The Quiet Side of Passion

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I wouldn’t do it,” Leo said.

  Isabel threw him what she hoped was a dismissive glance. Where are your references? she thought.

  She felt the back of her neck becoming warm. She had been right in her feeling that they were in some way blaming her for all this. They had no right to do that, she decided, and she should defend herself. “What do you think a referee would have written?” she asked.

  “ ‘A hard worker, but a nympho in her spare time,’ ” said Leo. “That would about sum it up.”

  Cat snapped at him. “Don’t joke about this, Leo. What are we going to do? I have to be in Glasgow on Monday afternoon, and then there’s Tuesday and Wednesday and presumably most of Thursday morning before Eddie condescends to show up. Unless he’s too love-sick...”

  “...or exhausted,” added Leo, smirking.

  There was a long silence, eventually broken by Cat saying, “I wish you hadn’t brought that girl here, Isabel. If you hadn’t done that, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “So it’s my fault?” Isabel challenged.

  Cat nodded. “If you say so.”

  “I wasn’t saying so. Definitely not.”

  Cat shrugged. “Well, whatever. I don’t know what we’re going to do. You can’t help, I take it.”

  Isabel drew in her breath. She was thinking of what Jamie would say when he heard of this blatant manipulation, but her mind was already made up. “I’ll help,” she said.

  Cat jumped at the offer. “Thank you. I knew you would.”

  Of course you did, thought Isabel. “I’ll have to phone Jamie and tell him.”

  “Help yourself,” said Cat, gesturing towards the telephone on her desk.

  When Jamie answered, Isabel heard Charlie crying in the background. “Don’t worry,” said Jamie. “It’s not real tears. He’s cross because Magnus threw a spoon at him. It wasn’t intentional—just a sort of infantile tossing away—but he was pretty incensed.”

  She told Jamie that she would have to stay and lend a hand in the deli. He replied that he thought that would be the case, and asked her what had happened. “I’ll tell you later,” she answered. “But just go up and take a look in Antonia’s room, would you? Check up on it and call me back if you find anything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything,” she said. “Just take a look.”

  He asked her if she knew where Antonia was. “I think she’s on Skye.”

  For a few moments Jamie was silent, and then he said that he would call her back if necessary. And he did—five minutes later—to tell her that he had found a note on her table. It was addressed to Isabel, but he had opened it and read it to her. “ ‘I need to take a few days off,’ ” Jamie read. “ ‘I’ve always wanted to visit Skye and I have the chance now. It’s been a last-minute decision, and so I didn’t want to wake you up and tell you. Love, Antonia.’ ”

  Isabel could not think of what to say, other than “I see.” Jamie then said, “I assume that’s the end of her.”

  “It looks like it,” said Isabel. “We can’t really—”

  Jamie interrupted her. “Of course we can’t. She’s shown herself to be thoroughly unreliable. You can’t have somebody like that looking after children.”

  “No,” said Isabel. “You can’t.”

  “Fire her by text message,” said Jamie. “That’s virtually what she’s done herself.”

  Isabel was tempted to agree, but said instead that she would talk to her when she came back. “We’ll pay her fare back to Italy,” she said.

  Cat had overheard this conversation—or one side of it—and was nodding her head in vigorous agreement. “I could scratch her eyes out,” she muttered.

  “That’s a bit extreme,” said Isabel. “Although I know it’s a metaphor.”

  Leo smiled. “I love seeing women fight,” he said. “Scratching, pulling each other’s hair. It’s very funny.”

  Cat ignored this, but Isabel looked at him sideways. Her earlier impression had been right, she decided: he’s crude. What sort of man likes watching women fight? She asked herself this question, but had no answer to it. So many men were voyeurs of one sort or another, she reminded herself—and their tastes were sometimes hard to understand, if you were a woman. There were men who liked watching women wrestling in mud. It was hard to believe, but there were. And yet, she suddenly remembered, there were women who loved going to wrestling matches to watch beefy men throwing one another round. The women in those wrestling audiences were always the most vocal, the loudest in their howls of encouragement. Then there were the tricoteuses. So perhaps women were as bad as men after all.

  Cat looked at her. “You have to go, don’t you, Leo?”

  He nodded. “Sorry. I have to.”

  Cat reassured him that she would cope now that Isabel was there. “I’ll see you this evening,” she said. “Remember that Tommy and Ann are coming round.”

  He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. Isabel watched, fascinated, as his lion’s mane fell forward around Cat’s face. What would it feel like to kiss a lion? Rather like that, she thought, although she had read somewhere that lions had a powerful smell, like tom-cats, and that would presumably be overwhelming. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she had a memory of reading an early explorer’s account of being attacked by a lion in Africa. He described the experience as almost euphoric: discovering that this ultimately horrifying event—being eaten by a lion—was not as bad as expected; the nervous system shut down in the face of such pain, it seemed, and so it did not hurt all that much. Of course such an account would have to come from one whose experience stopped short of completion, and it was possible that such euphoric acceptance was replaced by a less equable state of mind. Regret, she thought. To be eaten by anything must seem such a waste to the victim—and a humiliation as well: to become no more than part of the food chain.

