* * *
—
WHEN SHE GOT BACK to the house, Graham, the postman, was on the garden path, at the point of walking up to her front door.
“Save me the journey,” he said, handing her a small packet of letters.
Isabel stood on the path, shuffling through the mail. There were two bills, a copy of the National Museum of Scotland’s Bulletin, an auction catalogue from Lyon & Turnbull and two ordinary envelopes. She opened the first of these, and extracted a card. Richard and Caroline—At Home—Drummond Place. She read the note below from her friend, Richard Neville Towle: We both hope you and Jamie can make this. We’re going to have some Bach on the harpsichord. And some curry. I know, I know...Bach doesn’t go with curry, but there has to be a first.
The second envelope bore the typed address: Ms. Dalhousie, The Review of Applied Ethics, Merchiston, Edinburgh. She opened it.
The Lettuce Institute. She read the heading on the paper again, just to confirm what she thought she had seen. The Lettuce Institute.
She read on. “Dear Ms. Dalhousie, I shall come right to the point. I am very surprised at the way you have treated my research assistant. I consented to her taking a part-time post with you on the grounds that this would provide her with useful experience and you would be a considerate employer. I can see that I was wrong. I suppose that times change, and with them general mores. One should not be surprised, they tell me, if one encounters discourtesy and selfishness as one travels through life. Even so, when it is demonstrated by those with whom one has professional dealings, then it is always a bit of a shock. I trust that this letter finds you well. Yours sincerely, Robert Lettuce.”
Isabel stared at the letter and then re-read it. Somewhere above her head, a thrush chortled in the branches of the large yew tree next to the path. She looked up, and smiled at the bird she could not see. Then she tucked the letter back in its envelope and made her way into the house.
Grace was in the hall, struggling to get Magnus into a small red jacket. She looked up at Isabel. She was used to Isabel smiling at some private thought. “Something amusing you?” she asked.
“Yes,” came the reply. “A wonderful letter. So full of unintended humour.” And there was something additionally funny, she thought, when people behaved exactly as you expected them to behave.
“Oh, yes?” said Grace, untwisting a small red sleeve yet to be filled by a small resisting arm.
“From Professor Lettuce,” Isabel explained. “I think I’ve told you about him.”
“Oh, him,” said Grace.
“He now has something called the Lettuce Institute.”
“Ridiculous,” said Grace.
“Yes,” agreed Isabel. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Pay no attention,” said Grace, at last succeeding in enclosing Magnus within his coat. “Ridiculous people usually go away if you pay no attention.”
“I shall ignore him,” said Isabel. She wondered whether good manners required her to write to somebody to inform them that you are ignoring them. No, she said to herself, some things were a reductio ad absurdum, and one of the skills one had to develop in life was the ability to distinguish true absurdity from reality, which was not as easy as one might think. The Lettuce Institute was an absurdity, but it was real. Professor Lettuce himself was real, engaged in real plots, a real affair with a real young woman, and writing real letters like this. Isabel sighed. And her sigh was a real one too.
* * *
—
THAT EVENING, as she helped Jamie in the kitchen, Isabel could tell that he was tense.
“Just relax,” she said. “It’ll go swimmingly.”
He made a face. “It’s just that...”
“Cat?” she prompted.
“Yes. Her. You know how she is.”
Isabel did. Cat had forgiven Isabel for becoming involved with Jamie, but it was not clear whether she had extended this forgiveness to him—or at least it was not clear whether such forgiveness as she had summoned was complete.
“She can still be a bit prickly,” Jamie continued. “And then there’s this Leo character: he sounds a bit odd, from what you tell me.”
“Not so much odd,” said Isabel, “as rough.” She paused. “Do I mean that? Nope, probably not. He’s not exactly rough, he’s more...more animal. No, that’s wrong. He exudes something that I can’t quite put my finger on.”
“Sexual allure?” suggested Jamie. “She goes for men like that, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, to an extent. He’s certainly the sort who ends up modelling men’s undies. You know the type? You see them in the magazines—standing against a desert background in their designer pants.”
Jamie laughed. “One wonders what they’re doing in the desert...”
“...in their underpants? Yes, it does seem ridiculous. Mind you, models always look ridiculous in my eyes. I can’t take them seriously.”
Jamie stirred the sauce he was preparing. “I’ll do my best,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Isabel. “It’s important. She’s making an effort these days, I think. I think we really do need to make this move. We need to show her that we accept him. He might be the one, after all.”
Jamie looked dubious. “There have been so many contenders.”
“Yes, I know, but I have a feeling about Leo. He’s such a lion—and perhaps that’s what she’s been looking for all this time. A lion.”
Jamie laughed. “And they’ll form a little pride, and have cubs.”
Isabel closed her eyes and smiled. In her mind’s eye she saw a picture of Leo, dressed in a tawny suit, with Cat beside him...and then the thought struck her. “Nominal determinism,” she muttered.
Jamie was puzzled. “What’s that got to do with it?” And then it dawned on him. “Oh, of course: Leo.”
