Friends, Lovers, Chocolate id-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Isabel nodded miserably. “I feel very bad about this,” she said. “I barged in without checking to see what sort of ground I was standing on.”

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

  “Let’s just forget all about it,” said Rose. “There’s been a bit of confusion—that’s all.”

  There was nothing more for them to say to each other.

  Mutely, Rose got up, nodded to Isabel, and then walked out of the delicatessen. She did not turn round; she did not bother to look. And Isabel, folding up her paper, took her cup back to the counter.

  “What was that about?” asked Cat, nodding in the direction of the door. “Who was that woman?”

  “It was all about a misunderstanding,” said Isabel. “And it was also about me. It was about my tendency to get the wrong end of things. To make assumptions. To interfere. That’s what that was about.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit hard on yourself ?” Cat said. She was used to Isabel’s self-critical assessments and her frequent moral debates with herself—and with anybody else within earshot.

  But the self-abasement in her aunt’s voice was more profound than usual.

  “That’s my trouble,” said Isabel. “I’m not hard enough on myself. I have to stop this ridiculous assumption that just because somebody speaks to me I am bound to take up a cause.

  Well, I’ve had enough of that. I’m going to stop.”

  “Will you?” asked Cat. “Do you really think you will?”

  Isabel hesitated before answering, but only for a short while. Then she said, “No. No, I don’t. But I’ll try.”

  Cat burst out laughing, and Eddie, who had caught the conversation, looked up and met Isabel’s eye.

  “You’re very nice as you are,” he muttered. “Don’t change.”

  But Isabel did not hear what he said.

  C H A P T E R S I X T E E N

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  GRACE HAD TAKEN THE CALL from Tomasso, and when Isabel returned home she found the note on her desk. It was written on one of the cards on which Grace liked to scribble her messages—cards which Isabel used to log in manuscripts. She resented Grace’s use of these cards for this purpose—a scrap of paper would have sufficed—but she had decided not to tackle her housekeeper about it. Grace was sensitive, and even a modest suggestion could easily be interpreted as criticism.

  A very interesting man telephoned, wrote Grace. Tom somebody. Foreign. He’ll call again at three. I never get calls like that.

  But be careful.

  Grace was still in the house, working upstairs, and when she heard Isabel come in she made her way downstairs and popped her head round the door of Isabel’s study.

  “You saw that message?”

  Isabel nodded. “Thank you. He’s called Tomasso. And he’s Italian.”

  Grace smiled. “I liked the sound of his voice,” she said.

  “Yes, it’s very . . .” Isabel thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose there’s only one word for it. Sexy.”

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  “Good luck,” said Grace.

  Isabel smiled. “Well,” she said, hesitantly. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Grace opened the door fully and came into the room. “Don’t be defeatist. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t find somebody. You’re a very attractive woman. You’re kind. Men like you.

  Yes, they do. They love talking to you. I’ve seen it.”

  “They may like talking to me,” said Isabel. “But that’s about it. They’re frightened of me, I suspect. Men don’t like women who think too much. They want to do the thinking.”

  Grace thought about this for a moment. “I’m not sure if you’re right about that,” she said. “Some men may be like that, but by no means all. Look at Jamie. Yes, look at him. He worships the ground you walk upon. I can tell that from a mile away.” She paused, and then added, “Pity that he’s still just a boy.”

  Isabel moved over to the window and looked out into the garden. She felt slightly embarrassed by the direction in which the conversation was going. She could discuss men in general, but she could not discuss Jamie. That was too raw, too dangerous. “And what about you, Grace? What about the men in your life?”

  She had never before spoken to Grace like that, and she was not sure what her housekeeper’s reaction would be. She looked round and saw that Grace had not taken offence at the question. She decided to be more specific. “You told me the other day that you had met somebody at the spiritualist meetings.

  Remember?”

  Grace picked up a pencil from the desk and examined its tip nonchalantly. “Did I? Well, perhaps I did.”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “You told me about him and then I think I F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  saw him when I went there with you. That man sitting behind us—that good-looking man—the one who had lost his wife.

  That was him, wasn’t it?”

  The pencil became more interesting to Grace. “Could be.”

  “Ah!” said Isabel. “Well, I must say that I thought him rather nice. And he obviously liked you. I could tell.”

  “He’s easy to talk to,” said Grace. “He’s one of those men who listens to what you have to say. I always like that. A gentleman.”

  “Yes,” agreed Isabel. “A gentleman. Now that’s a useful word, isn’t it? And yet everybody’s too embarrassed to use it these days, for some reason. Is it considered snobbish, do you think? Is that it?”

  Grace put the pencil back on the desk. “Maybe,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t think that, though. You get all sorts of gentlemen. It doesn’t matter where they’re from or who they are. They’re just gentlemen. You can trust them.”

