The Sunday Philosophy Club id-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Of course.”

  “Could you answer the phone? Tell anybody that I’m working, which I intend to be. Tell them that I’ll be able to phone them back tomorrow.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Except Cat. And Jamie. I’ll speak to them, although I hope that they don’t phone today. Everybody else will have to wait.”

  Grace approved. She liked to be in control of the house, and being asked to turn people away was a most welcome instruction.

  “It’s about time you did this,” she said. “You’re at everybody’s beck and call. It’s ridiculous. You deserve a bit of time to yourself.”

  Isabel smiled. Grace was her greatest ally. Whatever disagreements they might have, in the final analysis she knew that Grace had her interests firmly at heart. This was loyalty of a sort which was rare in an age of self-indulgence. It was an old-fashioned virtue of the type which her philosophical colleagues extolled but could never themselves match. And Grace, in spite of her tendency to disapprove of certain people, had many other 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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  virtues. She believed in a God who would ultimately do justice to those to whom injustice had been done; she believed in work, and the importance of never being late or missing a day through

  “so-called illness,” and she believed in never ignoring a request for help from anybody, no matter their condition, no matter the fault that lay behind their plight. This was true generosity of spirit, concealed behind a sometimes slightly brusque exterior.

  “You’re wonderful, Grace,” Isabel said. “Where would any of us be without you?”

  S H E WO R K E D T H E E N T I R E morning. The post had brought a further bundle of submissions for the review and she entered the details of each of these in the book which she kept for the purpose. She suspected that several would not survive the first stage of screening; although one of these, “Gambling: An Ethical Analysis,” revealed, at first glance, some possibilities. What ethical problems did gambling occasion? Isabel thought that there was a straightforward utilitarian argument to this, at the very least. If you had six children, as gamblers so often seemed to do (another sort of gambling? she wondered) then one had a duty to steward one’s resources well, for the children’s sakes. But if one was well-off, with no dependents, then was there anything intrinsically wrong in placing, if not one’s last sou, then one’s surplus sous, on a bet? Isabel thought for a moment. Kantians would be in no doubt about the answer to that, but that was the problem with Kantian morality: it was so utterly predictable, and left no room for subtlety; rather like Kant himself, she thought. In a purely philosophical sense, it must be very demanding to be German.

  Far better to be French (irresponsible and playful) or Greek (grave, but with a light touch). Of course, her own heritage, she 1 6 4

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h thought, was enviable: Scottish commonsense philosophy on one side and American pragmatism on the other. That was a perfect combination. There had, of course, been those years at Cambridge, and that meant Wittgensteinism and a dose of linguistic philosophy, but that never did anybody any harm, as long as one remembered to reject it as one matured. And, I may as well admit it, I am mature, she thought, as she looked out the window of her study, into the garden, with its luxuriant shrubs and the first blossoms of white coming out on the magnolia.

  She selected one of the more promising articles to read that morning. If it was worthwhile, she could then send it out for peer review that afternoon, and that would give her the sense of accom-plishment that she needed. The title had caught her attention, largely because of the topicality of genetics—which formed the background to the problem—and because of the problem itself, which was, once again, truth telling. She was surrounded, she felt, by issues of truth telling. There had been that article on truth telling in sexual relationships, which had so entertained her and which had already been commented upon favourably by one of the journal’s referees. Then there had been the Toby problem, which had brought the dilemma into the very centre of her own moral life. The world, it seemed, was based on lies and half-truths of one sort or another, and one of the tasks of morality was to help us negotiate our way round these. Yes, there were so many lies: and yet the sheer power of truth was in no sense dimmed. Had Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn not said, in his Nobel address, “One word of truth will conquer the whole world.” Was this wishful thinking on the part of one who had lived in an entanglement of Orwellian state-sponsored lies, or was it a justifiable faith in the ability of truth to shine through the darkness? It had to be the latter; if it was the former, then life would be too bleak to continue. In that 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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  respect, Camus was right: the ultimate philosophical question was suicide. If there was no truth, then there would be no meaning, and our life was Sisyphean. And if life were Sisyphean, then what point in continuing with it? She reflected for a moment on the list of bleak adjectives. Orwellian, Sisyphean, Kafkaesque.

  Were there others? It was a great honour to a philosopher, or a writer, to become an adjective. She had seen “Hemingwayesque,”

  which might be applied to a life of fishing and bullfighting, but there was no adjective, so far, for the world of failure and run-down loci chosen by Graham Greene as the setting for his moral dramas. “Greene-like”? she wondered. Far too ugly. “Greeneish,”

  perhaps. Of course, “Greeneland” existed.

  And here was truth telling again, this time in a paper from a philosopher in the National University of Singapore, a Dr. Chao.

  “Doubts About Father” was the title, and the subtitle was “Paternalism and Truthfulness in Genetics.” Isabel moved from her desk to the chair near the window—the chair in which she liked to read her papers. As she did so, the telephone in the hall rang.

  After three rings it was answered. She waited; no call came from Grace. So she turned her attention to “Doubts About Father.”

  The paper, which was clearly written, began with a story.

