Friends, Lovers, Chocolate id-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Now,” said the medium, “I pass to another person in spirit who is coming to me. Yes, this person is saying very clearly to me that there is somebody in this room who has not forgiven him for what he did. That is what he is saying. This person says that he is very sorry for what he did and begs this other person on this side to forgive him. It is not too late to forgive, even now.”

  She looked out over the rows of seats. A woman at the end of the second row had risen to her feet. “This message might be F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  for me,” she said, her voice uneven. “I think that it might be for me.”

  The medium turned to face her. “I think it is, my dear. Yes, I think it is for you.” She paused. “And do you have that forgiveness in your heart? Can I tell this person in spirit that he has your forgiveness? Can I tell him that?”

  The woman who had been standing up suddenly sank back into her seat. She put her hands up to her face and covered her eyes. She was sobbing. A woman behind her reached forward to comfort her.

  The medium said nothing. When the woman’s sobbing had subsided, she sat down again and looked up at the ceiling, and did so for a good fifteen minutes. She rose to her feet and looked about the room, her gaze alighting on the man behind Grace.

  “I have somebody coming through for you,” she said. “I have somebody here. Yes. This is your wife. She is here. She is with me. She is with you. Can you sense her presence?”

  Isabel did not like to turn and stare, but did so anyway, discreetly. The man’s eyes were fixed on the medium; he was listening intently. In response to her question he nodded.

  “Good,” said the medium. “She is coming through very strongly now. She says that she is still with you. She . . .” The medium hesitated, and frowned. “She is concerned for you. She is concerned that there is one who is trying to get to know you better. She is concerned that this person is not the right person for you. That is what she says.”

  The relaying of this message had its effect on the room, and there were whispers. One or two people turned round and looked in the direction of the man to whom it was directed.

  Others looked firmly ahead at the medium. Isabel glanced at 1 4 8

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Grace, who was looking down at the floor and who seemed hunched up, as if hoping for the moment of embarrassment around her to pass.

  There was little more after that. The world of spirit, momentarily goaded into action by the medium, must have been exhausted, and after a few minutes the medium declared that she had finished her communication with the other side.

  Now it was time for tea, and they all withdrew to a cheerfully furnished room next to the library. There were plates of biscuits and cups of strong, warm tea.

  “Very interesting,” whispered Isabel. “Thank you, Grace.”

  Grace nodded. She seemed preoccupied, though, and did not say anything as she helped Isabel to a cup of tea and a biscuit. Isabel looked about her. She saw the medium standing at the side of the room. She was sipping at a cup of tea and talking to the man who had introduced her, the man in the black suit.

  But as she talked, Isabel saw her eyes move about the room, as if seeking somebody out. And they fixed on the man who had been seated behind her, the man who had received the message from his wife. Isabel looked at the medium’s expression, and at her eyes in particular. It was very clear to her, as it would be clear, she thought, to any woman. She had seen enough.

  C H A P T E R F I F T E E N

  E

  WHAT’S IT LIKE?” Ian asked. “I know it may sound like a rather simple question, naïve perhaps, but what’s it like—being a philosopher?”

  Isabel looked out of the window. It was mid-morning and they were sitting in her study, the tang of freshly brewed coffee in the air. Outside, on the corners of her lawn, the weeds had begun to make their presence increasingly obvious. She needed several hours, she thought, several hours which she would never find, for digging and raking. One must cultivate one’s garden, said Voltaire; and there, he said, is happiness to be found rather than in philosophising. She thought for a moment of the juxtaposition of philosophy and the everyday: zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance had been an inspired combination for its moment, but there might be others, as novel and surprising. “Voltaire and the control of weeds,” she muttered.

  “Voltaire and . . . ?” asked Ian.

  “Just musing,” said Isabel. “But in answer to your question: It’s much the same as being anything else. You carry your profession with you, I suppose, in much the same way as a doctor 1 5 0

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h or, I should imagine, a psychologist does. You see the world in a particular way, don’t you? As a psychologist?”

  Ian followed her gaze out into the garden. “To an extent,” he said, but sounded doubtful. “Being a philosopher, though, must be rather different from being anything else. You must think about everything. You must spend your time pondering over what things mean. A somewhat higher realm than the rest of us inhabit.”

  Isabel drew herself away from the lawn. She had been thinking about weeds. But weeds, and what to do about them, were very much a part of everyday life, and everyday life was exactly what philosophy was about. We were rooted in it, inevitably, and how we reacted to it—our customs, our obser-vances—was the very stuff of moral philosophy. Hume had called them, these little conventions, a kind of lesser morality, and in her view he had been right.

  “It’s much more mundane and everyday than you would imagine,” she began. And then she stopped. One could easily simplify too much, and discussions about social convention could give him the wrong idea. How you drank your coffee was not what it was about, but the fact that you drank coffee together was of tremendous significance. But she could not say that, because that statement could be made only after a great deal of earlier ground had been covered and understood.

