Friends, Lovers, Chocolate id-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I don’t mind,” said Isabel. And she did not. It was good to see him, and now that he was here, in the flesh, her inappropriate feelings seemed a thing of the past, virtually forgotten. This was Jamie, who was just a friend, although he was a friend of whom she was very fond.

  Jamie looked down, seeming to study the tablecloth. Isabel looked at his cheekbones, and at the en brosse hair. When he F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  looked up, she caught his gaze, and held it—eyes which were almost grey in that light; kind eyes, she thought, which was what made him so beautiful in her view.

  “You’ve met somebody,” she prompted.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m not sure what to do. I’m happy, I suppose, but I’m all mixed up. I thought that you being . . .”

  “The editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, ” she supplied.

  “And a friend,” Jamie went on. “Perhaps my closest friend.”

  No woman likes to hear that from a man, thought Isabel.

  Men may think about women in those terms, but it’s certainly not what most women want to hear. But she nodded briefly and Jamie continued: “The difficulty is that this person, this woman I’ve met, is not somebody I thought I would fall for. I hadn’t planned it. I really hadn’t.”

  “Which is exactly what Cupid’s arrows are all about,” said Isabel gently. “Very inaccurate. They fly about all over the place.”

  “Yes,” said Jamie. “But you usually have a general idea of what sort of person you’re going to go for. Somebody like Cat, for instance. And then somebody else comes along, and wham!”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “Wham! That’s the way it happens, isn’t it? But why fight it? Just accept that it’s happened and make the most of it. Unless it’s impossible, that is. But that doesn’t happen much these days. Montague and Capulet difficulties.

  Social barriers and all the rest. Even being the same sex is not a problem today.”

  “She’s married,” Jamie blurted out, and then looked down at the tablecloth again.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel caught her breath.

  “And she’s older than me,” said Jamie. “She’s about your age, actually.”

  She had not been prepared for this and her dismay must have shown. Jamie frowned. “I knew that you would disapprove,” he said. “Of course you would disapprove.”

  Isabel opened her mouth to say something, to deny the disapproval, but he cut her short. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. It would have been better not to tell you.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m glad you told me.” She paused, gather-ing her thoughts. “It is a bit of a shock, I suppose. I hadn’t imagined . . .” She trailed off. What offended her was that it was a woman of her age. She had accepted that he would want somebody of his own age, or younger, but she had not prepared herself for competition from a coeval.

  “I didn’t ask for it to happen,” Jamie went on, sounding quite miserable. “And now I don’t know what to do. I feel . . .

  what do I feel? I feel, well I feel as if I’m doing something wrong.”

  “Which you are,” said Isabel. Then she paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but . . . but don’t you think you’re doing something wrong if you’re participating in decep-tion, which adultery usually involves? Not always, but often.

  There’s somebody whose trust is being abused. Promises are being broken.”

  Jamie looked down at the tablecloth, tracing an imaginary pattern with a finger. “I’ve thought of all that,” he said. “But in this case the marriage is almost over. She says that although they’re still married, they lead separate lives.”

  “But they’re still together?”

  “In name.”

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  “In house?”

  Jamie hesitated. “Yes, but she says that they would prefer to live apart.”

  Isabel looked at him. She reached out and touched him gently on the arm. “What do you want me to say, Jamie?” she asked. “Do you want me to tell you that it’s perfectly all right? Is that what you want?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I don’t think so. I wanted to talk to you about it.”

  The milky coffee which Isabel had ordered now arrived, and she picked up the large white cup in which it was served.

  “That’s understandable,” she said. “But you should bear in mind that I can’t tell you what to do. You know the issues perfectly well. You’re not fifteen. You may want me to give you my blessing, to say that it’s perfectly acceptable, and that’s because you’re feeling guilty, and afraid.” She paused, remembering the line from WHA’s poem: Mortal, guilty, but to me/ The entirely beautiful. Yes, that spoke to this moment.

  The misery had not left Jamie’s voice. “Yes, I do feel guilty.

  And yes, I suppose I did want you to tell me that it was all right.”

  “Well, I can’t do that,” said Isabel, gently. And she reached across and took his hand, and held it for a moment. “I can’t tell you any of that, can I?”

  Jamie shook his head. “No.”

  “So what can I say?”

  “You could let me tell you about her,” said Jamie quietly. “I wanted to do that.”

  Isabel understood now that he was in love. When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we want to show them off, like emotional trophies. We invest them with a power to do to others what they do to us; a vain hope, as 5 0

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the lovers of others are rarely of much interest to us. But we listen in patience, as friends must, and as Isabel now did, refraining from comment, other than to encourage the release of the story and the attendant confession of human frailty and hope.

  C H A P T E R S I X

  E

  THE NEXT DAY it was Eddie who opened the delicatessen.

  By the time that Isabel arrived, he had already prepared the coffee and was pouring her a cup as she entered the shop.

  “Everything’s ready,” he said, handing her the cup. “And I’ve spoken to the delivery people about coming this afternoon.

  They can do it.”

