The Lost Art of Gratitude

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Isabel knew the book. There was a copy somewhere in her library.

  “Go and take a look at the engraving of the Toqué portrait of Charlie,” said Guy. “The one that was lost.”

  Isabel was puzzled. “The engraving was lost?”

  “No, the original painting. It was engraved by somebody before the painting was lost. So the only way we know what it looked like is through that engraving.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. Take a look at it. Then tell me what you think.”

  “Now? It’ll take some time to find Nicholson.” She looked at her shelves, her overstocked bookshelves. She imagined Nicholson himself lost in the piles and confusion of books. She imagined calling him, Professor Nicholson! Professor Nicholson! And a faint answering cry coming from somewhere in the midst of all those books.

  “Not now,” said Guy. “Some time soon, though. Take a look. He has a picture of the engraving in his book.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s identical to our painting,” said Guy. “The one we’ve just bought.”

  Isabel took a moment to digest this. She was not sure about the implications; she had bought the portrait with a view to putting it in a spare bedroom where her mother’s picture of Mary Queen of Scots had always hung. She had known that portrait all her life, and she knew that it was a special favourite of her mother, her sainted American mother. She was not sainted—not in the conventional sense; indeed Isabel had discovered that her mother had conducted an affair, but that did not change her view of her. Her mother had represented love, as most mothers do to most people; not that this love was always helpful. Boys, she knew, could be smothered by it, could feel that they had to escape, but she had never felt that. She wondered about Jamie’s mother, whom he rarely mentioned. His father had died when he was thirteen—he had been drowned in a loch, in a fishing accident—and his mother had remarried when Jamie was at music college. She had met a Danish surgeon, and they had gone off to live in Copenhagen.

  Jamie had said that they wanted to come and meet Charlie, but they never had, which had secretly appalled Isabel. And hurt her too: she had decided that they must disapprove of her—why else would they not come and meet their only grandchild? Well, she would not force it, if that was how they felt. They might meet Charlie at the wedding—if there was a wedding in the formal sense. She realised that not only had they not talked about that, she had not even thought about it. She would like something quiet and understated, and she imagined that Jamie would too: a ceremony in St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, perhaps, with a full choir and her friend Peter Backhouse on the organ playing Parry’s “I Was Glad.” She smiled. On the other hand, there was always the Register Office in Victoria Street, which presumably had no arrangements for music, not even a tape recorder. She imagined that the Register Office would be fairly similar to Warriston Crematorium, both being functional places run for the convenience of citizens by well-meaning bureaucrats; both with no time for too much fuss; both dedicated, in the final analysis, to changing the status of those whom they served. Surely Jamie would not like that.

  Guy’s voice came down the line: “Are you still there, Isabel?”

  “Yes. I was just thinking.”

  “About Toqué?”

  She looked up at the ceiling. “And other things.”

  The conversation wound to a close. Guy would make further enquiries. In the meantime, Isabel should not raise her hopes too much, as there were always disappointments in the art world—so many pictures were not what their owners wanted them to be, and this might be no exception. “I think it’s likely to be exactly what it says in the catalogue. Dupra’s circle, not Toqué. But I’ll have a closer look, just in case.”

  She wondered how important one had to be before one was given a circle. She had no circle, she thought: just Jamie and Charlie and Grace … and Brother Fox, of course. Or she was in his circle: Circle of Brother Fox, Scottish, early twenty-first century.

  “I am naturally cautious,” Isabel said, before Guy hung up. But even as she said this, she wondered whether it was true. And if it was, was it something to be pleased about, or something to regret? Was natural caution found in people who did something with their lives, or was it a quality of those whose lives ran narrowly and correctly to the grave? The question depressed her. She did not want to be naturally cautious, she decided; she wanted to throw caution to the winds and … and what?

  Grace appeared at the door of her study, a duster in hand. This was unusual: Grace did not like dusting, and only rarely did so. “We’re almost out of dishwasher detergent,” she said. “I’m worried that we’ll run out. Could you get some more?”

