He nodded and looked back at her briefly, before he looked away again, in misery, she thought.
“It was very good of you to come this evening,” she said gently. “It’s never easy to come and tell somebody that you were keeping something from them. Thank you, Neil.”
She had not intended this to be a signal for him to leave, but that was how he interpreted it. He rose to his feet and put out a hand to shake hands with her. She stood up and took the prof-fered hand, noting that it was trembling.
A F T E R N E I L H A D G O N E she sat in the drawing room, her empty sherry glass at her side, mulling over what her visitor had said. The unexpected meeting had disturbed her in more ways than one. Neil was more upset than she had imagined by what had happened to Mark and was unable to resolve his feelings.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h There was nothing that she could do about that, because he was clearly not prepared to speak about whatever it was that was troubling him. He would recover, of course, but time could provide the only solution for that. Much more disturbing had been the disclosures about insider trading at McDowell’s. She felt that she could not ignore this, now that she had been made aware of it, and although whether or not the firm engaged in that particular form of dishonesty (or was it greed?) had nothing directly to do with her, it became her concern if this had some bearing on Mark’s death. A bearing on Mark’s death: What precisely did this mean? Did it mean that he had been murdered? This was the first time that she had allowed herself to spell out the possibility that clearly. But the question could not be evaded now.
Had Mark been sent to his death because he had threatened to disclose damaging information about somebody in the firm? It seemed outrageous even to pose the question. This was the Scottish financial community, with all its reputation for uprightness and integrity. These people played golf; they frequented the New Club; they were elders—some of them—of the Church of Scotland. She thought of Paul Hogg. He was typical of the sort of people who worked in such firms. He was utterly straightforward; conventional by his own admission, a person one met at the private shows at galleries and who liked Elizabeth Blackadder. These people did not engage in the sort of practises which had been associated with some of those Italian banks or even with the more freewheeling end of the City of London. And they did not commit murder.
But if for a moment one assumed that anybody, even the most outwardly upright, is capable of acting greedily and bending the rules of the financial community (it was not theft, after all, that one was talking about, but the mere misuse of information), might such a person not, if he were faced with exposure, resort to T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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desperate means to protect his reputation? In different, less cen-sorious circles it would probably be less devastating to be exposed as a cheat, simply because there were so many other cheats and because almost everybody would be likely to have been engaged in cheating at some point themselves. There were parts of southern Italy, parts of Naples, for example, she had read, where cheating was the norm and to be honest was to be deviant. But here, in Edinburgh, the possibility of being sent to prison would be unthink-able; how much more attractive, then, would it be to take steps to avoid this, even if those steps involved removing a young man who was getting too close to the truth?
She looked at the telephone. She knew that she had only to call Jamie and he would come. He had said that before, on more than one occasion— You can give me a call anytime, anytime. I like coming round here. I really do.
She left her chair and crossed to the telephone table. Jamie lived in Stockbridge, in Saxe-Coburg Street, in a flat he shared with three others. She had been there once, when he and Cat had been together, and he had cooked a meal for the two of them.
It was a rambling flat, with high ceilings and a stone-flag floor in the hall and in the kitchen. Jamie was the owner, having been bought the flat by his parents when he was a student, and the flatmates were his tenants. As landlord he allowed himself two rooms: a bedroom and a music room, where he gave his music lessons. Jamie, who had graduated with a degree in music, earned his living from teaching bassoon. There was no shortage of pupils, and he supplemented his earnings by playing in a chamber ensemble and as an occasional bassoonist for Scottish Opera. It was, thought Isabel, an ideal existence; and one into which Cat would fit so comfortably. But Cat had not seen it that way, of course, and Isabel feared that she never would.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Jamie was teaching when she called and promised to call her back in half an hour. While she waited for the call, she made herself a sandwich in the kitchen; she did not feel like eating a proper meal. Then, when that was finished, she returned to the drawing room and awaited his call.
Yes, he was free. His last pupil, a talented boy of fifteen whom he was preparing for an examination, had played brilliantly. Now, with the boy sent off home after the lesson, a walk across town to Isabel’s house was just what he wanted. Yes, it would be good to have a drink with Isabel and perhaps some singing afterwards.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t feel in the mood. I want to talk to you.”
He had picked up her anxiety and the plan to walk was dropped in favour of a quicker bus ride.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I really need to discuss something with you. I’ll tell you when you come.”
The buses, so maligned by Grace, were on time. Within twenty minutes, Jamie was at the house and was sitting with Isabel in the kitchen, where she had started to prepare him an omelette. She had taken a bottle of wine from the cellar and had poured a glass for him and for herself. Then she started to explain about the visit to the flat and her meeting with Hen and Neil. He listened gravely, and when she began to recount the conversation she had had with Neil earlier that evening, his eyes were wide with concern.
