The Quiet Side of Passion

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “That’s a bit of an overstatement,” Isabel said. “I merely asked her—”

  “To tell Lettuce that he wasn’t welcome?”

  “More or less.”

  The gesture that Jamie made seemed to say: What can one expect? Isabel swallowed. Everything was going wrong. “I know,” she said. “I know. I know.”

  He looked at her sympathetically. “You could have a word with her, you know. Patch it up.”

  Isabel hesitated. If she had offended Claire, then she should at least make an apology. That might have the effect of getting Claire to change her mind, but she thought that was unlikely. And perhaps she should not be surprised at that: people stuck by their lovers, for the most part, and Claire was obviously enthralled with Robert Lettuce. No, she would leave things as they were, an option that was rapidly becoming more attractive. She had admitted two new people—Antonia and Claire—to her life, and now they were dropping out of it. They had both been, in their different ways, a mistake.

  She turned to Jamie. “I don’t think I’ll do anything,” she said quietly. “I want to get my life back.”

  He waited for her to say more.

  “You do see what I mean?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure that I do.”

  She spelled it out. “I thought that taking on Antonia and Claire would make my life easier,” she said. “In fact, it hasn’t. There was nothing wrong with the way things were before.”

  He protested that she had been too busy. “You needed help,” he said. “You couldn’t go on as you were.”

  “I could,” she said. “I had been doing it for years.”

  “But...”

  “No, I had. Granted, there were things that were wrong—I had a bit too much to do, I suppose, but then I made the mistake of thinking that there was an easy fix. Well, there wasn’t—and there often isn’t. We think that we can fix our lives by taking some simple step, but it’s not like that. Most problems need lots of little sticking plasters. They need coaxing and massaging and looking at from all sorts of different angles.”

  He did not argue. “So now we’re back to square one?”

  “Square one,” she said. “The view from square one.” Isabel now smiled. “That would be a good title for a book: The View from Square One. The autobiography of one who has tried, but not made much progress...”

  “Or a song?” suggested Jamie.

  “If you say so.”

  Jamie’s eyes lit up. “I do.” He tapped the table metronomically. “I’ve been thinking of moving forwards,” he sang, “But somehow I’ve moved right back / I’ve been thinking of things I wanted / But now it’s of things that I lack / From Square One the view is familiar...” He did not finish it. “What rhymes with familiar?” he asked.

  “No idea,” replied Isabel. “Not much, I suspect.”

  “Samovar?”

  But she was thinking of Square One as a house name. One might bestow it on the house in which one expected to finish one’s life—a house occupied in later retirement when one had done all the exciting things one was likely to do. Square One would be a sort of Mon Repos, an address with a note of acceptance to it. Somebody who lived at Square One would be one who knew that much of our achievement is temporary, if not even illusory, and that ultimately we all return to the place we started from, if not geographically, then at least metaphorically. We were born with nothing, and left this life with nothing, whatever glories and conceits we created for ourselves.

  They looked at each other. What did it matter? thought Isabel. If she was to be back at Square One, then there was nobody with whom she would prefer to be than Jamie. And she knew—not just assumed, but knew—that he felt the same about her.

  * * *

  —

  ANTONIA RETURNED LATE on Wednesday afternoon. She did not announce herself but, still having her key, let herself in through the front door and went straight up to her room. Grace heard her arrive, and knocked quietly on the door of Isabel’s study with an urgent, half-whispered message.

  “She’s back! She’s gone upstairs. Directly. No I’m home, of course. Just straight upstairs.”

  Isabel put down the book she was reading. She was working her way through a pile of books submitted for review by publishers. Each came with a letter, tucked neatly into the advance reader’s copy, stating just how excited the publisher was by this new offering and suggesting review. Publishers, it seemed to Isabel, must spend much of their time in a state of febrile excitement—if one were to believe these letters.

  She sighed. She was not sure what she could do for the book she had been flicking through. It did not excite her, and she feared it would not impress any reviewer she might pick. But that was not what made her decision difficult. This book, for all its leaden prose, was written by a philosopher who clearly harboured immense admiration for Professor Lettuce. One chapter, indeed, entitled “The Lettuce View,” set out in some detail and with hagiographic enthusiasm the opinions expressed by Lettuce in his last book. There was warning of that in the introduction, where the author mentioned the debt he owed to Lettuce’s works. These, he said, “were the cornerstone on which my own views of the subject have been built.”

  The problem for Isabel was this: if she did not publish a review of the book, then the Lettuce camp—as she thought of Lettuce’s supporters—would draw the inference that she had chosen not to do so because of her suspected views on their leader. If she did arrange for a review—and there was a real risk it would be a disparaging one—then she would be accused of allowing personal feeling to enter into a professional matter. Then again, if she asked a reviewer to be as gentle as possible, that would be compromising the dispassionate stand that an editor should adopt.

  Grace was only too ready to misinterpret the sigh. She thought Isabel could not face a confrontation with Antonia; well, Grace could, and would relish it.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll tell her. I’ll give her her notice.”

  Isabel rose to her feet. “No, I must do that.”