  Clinical geneticists, Dr. Chao said, were often confronted with misattributed paternity, and these cases posed difficult issues of how, if at all, these mistakes should be revealed. Here is a case, he wrote, which involved just such an issue.

  Mr. and Mrs. B. had given birth to a child with a genetic illness. Although the child could be expected to live, the condition was sufficiently serious to raise the issue of whether Mrs. B.

  should be tested during future pregnancies. Some fetuses would be affected, while others would not be. The only way to tell was prenatal screening.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h So far, so good, thought Isabel. Of course, there were broader issues about screening, including major ones of eugenics, but Dr.

  Chao did not seem concerned with those, which was quite right: this was about truth telling and paternalism. Dr. Chao continued: Mr. and Mrs. B. had to have a genetic test to confirm their carrier status. In order for this particular condition to manifest itself, both parents of the affected child would have to be carriers of the relevant gene. When the doctor received the test results, however, these showed that while Mrs. B. was a carrier, Mr. B. was not. The child who had been born with the condition, then, must have been by another man. Mrs. B. (Mrs. Bovary perhaps, thought Isabel), who was not described, had a lover.

  One solution was to tell Mrs. B. in private and then to leave it up to her to decide whether she would confess to her husband.

  At first blush this solution seemed attractive, as it would mean that one could avoid being responsible for possibly breaking up the marriage. The objection to this, though, was that if Mr. B.

  were not told, then he would go through life thinking that he was carrier of a gene which he did not, in fact, possess. Was he entitled to have this knowledge conveyed to him by the doctor, with whom he had a professional relationship? The doctor clearly owed him a duty, but what were the limits of this?


  Isabel turned the last page of the article. There were the references, all set out in the correct form, but there was no conclusion. Dr. Chao did not know how to resolve the issue that he had raised. That was reasonable enough: it was quite legitimate to ask questions which one could not answer, or which one did not want to answer. But, on the whole, Isabel preferred papers which took a position.

  It occurred to Isabel to ask Grace for her view on this. It was time for morning coffee, anyway, and she had an excuse to go 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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  through to the kitchen. There she found Grace, unloading the dishwasher.

  “I am going to tell you a rather tricky story,” said Isabel. “Then I’m going to ask you to give me your reaction. Don’t bother about reasons, just tell me what you would do.”

  She related the story of Mr. and Mrs. B. Grace continued to unload plates as she listened, but abandoned her work when the story came to an end.

  “I would write Mr. B. a letter,” she said firmly. “I would tell him not to trust his wife.”

  “I see,” said Isabel.

  “But I wouldn’t sign my own name,” Grace added. “I would write anonymously.”

  Isabel could not conceal her surprise. “Anonymously? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Grace. “You said that I should not bother with reasons. I should just tell you what I would do. And that’s it.”

  Isabel was silent. She was used to hearing Grace express unusual views, but this curious preference for an anonymous letter astounded her. She was about to press Grace further, but her housekeeper changed the subject.

  “Cat phoned,” she said. “She did not want to disturb you, but she would like to pop in for tea this afternoon. I said that we would let her know.”

  “That’s fine,” said Isabel. “I would like to see her.”

  Truth telling. Paternalism. She was no further forward, she felt, but suddenly she decided. She would ask Grace her views.

  “Here’s another one, Grace,” she said. “Imagine that you found out that Toby was seeing another girl and not telling Cat about it.

  What would you do?”

  Grace frowned. “Difficult,” she said. “I don’t think I’d tell Cat.”

  Isabel relaxed. At least they thought the same way on that issue.

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

  “But then,” Grace went on, “I think I’d probably go to Toby and tell him that unless he gave Cat up, I’d tell the other girl.

  That way I’d get rid of him, because I wouldn’t want somebody like that to marry Cat. That’s what I’d do.”

  Isabel nodded. “I see. And you’d have no hesitation in doing that?”

  “None,” said Grace. “None at all.” Then she added, “Not that this would ever happen, would it?”

  Isabel hesitated; here was another occasion on which a lie could slip out. And the moment’s hesitation was enough.

  “Oh my God!” said Grace. “Poor Cat! Poor girl! I never liked that boy, you know, never. I didn’t like to say it, but now you know.

  Those strawberry jeans of his, you know the ones he wears? I knew what they meant, right from the beginning. See? I knew.”

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  CAT ARRIVED FOR TEA at three-thirty, having left Eddie in charge of the shop. She was let into the house by Grace, who looked at her strangely, or so Cat thought; but then Grace was strange, she always had been, and Cat had always known that.

  Grace had theories and convictions about virtually everything, and one never knew what was going on in her head. How Isabel put up with those conversations in the kitchen, Cat had no idea.

  Perhaps she ignored most of it.

