The Sunday Philosophy Club id-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Isabel had now recovered sufficient composure to laugh at herself. “I more or less hid behind a parked van,” she said. “You should have seen me.”

  Jamie smiled. “It must have been exciting stuff. Pity about the result, but there we are.”

  “Well,” said Isabel. “I enjoyed myself anyway. And it teaches me a lesson about having a nasty, suspicious mind.”

  “Which you don’t have,” said Jamie. “You are not suspicious.

  You are absolutely straight down the middle.”

  “You’re very kind,” said Isabel. “But I have bags of failings.

  Same as anybody else. Bags.”

  Jamie lifted up his glass again. “She’s quite a nice girl, his sister,” he said. “I met her at a party which Roderick—that’s my sur-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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  veyor friend—gave a few months ago. It was a rather different crowd of people from my own crowd, but it was good fun. And I thought that she was rather nice. Very attractive. Very tall, with blonde hair. A model type.”

  Isabel said nothing. Then she closed her eyes, and imagined herself for a moment on the corner of Nelson Street, half hidden by the van, seeing Toby at the door, and the door opening. She could picture it quite clearly, as she had always been able to recall visual details with accuracy. Now the picture was clear. The door opened and the girl appeared. She was not tall, for Toby had stooped to embrace her, and she did not have blonde hair. Her hair, quite unmistakeably, was dark. Black or brown. Not blonde.

  She opened her eyes. “It was not his sister,” she said. “It was somebody else.”

  Jamie was silent. Isabel imagined the conflict within him: dis-pleasure, or even anger, at the fact that Cat was being deceived, and satisfaction that there was now a chance that Toby could be exposed. He would be thinking, too, it occurred to her, that he might be able to take Toby’s place, which is what she herself had thought. But she at least knew that it would not be that simple; Jamie was unlikely to know that. He would be optimistic.

  Isabel decided to take the initiative. “You can’t tell her,” she said. “If you went and told her, she would be angry with you.

  Even if she believes it—which she may not—she would feel like shooting the messenger. I guarantee that you would regret it.”

  “But she should know,” protested Jamie. “It’s . . . it’s outrageous that he should be carrying on with somebody else. She should be told. We owe it to her.”

  “There are some things one has to find out oneself,” said Isabel. “You have to let people make some mistakes themselves.”

  “Well, I for one don’t accept that,” Jamie retorted. “This is 1 3 2

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h a simple case. He’s a dog. We know it; she doesn’t. We have to tell her.”

  “But the whole point is that if we do that, we’re only going to anger her. Don’t you see? Even if she went and found out that what we said was true, she would still be angry with us for telling her. I don’t want her to . . . to write you off. But she will if you do that.”

  Jamie thought about what she had said. So she wanted him to get back with Cat. She had never actually said as much, but now it was in the open. And it was just as he had hoped it would be.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I see what you mean.” He paused. “But why do you think he’s two-timing her? If he likes this other girl—

  she’s presumably his sister’s flatmate—then why doesn’t he just go off with her? Why use Cat like this?”

  “Don’t you see?” said Isabel.

  “No, I don’t. Maybe I just don’t get it.”

  “Cat is wealthy,” said Isabel. “Cat owns a business, and quite a bit else—a lot else actually, as you may or may not know. If you were somebody who was interested in money, and Toby is, I should think, then you may want to get your hands on some of it.”

  Jamie’s astonishment was obvious. “He’s after her money?”

  Isabel nodded. “I’ve known quite a few cases like that. I’ve seen people marry for money and then think that they can behave as they like. They get the security of the money and carry on behind their wife’s or husband’s back. It’s not all that unusual. Think of all those young women who marry wealthy older men. Do you think they behave like nuns?”

  “I suppose not,” said Jamie.

  “Well, there you are. Of course, this is only one explanation.

  The other is that he simply wants to play the field. It’s possible 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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  that he really likes Cat, but that he likes other women too. That’s perfectly possible.”

  Isabel refilled Jamie’s glass. They were getting through the bottle quite quickly, but it was turning into an emotional evening and the wine was helping. There was another bottle in the fridge if needed, and they could broach that later. As long as I keep control, thought Isabel. As long as I maintain enough of a level head so that I don’t tell Jamie that if the truth be told, I’m half in love with him myself, and that there is nothing I would like more than to kiss that brow and run my fingers over that hair and hold him against me.

  T H E F O L L OW I N G M O R N I N G Grace, who arrived early, said to herself: two glasses, an empty bottle. Crossing to the fridge, she saw the half-full corked bottle, and added, And a half. She opened the dishwasher and saw the omelette plate and the knife and fork, which told her that the visitor was Jamie: Isabel always cooked an omelette when he stayed for dinner. Grace was glad that Isabel had that young man in. She liked him, and she knew the background with Cat. She suspected, too, what Isabel was planning; that she would be plotting to get the two of them together again. She could forget that. People rarely went back that way. Once you were off somebody, then you tended to stay off them. That, at least, was Grace’s experience. She had rarely found that she rehabilitated somebody once she had taken the decision to write them off.