  Isabel looked up. “Let’s just risk it,” she said. If one was going to throw caution to the winds, one had to start somewhere.

  Grace looked at her in astonishment. “Risk it?”

  Isabel shrugged. “I thought that perhaps …” She did not finish her sentence. “No, what I meant was, yes, I’ll get some more. One would not want to risk anything.”

  “Of course,” said Grace. She gave Isabel a curious sideways look and left the room. That, thought Isabel, is the trouble: I live a life in which caution simply cannot be thrown to the winds; the winds in Edinburgh would throw it right back in one’s face. It was just that sort of place, and that is what its winds were like.

  THE SECOND TELEPHONE CALL, the less welcome one, came an hour or so after Guy Peploe’s. This was from Minty Auchterlonie, or rather from her assistant, who asked, in rather cold tones, whether Isabel was available to take a call from her employer. Isabel said that she was, and there followed a brief pause before Minty came on the line. There were voices in the background during this pause, and she heard a man saying, “Due diligence? Have they done it yet?” The expression intrigued her—due diligence sounded rather like natural caution; perhaps it was the same thing. And she imagined one could not throw due diligence to the winds either.

  Minty sounded anxious. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “But I really needed to speak to you. Can we talk freely?”

  Isabel said they could. What listening ears did Minty imagine? Unsympathetic, hostile people, crowded about Isabel’s desk eager to hear something compromising, some scandalous morsel?

  “Good,” said Minty. “I’m afraid that I’ve had another call from Jock, Roderick’s father. He wants me to bring Roderick to see him tomorrow. He insists. He says that he wants me to come to the Botanical Gardens.”

  “Why? Why there?”

  “God knows. He likes to see him in places where he can play with him, I think.”

  Isabel waited for her to continue.

  “And I can’t,” said Minty. “We’re going over to Skye for a few days. We’re taking some American clients of Gordon’s to Kinloch Lodge. It’s important. What would I say to Gordon? That I can’t go? That I have to meet my … my former lover?”

  “Awkward,” said Isabel.

  “More than awkward. Distinctly more than.”

  Isabel cleared her throat. “I don’t really know what to suggest.” She thought: this is what happens when one has affairs. This is what happens.

  “And I just don’t trust Jock,” Minty said.

  Isabel tried to sound politely interested. “Oh?”

  “He could so easily become a loose cannon,” Minty continued. “I’m terrified that he’ll phone the house.”

  Isabel shrugged. “I suppose that’s always a danger.”

  “And if he spoke to Gordon, then … well, he might say something.”

  Isabel made a noncommittal remark. What she wanted to say was that this was a risk of having a clandestine affair—the best-known and most obvious risk.

  Suddenly Minty became businesslike. “Can you go?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I don’t like to ask you, but I’m at my wits’ end. Please go and talk to him. Tell him that I just can’t do this. Offer him money.”

  Isabel drew in her breath. Danegeld—the
money that the Anglo-Saxons, and others, paid the Vikings to stay away. But the problem with Danegeld was that the Danes came back for more.

  Minty continued. “Fifty thousand pounds. Tell him that if he drops all claims to Roderick I’ll give him fifty thousand pounds. Sixty. Go up to sixty.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I really don’t think—”

  Minty cut Isabel short. “Just this one thing. That’s all I ask. Just go and meet him. Keep him from doing anything stupid.”

  For a moment Isabel said nothing. She had her reservations when it came to Minty Auchterlonie, but there was no doubting the anguish behind her words; the voice on the other end of the line, she thought, was that of a trapped woman. And with that assessment, Isabel realised that she could not turn Minty down. This was a cry for help, and one could not—and certainly she could not—leave such a cry unanswered.

  “I’ll go,” she said. “But I don’t know what I’ll be able to do. Surely it’s better for you to try to speak to this man. Reason with him. Reach some sort of compromise.”

  “I can’t,” said Minty. “I’m scared of him. I’m scared of what he’ll do.”