  Ian nodded. “I see. Well, that’s a little bit disappointing. I imagined that you spent all your time pacing about trying to work out the nature of reality—wondering whether the world outside is real enough to take a walk in. That sort of thing.”

  Isabel laughed. “Sorry to disabuse you of such amusing notions. No. But I must admit that my calling—if I can call it that—sometimes makes life a little difficult for me.”

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  This interested him. “In what way?”

  “Well, it’s mostly a question of duty,” Isabel said. She sighed, thinking of her demons; moral obligation was the real problem. This was the cross she bore, the rack on which she was obliged to lie—even the metaphors were uncomfortable.

  “I find myself thinking very carefully about what I should do in any given situation,” she went on. “And it can get a little bit burdensome for me. In fact, sometimes I feel rather like those unfortunate people with OCD—you know, obsessive-compulsive disorder; of course you know that, you’re a clinical psychologist—but I sometimes think I’m like those people who have to check ten times that they’ve turned the oven off or who have to wash their hands again and again to get rid of germs. I think I can understand how they feel.”

  “Now you’re on familiar ground,” he said. “I had quite a few patients with OCD. One woman I knew had a thing about doorhandles. She had to cover the doorhandle with a handker-chief before she could open it. Tricky, sometimes. And public washrooms were a real agony for her. She had to use her foot to flush. She lifted a foot and pushed the lever down by stepping on it.”

  Isabel thought for a moment. “Very wise,” she said with a smile. “Imagine what results you’d get if you took a swab from one of those handles and cultured it. Imagine.”

  “Maybe,” said Ian. “But we need to be exposed to germs, don’t we? All this hygiene and refined foods—what’s the result?

  Allergies galore. Everyone will eventually have asthma.” He paused. “But back to phil
osophy. Those papers over there—are they submissions for that journal of yours?”

  Isabel glanced at the pile of manuscripts and suppressed a shudder. Guilt, she thought, can sometimes be measured in 1 5 2

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h physical quantities. A heavy drinker might measure his guilt in gallons or litres; a glutton in inches round the waist; and the editor of a journal in terms of the height of the stack of manuscripts awaiting her attention. This was almost eighteen inches of guilt.

  “I should be reading those,” she said. “And I will. But, as Saint Augustine said about chastity, not just yet.”

  “You don’t want to read them?” Ian asked.

  “I do and I don’t,” said Isabel. “I don’t want to read them in one sense, but in another sense I want to read them and get them finished.” She looked again at the pile. “Most of those are for a special issue we’re bringing out. It’s on friendship.”

  Ian looked puzzled. “What has philosophy got to do with that?” he asked.

  “A great deal,” Isabel replied. “It’s one of the great topics.

  What is the nature of friendship? How are we to treat our friends? Can we prefer our friends to others who are not our friends?”

  “Of course we can,” said Ian. “Isn’t that why they’re our friends in the first place?”

  Isabel shook her head. She arose from her chair and went to stand by the window, looking out on the lawn, but averting her gaze from the weeds. Weeds had a closer relationship with guilt than did grass.

  “There are some philosophers who say that we shouldn’t do that at all,” she said. “They say that we have a moral duty to treat others equally. We shouldn’t discriminate among people who need our help. We should allocate such help as we can give absolutely even-handedly.”

  “But that’s inhuman!” Ian protested.

  “I think so,” said Isabel. “But it’s not all that easy to make a sound case for preferring the claims of your friends. I think F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  one can do it, but you’re up against some powerful counter-arguments.”

  “Do philosophers tend to have many friends?” asked Ian. “If that’s the way they think . . .”

  “It depends on the extent to which they possess the virtues that make friendship thrive,” Isabel answered. “A virtuous person will have friends in the true sense. A person whose character is afflicted with vices won’t.”

  She turned away from the window and faced Ian. “We can return to this topic, if you like, Ian, but I’m afraid this is not why I invited you for coffee today. It’s something else altogether—”

  “I can guess,” he interrupted. “You’ve been thinking about what I said to you.”

  “Yes. I have. And I’ve been acting on it, too.”

  He looked at her anxiously. “I hadn’t intended to draw you in,” he began. “I didn’t imagine that—”

  “Of course you didn’t,” she interjected. “But you may recall that I said something about obligation earlier on. One of the consequences of being a philosopher is that you get involved.

  You ask yourself whether you need to do something and so often the answer comes up yes, you do.” She paused for a moment. It occurred to her that she should be careful not to make Ian feel stressed. Presumably he had to avoid stress, and shock, too.

  “I’ve traced the family of your donor. It wasn’t hard. You could have done it, if you thought about it.”

  “I didn’t have the courage,” he said. “I wanted to thank them but . . .”

  “And I’ve found your man,” Isabel continued. “The man with the high forehead and the hooded eyes. I’ve found him for you.”

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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 was silent; sitting there in his chair, staring at Isabel, completely taken aback, quite silent. Eventually he cleared his throat. “Well, I’m not sure if I was looking forward to that. But I suppose . . . Well, I suppose that if I don’t do something about this, I’m not really going to give myself much of a chance, am I?