“No,” said Isabel, “I was thinking of her.”
* * *
—
THE DINNER went far better than Isabel had imagined possible. Cat was in a good mood, and showed no signs of resentment—or of anything negative. Leo was attentive and seemed to get on well with Jamie, showing interest in his life as a musician. They talked briefly about Eddie; Leo disclosed that he was teaching him golf—a kindness, thought Isabel, notching up a further good point to Leo’s account. At one point in the evening, though, when Isabel and Cat were attending to the dishes—Jamie, as cook, had been excused washing-up duties—she witnessed an intense exchange between the two men. Their voices were lowered and she could not make out what was being said; she was worried that there was some sort of argument developing. As she watched, though, she decided that the expression on Jamie’s face was not so much disputatious as astonished. He looked at her from across the room, as if to say, You’ll never guess what I’ve just been told; then he resumed his conversation with Leo.
Isabel became aware that Cat was addressing her.
“Sorry. What was that?”
Cat pointed to one of the plates. “I like your plates,” she said. “These ones. They’re beautiful.”
“Haddon Hall,” said Isabel. “Minton made them, but not any longer. I use a lost-china service to find replacements.”
“They’re understated,” said Cat.
Isabel looked at the plate. “Yes, I see what you mean.” She shot a glance in Jamie’s direction. He was still looking surprised.
* * *
—
THEY HAD COFFEE after the meal, but Cat and Leo did not stay long. Leo was going to Aberdeen first thing the following morning, Cat explained, and would have to get up at five. “That’s what I used to do in the bush,” Leo said. “Up at five. The best part of the day.”
Cat looked at him longingly, Isabel noticed, and she knew. This was what was transforming her. Cat was in love—it was as simple as that: the simplest of transformational magic was l
ove. But was Leo in love with her? Isabel looked at him. She saw his eyes. She kept looking at his eyes—she could not help herself. There was a light within them—a light redolent of somewhere other than Scotland, and it bathed Cat, and gave Isabel her answer.
The door closed behind the guests, and Isabel and Jamie were alone. They stood in the hall and looked at one another. Jamie was shaking his head in disbelief.
“You won’t believe this,” he said. “You won’t.”
“No, I’ll believe anything.” She was thinking of the eyes.
Jamie shook his head again. “Leo’s been talking to people. He spoke to Patricia, but he also spoke to her friend.”
Isabel gasped.
“He told me,” Jamie went on, “that you’d have no further trouble with that man—you know, the man with the freckles. That Archie somebody.”
“McGuigan.”
“Yes, him. He said he’d sorted things out with him.”
Isabel blinked. “ ‘Sorted’?”
“Had a word with him,” said Jamie.
Isabel gave a start. “About...”
Jamie nodded. “About his intimidation. And it’s been effective, it seems, because...” He hesitated. “Because he used violence. He said, ‘People like that only understand one thing.’ ”
Isabel said nothing.
Jamie continued. “Apparently, he found him down in Leith—you must have given him that information.” He looked at Isabel enquiringly, and she inclined her head. “So he went to see him and told him...Well, I don’t know exactly what he told him, but it must have been to lay off, and if not...Then he said he made his point—got him up against the wall, he said—and this guy just folded up once he began on him. That was it.”
Isabel was open-mouthed. “Hit him?”
Jamie shrugged. “Something like that. He said, ‘I rearranged his nose a bit’—and then he laughed.”
“Do people do that sort of thing?”
“It seems that they do—or some of them do.”
She closed her eyes.
He was concerned. “Are you all right?”
She answered automatically; yes, she was all right, but she was not—not really, because what he had told her shocked her so much. Of course she knew that violence occurred, but she had never thought of it as happening in her immediate circle. Leo was Cat’s boyfriend, and it looked as if their relationship was becoming more serious. Yet he was, by his own admission, a man who used violence to achieve his ends. How could she accept somebody like that into her family?
They had been talking in the outer hall, in the half-light. Now they went back inside. Jamie looked at his watch and yawned. He turned to Isabel, his expression one of amusement. “Not quite the evening I’d imagined.”
She was still thinking of what he had told her. It was slow to sink in.
“I had no idea any of that would happen,” she said. “Leo...Why should he take it on himself?”
Jamie was smiling broadly now. “Don’t you see?”
“See what?”
“Leo is you, Isabel. He’s behaved exactly as you behave.”
She did not see what he meant. “Do I get people up against the wall?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. What I meant is: he did something about somebody else’s issue—yours, as a matter of fact. He intervened. Intervened. That’s what you do. That’s what I’ve always warned you about. You stumble across these odd little problems in people’s lives—stuff that most of us stay well away from—and you think it’s your duty to do something about them. You’ve done it time and time again.” He paused. His tone was gentle; he knew that this was sensitive territory.
“So here,” Jamie went on, “is somebody who thinks just like you. All right, he’s called Leo and he looks like a lion and there’s lots of testosterone floating about. All right, he’s not exactly sophisticated and he doesn’t talk about circles of moral proximity and all the things you talk about before you put your oar in, but it amounts to the same thing, you know.”