  Isabel wanted to say that she did not think of Minty as being a type to be scared, but she could not.

  “I just can’t face him,” Minty went on. “Do you think I’m a coward?”

  Isabel said that she did not. “You’re in a very difficult position,” she said.

  “I can’t face him,” Minty repeated. “I’m afraid of what I might do. I want to kill him. I really do.”

  Isabel tried to calm her down. “You feel angry, that’s all. And a bit frightened. Understandably.”

  “Angry.”

  “Well, I understand,” said Isabel. “But this offer of payment—I don’t think that we should mention money just yet. I think that I should see whether I can reason with him first. I want to talk to him about what he’s been doing. This campaign against you. People can sometimes be shamed into stopping what they’re doing if you confront them. Shame is a powerful thing, you know.”

  The silence at the other end of the line made Isabel wonder whether Minty really understood about shame. But of course she did; Isabel had been wrong about her. Minty was quite normal; she was not a psychopath, as Isabel had once thought her to be, and that meant that she would have a normal understanding of shame, and guilt, and all the other emotions and feelings forming the emotional backdrop to our lives.

  “You go over to Skye,” said Isabel. “And I’ll go to the Botanical Gardens.”

  As she said this, Isabel suddenly realised that Minty was sobbing. “You’re really kind,” the other woman said. “I can’t believe that you’re doing this for me. We hardly know one another, and yet you’re doing this for me.”

  “I’m very happy to do it,” said Isabel. She said so, but she was not happy to do it; she was not. She resented Minty, who had intuitively understood that Isabel would help her even though she had no right to make this claim on Isabel’s time and charity. But although she resented her, Isabel knew—and Minty knew too—that she would have no alternative but to act. If she had never studied philosophy and never wrestled with issues of our moral obligation to others, she would not have had to act at all. But she had done, and she could not unlearn everything she had acquired in Cambridge and Georgetown; nor could she forget that she was a citizen of Edinburgh, of the city of David Hume. I am obliged to act, she thought; by geographical propinquity, and by the mere fact of being human, I am obliged to act.

  They discussed the details. Minty told Isabel a little more about Jock, where she should meet him and how she would recognise him. Then came the note of caution. “It would be best not to phone me,” said Minty. “Gordon might wonder.”

  Isabel assented, but reluctantly. She did not like subterfuge in any form, and she felt uncomfortable about contacting Minty as if they were fellow conspirators. She was not in collusion with Minty Auchterlonie; she was helping her, out of charity, that was all. Sometimes, she thought, the barricades in this life are in the wrong place; but they are still barricades, and they have to be womanned.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ISABEL HAD DECIDED that the last thing one should do when one met a funambulist was to ask about tightrope walking. This exercise of tact was not particular to tightrope walkers; there were numerous situations, many of them much more mundane, in which one refrained from talking to people about what they did. One did not ask judges about how they felt when they sent people to prison; one did not enquire of airline pilots whether they had ever had a near miss; and one did not ask overweight chefs whether they found it difficult to keep from sampling their creations. In all of these examples such questions would stray into sensitive territory, and it was the same with tightrope walkers, who must feel, Isabel thought, the inherent absurdity of their profession.

  “He may be proud of it, of course,” Jamie pointed out. “It may be exactly what he wants to talk about.”

  Isabel suspected that even if Bruno were proud of being a tightrope walker, Cat would be cagey about it. “He’s in the theatre,” her niece had said opaquely, which gave the game away, in Isabel’s view.

  “Let’s just not mention it,” she said to Jamie. “If he mentions it himself, then we can ask. Otherwise, let’s not say anything about it.” She paused. “Of course, there’s nothing wrong in being a tightrope walker. We need them.”

  Jamie looked at her in amazement. “Do we?”

  Isabel shrugged. “Perhaps not. But what I’m saying is that we must respect the dignity of all labour.”

  Jamie shook his head. “But is it labour?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. But let’s not raise it, anyway. Just don’t mention it unless she does.”