  Isabel thought, And then you get men like John Liamor. And you know, or you should know, that he’s not a gentleman. She had known that, of course, and had ignored it, because one of the effects of those who are not gentlemen is that one’s judgement is overcome. You don’t care. But she did not want to think about him now because she realised that time was doing its healing, and he seemed to have become more and more distant. And she liked the feeling of forgetting, of the slow conversion into the state of his being just another person, somebody whom she could think about, if he came to mind, without feeling a pang of loss and of longing.

  She looked at Grace. If this conversation went too far, then Grace would simply remember that she had something to do and would go off and do it, leaving the exchange in midair. This 1 7 2

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h sometimes happened when she had argued herself into a corner over some point and could not retract; the ironing would suddenly call, or something would be remembered upstairs. But now she was showing no signs of ending their conversation, and so Isabel continued.

  “Of course, you may not be the only one to like him,” Isabel said. She tried to make the observation a casual one, but there was an edge to her voice, which Grace noticed. She looked up sharply.

  “Why do you say that?”

  Isabel swallowed hard. How would one put this? “I thought that the medium showed an interest,” she said. “She certainly kept her eyes on him. Over tea afterwards . . .”

  “She often looks at people,” said Grace defensively. “That’s the way they communicate. They have to establish a rapport with the people there so that the other side can get in touch.”

  Isabel thought for a moment. Grace was showing loyalty to the medium, which she should have expected. “But—and please correct me if I’m wrong—wasn’t that message she gave about somebody’s wife being concerned that somebody else was trying to get to know him better—wasn’t that directed at your friend? Didn’t you see his reaction?”

  Grace pursed her lips. “I wasn’t watching very closely,”

  she said.

  “Well, I was,” said Isabel. “And I could tell that he thought the message was for him.
It was as if somebody had hit him over the head with a rolled-up newspaper.”

  Grace sniffed. “I don’t know. Some of these messages are rather general. That could have been for anybody there. Most of the men who go to these meetings have lost their wives, you know. That man isn’t the only one.”

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  Isabel stared at Grace. Her housekeeper had many merits, she thought. She was direct in her manner, she was utterly truthful, and she had no time for hypocrisy. But when she chose to deny the obvious, she could do so with a tenacity that was infinitely frustrating.

  “Grace,” she said. “I didn’t want to spell it out, but you force me to do so. I thought the medium had eyes just for that man.

  She was devouring him. Now then, imagine that you are a medium and you notice that the man you’re after is getting a bit too friendly with another woman. What do you do? Suddenly you discover that the wife is coming through from the other side and, lo and behold, she tells him that the opposition is bad for him. And since he believes it’s his wife talking, he takes the warning seriously. End of romance for . . . well, sorry to put it this way, but, end of possible romance for you.”

  While Isabel was talking, Grace had fixed her with an unblinking stare. Now, picking up the pencil again, she twirled it gently between her fingers. Then she laughed.

  “But what if the wife has got it right? What if I’m not good for him? What then?”

  Isabel thought quickly. Her analysis, which she was sure was true, was based on the assumption that the medium was inventing the message. It was inconceivable to her that there was any communication with the dead wife, and so she had to think this. But if, like Grace, one thought that the message could be genuine, then quite another conclusion might be reached.

  “If you believe that,” she said, “then I suppose you might keep away from each other.”

  “Exactly,” said Grace.

  Isabel was puzzled. Most women did not abandon a man to 1 7 4

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h another woman without at least some attempt at a fight. And yet Grace seemed to be prepared to hand victory to the medium.

  “I’m surprised that you’re giving up so easily,” she said. “In my view, that woman is resorting to a cheap trick. And you’re letting her get away with it.”

  “I may not agree,” said Grace. “So there we are.” She looked at her watch and turned away. The conversation had come to an end. “There’s work to be done,” she said. “What about you? Is the Review up to date?”

  Isabel rose to her feet. “It never is,” she said. “It’s a Sisyphean labour for me. I push a rock up a hill and then it rolls down again.”

  “Everybody’s job is like that,” said Grace. “I wash things and they become dirty and need washing again. You publish one set of articles and another sack of them comes in. Even the Queen’s job is like that. She opens one bridge and they build another.

  She signs one law and they pass another.” She sighed, as if weighed down by the thought of the royal burden.

  “Our lot is labour,” said Isabel.

  Grace, who had picked up a piece of paper from the floor, nodded. “Consider the lilies of the field,” she said, “they neither . . .”

  “Toil nor spin,” supplied Isabel.

  “That’s right,” Grace went on, completing the quotation:

  “And even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

  “Solomon,” mused Isabel. “What do you think his glory was like? Gold trappings and all that sort of thing?”

  Grace examined the piece of paper she had retrieved from the floor. It was a page detached from a manuscript—something about sorrow and loss. It would never be reunited with its fel-F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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  low pages, she thought, as she placed it on the desk. “I suppose so. Heavy robes with lots of gold. Very hot for that part of the world. Most uncomfortable. Have you seen the paintings of Mary, Queen of Scots? How hot and uncomfortable they must have been in those dresses. And they had no deodorants, you know.”

