Was she? Since she had met John, just over twenty years ago, she had thought about him, one way or another, every day.
In the beginning, when she had been in his thrall, she had thought about him all day; he was just there, constantly, and her T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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thoughts of him were pleasant, almost numbing, like the feeling, she imagined, that an opiate would give. Then, when she had discovered that he was having an affair with one of his students, she had thought about him with anxiety and alarm, as one thinks of somebody whom one is afraid to lose. And that had been replaced by resentment and anger and aching feelings of love: emotions that were all inextricably mixed up and which fought with one another in a hopeless lack of resolution. The precise memory of him became less vivid, as a drawing in pencil on paper may blur, become less clearly delineated with handling and folding. But he was still there, and every so often—more often than she would have liked to admit—there came a pang of longing. At such times all she wanted was for him to come back into her life as if nothing had happened, for her to be lying in his arms listening to the song that he liked to play at such moments, the gravelly voiced singer with his mid-Atlantic drawl singing about love and heartache; music that she could not listen to now, because of its associations and the sense of loss that it triggered. We act out our lives to a soundtrack, thought Isabel, the music that becomes, for a spell, our favourite, and is listened to again and again until it stands for the time itself. But that was about all the scripting that we achieved; the rest, for most of us, was extemporising.
Yesterday, and the day before, she had not thought of John Liamor—not once. And she had not thought about him today, either, until that moment when in front of the lawyer’s office in Rutland Square she had thought about his absence from her thoughts. And it was different, she decided. When she thought about him now, he was just another person, not John Liamor, the man who had dominated her life. He was my North, my South—those desolate words of WHA about lost love. And he 1 0 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h went on to say: I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. Well, of course.
I am free of him now, she said to herself. I am a free woman.
I thought that he would last for ever: I was wrong. She went up to the door and pushed it open, thinking: I am free. But then she thought: Why am I free? And she knew intuitively that it was because of what had happened with Jamie. Something had been changed by that moment of contact. Jamie would be her lover. It was John who had been stopping her—not some notion of appropriateness—those were intellectual doubts and it was really far more simple than that. She had been tied to an incu-bus, the memory of a love that had been rejected and had had nowhere to go; she had been locked into a dead relationship and now the last dried skin of it had fallen away, like the scab on a wound, and she was free.
She faced the receptionist, who looked up at her with an enquiring smile. Isabel thought: What if I told this woman, if I said to her, “I have just decided, out there on your doorstep, that I am going to have an affair with a younger man?” And then, presto, had taken a photograph out of her bag and said, “There.
Look at him.”
We do not do these things, and she did not. She had once, in casual conversation about the mind, discussed such impulses with her psychiatrist friend, Richard Latcham, who had said:
“Of course we all have those thoughts. We have them when we stand on the edge of waterfalls. We all think: What if I jumped now? Or we think of saying something outrageous, or taking all our clothes off. It’s entirely natural, but we never do it. It’s the mind exploring possibilities, which is what our subconscious minds do all the time. Most of the possibilities are very straight-T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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forward likelihoods, but there are others, which are set aside and disregarded. Don’t worry, Isabel.”
“But surely it happens,” Isabel had said. “Surely sometimes people give in to these urges. After all, some people actually do jump over waterfalls, and maybe not all of them had thought it all out beforehand.”
Richard thought for a moment. “I think it’s pretty rare,” he said. “But I do know of one case. Somebody I know, in fact. He told me all about it. He’s a classicist here in Cambridge, a tremendously erudite man. He writes about late Latin poetry.
Apparently he’s the man for late Latin poetry. They had a dinner in his college and they were all in the senior common room afterwards—you know, one of those old panelled rooms with portraits of the founder and Isaac Newton and so forth on the walls, and he was sitting with a friend drinking a glass of port when a visiting professor of archaeology from Canada walked past with his wife. They had just helped themselves to coffee and had the cups in their hands. Apparently she was a rather substantial woman who was particularly broad in the beam. And this classicist suddenly said very loudly, in the hearing of everybody, ‘My God! What a massive rump!’ ”
“Apparently this poor professor of archaeology dropped his coffee cup and the coffee spilled down the front of his trousers.
And his wife stood frozen to the spot. That was it. The classicist apologised and said that he did not know what had come over him. He really felt terrible about it. He later wrote them a letter and offered to make a substantial donation to a charity or cause of their choice. They accepted his apology, which is exactly what you would expect of decent people like the Canadians, and then they suggested some association for Anglo-Canadian 1 0 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h understanding, which I suppose was appropriate, in a way. But I think that was one case where the inner urge to do something impermissible overcame the inhibitory mechanisms.” Richard paused. “Mind you, it could have been worse.”
“Hardly,” said Isabel.
“He could have been standing at the edge of a waterfall,”
said Richard thoughtfully. “Or he could have been standing behind her at a waterfall.”