  “I’ll help with her bags,” Grace said. This was something, at least, even if she would be denied the satisfaction of delivering the coup de grâce.

  Isabel went up alone. She found Antonia’s door open and the au pair sitting on her bed, in the middle of an animated telephone conversation in Italian. Looking up, Antonia beckoned to Isabel to come in. She pointed silently at a chair, and Isabel, now feeling like a supplicant in her own house, sat down.

  The conversation, voluble and largely one-sided—in Antonia’s favour—lasted a further five minutes. Isabel knew some Italian, but this was dialect, as far as she could make out, and mostly uttered in combative outbursts. Eventually, though, the call came to an end and Antonia tossed her telephone down on her bed in a show of evident disgust.

  Antonia looked across the room at Isabel. “You’ve been very kind to me,” she said. “Very kind.”

  Isabel was not prepared for this; she did not know what to say. Had she been kind? She had tried. But why the mention of this now? Was it intended to disarm her in the matter of the unapproved absence?

  “And that makes it even harder for me to do this,” Antonia continued.

  “Do what?” asked Isabel lamely.

  “Go home. I have to go home, you see.” She pointed at the mobile phone. “That was my fiancé, you see. He is being very difficult.”

  Isabel’s mouth opened. There were no words.

  “He’s a very sweet boy,” said Antonia. “But he gets very envious of me being away like this. He’s blue with envy.”

  “Green,” Isabel said. “Green with envy.”

  “Yes, of course. That’s very good that you correct my English like that. Green with envy. I’ll remember that now. When I see him tonight I’ll say, ‘You must not be green with envy.’ ”

  “So you�
�re leaving that soon,” said Isabel.

  “Yes, I’m sorry it’s so quick. But I don’t think you will miss me too much—you have that other lady, that Grace woman. She will be happy to see me go.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Isabel vaguely. Of course she knew.

  But now what she had heard was sinking in—in all its enormity. “My fiancé!” She was aware that she was staring at Antonia, and that her stare must have been transparently one of disbelief, if not shock.

  “I didn’t know you were engaged,” Isabel said. “I didn’t think...” She glanced at Antonia’s left hand; a small diamond ring caught the light. She had not noticed that before, or perhaps it had not been there in the first place and had only now been put back on.

  Antonia appeared to be preoccupied with her fingernails. “Yes,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “Massimo is a student too. We have known one another since we were six. His father has a big factory that makes ceramic tiles. He is very rich and has many important friends. He knows Mr. Berlusconi.”

  “Very impressive.”

  Antonia nodded. “And his father is also the nephew of the Pope—not this pope, of course, but one of the previous, proper Italian ones.”

  So, thought Isabel, the Poles, the Germans, the Argentinians were viewed as interlopers. “A pope,” exclaimed Isabel. She looked thoughtfully at Antonia. What went on in that head? What gulf lay between them—what impossibility of understanding? And she thought of the fiancé, of this Massimo, with his ceramic prospects and his papal connections, and his jealousy—what sort of wife would Antonia make for him, if they ever got that far? What would happen if Massimo were to find out that she had apparently spent her time in Scotland picking up men? Would there be a great tempestuous scene, followed by a storming out, and then reconciliation? Having turned blue with envy, would he turn ochre with rage?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  GRACE RALLIED ROUND.

  “I know things are difficult for you at the moment,” she said. “What with that girl going...” And here she fixed Isabel with a look that was a combination of reproach and sympathy. “What with her letting you down like that and then all that business at the deli; I know it’s hard for you.”

  Isabel accepted the rebuke. Grace had seen through Antonia, as had Jamie; everybody had, it seemed, except Eddie and her. She had made the wrong decision in getting an au pair; she had made the wrong decision in employing Claire; she had made the wrong decision in getting involved in Patricia’s affairs. She had bungled everything.

  “So,” continued Grace, “why don’t I move in here for the next few days. It’ll be easier that way. I’ll be able to look after the boys more easily.”

  Isabel thanked her. “It would be a help,” she said. “I’m going to help at the deli today in case Eddie...”

  Grace’s eyes narrowed. “That poor boy! Taken off to Skye like that. Whisked away. Abducted. Shocking.”

  “I think he was a willing party,” said Isabel mildly. “And he’s over twenty-one.”

  “Pah,” said Grace. “He’s just a wee boy.”

  Isabel had yet to see Eddie after his return, and was not sure what the situation would be. She wondered whether Antonia had told him about her return to Italy, or whether she had simply disappeared. If she had not told him about having a fiancé, then it was perfectly possible that she would not have bothered to tell him about her departure. Eddie would not take it well, Isabel imagined; he had been under the fond misapprehension that Antonia had been as much in love with him as he had been with her, and he would be unprepared for this rapid dismissal. She was not sure what she would be able to say to comfort him; very little, she thought.

  Half an hour later, when she arrived at the deli, she found Cat at the counter, serving a woman who looked vaguely familiar. A surreptitious glance confirmed Isabel’s suspicion: this was the woman with whom she had sparred earlier on over the subject of the thinness of ham. Cat was, in fact, wrapping ham for her, suitably thinly sliced.