  I told you earlier on that I thought this thing would kill me—

  this sadness, this dread, whatever we call it. I think it’ll prevent the new heart from . . . from taking, so to speak.” He looked at her, and she saw the anguish in his eyes. “Maybe it’s best to know,” he said. “Do you think so?”

  “Maybe,” said Isabel. “But remember, there are some things which we would probably prefer not to know once we’ve found them out. This may be one of them.”

  He looked confused. “I don’t see how—”

  Isabel raised a hand to stop him. “You see, the difficulty is that this man—the man who looks so like the man of your . . .

  your imaginings—lives with the mother of the young man who was the donor.”

  He frowned slightly, taking in the information. “How did he die?” he asked. “Did you find out?”

  “A hit-and-run accident,” she said. “Still unsolved. It was very close to the house. He was knocked over and he died shortly thereafter in hospital. He was unconscious when they found him, which meant that he was unable to say anything about what happened. But . . .”

  “But,” he said, “but he could have been conscious immediately after being knocked over, and the driver could have bent over him and looked at him?”

  “Exactly,” said Isabel.

  For a few minutes nothing further was said by either of them. Isabel turned away again and looked out into the garden, F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  oblivious now of the weeds, thinking only of the dilemma which she had created for herself and from which there seemed no easy, painless escape. Unless she handed it over to Ian, though he had done nothing to bring the situation about in the first place—other than to tell her about what had happened.

  Ian’s voice broke the silence. “Does she know?” he asked.

  “Know what?” Isabel had not told him that she had been unable to speak about his vision. “I didn’t tell her about you,”

  she said. “I couldn’t. He was there.”

  “No,” said Ian. “That’s not what I meant. What I meant was, does the mother of the donor know that this man could have been the hit-and-run driver?”

  The question surprised Isabel. She had not thought about that, but it was an obvious possibility. She had assumed that she did not, but what if she did? That put a very different complexion on the matter.

  “If she knows, then she’d be sheltering the person who killed her son,” she said. “Would any mother do that, do you think?”

  Ian thought for a moment before giving his answer. “Yes,” he said. “Many would. These domestic killings that occur from time to time—the woman often shelters the man. A violent partner harms one of the children. The woman stays silent. Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of helplessness. Perhaps out of misplaced loyalty. It’s not uncommon.”

  Isabel thought back to her conversation with Rose Macleod. She remembered her expression of eagerness when Isabel had revealed that she might have some information on the incident. That had not been feigned, she thought. Nor was she mis-taken about the man’s anxiety, shown in the tension of his body language when she had broached the subject—a tension which 1 5 6

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h had visibly dissipated when she had come up with a description of the driver which so clearly excluded him.

  “I’m sure that she doesn’t know,” she said. “I really think she doesn’t.”

  “Very well,” Ian said. “She doesn’t know. Now what?”

  Isabel laughed. “Precisely. Now what?”

  “We can go to the police,” Ian said quietly. “We can just hand the thing over.”

  “Which will lead to nothing happening,” said Isabel. “The police aren’t going to go and accuse him of being the driver on the basis of what they will probably call a dream.”

  She saw that he agreed with this,
and she continued, “So the issue now is whether we have a duty to go and inform that woman that the man with whom she lives was possibly the hit-and-run driver who killed her son. Just possibly, note. The whole argument is based, after all, on the pretty shaky premise that your vision has anything to do with anything. A very shaky premise.

  “But let’s say that we believe it may be relevant information.

  Let’s say that the mother takes the same view and believes it, even if it can’t be proved. What we will have succeeded in doing then will be to have introduced an awful, corrosive doubt into her life. We might effectively destroy her relationship with that man. And so she will have lost not only her son, but her man as well.”

  When Ian spoke, his tone was resigned. He sounded tired.

  “In which case we keep quiet.”

  “We can’t,” said Isabel. She did not explain why she said this, as she had noticed Ian’s weariness and she was concerned not to tire him. It was to do with formal justice, and the duty F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  that one has to the community at large not to allow people like drunken drivers—if he had been drunk—to go unpunished if they cause death on the road. That was profoundly important, and outweighed any consideration of the emotional happiness of one unfortunate woman. It was a hard decision, but one which Isabel now seemed to be seeing her way to reaching. But even as she reached it, she thought how much easier it would be to walk away from this, to say that the business of others was no business of hers. That, of course, required one to believe that we are all strangers to one another—which was just not true, in Isabel’s view, indeed it was as alien to her as it had been to John Donne when he wrote those echoing, haunting words about islands and community. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, he had said. Yes. It is.

  But even if she had reached the view that considerations of community and moral duty obliged them to act, she still had no idea what form this action should take. It was a curious, slightly disconcerting state to be in: to know that one should act, but not knowing how. It was rather like being in a phoney war, before the bombs and bullets are exchanged.