CHAPTER SEVEN

THERE WAS A NEW DOG in their lives—a rumbustious, enthusiastic black Labrador, burdened with a Russian name that Isabel knew she would find difficult to remember. The days when dogs bore names like Bobby or Hero seemed to be over; now dogs were given names from Icelandic sagas or, with playful irony, named after philosophers, actresses or obscure football players. This Labrador, a recent addition to the household of Isabel’s friends Peter and Susie Stevenson, had been given the Russian name Lubka; their previous dog, Murphy, having had an Irish one. Another Irish name would be too much of a reminder of what they had lost: Murphy had not been an intellectual—few Labradors are—but had been loyal and loving, and was sorely missed.

Her visit to the Stevenson house in the Grange, that quiet, well-kept quarter on the south side of the city, was overdue. Susie had been keen to meet Magnus, and Isabel had promised to bring him round sooner rather than later; yet he was already three months old, and it was only now that she was standing in the hall of West Grange House, being introduced to the overactive bundle of fur, sinew and enthusiasm that was Lubka.

“And here he is,” said Susie as she leaned forward to examine Magnus, still fast asleep in his reclining pushchair.

What was there to say about babies? That was the question that Jamie had posed—not in a spirit of antipathy towards babies in general, but out of puzzlement that people appeared to be able to discuss any baby at length.

Isabel had pointed out that when babies were talked about, it was never babies in general terms; discussion of babies tended to be about a particular baby, and almost always about one whose parents were known to those participating in the conversation. People, she suggested, had a great deal to say about their own babies or their children’s babies; there was endless interest in their everyday doings, in their progress towards physical control of the head, in their sleep patterns, in their reactions to the world: a baby might do nothing at all and yet be considered fascinating.

And now Susie, examining Magnus with unforced interest, pronounced on his appearance. “The image of Jamie,” she said. “The absolute image.”

Isabel would have been only too happy to agree. That one should be the image of Jamie would be a good start in life, but how could anybody see this in features that still had the malleability of early infancy? All babies, she remembered her father saying, look like Winston Churchill. And yet they did not look quite the same, because people could pick their babies out in the crowd; she would certainly not mistake Magnus for another baby. So what made the baby face recognisable? As if in answer to her unspoken question, Susie said, “The eyes are the same, aren’t they?”

Isabel gave a non-committal reply. “Perhaps. But it’s difficult to tell with babies, I find.” Then she added, “I’ll tell Jamie. I’m sure he’ll be pleased.”

As she spoke, she found herself looking at Lubka, who had momentarily stopped wriggling and was sitting down, his liquid brown eyes fixed on Isabel. There was something in the dog’s gaze that struck her as familiar, but she was unsure what it was. Then it came to her: Peter. The look in the dog’s eyes was reminiscent of Peter’s gaze—which was absurd, of course. Dogs were often said to resemble their owners because of unconscious factors at play in the choosing of dogs; pit-bull terriers were not owned by thin aesthetes, but by stocky, aggressive types, mesomorphs almost without exception; poodles were often to be seen with fashion-conscious owners; mongrels attracted comfortable, home-loving people who were not too bothered with grooming, either canine or human. But that was as far as it went, and that a dog should somehow have the eyes of its owner was fanciful anthropomorphism.

They went inside, and Susie led them into the kitchen at the rear of the house, a comfortable room complete with a piano and a view of the monkey-puzzle tree that dominated the lawn. Peter appeared, took a look at the still sleeping Magnus and gave Isabel a kiss of greeting.

“He looks just like his father,” he said, smiling.

Susie made a face. “He says that about every baby.”

“Reassurance,” said Isabel. “And tact. One could hardly remark on the fact that a baby looked nothing like the putative father.”

Susie busied herself with the teapot. “You must have your hands full,” she said. “Charlie, and now Magnus…”

“Jamie’s very hands-on,” said Isabel. “And there’s Grace, of course. I still manage to get time for other things.”

Peter was watching her. “You aren’t—” He broke off. “You aren’t getting involved again, are you?”

She sighed. “I didn’t seek this one out.”

Peter laughed. “But you never do. People come to you. In spite of your never breathing a public word about what you do, they come, don’t they?”

Isabel made a gesture of acceptance. “I know, I know.”

Peter laughed. “It’s amazing how they know. They don’t even have to search for you on the Internet—because there’s nothing there, anyway, to encourage people to ask for your help. You’re too modest for that, aren’t you?”

“You’ve looked?” asked Isabel.

“Of course I have,” said Peter. “Not to look for one’s friends on the Internet is actually a breach of civility.”

Isabel found herself thinking of when she had last searched online for a friend’s name: yesterday.

