The Right Attitude to Rain id-3

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She opened her eyes. She was aware that somebody, a woman, had come up behind her. “That tune,” she said. She made the remark, or the beginning of a remark, before she took in who it was, and now she gave a slight start of surprise.

  “Yes,” said the woman. “We’ve met before, haven’t we? Cynthia Vaughan.”

  Isabel inclined her head. “Of course. I’m sorry, but I wasn’t putting two and two together. I saw you outside, at the other end of the table, but hadn’t . . .”

  Cynthia raised a hand. “I wasn’t sure either,” she said. “And then somebody said yes, it was you. I can’t remember exactly 1 5 4

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h when we met last time, but wasn’t it on that committee—the one to do with the hospital?”

  They established where it was, and when, and they talked briefly about what had happened to the committee. Isabel thought: So this is her, Patrick’s mother. The possessive one.

  She certainly looked the part—the matron, the galleon in full sail; she was tall, and there was that look Isabel always associated with political women—a firmness, a determination to stick to the agenda.

  They had been standing near the door that led into the large dining room, where the music was coming from. “We’re in the way,” said Cynthia, gently steering Isabel away. “Here’s a sofa.

  We can sit down here.”

  Isabel slightly resented being drawn away and told to sit down. What if she preferred to stand? But it was quite in character, she thought, for a woman like this to tell people what to do, and she found some amusement in that. And it was obvious that Cynthia had something to say to her, which intrigued Isabel; something about Cat, perhaps—if she knew of the connection.

  “I gather that we have something in common,” said Cynthia.

  Isabel thought: She wastes no time. “Yes,” she said. “You’re Patrick’s . . .”

  “I’m Patrick’s mother,” said Cynthia. “Yes. And you are Cat’s aunt, I believe. I must say that you look rather young for that.”

  Isabel smiled. There had been no declaration of war yet, but she thought it would probably come soon; indirectly, she thought, but then she looked again at the haughty nose and the firmness of the lips and decided that it might not be all that indirect.

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  “Cat was born when my brother was quite young. That makes me a young aunt,” Isabel said pleasantly. “And Patrick came to my place for dinner. I liked him.” She uttered the lie without thinking, and immediately said to herself: Social lies are so easy.

  She had not intended that the comment should impress Cynthia, nor ingratiate her with the older woman, and it did neither. Cynthia took a sip of her coffee and stared into her cup, as if the compliment was so obviously true that she was not required to acknowledge it.

  “Patrick’s doing very well in his firm,” she said. “He was with Dickson Minto, you know. Bruce Minto—I don’t know if you know him, but he’s one of the most successful lawyers in the country—he trained him. Personally. Then Patrick was offered this new job and he took it. He left with Bruce’s blessing.”

  “It’s always better that way,” said Isabel.

  Again there was no response to her remark. Isabel felt awkward. So far in the conversation she had uttered platitudes, and she felt foolish and ill at ease, as one does in a conversation where the other party has the advantage. There was no reason for her to feel this way, she was at least the intellectual equal of this political woman; it was a question of what people called alpha behaviour. Isabel was never sure exactly what alpha qualities were, but they seemed to have something to do with the desire—and ability—to dominate others. People usually spoke of alpha males, but there was no reason, surely, that there should not be alpha women. And if such people existed, then Cynthia was certainly one.

  Cynthia had not been looking at Isabel as she spoke, but now she did, and Isabel felt the other woman’s rather large 1 5 6

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h brown eyes on her. “It’s difficult these days,” she said. “It’s so competitive. Even for people like Patrick, who are . . . well, who are on top of things. They have to work all hours of the day. All those transactions, those deals that they get involved in.”

  She paused and Isabel felt that her agreement was required and that it would be all right now to say something trite. “Of course,” she said. “How they do it—”

  “Patrick was talking to me the other day,” interrupted Cynthia. “He was telling me that they were involved in something or other which required them to sleep in the office! They were working until three in the morning and then had to get back to work at seven. They have fold-out beds and the lawyers sleep on those.”

  How ridiculous, thought Isabel. Firemen might do that, and doctors perhaps. But why should lawyers? She knew, though, that it was true. The whole culture of work had become so intrusive and demanding that people had to do it. And the result was that they were left with little time for simply living their lives, for going for a walk, for sitting in a bar, for reading a book.

  It was all work.

  “Why do people have to work so hard?” she asked. “Do you think it’s natural to work ten hours a day, every day? Were we made to do that, do you think?”

  Cynthia frowned. She looked rather displeased by this remark, as if Isabel had interrupted the flow of her thought with some specious question. “That’s how it is,” she said. “It’s China and India, isn’t it? They are prepared to work for next to nothing, which means that our people have to run to keep still.

  Nobody can compete with the sweatshops.”