  She prepared the coffee. Isabel would be down soon, and she liked to have the coffee ready for her when she came into the kitchen. The Scotsman had arrived and Grace had brought it 1 3 4

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h through from the front hall, where it was lying on the mosaic floor beneath the letter box. Now it was on the table, front page up, and Grace glanced at it while she ladled the coffee into the percolator. A resignation had been called for from a Glasgow politician suspected of fraud. (No surprise, thought Grace; none at all.) And there beneath it, a picture of that person of whom Isabel did not approve, the popinjay, as she called him. He had been crossing Princes Street and had collapsed, to be rushed off to the Infirmary. Grace read on: it had been a suspected heart attack, but no—and this was truly astonishing—he was found to have suffered a large split in his side, fortunately dealt with by quick and competent surgical stitching. He had made a full recovery, but then the diagnosis had been revealed: he had burst with self-importance.

  Grace put down the coffee spoon. Surely not. Impossible.

  She picked up the newspaper to examine it further, and saw the date. The first of April. She smiled. The Scotsman’s little joke—

  how funny; but how apt.

  C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N

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  IN SPITE OF THE FACT that he had drunk three glasses of wine and Isabel was towards the end of her second, Jamie had at first been doubtful about Isabel’s proposition, but she had won him over, wheedling him, persuading him that they should at least give it a try.

  To do what? To go to see Paul Hogg, of course, as the first step in finding out what it was that Mark Fraser had discovered, and about whom he had discovered it. Sitting at the kitchen table, the chanterelle omelette consumed, Jamie had listened intently as she explained to him about the conversation with Neil, and about how she felt that she could not ignore what he had revealed. She wanted to take the matter further, but she did not want to do it by herself. It would be safer, she said, with two, although the nature of the dan
ger, if any, was not expanded upon.

  At last Jamie had agreed. “If you insist,” he said. “If you really insist, I’m prepared to go with you. But it’s only because I don’t want you charging off into this by yourself. It’s not because I think it’s a good idea.”

  As Isabel saw Jamie out of the house later that evening, they had agreed that she would telephone him at some point in the 1 3 6

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h next few days, to discuss how they were to proceed with Paul Hogg. At least she had an acquaintanceship with him, which would enable them to seek him out. But exactly how this would be done, and on what pretext, remained to be worked out.

  Barely had Jamie left the house than a thought occurred to Isabel. It almost sent her running after him to tell him about it, but she desisted. It was not all that late, and several neighbours walked their dogs along the street at that hour. She did not wish to be seen running after young men, in the street at least (though the metaphorical context would be as bad). That was not a situation in which anybody would wish to be seen, in much the same way as Dorothy Parker had pronounced that she would not wish to be caught, stuck at the hips, while climbing through anybody else’s window. She smiled at the thought. What was so funny about this? It was difficult to explain, but it just was. Perhaps it was the fact that somebody who would never climb through a window nonetheless expressed a view on the possibility of climbing through a window. But why was that amusing? Perhaps there was no explanation, just as there was no rationale for the intense humour of the remark she had once heard at a lecture given by Domenica Legge, a great authority on Anglo-Norman history. Professor Legge had said: “We must remember that the nobles of the time did not blow their noses in quite the way in which we blow our own noses: they had no handkerchiefs. ” This had been greeted with peals of laughter, and she still found it painfully amusing. But there was really nothing funny about it at all. It was a serious business, no doubt, having no handkerchiefs; mundane, certainly, but serious nonetheless. (What did the nobles do, then? The answer was, apparently, straw. How awful. How scratchy. And if the nobles were reduced to using straw, then what did those beneath them in the social order use? The answer was, of course, vivid: they blew 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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  their nose on their fingers, as many people still did. She had seen it herself once or twice, though not in Edinburgh, of course.) It was not of handkerchiefs, or the lack of handkerchiefs, that she thought, but of Elizabeth Blackadder. Paul Hogg had bought the Blackadder which she had wanted. The exhibition at which he had bought it was a short one, and those who had bought paintings would by now have been allowed to remove them. This meant that anybody who wanted a further look at the painting would have to do so in Paul Hogg’s flat in Great King Street. She could be just such a person. She could telephone Paul Hogg and ask to see the painting again, as she was thinking of asking Elizabeth Blackadder, who still had her studio in the Grange, to paint a similar picture for her. This was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. An artist might not wish to make a mere copy of an existing work, but might be quite willing to do something similar.