  Jamie agreed, although reluctantly. “But I’m really interested,” he said. “I’d like to know how he trained for the job. I’d like to know what was the highest rope he’s ever walked on. Do you think he’s one of these people who walks across the Niagara Falls?”

  “Nobody walks across the Niagara Falls any more,” said Isabel. “Waterfalls are very tightly regulated these days.”

  Jamie burst out laughing. “That sounds very funny.”

  “Or sad,” said Isabel, becoming thoughtful. She remembered reading about the visit of Pius XII to the Niagara Falls when he was a papal envoy to the United States. He had been taken to Niagara and had gazed out over the river. Then, presumably feeling that something was expected of him, he had proceeded to bless the falls. That had tickled her. What was the point of blessing a natural feature? Did he expect that the falls would behave better if blessed? Or would they just bring more pleasure to visitors if they had the benign disposition of blessed falls rather than unblessed falls? The irreverent thoughts gave way to more sober reflection. We all wished for places to be made special somehow; people had holy rivers, after all: the Ganges, the Brahmaputra. And Isabel was sure that there were others, even if she could not name them. Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. Auden again—he came back to her, at these odd moments; she could not help it.

  When Cat rang the bell, Isabel was with Charlie in the sitting room, reading to him from a battered copy of Now We Are Six. A poem about the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace might not have been the most intellectual of fare, but for Charlie, not yet two, it was as metaphysically challenging as the most obscure lines of John Donne or Andrew Marvell. But whereas Donne and Marvell did not go tiddly-om-pom-pom in metrical terms, Milne did, and that was what Charlie liked. So it did not matter that Charlie had no idea why one of the sergeants should look after the guards’ socks or why Alice was about to marry one of the guards. Nor did it matter when Isabel read Hiawatha to him that he had no inkling as to what a wigwam or the shining Big-Sea-Water was; what counted was Longfellow’s use of metre, a monstrously repetitive business, which Charlie loved, and which could be counted upon to send him into a state of somnolence after fifty lines. Noticing this, Isabel had toyed with the idea of suggesti
ng to some far-sighted publishers that they publish a book specifically targeted at insomniacs. This volume would not offer advice on how to tackle sleeplessness (there were far too many people advising us about everything, she thought); it would simply contain passages the reading of which could be relied upon to send the insomniac reader to sleep. Hiawatha would be there, but so would, for quite different reasons, excerpts from Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, and from one or two modern political memoirs.

  Isabel put down the Milne and announced to Charlie that she would have to leave him for a moment to answer the door. She laid him down gently in his playpen, and then said, “Your cousin’s at the door, Charlie.”

  Charlie looked up at her expectantly. “Olive,” he muttered.

  “Not now,” said Isabel. “But well done.”

  She went through to the front hall and opened the door. Cat was there, and immediately behind her was a man whom Isabel took to be Bruno. The evening sun, slanting in from the west, was in Cat’s hair, creating a halo effect.

  Isabel stepped forward and gave the younger woman a light kiss. “And this, I assume, is Bruno.”

  “Yes,” said Cat, moving aside to let Isabel reach out to shake hands with her new fiancé.

  Bruno inclined his head. His expression was one of bemusement shading into condescension. It was the look of somebody who would rather be somewhere else but was there anyway and was prepared to be tolerant.

  When he spoke, Bruno did so with a curiously high-pitched voice. “Pleased to meet you.”

  It was entirely involuntary, but Isabel felt the muscles about her mouth tighten. She knew she should not feel that way, but she did. She did not like the tone in which Bruno said Pleased to meet you. There was a jauntiness to it, almost an irony, as if he were saying that he was pleased but was not, or was indifferent. He is here on sufferance, she thought; he has come here only because Cat has insisted. She disliked that intensely. It was like one of those occasions at a cocktail party when you find yourself conversing with somebody who is looking over your shoulder to see if there is anybody more important to engage in conversation.