  Isabel thought that was probably right. If we believed that 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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  we could survive on our wits without actually making anything, then we were living in a fool’s paradise. But she was not sure that this applied to lawyers. So she simply said, “No.”

  “No,” echoed Cynthia. “Anyway, Patrick does all this very cheerfully, I must say. And he’s doing very well, as I said.” She paused. “His career is very important to him, you know.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Isabel.

  Cynthia reached out and picked a piece of fluff off a cushion and twisted it between her fingers. “I’m not sure that it’s a terribly good idea for him to get too emotionally involved with anybody at this stage,” she said quietly. “These next few years will be pretty important for him, job-wise. I imagine that he might be offered a partnership before too long. If he applies himself, that is.”

  Isabel tried not to grin. The approach had come, and she marvelled at Cynthia’s effrontery. It amazed her that anybody would think this way, but it was even more astonishing that Cynthia felt that she could raise the issue like this. She was about to invite her, Isabel thought, to interfere.

  “Emotional involvement is what people do,” said Isabel. “All of us.”

  Cynthia drew in her breath. “I don’t think they’re suited,”

  she said. “Sorry to have to say it. But I don’t.”

  “It’s difficult to say,” said Isabel evenly. “Very different people, or people who strike others as being very different from each other, can get on very well. It’s chemistry, don’t you think?”

  Cynthia’s eyes were upon her again. “I know my own son,”

  she said. “I know what he’s like.”

  “I’m sure you do. But when it comes to these things, to . . .

  well, sex, it’s a very private matter, isn’t it? And can we ever tell 1 5 8

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h who’s going to get on well sexually with whom? I can’t. I’ve never been able to.”

  Cynthia stiffened. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I don’t imagine that sex lies behind it.”

  Isabel was silent. Patrick’s mother obviously did not know Cat. Isabel remembered telling Cat that she thought she sexu-alised the world to
o much. And Cat had laughed and said, “But, Isabel, the world is sexual. It is.”

  Cynthia looked at her, but when Isabel said nothing, she continued, “I don’t know you well. But I’m sure that we both have the interests of Patrick and Kate—”

  “Cat,” corrected Isabel.

  “Cat. We both have their best interests at heart. A word from you, perhaps, to your niece might help her see that this is not necessarily the best thing for them. Do you think so?”

  “No,” said Isabel. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  Cynthia suddenly got to her feet. “I’m sorry that I raised this,” she said. “I thought that we might see things in the same way. We obviously don’t.”

  Isabel rose to stand beside her. “Don’t you think that we should keep out of it?” she said. “It’s their business, after all.”

  She wanted to add, “And it’s time to let go of your son,” but she did not, because she felt that it would be cruel to say that, even if it was abundantly clear that that was what Cynthia needed to do.

  Later that evening, as she walked back with Joe and Mimi and she described the conversation to them, Mimi said, “You were right not to say anything more. Poor woman. He’s all she has, and that’s rather sad, isn’t it? People cling. It’s not the best way, but you can understand why they cling.”

  Isabel felt chastened. The needs of others were not a matT H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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  ter to be treated lightly, even when they were unreasonable, as was the case with Cynthia. I should feel sympathy for her, she thought, not irritation. And yet one could not hold on to somebody beyond a natural point, and Patrick, surely, had reached that point where his mother should let him go to live his own life. This made her think of Jamie, of course.

  C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N

  E

  MIRANDA, the Australian whom she had met at the Stevenson party, telephoned at nine o’clock the following morning, reminding Isabel that she had offered to speak to Cat about a job. Isabel, immured in her morning room with her coffee and the Scotsman crossword, with Mimi seated opposite her reading The Times, was surprised that she should call so early and so soon after the offer was made. But she was not irritated, as one sometimes may be when a promise is called in. It was understandable that Miranda should call and remind her; finding a job was a major thing for her. Then there was her age—nineteen or twenty-one is impatient, or less patient, Isabel thought, than thirty or forty. Isabel agreed to speak to Cat that morning and to telephone her once she had found out whether Cat could offer her anything.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m being pushy,” Miranda said.

  “Calling straight away and all. But you did say . . .”

  “I did,” said Isabel. “And I’ll do what I said I would do.”

  Isabel thought that it would be easier to discuss this with Cat in person, so she went into Bruntsfield an hour or so later.

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  Eddie was standing at the door of the delicatessen when she arrived. He turned to her distractedly and then spat out, “Somebody’s stolen coffee again.” Then he swore—a simple expletive, crude, dirty.

  Isabel looked at Eddie. He was staring down the street, his lip quivering in anger, his face flushed, as if he had just come running from somewhere. There were times when he seemed on the brink of tears, from sheer injustice, Isabel had always thought, and from that ancient, unspecified hurt; now it was more immediate.

  “Stolen coffee?”

  Eddie turned to face her. “It happens all the time,” he said.

  “They just go for it. It’s always packets of coffee. Nine times out of ten.”