“Isabel,” he said as she stopped speaking. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”
“That I should keep out of things that don’t concern me?”
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“Yes, absolutely.” He paused. “But I know from past experience that you never do. So I won’t say it, perhaps.”
“Good.”
“Even if I think it.”
“Fair enough.”
Jamie grimaced. “So what do we do?”
“That’s why I asked you to come round,” said Isabel, refilling his glass of wine. “I had to talk the whole thing through with somebody.”
She had been speaking while she prepared the omelette.
Now it was ready and she slid it onto a plate that had been warming on the side of the stove.
“Chanterelle mushrooms,” she said. “They transform an omelette.”
Jamie looked down gratefully at the generous omelette and its surrounding of salad.
“You’re always cooking for me,” he said. “And I never cook for you. Never.”
“You’re a man,” said Isabel in a matter-of-fact way. “The thought doesn’t enter your head.”
She realised, the moment she had spoken, that this was an unkind and inappropriate thing to say. She might have said it to Toby, and with justification, as she doubted whether he would ever cook for anybody, but it was not the right thing to say to Jamie.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That just came out. I didn’t mean that.”
Jamie had put his knife and fork down beside his plate. He was staring at the omelette. And he had started to cry.
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OH MY GOODNESS, Jamie. I’m so sorry. That was a terrible thing to say. I had no idea that you would . . .”
Jamie shook his head vigorously. He was not crying loudly, but there were tears. “No,” he said, wiping at his eyes with his handkerchief. “It’s not that at all. It’s not what you said. It’s nothin
g to do with it.”
Isabel sighed with relief. She had not offended him, then, but what could have provoked this rather extraordinary outburst of emotion on his part?
Jamie picked up his knife and fork and started to cut into his omelette, but put them down again.
“It’s the salad,” he said. “You’ve put in raw onion. My eyes are really sensitive to that. I can’t go anywhere near raw onion.”
Isabel let out a peal of laughter. “Thank God. I thought that those were real tears and that I’d said a dreadful, insensitive thing to you. I thought that it was my fault.” She reached forward and took the plate away from the place in front of him. Then she scraped off the salad, and gave it back to him. “Just an omelette.
As nature intended. Nothing else.”
“That’s perfect,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. It’s genetic, I T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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think. My mother had exactly the same problem, and a cousin of hers too. We’re allergic to raw onion.”
“And I thought for a moment that it had something to do with Cat . . . and with the time you cooked dinner for the two of us in Saxe-Coburg Street.”
Jamie, who had been smiling, now looked pensive. “I remember,” he said.
Isabel had not intended to mention Cat, but now she had, and she knew what the next question would be. He always asked it, whenever she saw him.
“What is Cat up to?” he asked. “What is she doing?”
Isabel reached for her glass and poured herself some wine.
She had not intended to drink anything more after her sherry with Neil, but there in the intimacy of the kitchen, with the yeasty smell of mushrooms assailing her nostrils, she decided otherwise; akrasia, weakness of the will, again. It would feel safe sitting there with Jamie, talking to him and sipping at a glass of wine. She knew that it would make her feel better.
“Cat,” she said, “is doing what she always does. She’s quite busy in the shop. She’s getting on with life.” She trailed off weakly. It was such a trite reply, but what more was there to say?
To ask such a question, anyway, was the equivalent of asking
“How are you?” on meeting a friend. One expects only one answer, an anodyne assurance that all is well, later qualified, perhaps, by some remark about the real situation, if the real situation is quite different. Stoicism first, and then the truth, might be the way in which this could be expressed.
“And that man she’s seeing,” said Jamie quietly. “Toby. What about him? Does she bring him round here?”
“The other day,” said Isabel. “I saw him the other day. But not here.”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Jamie reached for his glass. He was frowning, as if struggling to find precisely the right words. “Where, then?”
“In town,” Isabel replied quickly. She hoped that this would be the end of this line of questioning, but it was not.
“Was he . . . was he with Cat? With her?”
“No,” said Isabel. “He was by himself.” She thought: That is, he was by himself to begin with.
Jamie stared at her. “What was he doing?”
Isabel smiled. “You seem very interested in him,” she said.
“And he’s not really very interesting at all, I’m afraid.” She hoped that this aside would reassure him as to whose side she was on, and that the conversation might move on. But it had the opposite effect. Jamie appeared to interpret it as paving the way for further discussion.
“What was he doing, then?”
“He was walking along the street. That’s all. Walking along the street . . . in those crushed-strawberry corduroys that he likes to wear.” The last part of her answer was unnecessary; it was sarcastic, and Isabel immediately regretted it. That was two unpleasant things she had said tonight, she thought. The first was that gratuitous remark about men not cooking; the second was an unworthy remark about Toby’s trousers. It was easy, terribly easy, to become with time a middle-aged spinster with a sharp tongue.