  Isabel was in her summerhouse, correcting proofs. The summerhouse was a small octagonal building, constructed of wood and painted dark green. It stood at the back, against the high stone wall that enclosed the garden; in his illness her father had spent whole days in it, looking out over the lawn, thinking and reading, although it was hard for him to turn the pages and he would wait for Isabel to do that. For some years after his death she had been unable to go into it, such were the memories, but gradually she had taken to working in it, even in winter, when it could be heated by a Norwegian wood-burning stove which stood in one corner. It was largely undecorated, save for three framed photographs which had been hung on the back wall. Her father, 1 7 0

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h in the uniform of the Cameronians, in Sicily, under a harsh sun, standing in front of a requisitioned villa; all that bravery and sac-rifice, so long ago, for a cause that was utterly, utterly right. Her mother—sainted American mother; once awkwardly referred to by Grace as her sanitized American mother—sitting with her father in a café in Venice. And herself as a child with her parents, on a picnic, she thought. Foxed at the edges, the photographs needed restoration, but at present they were undisturbed.

  It was a warm day for spring—more of a summer’s day, really—

  and she had opened the double glass doors of the summerhouse.

  Now she saw Cat approaching her across the lawn, a small brown bag in her hand. It would be something from the delicatessen; Cat never came empty-handed, and would give Isabel a small jar of truf-fle pâté or olives picked at random from the shelves of her shop.

  “Belgian chocolate mice,” said Cat, laying the packet on the table.

  “Cats bring mice as an offering,” remarked Isabel, laying the proofs to one side. “My aunt—your great-aunt—had a cat which caught mice and put them on her bed. So thoughtful.”

  Cat sat down on the wicker chair next to Isabel’s. “Grace tells me that you’re in seclusion,” she said. “Not to be disturbed except by me.”

  That was tactful of Grace, thought Isabel. It was not helpful to mention Jamie too often.

  “Life has been getting rather complicated,” said Isabel. “I wanted a day or two to get on with some work and decomplicate.

  I’m sure you know how it feels.”

  “Yes,” said Cat. “Curl-up-and-get-away-from-it-all days. I have them too.”

  “Grace will bring us tea and we can have a chat,” said Isabel.

  “I’ve done enough work for the day.”

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  Cat smiled. “And I’m going to throw in the towel too,” she said. “Eddie can look after things until closing time. I’m going to go home and get changed. Then I . . . we’re going out.”

  “Good,” said Isabel. We. Toby, of course.

  “We’re going to celebrate,” said Cat, looking sideways at Isabel. “Dinner, then a club.”

  Isabel caught her breath. She had not expected it, but she had dreaded it nonetheless. And now the moment had arrived. “A celebration?”

  Cat nodded. She did not look at Isabel as she spoke, but was staring out over the lawn. Her tone was cautious. “Toby and I are engaged,” she said. “Yesterday evening. We’ll put it in the papers next week. I wanted you to be the first to know.” She paused. “I think that he’s told his parents now, but apart from them, nobody else knows. Only you.”

  Isabel turned to her niece and reached to take her hand. “Dar-ling, well done. Congratulations.” She had mustered a supreme effort, like a singer straining for a high note, but her attempt proved inadequate. Her voice sounded flat and unenthusiastic.

  Cat looked at her. “Do you mean that?”

  “I only want you to be happy,” said Isabel. “If this is what makes you happy, then of course I mean that.”

  Cat weighed these words for a moment. “The congratulations of a philosopher,” she said. “Can’t you say something personal?”

  She did not give Isabel time to respond, although Isabel had no answer ready and would have had to battle to find one. “You don’t like him, do you? You’re simply not prepared to give him a chance—

  even for my
sake.”

  Isabel lowered her eyes. She could not lie about this. “I haven’t warmed to him. I admit it. But I promise you: I’ll make every effort, even if it’s hard.”

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Cat seized on her words. Her voice was raised now, the indignation coming through. “Even if it’s hard? Why should it be so hard? Why do you have to say that?”

  Isabel was not in control of her emotions. This news was devastating, and she forgot her intention not to mention what she had seen. Now it came out. “I don’t think that he’s faithful to you,” she said. “I’ve seen him with somebody else. That’s why. That’s why.”

  She stopped, horrified by what she had said. She had not meant to say it—she knew it was wrong—and yet it had come out, as if spoken by somebody else. Immediately she felt miserable, thinking: So are wrongs committed, just like that, without thinking. The doing of wrong was not a hard thing, preceded by careful thought; it was a casual thing, done so easily. That was Hannah Arendt’s insight, was it not? The pure banality of evil.

  Only good is heroic.

  Cat was quite still. Then she shrugged off the hand which Isabel had lightly placed upon her shoulder. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You say that you’ve seen him with another woman. Is that what you say?”

  Isabel nodded. She could not recant now, and that left honesty as the only option. “Yes. I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant to tell you, because I really don’t think that it’s my business to interfere in your affairs. But I did see him. I saw him embracing another girl.

  He was going to see her. It was in the doorway to her flat. I was . . . I was passing by. I saw it happen.”

  “Where was this?” she asked quietly. “Where exactly did you see this?”

  “Nelson Street,” said Isabel.

  Cat was silent for a moment. Then she began to laugh, and the tension drained from her. “His sister, Fiona, lives there, you know. Poor Isabel! Of course you had it all mixed up. He often 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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