The Careful Use of Compliments id-4

by Alexander McCall Smith

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  irrelevant. Isabel had never judged people by their means; it simply was not an issue with her. But at the same time, she realised that it could be difficult for Jamie. Money gave power over people, no matter how tactful one was about it. With money you could get the attention of others; you could ask them to do things.

  “I can afford it,” she said quietly. “If I want it. But the problem is . . . well, I feel guilty.” She paused. “And you’re not helping much.”

  He frowned. “Not helping? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You disapprove of the fact that I can buy that,” said Isabel.

  “You’re making it rather obvious.”

  Jamie’s surprise was unfeigned. “Why should I disapprove?

  It’s your money. What you do with it—”

  “Is my business,” Isabel interjected. “If only that were the case. But it isn’t, you know. People watch what other people do with their money. They watch very closely.”

  Jamie shrugged his shoulders. “Not me,” he said. “I don’t. If you think that I do, then you’re wrong. You really are.”

  Isabel watched his expression as she spoke. She had misjudged him; what he said was true—he had no interest in what she did with her money; there was no envy there.

  “Let’s not argue,” she said. “Especially in front of Charlie.”

  Jamie smiled. “No. Of course.” The discussion had made him feel uncomfortable, as it had raised something which had not been present in their relationship before: a financial dimen-sion. As they left the auction house, with Charlie returned to his sling on Isabel’s front, Jamie thought about what had been said.

  And there was something else worrying him, something else that had not been spoken about but that had to be discussed at some point. Who was financially responsible for Charlie? He 2 4

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h had not thought about this, in the drama of Isabel’s pregnancy, but a few days previously it had occurred to him that now there would be bills. He had seen an article in the paper about the cost of a child until it reached the age of independence, and the figure had been daunting. Tens—scores—of thousands of pounds were needed to feed, clothe, and educate a child, and the age of independence itself seemed to be getting higher and higher. Twenty-five-year-olds still lived with, and on, their parents, and the paper cited one case of a daughter of thirty-two, still in full-time education, still being supported by her father. Was Charlie going to be that expensive? And if he was, would he be able to pay his share?

  They were going for lunch in the restaurant at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which was on Queen Street, a short walk from the auction house. Outside, in spite of the fact that it was June, the wind had a note of chill in it, a wind from the east, off the North Sea. Isabel looked up at the sky, which was clear but for a few scudding clouds, wispy, high-level streaks of white.

  “It’s so bright,” she said, shivering as a gust of wind swept up Broughton Street and penetrated the thin layer of her jersey.

  “Look at that sky. Look up there.”

  Jamie stared up into the blue. He saw a vapour trail, higher than the clouds, on the very edge of space, it seemed, heading westwards towards America or Canada. He thought of the shiny thin tube suspended, against gravity, in that cold near-void; he thought of the people inside. “What do you think of when you see those jets?” he asked Isabel, pointing up at the tiny glint of metal with its white wisp of cotton wool trailing behind it.

  Isabel glanced up. “Trust,” she said. “I think of trust.”

  Jamie looked puzzled. “Why would you think of that?” Then he started to smile; he knew the answer, and Isabel was right.

  “Yes, I see.”

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  They turned the corner onto Queen Street. On the other side of the street, a block away, rose the red sandstone edifice of the Portrait Gallery, an ambitious neo-Gothic building which Isabel had always liked in spite of what she called its “Caledo-nian spikiness.” The gallery restaurant, tucked away and old-fashioned, was popular with people who wanted to sit, four to a table, in high-backed chairs reminiscent of suburban dining rooms. Isabel liked it because of its welcoming atmosphere and the overflow paintings from the main gallery hanging on its walls.

  “I like coming here,” said Jamie, as they sat down at their table. “When I was a boy, I used to be brought here to see the pictures of the kings and queens of Scotland. I was interested in seeing Macbeth, but of course we haven’t a clue what he looked like.”

  “A much maligned king,” said Isabel as she loosened Charlie’s sling. “Shakespeare cast him as a weak man, a murderer, but in fact he had quite a successful reign. Scotland prospered under Macbeth.”

  “She was the problem,” said Jamie.

  Isabel doubted this. It was only too easy to blame women, she thought, although she had to admit, if pressed, that there were some women who deserved any blame that came their way. Mrs. Ceau¸sescu was such a case, as she pointed out.

  “She was shot, wasn’t she?” said Jamie.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Isabel. “And nobody deserves that. Not even the most appalling tyrant, or tyrant’s wife. She pleaded for her life, we are told, as did her husband, in his long winter coat, standing there in front of those young soldiers. He said that they should not shoot his wife, as she was a great scientist. At least he tried to do something gentlemanly at the very end.”

  They were silent for a moment; Romania and firing squads 2 6

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h seemed a world away from the atmosphere of the Portrait Gallery. Jamie looked at Charlie. The cruelties of the world, its viciousness, seemed so dissonant with the innocence of the child. He returned to kings.

