The Right Attitude to Rain id-3

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “It’s about islands,” he said, and that was all he told her.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel would find him gazing at her sometimes, just gazing, and he would smile when he saw that she had noticed. She asked him on one such occasion what he was thinking, and he replied, “About you. I’m thinking about you.” He said it with guilelessness, with a sort of innocence, and she felt something happen within her, some suffusion of warmth, that made her want to hold him, there and then, hold him to her.

  He stayed for days at a stretch, going back to his flat in Saxe-Coburg Street only to pick up the mail and find things, a bassoon reed, a page of his composition which he had scribbled and left somewhere, a book he was reading. For much of the time they were alone, but once they invited friends round for a dinner at which they sat out until midnight, under a sky which was dark, but only just, dotted with faint stars. They talked, united in a common feeling of contentment and peace, and then sat silently, with neither saying anything for a long time, each looking up at the sky, alone in his or her private musing.

  Isabel bumped into Cat in Bruntsfield, in the post office. It was an awkward meeting; Cat was polite but seemed embarrassed, and Isabel’s efforts at a normal conversation were too studied to be anything but stiff. They parted after a few minutes, nothing resolved. Isabel asked herself whether she should try another apology, but decided again that there was nothing for her to apologise for. It was taking a long time, but Cat would come round eventually. She almost told Jamie about it, but stopped herself because it occurred to her that he might interpret Cat’s jealousy as a sign that she wanted him back, which Isabel knew was not the case.

  Then came the letter from Mimi. They were back in Dallas, and she complained about the heat. Joe had gone to a legal history conference in Denver. It was cooler there, he had told 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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  and she wondered whether she should have gone too. Then: Something bad happened here a couple of days ago. Tom Bruce, who entertained us all, had a fire at his place near Tyler. He has a house there, and he goes there for weekends now and then. It went up pretty quickly, I’m afraid. He was in it at the time.

  Isabel strained to make out Mimi’s handwriting. A word had been smudged, but the rest of the sentence was clear.

  In spite of that . . . he managed to escape out a window.

  The front door had been locked by somebody who had a key. He said that he didn’t bother to lock up at night. But the fire people thought that he had probably done so and had forgotten. I’ve done that myself, haven’t you? Forgotten whether or not I’ve locked something. But I imagine that somebody else might have had a key.

  Tom was all right, apart from having breathed in smoke, which made them keep him in hospital for a night.

  Hank and Barb Lischer saw him. They said that he was pretty shocked, but otherwise none the worse for it all. It’s not a very nice story, bearing in mind that the fire chief in Tyler says that the fire was deliberately started. He’s ada-mant about it. Apparently they can tell if gas has been used, and they said it had. So who did it?

  Mimi then wrote, and underlined, We know, of course. She understood, and shared, Isabel’s liking for crosswords, and wrote, Take the saint from German anxiety, that is.

  Isabel smiled at the clue, which was hardly a revelation. She would be more direct, though, and called Mimi immediately.

  “I’ve had your letter,” she said. “That fire: you know, I know—do you think Tom knows?”

  “He’s not stupid,” said Mimi. “I imagine he does.”

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

  “But are you sure?”

  “No,” said Mimi. “I’m not.”

  “Sometimes when things concern us intimately, we don’t see the obvious.”

  “We don’t,” said Mimi. “Often we don’t.”

  There was silence as each waited for the other to say something. It was Isabel who spoke. “Go and ask him if he’s done something about his will,” she said. “He said that he had made arrangements after the engagement.”

  “He must have done something about that,” said Mimi.

  “He has his advisers. I can’t imagine that sort of thing would be left.”

  “But it can be,” Isabel protested. “You’re always hearing about people who don’t bring these things up to date. Then they die and their first wife gets everything and the second nothing.”

  Mimi sounded doubtful. “But is it our business?”

  “Yes,” said Isabel firmly. “It is. But, if you like, I’ll call him.

  Just give me his number.”

  “I’ll speak to him,” said Mimi.

  “And tell him to tell Angie,” added Isabel.

  “To tell her what?”

  “To tell her that the provision he made has been unmade.

  That’s very important.” She paused. “Of course it may have nothing to do with it. It may just be a settling of scores. She feels rejected. A fire might restore her amour propre. ”

  “It’s unlikely that they will be able to prove anything,” said Mimi. “And anyway, even if he has an idea that it’s her, would he want to take matters further? Probably not.

  “You may be right, though,” Mimi continued. “Anything else?”

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  “Just an observation,” said Isabel. “A question for us. How wrong can you be?”

  “Perhaps we should trust our intuitions,” said Mimi.

  “Of course, there are other reasons for arson,” said Isabel, as an afterthought. “Especially in the country. Local issues. Local jealousies. Resentment over boundaries, trees, livestock. Anything.” One just could not tell. And until there was proof, nothing was clear, which was the way that so much of life was—vague, ambiguous, by no means as simple as we imagine it to be.

