  A movement in the rhododendrons could be the wind—the branches of the trees were moving slightly—or it could be Brother Fox. She stared at the foliage: rich, green, waxy. It danced against the darkness of the shrub’s interior. And then a nose: tiny, black.

  “Brother Fox,” she whispered.

  She gazed at him. The nose had been followed by a head and now the forequarters. He stopped, as if deciding whether he had forgotten something. And then another, unexpected movement, and a small bundle of fur teetered out unsteadily. A cub.

  She drew in her breath. Brother Fox had a son.

  The telephone rang, taking her away from the window. She picked up the receiver, still thinking of the cub. He was so beautiful, so perfect, just like one of Charlie’s stuffed toys.

  “Isabel?” It was Gareth Howlett. “A moment?”

  She answered vaguely. How old would Brother Fox’s cub be? He looked as if he was only a few weeks old.

  “I’m calling about those shares,” said Gareth. “West of Scotland Turbines.”

  “Of course. Yes. You bought them, I take it?”

  “Fortunately,” said Gareth. “You must have some pretty good sources of financial intelligence, Isabel. They’ve appreciated by forty-two per cent in the space of a few days. Extraordinary.”

  She smiled. Pretty good sources of financial intelligence? The best, in fact. Direct from the other side, as Grace would put it.

  Gareth explained that he thought that it might be best to sell them and take the profit. “I’m not sure that they will necessarily keep their current value,” he said. “Let’s err on the side of caution.”

  Isabel was still thinking of foxes. Where was Brother Fox’s mate? Had they split up, perhaps? Incompatibility? Would she leave him with the children? Some women did that. It was rare, of course, but it happened. Did foxes divorce? Absurd idea. In the animal world you chose a mate and you stuck to him or her, at least for the season. It was not conversation that you were interested in, after all.

  “Of course you’ll have a capital gains tax bill,” said Gareth. “But you’ll end up with a pretty tidy profit.”

  Isabel thanked him, and the conversation came to an en
d. She had already decided what that money would be used for: relieving financially stressed libraries of the cost of their subscription to the Review of Applied Ethics for a couple of years. It would be free for them. She would write to them about it.

  She returned to the window. Brother Fox had vanished, as had his son.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WHEN ISABEL PHONED JANE, the phone was switched through to the secretary, who said that she thought that Dr. Cooper was in St. Andrews for the day and would be back very late in the afternoon. Isabel left a message, and it was not until that evening that Jane returned the call.

  “I’ve had the most gorgeous day,” she said. “A meeting of the Scots Philosophical Club that lasted only two hours. Then I went for a walk and to a seafood restaurant and … I’m sorry, you’ve probably been at your desk all day.”

  “I’ve barely sat at it,” said Isabel. “Distractions.”

  Jane sounded apologetic. “Not my … enquiry, I hope.”

  “No. Not today. But I do have some news on that.”

  There was a silence at the other end of the line. Isabel sensed the anticipation; telephones, she felt, could transmit more than mere words.

  “I think I may know who you’re looking for,” she said. She could have said I’ve found your father, but she thought that would sound excessively melodramatic.

  Jane said nothing.

  “Are you there, Jane?”

  “Yes. Sorry. This is a bit surprising, that’s all.”

  “I can understand,” said Isabel. “Anyway, there was a young man called Rory Cameron who was your mother’s boyfriend at the relevant time. I found out by—”