  “George IV,” he said. “That was another favourite picture of mine. Ever since I heard that the artist who painted the picture of his arrival in Edinburgh showed him in his kilt but without the pink tights that apparently he wore when he arrived in Scotland.”

  Isabel laughed. “That sounds almost as bad as those Soviet portraits. I saw one in the State Gallery in Moscow years ago. It was a collective portrait of the politburo or some such group.

  The ones who had been discredited or executed were simply painted out and replaced with large flower arrangements. But the contours of the paint showed that something had been done. Such a bad sign—the appearance of flowers in official portraits.”

  Jamie looked at her quizzically. He was not quite sure how to take remarks like that from Isabel. It was, he said, her Dorothy Parker streak. “But I’d never take a streak from another woman,” Isabel had protested.

  “There you go,” said Jamie.

  But now there was this odd remark about flowers. “Why flowers?” he asked.

  “Well,” said Isabel, “look at political broadcasts by presidents and prime ministers. The shaky ones, those one thinks are lying, or at least being economical with the truth—they bedeck the tables behind them with large floral arrangements. I take that as a sure sign that there’s something fishy going on. Flags and flowers. They’re stage props. And soldiers. Being seen talking to the troops is very good for votes.”

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  The waitress arrived and they gave their order. Jamie reached across the table and touched Charlie’s arm.

  “So small,” he said. “Like a little doll.”

  Isabel smiled and let her hand touch Jamie’s. He curled his fingers round hers, briefly.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  “Thank you for what?”

  “For not going away.”

  He gave a start. “Why should I go away?”

  She nodded in the direction of Charlie. “Not every man stays,” she said. “You might easily have preferred . . . preferred your freedom.”

  He stared at her. Had she misjudged him that badly? He felt
an irritation, a crossness, that she should think that of him. And Isabel, watching him, immediately sensed that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve offended you. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that . . . well, you’re younger than I am. You need your freedom. You don’t need to be tied down.”

  Jamie swallowed. He looked about him briefly; the restaurant was busy, as it always was at lunchtime, but in the general hubbub it did not look as if anybody might overhear their conversation. “Of course I wouldn’t make myself scarce,” he said. “I told you that—right at the beginning. I told you when Charlie arrived. I was there, wasn’t I?”

  “Of course you were,” said Isabel soothingly. “Please don’t be angry with me. Please.” And she thought, I’m making a mess of this. It’s exactly the same as my relationship with Cat. I make a mess of things by saying things that I don’t need to say.

  Jamie was staring at the table, tracing on its surface an imaginary pattern with a forefinger. He looked up, and Isabel saw that he was flushed. “Jamie,” she said. “Please . . .”

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h He shook his head. “No. I want to say something. I should have said it before. Now I’m going to say it.”

  She held her breath. I shouldn’t have imagined that this would last, she thought; now I’ll find out what I always feared.

  To have had him, now to lose him; it was inevitable.

  “Isabel,” he said. “I’d like you to marry me.” He paused. “I think we should get married.”

  For a moment she thought that she had misheard him. But then he repeated it. She was surprised, but not surprised.

  She had wondered whether he might say this, ever since she announced to him that she was pregnant. She had been unable to stop herself from entertaining the possibility, and had considered, at length, what her response would be. And now that the moment had come, she found herself hesitating. What if she said yes right there and then?

  Instead she said, “It’s a rather public proposal, isn’t it, Jamie?” She gestured about her.

  Jamie blushed. “I’m sorry. But it’s just that you brought up the whole issue of my being around. I felt that I had to say something.”

  She reassured him. “Yes, I understand.”

  “And?”

  “I know you feel you have to ask me,” she said. “But I think we should wait. I really do. Let’s wait some time and see how things go. That makes more sense, you know.”

  He did not say anything for a minute or two, and she imagined that he was wrestling with himself. If he really wanted to marry her, she thought, he would press her again. But if he had merely proposed out of a sense of duty, then he would probably accept her suggestion with some relief.

  “All right,” he said at last. “Let’s see.”

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  She realised how tense she had been; now she relaxed. But she felt a certain sadness that he had gone along with her suggestion, even though she knew that this was the right thing to do, and that quite the wrong thing for her to do would be to allow him to marry her. And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.

  C H A P T E R T H R E E

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  BY THE TIME Grace arrived at the house the next morning, Isabel had bathed Charlie, given him his breakfast bottle, and was standing in front of the drawing-room window, encouraging him to look out over the garden. She was not sure how much he saw, but she was convinced that he was interested and was gazing fixedly at one of the rhododendrons. As she held Charlie before the window and rocked him gently, Isabel saw Grace walking up the front path, although Grace did not spot her.