“And pushed her over?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Richard.
“What a—” She was about to say terrible disaster, but Richard said: “Splash.”
T H E R E C E P T I O N I S T I N V I T E D I S A B E L to take a seat. The lawyer, she said, would be down to see her in a few minutes and would see her in the small conference room off the reception area. Isabel sank into a large black leather sofa and paged through a social magazine. It was about cocktail parties and receptions and openings at galleries. The same faces appeared in several of the photographs, faces which looked confidently into the camera as if to say, “Yes, me again.” She turned the pages quickly, and then stopped. A dance had been held at Prestonfield House: somebody’s birthday, the daughter of a man in a kilt with an elaborate ruff at his throat, the full Highland rig, an East Lothian grandee. And there were the bright young people, smiling, laughing, glasses of champagne in their hands.
And there was Jamie standing in a group of three young men, all of them in their kilts and formal jackets, their arms around one another. She stared at the photograph, stared at the faces of the other two young men, and at Jamie, and her heart gave a lurch.
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She was not part of that world. But there was something else about the photograph that intrigued her, something almost homo-erotic in the easy intimacy of the three young men, their friendship, their closeness. She looked closer. Their arms were on one another’s shoulders; the face of one of them was turned to another, facing him. Jamie had pulled back from the kiss that afternoon; could it be that, for all his obsession with Cat, who was, after all, boyish in her appearance, his inclinations, or some of them, were otherwise? That was quite common, and one should not be surprised that a man might be attracted to one or two women but still be attracted to his own sex. There were many such relationships. And a young man like that might find the company of an older woman appealin
g, because it was easy and interesting and sexually undemanding. She looked at the photograph again, and, in a quick movement, furtively tore it out, folded it and tucked it into her bag. There was a rustling of paper from the desk near the window, and she gave a glance in the direction of the receptionist, who had clearly seen her. She smiled and shrugged, a gesture which came naturally to her but which was ambiguous in its meaning.
“I’m sorry,” Isabel said across the room. “I simply had to keep that. It’s someone I know. And it’s pretty out of date . . .”
“Of course,” said the receptionist politely. “It’s just that we tend to keep the magazines for a while. People like to read them.”
“Good,” said Isabel, meaninglessly, looking up at the ceiling, like a child caught in an act of flagrant disobedience who simply pretends that it has not happened.
The lawyer, an attractive woman in the dark skirt and high-boned looks of her profession, came through the door and shook hands. She gestured to a door and led Isabel into a small, 1 0 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h windowless conference room furnished with a beechwood table and chairs. There was coffee in a vacuum jug and a small plate of biscuits.
As she helped Isabel to coffee, the lawyer explained that although she was happy to talk about the purchase of the flat, any formal offer would have to come through Isabel’s own lawyer in the proper legal form.
“I understand,” said Isabel. “But there was something I wanted to discuss with you personally.”
“I haven’t seen the flat myself,” warned the lawyer. “I have some particulars about it, but I don’t have details. If there is something about it that needs further looking at, then you need to speak to your surveyor. I take it that—”
Isabel interrupted. “It’s nothing to do with that,” she said.
“We had a survey done. Everything was fine. No settlement in the building.”
“Which is very much a plus in the New Town, isn’t it?” said the lawyer. “There are some parts where the floors are at quite an angle. I suppose it’s the penalty you pay for living in an old building. Lots of character, but sometimes lots of cracks.
No, I gather it’s a very nice little flat.” She looked at Isabel enquiringly.
“Simon Mackintosh said that the owner—”
“Florence Macreadie.”
“Yes, I met her. He said that Florence Macreadie was prepared to let me have the flat for substantially under the starting price.”
The lawyer nodded. “It’s unusual. Very unusual. But yes, I can confirm that. Ten thousand below.”
Isabel sipped at her coffee. She looked at the lawyer’s hands, which were resting on a pad of paper, an expensive, lacquered T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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fountain pen held loosely between the fingers. But her hands did not move. They were perfectly still.
“It’s very generous of her,” said Isabel. “But I fear that she has the wrong impression.” She looked at the lawyer, whose eyes moved away from hers. It was embarrassing for her, she decided. This was not a matter of conditions and clauses. “Yes,”
she went on. “She formed the impression that the young man who was with me was there because we were going to move in together. She was . . .”
“Touched,” supplied the lawyer, and smiled at Isabel, as one woman to another. She looked down at her hands and placed the pen very deliberately on the pad of paper. It rolled slightly and then came to rest. Isabel watched it.
“Well, we’re not,” said Isabel. “I asked him to come simply because he knows the area.”
The lawyer was silent for a moment. Then she laughed.
“Ah! So you’re not . . . Well, I suppose one must say that you’re not . . . together. I’m sorry. The way she described it to me made it sound rather romantic. I’m sorry, Miss Dalhousie.”