  “And people set fire to their own property,” said Mimi.

  “That’s very common, apparently. And not just for insurance purposes.”

  Isabel said nothing. She remembered a conversation she had had with Tom on their walk up the hill, about something to do with a house not being in the right place. They had talked about it. But she could not remember exactly what had been said, and after puzzling for a few moments, she stopped thinking about it.

  She rang off. In her mind there was a counting rhyme, one of those rhymes one learns as a child, and which stays in the mind for ever. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo: he lies, she lies, he lies, she lies, he lies . . . And the finger ended up pointing at the child who was in the wrong place when one finished counting. Liar!

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E

  E

  THE CONVERSATION with Mimi took place on a Monday; the next two days were days of activity and revelation. By Wednesday she knew that she had to talk to Jamie. He had gone to Glasgow to take part in a musical workshop organised by the chamber orchestra in which he occasionally played. That was due to finish on Friday afternoon and he would return, he said, on Saturday afternoon: there were friends he wanted to meet in Glasgow. Isabel said to him, “You don’t think that you would be able to come back for Friday evening? We could have dinner.”

  “What about Saturday evening? Are you doing anything on Saturday evening?”

  She was not, but she needed to talk to him. It could wait, of course—most things can wait—but she wanted to talk to him as soon as possible.

  “There’s something we need to discuss,” she said, trying not to sound too insistent, but fearing that she did.

  Jamie’s hesitation was very brief, but enough to convey anxiety. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come round on Friday evening. We can discuss whatever it is. What is it, by the way?”

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  “Do you mind waiting?”

  A note of irritation crept into his voice. �
�No, not really.

  But . . .”

  “It would be better,” she said.

  After that their conversation came to an end. She knew what he was thinking: that she was proposing to end their affair and that she wanted to do it face-to-face. He must be thinking that, she told herself—if only he knew.

  She decided to make a special meal for that evening and went into Bruntsfield to buy supplies. When Isabel went into the delicatessen Miranda was serving, standing behind the counter with Eddie. They had been laughing at a shared joke.

  “Something amusing happen?” asked Isabel.

  Eddie glanced at Miranda, and burst into giggles.

  “Eddie said . . . ,” began Miranda, but she, too, started to laugh.

  Isabel smiled, not at the joke, whatever it was, but at the sight of the two of them so obviously enjoying themselves.

  She had so rarely seen Eddie smiling, let alone laughing, and the sight pleased her. “Don’t bother,” said Isabel. “Some jokes just don’t translate.”

  “She said . . . ,” Eddie began, but again burst into squeals of laughter.

  Isabel shook her head in mock despair. She saw that the door of the office was open and that Cat was sitting at her desk.

  She approached the door, knocked and stuck her head in.

  Cat looked up. When she saw Isabel, her expression changed. There was a flicker of a frown, but only a flicker. Then she gestured to a chair in front of the desk.

  “I mustn’t stay,” said Isabel. “I thought that I might just . . .”

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h She had not thought of what she might say to Cat, but now she knew. The time for reconciliation had arrived. “I thought I might just say that I’m sorry.”

  Cat looked down at her desk. “I’m the one who should be saying that,” she mumbled. “I got carried away.”

  “We all get carried away,” said Isabel. “It’s a risk of being human—being carried away.”

  The tension that had been in the room disappeared. “May I come round on Sunday? To tea?”

  “Of course,” said Isabel. In her relief, she decided to include Patrick. “And Patrick too. Please bring him.”

  Cat’s frown returned. “Patrick and I . . .”

  Isabel looked up quickly. Patrick’s mother had won. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, now you do,” said Cat. “We’re no longer seeing each other.”

  “His work?” asked Isabel. “Was that the trouble?”

  Cat seemed surprised by the question. “How did you guess?

  He said that he just didn’t have the time at the moment to continue to be involved.”

  Mother, thought Isabel. That interfering woman had got what she wanted. And Patrick joins the ranks of Cat’s former suitors.

  “Oh well,” said Isabel. “You’ll be all right.”

  “I am,” said Cat. “I am all right.”

  “Good.”

  “And you?” asked Cat. It was not a prying question.

  “I’m all right too,” said Isabel. “You know how it is . . .” It was a vague, pointless thing to say, and for a moment she thought of adding whatever, but did not.

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  She left Cat’s office and made her purchases. Miranda and Eddie were still laughing with each other, and Isabel’s presence seemed to tickle them all the more. “Anyone would think that you were high on something,” Isabel said good-naturedly.

  There was a sudden, sober silence. You are! thought Isabel.

  And that, she thought, must be Miranda’s doing. She would have to speak to Cat about it, discreetly. She did not like the idea of Eddie being led astray by an older woman. Young men are easily led astray, she thought, but then . . .