  “Such efficiency,” said Isabel, smiling at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “You don’t really need me, I think.”

  Eddie’s face showed his alarm. “No,” he said. “I do.”

  “I wasn’t entirely serious,” Isabel said quickly. She had noticed that Eddie was very literal, and it crossed her mind that he might have Asperger’s. These things came in degrees, and perhaps he suffered from a mild version of the condition. It would certainly explain the shyness; the withdrawal.

  Isabel sat at Cat’s desk, her coffee before her. The morning’s mail, which had been retrieved by Eddie, contained nothing of note, other than an inexplicable bill for which payment was demanded within seven days. Isabel asked Eddie about it, but he shrugged. Then there was a letter from a supplier saying that a consignment of buffalo mozzarella had been delayed in Italy 5 2

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h and would be delivered late. Eddie said that this did not matter, as they still had plenty.

  Then the customers began to drift in. Isabel dispensed small tubs of olives and sun-dried tomatoes. She cut cheese and wrapped bread and reached for tins of mackerel fillets from the shelves. She exchanged views with customers—on the weather, on the contents of that day’s copy of the Scotsman, and, with questionable authority, on a local planning issue. So the morning drifted by, and not once, she reflected, had she had the opportunity to think about moral philosophy. This was cause for thought: most people led their lives this way—doing rather than thinking; they acted, rather than thought about acting. This made philosophy a luxury—the privilege of those who did not have to spend their time cutting cheese and wrapping bread. From the perspective of the cheese counter, Schopenhauer see
med far away.

  If there was no time to think about the affairs of the Review of Applied Ethics, there was time enough to think about Jamie.

  The entire previous evening, when Isabel had been catching up with Review work, she had found her mind wandering back to her conversation with Jamie. The news of his involvement with Louise—that being the only name he had revealed to her—had initially upset Isabel, and after a while she had found herself depressed by what he told her. There was nothing romantic in the situation, she felt, no matter how Jamie might wish to portray it. He was clearly infatuated, and Isabel doubted very much that Louise would reciprocate. Her picture of Louise was of a bored and rather hard woman, living with a husband who was probably unfaithful to her but staying with him because he provided material security. She would not leave her husband, and indeed Jamie might have been a way of her getting back at a F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  man who paid her little attention. It was exactly the strategy which some people urged on ignored wives: make him jealous.

  And Jamie would be perfect for that—a younger man, handsome, and, as a musician, slightly exotic.

  Isabel ate her lunch at one of the tables in the delicatessen.

  While Eddie attended to the customers, she picked up a copy of Corriere della Sera and flicked through the news. Much of it was of the internecine battles of Italian politicians; the shifting of coalitions, the pursuit of narrow advantage, the accusations by liars of lying by others. There was a statement from the Pope about the importance of papal statements.

  Isabel looked up from her paper and reached for her sand-wich. A man was standing at the table, a plate in his hand, gesturing at the vacant seat.

  “Would you mind?”

  Isabel noticed that while she had been reading the other tables had filled up. She smiled at the man. “Not at all. In fact, I shouldn’t be sitting here much longer. I’m staff, you see.”

  The man sat down, placing the plate in front of him. “I’m sure that you need a break, just as everyone does.”

  Isabel smiled. “It’s not as if I’m real staff,” she said. “I’m standing in for my niece.” She looked at his plate, which had on it a small portion of tomato salad, a few hazelnuts, and a sardine.

  He was on a diet, and yet there seemed to be no need. He was a man in his mid-fifties, she thought, not at all overweight—the opposite, in fact. She noticed, too, that he had that look about him which her housekeeper Grace described as distinguished, but which she herself would have described as intelligent.

  He noticed Isabel’s glance at his plate. “Not very much,” he said ruefully. “But needs must.”

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

  “Looking after your heart?” Isabel asked.

  The man nodded. “Yes.” He paused, moving the sardine to the centre of the salad. “It’s my second.”

  “Sardine?” she asked, and then immediately realised what he meant.

  She felt herself blush, and began to explain, but he raised a hand. “Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I’ve had a heart transplant, and I have fairly strict instructions from my doctors. Salads, sardines, and so on.”

  “Which can be made to taste perfectly nice,” she said, rather weakly, she thought.

  “I don’t complain about this new diet of mine,” said the man. “I feel much better. I don’t feel hungry, and”—he paused, touching the front of his jacket, at the chest—“and this, this heart— my heart I should call it now—seems to thrive on it, and on the immunosuppressants.”

  Isabel smiled. She was intrigued. “But it is your heart,” she said. “Or now it is. A gift.”

  “But it’s also his heart,” he said. “And at least I know that it was a he. If it had been a woman, then that would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it? Then I’d be a man with the heart of a woman. Which would make me very much of a new man, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Perhaps,” said Isabel. “But I’m interested in what you said about it being his heart. Things that we own remain ours, don’t they, even when we pass them on. I saw somebody driving my old car the other day, and I thought, That woman’s driving my car. Perhaps there are echoes of ownership that persist well after we lose possession.”