He looked at his watch again. “I’m really tired. Let’s turn in.”
She shook her head. “I’m too...” She shrugged. “I need to think.”
“Should you?”
“I’m not in the mood to sleep. Too much has happened.”
Jamie made his way to the stairs. Turning round, he addressed an afterthought to Isabel. “I liked him, by the way.”
Isabel did not think about her response. “So did I,” she said. But how can I like him now? she asked herself. How can I like somebody who uses violence?
“You see?” said Jamie. “You two have more in common than you think.”
Isabel went into her study. She looked at the rows of books on the shelves. She looked at her desk; papers piled up on each side. The printed word, thousands upon thousands of printed words, occupied this room, kept it safe—she had always imagined—from the enemies of reason. She had thought of these words as having power, because they described for us the limits of what might be done, but did they really do that? What weight had the considered, rational statement against crude force? Leo had a short answer to that, it seemed.
She sat down at her desk. It’s my fault, she told herself. I created this situation. I interfered in something that was not my business at all, and in doing so I have been responsible for threats and violence. She felt ashamed. She looked at her hands, as if they were the agents of what had happened in that tawdry scene in Leith. “I pulled the trigger,” she muttered, “I pulled the trigger.”
She wondered why Leo should have taken it upon himself to deal with the freckled man. Was it some sort of crude loyalty to her on the strength of her relationship with Cat—a relationship that entitled her to his protection? Or was it simply a result of the distaste that he felt for bullying? If that were so, then perhaps Jamie was right: she and Leo had a lot in common. She took up the cause of those with whom she was in a relationship of moral proximity; perhaps he did exactly the same, although in his case he used physical means.
She looked for justification. Was it self-defence? Leo’s victim had made threats; he was dangerous. Reasoning with people like that tended not to work, but they did understand physical force. That was what Jamie had reported Leo as saying. Leo was not a thinker—he acted. And there were some circumstances in which you had to act, because if you did not, then the world would never be as you would want it to be. If you believed in something, then you had to act on its behalf, or its antithesis would prevail. That was an ancient, incontrovertible truth, demonstrated time and time again when good had prevailed. The Second World War, that titanic struggle against pure evil, had ended the way it had because there had been people like Leo who had acted; not talked or agonised about what to do, but acted. Violence was not always bad; wielded righteously, it could be a disinfectant, like incense in a thurible.
Her gaze moved across her desk. The pile of books for review was topped by one with a light orange cover. Buddhist Ethics: Doing Right in a Fractured World. The title momentarily reproached her. Compassion; non-violence; gentleness. And what had she just thought about violence? She was part of that vicious cycle that perpetuated it.
But what if Churchill had been a Buddhist? His speeches would have been very different. We shall meditate on the beaches, we shall meditate on the landing grounds...She stopped herself, embarrassed at the levity that mocked the moral seriousness of Buddhism. And she was not sure that she should parody Churchill either. She closed her eyes and sighed. She was lost. She, the philosopher, was adrift and confused.
On impulse, she reached for Buddhist Ethics and opened it at random. It was printed on cheap paper, and the type in places was slightly indistinct. But the message was not. She saw a paragraph heading, spidery in its italics: Love and compassion are the only balm. She reached for a pencil and underlined the words. Then underlined the
m again. When had she last done this in a book? At school probably, when it had been her practice to underline subjunctives in her French grammar. It had become a habit and then a superstition. If you did not underline your subjunctives you would fail the French exam—better to be safe.
She arose from her desk and made her way into the kitchen. She did not turn on the light, but relied on the bulb in the refrigerator when she opened the door. There was a half-finished roast chicken on a plate—Grace had cooked it for the boys earlier that day. She picked up the carcass gingerly, the unwelcome grease cloying on her fingers. She opened the kitchen door and stepped outside into the darkness of the garden.
There was a small patch of lawn outside the kitchen, and beyond that, riotous and undisciplined, the growth of rhododendrons. She placed the chicken on the ground, close to the place where there was a low gap in the vegetation. He would come that way, Brother Fox, on his nightly prowling, and would find the chicken. It would be unexpected—manna from whatever god foxes believed in; the moon, perhaps.
Compassion for all life: it was too late for the chicken, but not for the fox. And the insight came to her, in a moment of comfort: in an imperfect world, we make the best of what has already been done; that is what we do.
* * *
—
SHE MADE a deliberate effort to keep the following day low-key and routine. She would try to lead her life as she had led it before she tried to improve it with an au pair and an assistant. She would apply the balm of love and compassion in the very ordinary things of life. She would pay attention to her own metaphorical garden rather than to the metaphorical garden of others.
That was her intention, and it would have led to an uneventful day had it not been for the fact that the unexpected occurs irrespective of our intentions. The first surprise was a conversation with the nursery school teacher when she went to collect Charlie.
“He’s been a bit unsettled today,” said the teacher.
The Quiet Side of Passion Page 25