  Grace had a newspaper tucked under her arm and was carrying the white canvas tote bag that accompanied her to work each day. This bag was often empty, and hung flaccid from Grace’s arm, but on occasion it bulged with tantalizing shapes that intrigued Isabel and that she wished she could ask Grace about.

  She knew, though, that there was usually at least a book in the bag, as Grace was a keen reader and had a sacrosanct lunch hour during which she would sit in the kitchen, immersed in a novel from the Central Library, a cup of tea getting steadily colder in front of her.

  Since Charlie’s arrival, the nature of Grace’s job had changed. This change had required no negotiation, with Grace T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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  assuming that Isabel would need help with the baby and that naturally this would take priority over her normal, more mundane duties of cleaning and ironing.

  “I’ll look after him while you’re working,” Grace had announced. “And also when you want to go out. I like babies. So that’s fine.” The tone of her voice indicated that there needed to be no further discussion.

  Isabel was happy with the new understanding, but even had she not been, she would have hesitated to contradict Grace. Although Isabel was nominally Grace’s employer, Grace regarded herself as still working for Isabel’s father, who had died years before and in whose service as housekeeper she had spent all her working life. Either that, or she thought of herself as being employed in some strange way by the house itself; which meant that her loyalty, and source of instructions, was really some authority separate from and higher than Isabel.

  The practical consequences of this were that Grace occasionally announced that something would be done because

  “that’s what the house needs.” Isabel thought this a curious expression, which made her home sound rather like a casino or an old-fashioned merchant bank—in both of which one might hear the staff talking about the house. But for all its peculiarity, the arrangement worked very well and indeed was welcomed by Isabel as a means of putting the relationship between herself and Grace on a more equal, and therefore easier, footing. Isabel did not like the idea of being an employer, with all that this entailed in terms of authority and power. If Grace regarded herself as being employed by some vague metaphysical body known as the house, then that at least enabled Isabel to treat her as a mixture of friend and colleague, which is precisely how she viewed her anyway.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Of course the circumstances in which the two women found themselves were different, and no amount of linguistic sleight of hand could conceal that. Isabel had enjoyed every advantage in education and upbringing; there had been money, travel, and, ultimately, freedom from the constraints of an office job or its equivalents. Grace, by contrast, had come from a home in which there had been no spare money, little free time, and, in the background, the knowledge that unemployment might at any time remove whatever small measure of prosperity people might have attained.

  Grace went into the kitchen, put the tote bag down on a chair, and made her way into the morning room.

  “I’m here,” Isabel called out. “In the study.”

  Grace entered the room and beamed at Charlie. “He’s looking very bright and breezy,” she said, coming up to tickle Charlie under the chin. Charlie grinned and waved his arms in the air.

  “I think he wants to go to you,” said Isabel.

  Grace took Charlie in her arms. “Of course he does,” she said.

  It was not the words themselves, Isabel realised—it was more the inflection. Did Grace mean that it was no surprise that Charlie should want to go to her rather than stay with his mother? That was how it sounded, even if Grace had not meant it that way.

  “He actually quite likes me too,” said Isabel softly.

  Grace looked at her in astonishment. “But of course he does,” she said. “You’re his mother. All boys like their mothers.”

  “No,” said Isabel. “I don’t think they do. Some mothers suf-focate their sons, emotionally. They don’t mean to, but it happens.” She looked out of the window. She had seen it in her family, in a cousin whose ambitious mother had nagged him un
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  with her. He had been civil, of course, but everybody had seen it—the stiff posture, the formal politeness, the looking away when she spoke to him. But had he loved her, in spite of this? She remembered him at his mother’s funeral when he had wept, quietly but voluminously, and Isabel, sitting in the row behind him, had put her hand on his shoulder and whispered to him in comfort. We leave it too late, she had thought; we always do, and then these salutary lessons are learned at the graveside.

  “Mothers always mean well,” said Grace. “As long as they don’t try to choose their son’s wife. That’s a mistake.”

  Charlie looked up at Grace and smiled. I have enough, thought Isabel; I have so much that surely I can share him.

  Grace turned towards Isabel. Her face, Isabel noticed, seemed transformed by the close presence of the baby, her look at that moment one of near pride. “Do you want to work this morning?” she said, looking in the direction of Isabel’s over-crowded desk. “There’s not much to do in the house. I could look after Charlie.”

  Isabel felt a wrench. Part of her wanted to answer that she would decide for herself, in good time, whether she wanted to work or whether she wished simply to be with Charlie; but another part of her, the responsible part, felt she should deal with the pile of correspondence that she had started to tackle the previous day but that she had abandoned in favour of the auctioneer’s catalogue. There were two horses in the soul, she thought, as Socrates had said in Phaedrus—the one, unruly, governed by passions, pulling in the direction of self-indulgence; the other, restrained, dutiful, governed by a sense of shame. And Auden had felt the same, she thought; he was a dualist who knew the struggle between the dark and the light sides of the self, the struggle that all of us know to a greater or lesser extent.