  The man lifted his knife and fork to begin his meal. Noticing this, Isabel said: “I’m sorry. You have your lunch to eat. I should stop thinking aloud.”

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  He laughed. “No, please go on. I enjoy a conversation which goes beyond the superficial. Most of the time we exchange banalities with other people. And here you are launching into linguistics, or should I say philosophical speculation. All over a plate of salad and a sardine. I like that.” He paused. “After my experience—my brush with death—I find that I have rather less time for small talk.”

  “That’s quite understandable,” said Isabel, glancing at her watch. There was a small line of customers building up at the cash desk and Eddie had looked over at her table, as if to ask for help.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said. “I have to get back to work.”

  The man smiled at her. “You said you don’t really work here,” he said. “May I ask: what is it you do normally?”

  “Philosophy,” said Isabel, rising to her feet.

  “Good,” said the man. “That’s very good.”

  He seemed disappointed that she was leaving the table, and Isabel was disappointed to go. There was more to be said, she thought, about hearts and what they mean to us. She wanted to know how it felt to have an alien organ beating away within one’s chest; this bit of life extracted from another, and still living. And how did the relatives of the donor feel, knowing that part of their person (Isabel refused to use the expression loved one, because it was so redolent of the world of its original coin-ers, American undertakers) was still alive? Perhaps this man—

  whoever he was—knew about this and could tell her. But in the meantime, there was cheese to be cut and sun-dried tomatoes to measure out; matters of greater immediate importance than questions of the heart and what they meant.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h S H E WO U L D H AV E L I K E D to do nothing that evening, but could not. It had been a demanding day, with many more customers than usual, and she and Eddie had been kept busy until almost seven o’clock. Now, back at the house, the sight of her unopened mail, neatly stacked on her desk by Grace and containing several very obvious manuscripts, dispirited her. What she would have liked to do was to have a light dinner in the garden room, and follow that with a walk in the garden, with a glimpse, perhaps, of Brother Fox, her name for the urban fox who lived part of his cautious, hidden life there, and then a long, warm bath. But this was impossible, as the mail would stack up and it would begin to haunt her, reproaching her every time she entered her study. So she had no alternative but to work, and had resolved to do so when the telephone rang and Jamie announced that he and Louise would be passing by on their way to Balerno (not en route, Isabel thought, but did not say), and would she mind if they called in for a quick cup of something. Isabel wanted to say yes she would mind, but even with the pile of mail in view she said no, she would not mind.

  This made her think of akrasia, weakness of the will, by which we do that which we really want to do in the full knowledge that we should be doing something else. But why should she want to see Jamie and Louise? Curiosity, she assumed.

  After the telephone call she could settle to nothing. She was no longer interested in dinner, and although she tried to deal with the mail, she could not concentrate on that and gave up. There were already more than twenty outstanding items; tomorrow there would be five or six more—sometimes it was many more than that—and so on. But even the thought of F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  the numbers (over a hundred and fifty letters in one month, three hundred in two) failed to motiva
te her, and she ended up sitting in the drawing room at the front of the house, paging through a magazine, waiting for Jamie to arrive. They were going to Balerno, were they? Balerno was a suburb in the west of Edinburgh, a place of well-set suburban homes, each planted squarely in a patch of garden, and each staring out on the world with windows that looked to all intents and purposes like two rectangular eyes. Balerno was somnolent, a respectable place in which nothing out of the ordinary happened.

  Then she remembered something else which had been said to her by somebody a long time ago, perhaps when she was a schoolgirl or a very young woman. Somebody had said—or whispered, perhaps—that the suburbs of Edinburgh had a reputation for adultery, and that Balerno was a great place for that. Yes, somebody had said that and sniggered, as a schoolgirl might snigger; and of course it was easy to imagine. If you were tucked up in a suburb, then might you not feel the need to take some risks? And that would lead to the adventure of adultery committed after parties in insurance offices in town, on company training weekends in Perthshire hotels; snatched moments of excitement, lived out against the emptiness of a predictable life.

  Jamie had been drawn into that world, and that was why he was going to Balerno. The thought made Isabel grimace. There was no romance there; only tawdry shame. And poor Jamie had been entrapped by this Louise person, this older woman, who probably cared nothing for his music or for his moral qualities, and for whom he was something to toy with.

  One might work oneself up into a state of anger just thinking about Louise, and what she stood for. But Isabel would not allow this to happen; it was always a mistake, she thought, to 5 8

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h dwell on the cause of one’s anger, like Tam O’Shanter’s wife, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm, as Burns put it. No, thought Isabel, I must like Louise, because that is my duty; not because one has a moral duty to like people in general—an impossibility for those short of sainthood—but because I know that Jamie will be hoping that I should like her.

  She was thinking of friendship and its duties when the bell rang. When she opened the door, she saw immediately from Jamie’s expression that she had been right about how he would feel: there was a strange look on his face, one in which anticipation was mixed with concern. She wanted to lean forward and whisper to him, Don’t worry. Don’t worry. But could not, of course, because standing behind him was Louise, who seemed to be looking up at the evening sky.