  Eddie pointed to a large box filled with crumpled silver-paper wrappings. He smiled guiltily. “Liqueur chocolates,” he said. “Cat found a time-expired box and gave them to Miranda.

  Rum. Cointreau. Even crème de menthe. We’ve eaten them. All of them. Thirty-two.”

  He turned to Miranda, as a conspirator turns to an accom-plice; she put a hand to her mouth in an elaborate display of greed discovered, but then burst out laughing again. Isabel shook her head and smiled, then left the delicatessen. Once again I jumped to the wrong conclusion, she thought; I am often almost right, she told herself, or right but wrong.

  She made her way back to the house, walking slowly along Merchiston Crescent in the warmth of the afternoon, deep in thought. There was no turning back; she would not do that, she would see things through. Once back at the house, she laid out the provisions she had bought. Grace was about to leave, but before she did she showed Isabel the rearrangement she had made of the spice cupboard. “The nutmeg was all mouldy,” she said accusingly. “I had to throw it out.”

  Isabel would not be held responsible for mould and she ignored Grace’s remark.

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  “And as for the pepper,” Grace went on, “you had three opened jars. That makes pepper dry and dusty. I put everything into one jar and sealed it.”

  Isabel accepted the reproach. “I’ll try to remember to finish each one before I open another,” she said.

  They finished with the spice cupboard, and Grace gathered her things in readiness to leave. Isabel asked her about her plans for the weekend and was told that there was a session at the spiritualist centre that night. “A very good medium,” said Grace.

  “She’s very direct, and she doesn’t hesitate to warn us.”

  She looked challengingly at Isabel, as if expecting contradiction. But Isabel said only, “How useful.” She was wondering when she should speak to Grace, when she should tell her; next week perhaps.

  Then Grace said, “I’ve not said thank you properly. For the flat. I’m very grateful to you, you know.”

  Isabel looked away. She felt awkward about thanks; she knew that she should not, but she could not help it. She knew how to show gratitude; it was harder to accept it, and she would have to learn.

  “I’m glad that you like it,” she said. “I took to it straight away.”

  Grace nodded. “Shall I pay you the rent monthly?”

  Isabel frowned. “There’s no rent,” she said.

  “But I must,” said Grace. “You can’t . . .”

  “I can.”

  “I won’t accept it,” said Grace. She could be stubborn, as Isabel knew well.

  “In that case we’ll agree on a peppercorn rent,” said Isabel, pointing to the spice cupboard. “A jar of peppercorns.”

  The matter was left at that; they would discuss it later.

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  Grace left Isabel in the house shortly before five. Jamie would be coming at seven, and she had things to make ready. But although she had things to do, she could not do them. She sat down at the kitchen table, feeling suddenly weepy; she rested her head in her hands, staring at the stripped pine surface. The table—a long one—had been bought by her father when it was no longer required by a psychiatric hospital on whose board of trustees he had served. It had seen sorrow, she thought, confusion, unhappiness. And she remembered, as she sat there, a short film she had seen about the life of a man, a quiet, gentle man, who had been taken from his small farm on one of the Hebridean islands and had been detained in that hospital for seventeen years. He had been a weaver, and had made figures out of reeds and rushes; she realised, as she watched the film, that her father had known this man and had brought back for her one of these small figures, a corn dolly, and she had kept it on her window sill amongst her other dolls. When he had been allowed to go back to his croft, after all those years, he had been looked after by a sister, who had waited for him to return and was ready to care for him again, as she had done before.

  That was all that the film was about: exile and return, and
the small needs of quiet people. She had wept then, as she watched the film, as she wept now, for very different reasons.

  S H E M E T JA M I E in the front hall and led him through to the kitchen, where she had been preparing their supper. He yawned, stretched and said, “I’m really tired, you know. We had a party last night—the people from the workshop. I didn’t get to bed until two.”

  “We can eat early tonight,” she said.

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  “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “No, I know that.” Her heart was beating hard within her; her stomach felt light, topsy-turvy. She walked over to the fridge and took out the opened bottle of New Zealand white wine which she had put in to chill. She poured Jamie a glass of wine and a glass of ginger ale for herself.

  He took the wineglass from her, looking at her glass as he did so. “Ginger ale?”

  “Yes,” she said, trying to steady the glass in her hand, which was shaking.

  He raised an eyebrow. He knew that Isabel enjoyed a glass of wine in the evening, particularly at the end of the week.

  “Why?”

  She closed her eyes. Her glass was chilly on her fingers, moist. Now was as good a time as any, perhaps the best.

  “Because I’m pregnant,” she said.

  He dropped his wineglass. It fell to the floor, to the Victorian stone flags; it shattered, although the stem remained intact, a little glass tower catching the light from the window. There was the sharp smell of wine, released in a sudden rush of bouquet.