  Since it was a Saturday, and a busy one at that, they worked hard, with very little let-up. At four o’clock Isabel realised that she had not taken time off for lunch, and she made herself a quick ham sandwich to placate her growing hunger. Cat urged her to sit down and have a cup of coffee, but Isabel declined. “I’ll survive,” she said.

  Cat looked at her appreciatively. “You know, I think I should apologise to you.”

  Isabel asked her why.

  “Things I said this morning. I blamed you for this business with Eddie.”

  Isabel assured her that no offence had been taken. “You were understandably upset,” she said.

  “Yes, maybe. But that’s no excuse to get at somebody who”—she hesitated before continuing—“somebody who’s always helping you. Me, I mean. Helping me.”

  “That’s all right,” said Isabel. “Don’t worry.”

  Cat was staring at her. “Do you like Leo?” she suddenly asked.

  Isabel found it difficult to lie. “He’s your boyfriend, not mine.”

  “That’s no answer,” Cat said.

  “But it is,” said Isabel. “What it means is that how I feel is neither here nor there. What determines my view is the question: Are you happy? Does he make you happy?”

  Cat looked thoughtful. “But you’ll still have your views.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, what are they?”

  Isabel decided that she could not sidestep the question. “He’s not really my type.” She did not wait for a reaction before adding, “But then I shouldn’t imagine that will surprise you.”

  Cat looked away. “Not your type? Why? Because he’s not interested in the things you’re interested in?”

  This provided Isabel with the opportunity she felt she needed. “Exactly. And that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be your type. As I’ve already said, that’s the important question here.” She paused. “Anyway, I don’t think we shou
ld discuss this any longer. Give me time to get used to him—I’m sure I’ll like him better the more I get to know him.” Her words were badly chosen, and for a few moments she thought that Cat would treat this as an admission of Isabel’s dislike of Leo, but this seemed not to happen. Cat turned to make a cup of coffee for both of them, while Isabel busied herself with cleaning the chopping boards. Nothing more was said on the subject for the rest of the afternoon.

  At six o’clock Cat locked up and they said goodbye to one another. Isabel promised that she would be there shortly after nine on Monday; that would not give her time to see Claire briefly when she reported for work at nine-thirty. Jamie would be taking Charlie to nursery school and could cover the afternoon, while Grace would be only too pleased to be in charge of Magnus for the entire day.

  She walked slowly back towards the old post office at Boroughmuirhead and the start of the winding crescent that led to her own street. Students from the nearby Napier University were making their way back from the library, and she heard snippets of conversation from a couple of these—two young men—who were walking directly in front of her.

  “I don’t know what her problem is,” said one of them. “She thinks she’s too good for me. Can you believe it? Her?”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Yeah. And you know what she said? She said she wouldn’t go on a date with me if I were the last guy alive. She actually said that. I said: ‘Are you serious?’ ”

  Isabel suppressed an urge to laugh. The student turned round and, seeing Isabel behind him, stepped aside to allow her to pass him on the pavement. He made eye contact with her, but he looked away quickly. Isabel smiled.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. She was not sure whether it was an apology for blocking the pavement or for any embarrassment caused by his remarks.

  “Thank you,” said Isabel, and continued on her way. That’s what it’s like to be nineteen, or whatever it is they are, she said to herself. That’s when you have strong views and strong uncertainties; when you can’t believe that others may not see you as you see yourself, or love you as you love them. It was a wonderful age in so many respects, and yet so horrible in others. You thought of yourself as more or less immortal, with all the time in front of you that near-immortality conferred—forty, fifty years, even sixty—and yes, you would achieve most of your ambitions. And yet you worried so much about what people thought of you, about your looks, about the clothes you wore, and you could hardly believe that the world was so slow to listen to your opinions.

  She continued walking, with these thoughts going through her mind, and after a few minutes turned into her own street. This was a broad road, with large trees dominating the front gardens of the houses. A few cars were parked further down the street, but otherwise it was empty. The early-evening sun, still high in the sky at this time of year, painted the treetops with gold. Above the trees, above the roofs of the houses, was a largely empty sky, the blue broken only here and there with sweeps of feathery cirrus. Ice crystals, thought Isabel; that’s what those high clouds are—falling veils of ice crystals, even now in high summer.

  She thought of Eddie, on the Isle of Skye with Antonia, infatuated, unaware of the likely brevity of the affair into which he had thrown himself. She rehearsed what she would say to Antonia on her return, but it all sounded too preachy, and she knew that she would say none of it. She would simply say that the arrangement had not worked out as she had hoped and that they would pay for her flight back to Italy; there would be only indirect reproach about Eddie and about insensitivity to the needs of others. And to Eddie himself she would say nothing, and she would ask Cat not to bring up the subject of the unauthorised holiday. Every young man should be allowed his bad decisions and personal disasters; for most of these there would be the excuse of youth and inexperience—excuses based on the impulsivity and sheer bad judgement that were a concomitant of being under thirty, or thereabouts. Twenty-eight was the cut-off point, Isabel had heard; after that there was full responsibility. As for Antonia, she, being a woman, might be held to a higher standard: the female brain was wired differently, which was why young women did fewer reckless and dangerous things than their male coevals. People might wish to deny that, might pursue their androgynous agenda with intimidating ruthlessness, but the scientific evidence was there for all to see—men and women were different, and women, in general, were safer. What was to be gained by denying the obvious?