She would have to guard against this. So she added, “They’re not too bad, crushed-strawberry corduroys. Presumably Cat likes them. She must . . .”
Again she stopped herself. She had been about to say that Cat must have found crushed-strawberry corduroys attractive, but that would have been tactless. It implied, did it not, that Jamie, and his trousers did not measure up. She allowed herself a furtive glance at Jamie’s trousers. She had never noticed them T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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before, largely because her interest in Jamie lay not in his trousers, but in his face, and his voice. In fact, it lay in the whole person; and that, surely, was the difference between Toby and Jamie. You could not like Toby as a person (unless you yourself were the wrong sort of person); you could only like him for his physique. Yes, she thought, that’s all. Toby was a sex object in crushed-strawberry corduroys, that’s all he was. And Jamie, by contrast, was . . . well, Jamie was just beautiful, with those high cheekbones of his and his skin and his voice which must surely melt the heart. And she wondered, too, what they were like as lovers. Toby would be all vigour while Jamie would be quiet, and gentle, and caressing, like a woman really. Which might be a problem, perhaps, but not one that she could realistically do very much about. For a few moments, a few completely impermissible moments, she thought: I could teach him. And then she stopped.
Such thoughts were as unacceptable as imagining people being crushed by avalanches. Avalanches. The roar. The sudden confusion of crushed strawberry. The tidal wave of snow, and then the preternatural quiet.
“Did you speak to him?” asked Jamie.
Isabel returned from her thoughts. “Speak to whom?”
“To . . . Toby.” It clearly involved some effort for him to bring himself to pronounce the name.
Isabel shook her head. “No,” she said. “I just saw him.” This, of course, was a half-truth. There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one. Isabel had herself written a short article on the matter, following the publication of Sissela Bok’s philosophical monograph Lying. She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent 1 2 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h thought she had revised her position. Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reveal everything in response to a casual question by one who had no right to the information.
“You’re blushing,” said Jamie. “You’re not telling me something.”
So that, thought Isabel, was that. The whole edifice of philosophical debate on the fine nuances of truth telling is ultimately undermined by a simple biological process. Tell a fib and you go red in the face. It sounded so much less dignified than it did in the pages of Sissela Bok, but it was absolutely true. All the great issues were reducible to the simple facts of everyday human life and the trite metaphors, the axiomata, by which people lived. The international economic system and its underlying assumptions: Finders keepers, losers weepers. The uncertainty of life: Step on a crack and the bears will get you (which she had believed in so vividly as a child, walking up Morningside Road with Fersie McPherson, her nurse, carefully avoiding the cracks in the pavement).
“If I’m blushing,” she said, “it’s because I’m not telling you the whole truth. For which I apologise. I didn’t tell you what I did because I feel embarrassed about it, and for . . .” She hesitated.
There was another reason for not revealing what had happened, but now she had embarked on the road of disclosure; she would have to tell Jamie everything. He would sense it if she did not, and she did not want him to feel that she did not trust him. Did she trust him? Yes, she did. Of cou
rse she did. A young man like that, with his en brosse hair and his voice, could only be trustwor-thy. Jamies can be trusted; Tobys cannot.
Jamie watched her as she spoke. Now she continued: “. . . for T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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the reason that there is something that I did not want you to know. Not because I don’t trust you, which I do, but because I think that it has nothing to do with us. I saw something that we cannot do anything about. So I thought that there was no reason to tell you.”
“What is it?” he asked. “You have to tell me now. You can’t leave it at that.”
Isabel nodded. He was right. She could not leave the matter like this. “When I saw Toby in town,” she began, “he was walking down Dundas Street. I was on a bus and I saw him. I decided to follow him—please don’t ask me why, because I don’t know if I can give an adequate explanation for that. Sometimes one just does things—ridiculous things—that one can’t explain. So I decided to follow him.
“He walked down Northumberland Street. Then, when we got to Nelson Street, he crossed the road and rang the bell on a ground-floor flat. There was a girl who came to the door. He embraced her, pretty passionately I think, and then the door closed, and that was that.”
Jamie looked at her. For a moment he said nothing, then, very slowly, he lifted his glass and took a sip of his wine. Isabel noticed the fine hands and, for a moment, in his eyes, the reflected light from the wineglass.
“His sister,” he said quietly. “He has a sister who lives in Nelson Street. I’ve actually met her. She’s a friend of a friend.”
Isabel sat quite still. She had not expected this. “Oh,” she said. And then, “Oh.”
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YES,” SAID JAMIE. “Toby has a sister in Nelson Street. She works in the same property company as my friend does. They’re both surveyors—not the sort who go out with theodolites, but val-uers.” He laughed. “And you thought that the result of your gumshoe activities was that you had discovered Toby being unfaithful. Ha! I wish you had, Isabel, but you haven’t. That’ll teach you to follow people.”
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