  Cat caught Isabel’s eye and nodded in the direction of the office. “He’s in there,” she mouthed.

  Isabel made her way into Cat’s office, to find Eddie sitting in a chair beside Cat’s desk, scrolling through the address book on his mobile. He looked up as Isabel entered and gave her a broad smile.

  “I didn’t know you were coming in today,” he said. “She didn’t say.”

  Isabel put her bag down on Cat’s desk. “I thought I’d come in just in case...” She did not finish. She had intended to say “because of you.”

  Eddie looked defensive. “I told her when I was coming back. I’m only a little bit late.”

  Isabel decided to make light of this. She had decided that Eddie did not know of Antonia’s departure and that he should be handled gently.

  “The important thing is that you’re here,” she said, adding, “Did you enjoy Skye?”

  Eddie nodded—not very enthusiastically, she thought.

  “You were camping?” Isabel asked. “Did it rain?”

  “No. No rain.”

  There was a momentary silence. Eddie looked down at his mobile, as if waiting for a message. Antonia, thought Isabel.

  “Did Antonia like Skye?” she asked.

  Eddie’s response surprised her. He shrugged. “She’s more of a city person, I think.”

  “Ah.”

  There was a further silence.

  “What did you do?” asked Isabel. It was an innocent question, but no sooner had she asked it than she thought that it might not be the most tactful thing to ask.

  Eddie was staring at her. His expression had changed; he was frowning now, and Isabel thought that this must be because an expected message from Antonia had not arrived.

  “What did we do?” said Eddie. “Well, we went to Skye. We had this tent, see, and we pitched it near a burn, and...” He stopped. Isabel saw him blush, and she tried to change the subject.

  “Skye’s so beautiful in the summer,” she said quickly. “Jamie and I have been thinking of going up there some time soon.”

  “Isabel,” stuttered Eddie. “I feel really awkward about this. I know you really well, you see, and I wondered if I could speak to you about something.”

  She sat down in Cat’s chair, facing Eddie across the desk. “Eddie, you can talk to me about anything. Any time. Anything. You know that.”

  He reddened further. “This is something I’d never normally mention.”

  She shook her head. “Anything. I mean it. Anything. And it’ll go no further; I promise you.”

  He was looking down at the floor now, intently, avoiding her gaze. “You see,” he began, almost under his breath, “she seems to want to do only one thing. All the time.”

  He looked up to see the effect of his words. Isabel struggled. This was completely unexpected, and yet the warnings had been there. Leo, at least, had spelled it out, even if crudely.

  “Oh dear,” said Isabel. And then she added, “How tiresome.”

  She was aware of how ridiculous she sounded; just like Georgie Pillson in the Benson novels, who found things tiresome, or tarsome, as he put it. This was tarsome.

  “Yes,” said Eddie. “I was tired out.”

  Isabel made a non-committal sound.

  “Isabel,” Eddie continued, “I don’t know how to put this, but are men meant to go on forever?”

  She had to laugh; she could not control herself. “Of course not.”

  Eddie looked relieved. “I told her that, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “Oh dear,” said Isabel, who could think of nothing else to say. But then she saw that this was her chance, and she continued, “It’s a good thing she’s going back to Italy.”

  Eddie looked up sharply. “Going back?”

  “Gone back, actually,” said Isabel. “She left yesterday. I’m
sorry, Eddie...”

  Her sympathy was clearly unnecessary.

  “Great,” said Eddie. He shook his head in relieved disbelief. “I was going to ask you another question: How do you get rid of somebody you don’t like all that much?”

  She thought for a moment. “You do it as gently as possible. You talk. You explain yourself. If needs be, you say sorry.” She scrutinised his expression. He was listening, and learning, she thought. She wanted to embrace him; she wanted to say, “Don’t worry, Eddie. We all make mistakes. It gets better.” And then she wanted to add, “And you must remember—we all love you. Cat, me, Jamie: all of us—we love you a lot.”

  With Eddie back at work, Isabel did not need to stay at the deli. She had a brief discussion with Cat, though, while Eddie was attending to a customer, and she was able to reassure her that everything was all right.

  “What did he say?” asked Cat discreetly. “What happened?”

  “I can’t really say,” said Isabel. “I promised him I wouldn’t. But suffice to say he’s come out of it unharmed, as far as I can make out.”

  “Poor boy,” mused Cat. “I feel responsible for him, you know.”

  Isabel nodded. She was pleased that Cat had said this. We are all responsible for Eddie, she thought, just as we are all responsible for those who are easily hurt, or who need us, or who are anxious about who they are or what they should do. Of course we are, and those who say we’re not are simply wrong. Just wrong.

  On impulse, Isabel said, “Are you and Leo free tonight?”

  Cat looked surprised. “Both of us?”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “Both of you. I wondered if you’d like to come and have dinner with us. In the kitchen. Jamie was going to cook something, but I’ll let him know so that he can get a bit more.”

  Cat hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Then, yes, we’d love to.”

  They agreed a time, and Isabel left, receiving, as she did so, a wave and a smile from Eddie that she judged to be relieved—if somewhat tired.