  She was approaching her house when she noticed the car. It was parked on her side of the street, almost level with her gate, and she could tell that there was somebody sitting in it. She wondered whether this was somebody who had come to see her—had she forgotten something in her diary? There had been an occasion a few weeks ago when she had failed to remember an appointment with an insurance agent and had arrived to find him sitting patiently in his car, having been there for at least three-quarters of an hour.

  She slowed down as she approached the stationary car. The driver was at the wheel, and when she drew level with the car he turned round and faced her. He had been observing her in his rear-view mirror as she came down the road, and now he was staring at her directly. The shock brought her to a halt, and for a time their eyes met, locked in a moment of shared recognition. It was the freckled man—the man that Patricia had claimed so coolly and so mendaciously was her brother.

  Isabel was only a few feet away from the open window of the car. She could have reached out and touched him, and he her, but every instinct in her told her to back away. As she did this, the man’s lips broke into a thin, icy smile. At the same time, he reached up with his right hand and, fingers separated in a V, pointed to his eyes and then at Isabel. It was the I’m watching you sign, and its meaning was as clear as it possibly could be. This was intentional intimidation.

  Isabel took a few steps back, and then stopped herself. She would not be threatened outside her own house; she would not.

  She stepped forward. “What do you want?” she challenged, her voice quivering.

  The man did not get out of the car, but addressed her from where he was.

  “What do I want? I could ask you the same thing: What do you want?”

  She caught her breath. There was something in the tone of his voice, in its slightly nasal quality, in its coldness, that made her heart pound.

  “I’ll call the police,” Isabel said.

  The man laughed. “This is a public road, if I’m not mistaken. I can park here if I like.”

  “But not threaten or intimidate people.”

  The man sneered. “We’ll see about that. Anyway, I just wanted to give you a message. Keep out of things that don’t concern you. Got that? Comprende?”

  His warning delivered, he leaned forward to start the engine. Crashing the car into gear, he shot off down the road, the car’s brake lights glowing red as he approached the junction at the bottom. Isabel remained in the street for a few moments longer, and then walked quickly up her drive to the safety of her front door. As she fumbled with her key, she felt a sudden moment of panic; she felt eyes upon her, she felt that somebody—possibly the freckled man—was in the garden now, watching her. She knew that this was impossible, but the feeling was strong enough to make her experience momentary terror.

  The door opened even before she managed to turn the key—and that was a further shock.

  “You frightened me,” she said, her heart racing.

  Jamie smiled. “I heard you at the door—I thought I’d welcome you home.” He looked at her with concern. “Is there something wrong?” He put his arm about her. She was shaking. “Isabel? Are you all right?”

  She sat down on the chair in the hall. Her voice was every bit as unsteady as she felt. “There was a man outside in the street. He threatened me.”

  Jamie gasped. “What man?”

  “In a car. That man with freckles. The one we saw with Patricia.” />
  Jamie went to the front door and looked out. “Was it a blue car?”

  Isabel nodded.

  “I noticed it earlier on,” said Jamie. “It’s gone now.”

  He crouched down to be beside her.

  “He did a horrible thing,” she said. “He made that sign that means somebody’s watching you; you know, fingers to the eyes—that sign.”

  “Oh, God.”

  She tried to pull herself together. “I need to tell the police.”

  “Of course.”

  But then she asked herself what proof she had. She knew his name—the woman down in Leith had told her that—and she knew that he was somebody the police were watching for other reasons. But of the incident itself there were no witnesses other than her, and she knew that the police would be unable to do anything about it unless there was an actual complaint to be made. People were entitled to park in public streets, and even if they were not entitled to make threatening gestures, it would be very hard to do anything about it unless there was some form of corroborative evidence.

  She stood up. “No,” she said. “I’ll ignore it this time. If he does anything else, then we can think again.”

  “But surely you should—”

  “No, Jamie. What does that man want? He wants to frighten me, to bully me. How do you deal with bullies? You ignore them, which is one way of standing up to them. You don’t give them the satisfaction of thinking they’ve frightened you.”

  “But you are frightened,” Jamie pointed out. “And the police can stop him.”

  “Yes, once he does something that they can pin on him. He hasn’t done that yet.”

  Charlie walked into the hall and rushed up to Isabel. She lifted him up and hugged him.

  “I saw Brother Fox today,” said Charlie.

  Isabel’s manner had changed. She remembered something: Cover hatred and fear with love and delight, and with innocent things. With love and delight, and with innocent things. The trouble was that people were cynical about innocent things, or too embarrassed to celebrate them. The proponents of confrontation, violence, the acerbic comment, laughed at innocent things, thought them naïve, considered them beneath them. How easy it was to destroy the civilised structures of the world; how easy to poison the wells.