  A lie, she thought, but only a lie at this stage of the plan’s conception; lies can become truths. She had indeed planned to buy a Blackadder and there was no reason why she should not commission one. In fact, she would do exactly that, which meant that she could see Paul Hogg on these grounds with a perfectly good conscience. Not even Sissela Bok, author of Lying, could object. Then, having examined the Blackadder again, which he would be proudly displaying on his wall, she would delicately raise the possibility that Mark Fraser might have found out something awkward in the course of his work at McDowell’s. Would Paul Hogg have any idea of what that might be? And if he did not, then she might be more specific and say to him that if he was attached to the young man—and he clearly had been fond of him, judging from his emotional reaction to what she had said in the Vincent Bar—then might he not be prepared to make some enquiries so as to prove or disprove the worrying hypothesis that 1 3 8

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h all of this seemed to be pointing towards? It would have to be handled delicately, but it could be done. He might agree. And all the time, just to give her confidence, Jamie would be sitting beside her on Paul Hogg’s chintzy sofa. We think, she could say; we wonder. That sounded much more reasonable than the same thing expressed in the singular.

  She telephoned Jamie the next morning at the earliest decent hour; nine o’clock, in her view. Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again. On answering the telephone one should, if at all possible, give one’s name, but only after saying good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. None of these conventions, she conceded, was observed to any great extent by others, and not, she noted, by Jamie himself, who answered her call that morning with an abrupt “Yes.”

  “You don’t sound very welcoming,” said Isabel disapprovingly.

  “And how do I know who you are? ‘Yes’ is not enough. And if you had been too busy to take the call, would you simply have said ‘No’?”

  “Isabel?” he said.

  “Had you told me who you were, then I would have reciprocated the courtesy. Your last question would then have been otiose.”

  Jamie laughed. “How long is this going to take?” he asked. “I have to get a train to Glasgow at ten. We’re rehearsing for Parsifal. ”

  “Poor you,” said Isabel. “Poor singers. What an endurance test.”

  “Yes,” Jamie agreed. “Wagner makes my head sore. But I really must get ready.”

  Isabel quickly explained her idea to him and then waited for his reaction.

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  “If you insist,” Jamie said. “I suppose it sounds feasible enough.

  I’ll come along if you insist. Really insist.”

  He could have been more accommodating, thought Isabel after she had rung off, but at least he had agreed. Now she would have to telephone Paul Hogg at McDowell’s and ask him if and when it would be convenient to visit him. She was confident that he would welcome her suggestion. They had got on well together, and apart from the moment when she had inadvertently triggered in him a painful memory, the evening they had spent together had been a success. He had suggested, had he not, that she meet his fiancée, whose name she had forgotten but who could be referred to for the time being simply as “fiancée.”

  She telephoned at 10:45, a time when she believed there was the greatest chance that anybody who worked in an office would be having their morning coffee, and in fact he was, when she asked him.

  “Yes. I’m sitting here with the FT on my desk. I should be reading it, but I’m not. I’m looking out the window and drinking my coffee.”

  “But I’m sure that you’re about to take important decisions,”

  she said. “And one of them will be whether you would allow me to look at your Blackadder again. I want to ask her to do one for me, and I thought that it might be helpful to look at yours again.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Anybody can look at it. It’s still in the exhibition. It has another week to run.”

  Isabel was momentarily taken by surprise. Of course she should have telephoned the gallery to find out whether the show was still on, and if it was, she should have waited until he had collected his painting.

  “But it would be very nice to see you anyway,” Paul Hogg went on helpfully. “I have another Blackadder you might like to see.”

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h They made the arrangement. Isabel would come the following evening, at six, for drinks. Paul Hogg was perfectly happy for her to bring somebody with her too, a young ma
n who was very interested in art and whom she would like him to meet. Of course that would be perfectly convenient, and nice too.

  It was so easy, thought Isabel. It was so easy dealing with people who were well-mannered, as Paul Hogg was. They knew how to exchange those courtesies which made life go smoothly, which was what manners were all about. They were intended to avoid friction between people, and they did this by regulating the contours of an encounter. If each party knew what the other should do, then conflict would be unlikely. And this worked at every level, from the most minor transaction between two people to dealings between nations. International law, after all, was simply a system of manners writ large.

  Jamie had good manners. Paul Hogg had good manners. Her mechanic, the proprietor of the small backstreet garage where she took her rarely used car for servicing, had perfect manners.

  Toby, by contrast, had bad manners; not on the surface, where he thought, quite wrongly, that it counted, but underneath, in his attitude to others. Good manners depended on paying moral attention to others; it required one to treat them with complete moral seriousness, to understand their feelings and their needs.

  Some people, the selfish, had no inclination to do this, and it always showed. They were impatient with those whom they thought did not count: the old, the inarticulate, the disadvantaged. The person with good manners, however, would always listen to such people and treat them with respect.

  How utterly shortsighted we had been to listen to those who thought that manners were a bourgeois affectation, an irrelevance, which need no longer be valued. A moral disaster had ensued, 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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  because manners were the basic building block of civil society.

  They were the method of transmitting the message of moral consideration. In this way an entire generation had lost a vital piece of the moral jigsaw, and now we saw the results: a society in which nobody would help, nobody would feel for others; a society in which aggressive language and insensitivity were the norm.