  “But everybody was in the same boat,” said Isabel. “I think they didn’t notice.” She paused, remembering her trip to Russia in the dying days of Communism, when there was nothing to be seen in the shops but echoing emptiness. She had travelled in the Moscow underground at the height of the rush hour, and the shortage of soap and the nonexistence of deodorant had made itself evident. She had noticed, but did the Russians?

  “There was a very old man who lived near my uncle in Kelso,” Grace said. “I remember him as a child, when I went down there to stay with my uncle and aunt. He used to sit outside his front door, staring out onto the fields. They said that he was past his ninety-eighth birthday and that he hadn’t washed since the hot-water system in his cottage broke down twenty years before. He claimed that this explained his longevity.”

  “Nonsense,” said Isabel, but she immediately thought, Was it really nonsense? There were friendly bacteria, were there not?

  Colonies of tiny beings who lived on us in perfect harmony with their hosts and were ready to deal with the real invaders, the unfriendly infections, when they arrived; and yet at every bath we depleted their ranks, washing away their cities, their dynas-ties, their cultures. So she retracted, and said, “Well, perhaps not.” But Grace had already left the room.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h TO M A S S O ’ S T E L E P H O N E CA L L , when it came later that afternoon, was an invitation to dinner. He apologised for giving her such short notice—he explained that he had tried to contact her earlier—but would she be free that evening? Isabel had a friend who would never accept, as a firm rule, an invitation to do anything that day, as this would suggest that her diary was empty. That was pride, which could deprive one of so much fun; Isabel had no such compunction, and accepted immediately.

  He chose the restaurant, a fish restaurant in Leith, the city’s port. It was in a small stone building that had been a fisherman’s house in simpler days, with a view across a cobbled street to a shipping basin. It had the air of a French bistro, with its plain-board floor, its gingham tablecloths, and the day’s specials written in coloured chalk on a large blackboard. Tomasso looked around quickly and gave Isabel an apologetic look. “They recommended it at the hotel,” he whispered. “I hope that it is all right.” As he leant towards her to whisper, she caught a whiff of cologne, that expensive, spicy smell that she associated with the turn-down scratch-and-sniff pages of the glossy magazines.

  Isabel assumed that he was used to something smarter; he looked so elegant, in his tailored jacket and his expensive shoes with their tasteful buckles. “It’s very good,” she said. “Everyone knows this place.”

  Her comment seemed to reassure him, and he relaxed.

  He looked around again. “It’s difficult when you’re away from home,” he said. “If we were in Bologna, or Milan even, I’d know where to take you. When you’re abroad, you’re so vulnerable.”

  “It’s hard to see you as vulnerable,” she said, and immediately she regretted this, as he gave her a curious look.

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  “But you don’t know me,” he said. “How can you tell?”

  Isabel looked at him, noticing what she had not noticed earlier on—the silk tie, the collar of his shirt, which was hard shiny white, as if it had been starched; the perfectly groomed hair, dark auburn plastered back so scrupulously, not a strand out of place. He had that look about him, the look which Isabel described as classic dancing instructor, a look which normally she would have dismissed, or written off as the outward sign of an inward vanity, but which now, for some unfathomable reason, pleased her. And she realised that as they had entered the restaurant, she had felt a thrill of pride to be seen with this man; she wanted others to see her with him. And that, she realised, was
what people felt when in the company of the beautiful, and why they sought that company; beauty, glamour, sexual appeal rub off on those around the blessed object.

  They were shown to their table, beside the window. She sat down; she had not looked at the other diners, and now did. A woman two tables away who was looking at her discreetly, and at Tomasso, turned away briefly so as not to be seen staring, and now looked back. Isabel recognised her, but could not work out why. They smiled at one another.

  Tomasso looked at the other table. “Your friends?”

  “Friends I don’t really know,” said Isabel. “That is what this city is like. It’s not very big.”

  “I like it,” said Tomasso. “I feel as if I’m in Siena, or somewhere like that. But more exciting—for me, at least. Scotland is very exciting.”

  “It has its moments,” said Isabel. The waiter had arrived and handed her a menu. He was a young man, a student perhaps, with regular features and a wide grin. He smiled at her and then at Tomasso. Tomasso looked up at him, and for a moment Isabel 1 7 8

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h imagined that she saw something, a look, a moment of understanding, pass between them. Or had she? She watched Tomasso’s eyes. He had glanced at the open menu placed in his hands, and now he looked back at the waiter.

  Tomasso asked her whether she could recommend anything, but Isabel did not hear him. She was studying the menu and thinking about what she had seen, if she had seen anything.

  Tomasso repeated his question. “Is there anything you can recommend? I don’t know, you see, these Scottish dishes . . .”

  Isabel looked up from her menu. “I can recommend honesty,” she said. “And kindness. Both of those. I can recommend both of those.”

  The effect of this on the waiter was to make him start. He had his notebook in his hand, and he clutched it to his chest in his surprise. And Tomasso’s head gave a small jolt, as if a string had been pulled.

  Then the waiter laughed, immediately putting a hand up to his mouth. “Not on the menu tonight,” he said. “Not really . . .”