Isabel looked again at the lawyer’s hands. The wedding ring.
And her mind was made up. She would not be an object of pity.
She would not. “We are actually,” she said.
The lawyer did not understand. “You’re . . .”
“We are in a relationship,” said Isabel.
The lawyer blushed. “Oh . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”
“It’s all right. It’s at an early stage. But we’re not going to live there. That flat will be for someone else altogether. I have a . . .
a lady who helps me. I’m buying it for her.” To say that it was at an early stage was not enough. She should have said that they were close friends, and that was all. But suddenly she was tired of being by herself, tired of being seen by others as being in 1 0 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h some way disadvantaged because she was single, or as incapable of getting herself a man. She was not. She was not. But she knew at the same time she should not make what amounted to a childish boast of a relationship with a younger man. She had no reason to wish to make this other woman feel envious, and yet it had slipped out and now it was difficult to retract it without looking foolish. Leave it, she thought. It’s not important.
Leave it.
The lawyer seemed flustered, but after a moment or two she regained her composure. “But don’t you think that Miss Macreadie’s offer might still stand? I’ll have to ask her, of course, but it seems to me that she might still wish to help you by selling you the flat, even if it’s for your . . . your lady. The way she put it to me was that she wanted to do something for you because she liked the idea of your being with that young man—and she did describe him as a bit younger than you. Not of course that . . .
But the point is, I think she wants you to have it.”
Isabel sat back in her chair. She had not expected this. She had stretched the truth. Jamie was not her lover—yet—and now it seemed as if she might be offered the flat nonetheless. And that would mean that a potential advantage secured on the basis of a misunderstanding would become a potential advantage secured on the basis of a clear lie. So she had made the situation worse.
The lawyer stood up. “Let me speak to her,” she said. “Then I’ll get back to Simon Mackintosh to confirm things. That’s what I’ll do.”
Isabel could not bring herself to object. She knew that she should, but she thought that she might do so later, when she had the time to think of a reasonable way out of a ridiculous misunderstanding. So she said nothing, and was shown out cor-T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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dially by the lawyer. As she left through the front door she saw the receptionist glancing at her. There was disapproval in the glance but it was well concealed; disapproval of one who tore pictures from the magazines of others, which would have been compounded, surely, had she known that this magazine-mutilator was one of those people who boasted of romantic exploits that they simply had not had. Those are the worst sort of people in every way. Inadequate lovers. Inadequate people.
C H A P T E R T E N
E
JAMIE ARRIVED EARLY for dinner, as he often did, since he enjoyed talking to Isabel while she prepared the meal. He would sit at the kitchen table, glass in hand, listening to her; he liked to listen to her. But this was not possible this evening, as it was Mimi’s dinner and she had forbidden Isabel to enter the kitchen.
“Unless I can’t find anything,” she said. “Then you can come in and get it for me. Otherwise, this is my show. You’re off duty.”
As Joe was busy with correspondence in the study, Isabel took Jamie through to the music room and they sat in front of the high Victorian fireplace. During the summer Grace filled the fire basket with dried hibiscus from the garden, and the faded blue-grey petals of the flower heads were covered with little fragments of masonry that had fallen down the flue.
“Somebody told me that my chimneys were crumbling inside,” Isabel said. “And every so often a good chunk of masonry falls down to make the point. But I can’t be bothered to do anything about it. I really can’t. They can re
line them, but it’s another expense.”
“But you’re not short of money,” said Jamie. “You can have T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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lined chimneys if you want. You can have anything you want.
Anything.”
Isabel looked at him. She did not like discussing her finances with anybody, even with Jamie, but now she considered what he had said. You can have anything you want. And anyone too? she wondered. The idea was offensive, and she tried to put it out of her mind, but the question was insistent: Could money really get you people, if that was what you wanted? Was it a crude transaction, or were there people who were simply drawn to those with money and therefore prepared to take up with them, even if they would never have done so otherwise? She thought of an aged magnate who had married one of the world’s most glam-orous women. Would she have married him if he had no money?
It was difficult to imagine, but then she thought: I know nothing about that woman, and what she wanted, or saw in him. How do I know that she didn’t love him?
“It’s not that simple,” she said to Jamie. “In the first place, I don’t have that much. And in the second place, I don’t like to waste it.” She did not intend to sound peevish, but she did.
Jamie looked apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“I know,” said Isabel, melting.
“The point is,” said Jamie, “that you shouldn’t let things go with a house. If something needs attending to, then you should do it before it gets worse. My dad’s got a builder who keeps saying that to him.”
“And it’s true,” said Isabel. But then she remembered a conversation with a German friend, Michael von Poser, on one of his visits. He was a prominent German conservationist who believed that old buildings should be left to age gracefully. “And if 1 1 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h your ceiling should fall down,” he had said to Isabel, a twinkle in his eye, “then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard.
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