She suddenly asked: ‘You don’t have a photograph of him, do you?’
Cat looked at her in astonishment. ‘Why?’
‘I’m curious. That’s all. I’ve seen most of your boyfriends. But not him.’
Cat shrugged. ‘I’ve got some photos from Sri Lanka through there in the office. He’ll be in some of them.’
‘Please let me see.’
‘I suppose so. If you really want to.’
She rose and disappeared into her office, to reappear a few minutes later with a small folder of photographs. ‘Look at the shots of Galle,’ she said. ‘It’ll make you want to go there.’
Isabel opened the folder and took out the photographs. On the top was a picture of a small island, just a few yards out to sea. The island was topped by a white villa, a tattered flag flying limply from the high point of its roof.
Cat looked over Isabel’s shoulder. ‘Taprobane Island,’ she said. ‘We went there for lunch with a friend. He lives there. It’s the most wonderful place.’
‘And here?’ asked Isabel.
There was a group of ten or twelve people on a beach. A highly coloured fishing boat was drawn up on the sand behind them. ‘That was further down the coast. We went there before we went to a tea plantation – the place where I bought that white tea I gave you. Have you tried it yet?’
‘Not yet,’ muttered Isabel. She was looking at the group of people. Cat was there, and she was standing next to a man, who had an arm around her. But even without that, Isabel could tell.
‘That’s him, isn’t it? That’s Simon?’
Cat glanced at the photograph, and looked away again quickly. ‘Yes.’
‘He’s . . . so good-looking.’ She spoke quietly. ‘And he looks so like my brother. Your father. Isn’t that strange?’
She said nothing else, but moved on to the next photograph. The tea estate. ‘That was where they dried the tea. Over there,’ said Cat. ‘And do you see that man? That one? He showed us round. Tea was his life.’
But she spoke as one who was thinking of something else. Isabel could tell that, and she wondered whether she had planted the seed of something that might help Cat; she hoped that she had. Some women searched for their fathers; some men searched for their mothers. Sometimes it was better to search for neither. But she could never tell Cat that; not directly.
She had a few purchases to make in Bruntsfield, and she went directly from the delicatessen to the fish shop at Holy Corner. She wanted langoustines, and she was pleased to see that there were some, neatly arranged on a marble slab in the window, along with squid and wild salmon. While the fishmonger selected them for her, placing them on a piece of greaseproof paper, she asked him about how they differed from crayfish. ‘Langoustines are saltwater decapods,’ he said. ‘Decapods. Nice word, isn’t it, Isabel? And crayfish, which are crawfish over the Pond, are freshwater decapods. But, if you’re in France, then prawns are called langoustines. As an act of charity towards the humble prawns, I think. To promote them a bit.’
It was an entirely satisfactory conversation. Isabel liked talking to people who knew their subject, and the fishmonger knew all about fish. Many people in shops did not know what they were talking about, she thought. They just sold things; the fishmonger, and people like him, believed in things.
She left the fish shop and wandered down to the newsagent near the post office. She would buy a paper – perhaps two – and a couple of magazines. Scottish Field, perhaps, because it was so full of comforting things: dogs, wildlife, lochs, glens – an unchanging Scotland that started just a mile or two from where she was standing, where the Pentland Hills swept down to the edge of the city. Then, armed with her purchases, she would go back to the house and think about lunch. She was happy.
She sauntered back. The morning was comfortable – warm enough for the time of the year – and the sky was clear. A few gulls, circling overhead, mewled in the wind, and then glided away, disturbed, perhaps, by the sudden appearance of a small formation of geese heading west. The geese were flying low for some reason and she heard the muffled sound of their pinions on the air, that slight thumping sound, punctuated by the calls of the leader. She stood still for a moment, half way down Merchiston Crescent, and watched them pass overhead. Within hours they would be in the Hebrides, at the very edge of Europe, where they would land on the machair, the sweet pastures of the islands.
Jamie was already at home when she arrived. Charlie had slept for much of his outing and was wide awake now. Isabel changed him, and took off his McPherson tartan rompers in favour of a loose white tee-shirt, more suitable for the warmth of the day.
‘We can sit outside,’ she said. ‘A bit later on I’ll make a picnic lunch.’
It had rained the previous day, and although the grass had dried out in the morning sun, the earth was still wet. Jamie decided that he would replant the bulbs that Brother Fox had dug up again. And there were several shrubs that Isabel had ordered from a horticultural catalogue waiting to be planted.
She sat on the blanket, a book beside her, but she did not read. She played with Charlie. He had a small stuffed fox that Jamie had bought him. He loved it.
Jamie worked in the garden for an hour or so and then rejoined them on the rug. Charlie was drowsy now, and had been put, with a feeding cup, on an infant deck chair that rocked gently backwards and forwards. He would drop off to sleep, the beak of the feeding cup still in his mouth.
Isabel looked at Jamie. ‘You’re covered in mud,’ she said. ‘Look, stand up, and I’ll brush it off you.’
She stood beside him. There was mud upon the knees of his trousers, where he had been kneeling. She brushed it off. ‘Mud and Saturdays go well together,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They do.’
She examined his shirt; there were small patches of mud on the sleeves. She brushed these off too, gently, with love.
Brother Fox, unseen, watched them from the shadows of a rhododendron bush. There were the red flowers of the bush above him, and below him the muddy earth in which he made his burrow, his sanctuary. When Isabel and Jamie went inside, briefly, to get the things for lunch, he padded out across the grass and sniffed gently at the sleeping child. Then he turned away and pressed his wet black nose against the stuffed fox. It smelt of milk. Brother Fox took it in his jaws and began to carry it across the lawn. But then, when a sound came from within the house, he dropped the soft toy in the middle of the lawn and slunk back into the shadows.
‘How did that happen?’ asked Jamie.
Isabel put a tray down on the ground and looked at Charlie, still asleep. She did not answer the question because she was not in any mood to solve the problems of others, and all she wanted to say was ‘I am so very happy.’ Which she did; and she was.
Table of Contents
The Comfort of Saturdays
About the Author
Also by Alexander McCall Smith
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
The Comfort of Saturdays Page 21