  Isabel looked down the street. It was that time in the morning when things were at their quietest: those going to work had caught their lumbering buses, and it was too early for the morning shoppers to come out. A man walked past with his dog, a small cairn terrier with a collar on which dog was written helpfully in studs; the man glanced at Isabel and then at Eddie and smiled. There was a woman with a heavy bag, and a couple of boys of fourteen or fifteen, loose-limbed, dressed in black jeans sinking to the ground and voluminous T-shirts, engaged in the tribal debate of teenagers. She saw no fleeing shoplifters.

  She followed Eddie inside, and the air changed; the smell of coffee (a temptation perhaps to the thieves), of ripening cheeses; the dry, itchy notes of pulses and cereals. Isabel had always felt that this was the smell of real food—supermarkets smelled of chemicals and detergents and cellophane wrapping.

  Eddie, normally laconic, was vocal. “I don’t know why they 1 6 2

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h go for it,” he said. “They stuff their pockets with that Kenyan blend with the nice picture on it. Then they run out of the shop.”

  Isabel thought. She had been in charge of the delicatessen for a week not all that long ago, when Cat had gone to a wedding in Italy, and she had seen no signs of shoplifting. Had she missed it? She cast her mind back. She remembered stacking the coffee section, and she remembered packets with a picture.

  She had assumed that everybody who came into the shop was honest, which was the general assumption that she made about others.

  She looked at Eddie, who was busying himself with counting the packets of coffee on the shelf. He was still quivering with rage.

  “I always assume that people are good,” said Isabel. “I’m naïve, I suppose.”

  “They aren’t,” muttered Eddie.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t trust people,” Isabel went on.

  “Don’t,” said Eddie. “Never.”

  She moved to the newspaper rack. What had happened to Eddie before he came to work here—and Isabel had never found out what that was—must have destroyed his trust in people. He had confided in Cat, she believed, and Cat had kept the confidence, not revealing what Eddie had said to her. But Isabel knew that it was something dark, and she did not want to know the details. So although she did not want to arouse Eddie’s private demons, she did not feel she could let this denial of trust go answered.

  She picked up a paper and went to stand beside Eddie. “You can’t say that about trust, Eddie. You have to trust somebody.”

  The young man stopped in the act of counting, his hand 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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  resting on the edge of the shelf. Isabel was aware of his breathing, which seemed to come more quickly than usual, as if he had been exerting himself. He did not look at her, but kept his gaze upon the packets of coffee in front of him.

  “I don’t,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “I just don’t.”

  “Because of something that happened to you?” She had not meant to say that, but it had come out.

  He did nothing, said nothing. Isabel quickly thought, I must get away from this topic.

  “Anyway,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it. But remember that there are some people you can trust. Me. Cat. You can trust us, Eddie. And not everyone who comes into this shop is going to steal something. They really aren’t.”

  She moved back to the newspaper rack and replaced the paper, since Cat had arrived, a shopping bag in her hand. Isabel greeted her, leaving Eddie to his thoughts. “We’ve had shoplifters,” she whispered. “Eddie’s very upset.”

  Cat glanced at Eddie and sighed. With a nod of her head she signalled to Isabel to follow her into the office at the back.

  “He gets really upset over that,” said Cat once they were out of Eddie’s earshot. “It’s one of the things that seems to trigger memories for him. He gets over it, of course, but I really feel for him when it happens.”

  “He said something about not trusting anybody,” said Isabel.

  Cat opened her shopping bag and took out a small container of nail polish, which she held against her nails to assess the colour match.

  “He doesn’t,” said Cat. “Poor Eddie. He doesn’t trust anybody. Even h
imself.”

  Isabel frowned. The idea of not trusting oneself was a strange one. It was possible to imagine not trusting anybody 1 6 4

  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h else—bleak though such a position would be—but not to trust oneself? Did that make sense?

  Cat put down the bottle of nail polish and looked up at Isabel. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what happens, I gather. People to whom really bad things happen don’t trust their own feelings.

  Did they ask for it? Did they deserve it? Those sort of questions.

  And that means they don’t trust themselves.”

  Yes, thought Isabel, you’re right. And she remembered that when John Liamor had left her she had asked herself whether she had brought about his departure. For a time she had blamed herself for his womanising, for his constant affairs, and had felt, in some vague, unspecified way, that it was her failure to make him happy that had driven him into the arms of others. Such nonsense, of course, but she had believed it then.

  Cat shrugged. “Leave him,” she said. “He’s getting a bit better—generally. Don’t talk to him about it.”

  Isabel agreed. “But I do want to talk to you,” she said. “Are you still thinking of taking on somebody else?”

  Cat said that she was. “There’s an Australian girl I met,”

  Isabel said. “She’s looking for something. I get the impression that she’d be a very good worker. And she’s available pretty much immediately.”