“If you don’t look for somebody,” Peter continued, “then you’re actually implying that they aren’t interesting enough to have much of an online presence.” He was smiling at her, and Isabel was not sure whether he was entirely serious.

“And to look for oneself?” asked Isabel.

Peter shrugged. “Most people do that, even if not many admit to it. But of course you should be careful; it’s like reading a recommendation that somebody’s written for you: you might not like what you see.” He thought for a moment before continuing. “As often as not, what people find when they do a self-search is stuff they’ve written themselves—about themselves.”

“Our narcissistic times,” said Isabel. “I just don’t see what the attraction is in leading one’s life in public. Yet so many people do it. They put all the details of their lives up on social media, every last little thing. With photographs. ‘Here’s me waiting for the train.’ ‘Here I am making sandwiches.’ And so on.”

Peter nodded. “Selfies.”

“Have you ever taken one?” asked Isabel.

“No. Not really.”

She smiled ruefully. “Nor have I.” And added, “Does that make us out of date?”

“Probably,” said Peter. “Everybody seems to take selfies now. It’s made being the Pope or the Prime Minister a very demanding job. The moment you meet somebody they want a selfie, and you have to get up close to your new friend and grin into the camera.”

“I suspect there’s a protocol about that.”

“Not one that the public observes,” said Peter. He was going to add to this, but Magnus had awoken, and was being lifted up admiringly by Susie.

Peter turned to Isabel. “Shall we talk?”

She nodded. She felt slightly reluctant to burden them with the issue, but they had never objected in the past. And, she thought, they half expected it.

“Do you know somebody called MacUspaig?” she asked.

Susie looked up. “Mac what?”

“MacUspaig. Yes, it’s a very rare name, apparently—originally from the Hebrides. He’s a doctor—a plastic surgeon.”

Peter shook his head. “No. I don’t. Susie?”

“No,” Susie replied. “It’s a name one would remember, don’t you think?”

“Or a woman called Connie Macdonald,” Isabel continued. “Constance Macdonald.”

Peter shook his head again. “No. Of course there are thousands of Macdonalds…”

“Or Bea Shandon?”

He looked thoughtful. “I think we may have met her.” He looked across the room, to where Susie had Magnus in her arms. “Bea Shandon, Susie?”

Susie looked up. “It rings a vague bell. I think we’ve met her, but I can’t remember where…or when, for that matter.”

Isabel thought: The Village of Edinburgh. She turned to Peter. “May I tell you the full story?”

He listened attentively as she explained. When she’d finished, he surveyed her with one of his characteristic looks: a look that said that he understood the issue and could see why she felt she should do something, but at the same time made it quite clear that it would be far better for her not to be involved. It was a complex look.

“So,” said Isabel. “There you have it.”

Peter sighed. “Or there you have part of it.”

“Meaning?” asked Isabel.

“What I mean is that you’ve heard about all this from one source. And when you hear about something from one source, it means that you have one person’s view of things, with all the filters that one person has.”

She was a philosopher; it was the very beginning of philosophy, that question: how we know what we think we know.

“All I’m suggesting,” Peter continued, “is that you consider the possibility that none of this may be true.”

She frowned. “But of course,” she said. “Anything we hear may not be true, but we can’t be too sceptical. We have to assume the truth of at least some of the things we hear, otherwise…well, otherwise how would we live?” She paused. “It’s what I’d call a necessary assumption.”

“I like that,” said Peter, savouring the expression. “A necessary assumption.” He appeared to consider this for a moment before he went on, “You mentioned an Andrea Murray? I assume it’s the same Andrea Murray we know.”

“I don’t know anything more about her,” said Isabel. “I know only what I told you.”

“I think it must be the same person,” mused Peter. “It would be interesting to hear her side of the story.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Not much. She was friendly with a friend of Susie’s.”

Susie joined in from across the room. “My friend saw quite a lot of her. They played bridge together, but then I think they lost touch with one another.”

Isabel remembered what Rob had told her about Andrea’s attempt at suicide. She wondered if Susie had heard of what had happened.

Susie looked astonished. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’d heard that she had some sort of bust-up with a man, but I was told that she was the one who got rid of him.”

“Perhaps your friend got it wrong.”

“Or,” said Peter, “perhaps you did.”

They looked at one another, each uncertain what to say. Eventually Isabel broke the silence. “I could speak to her,” said Isabel.

Peter frowned. “Are you going to ask her about all this? About what happened with this MacUspaig character? It could be very painful for her.”

“I could speak to one of the others,” said Isabel.

“Possibly,” Peter replied. “If you can track them down.” He scratched his head. “But just let me work out why you would want to do that—to satisfy yourself as to whether what you’ve heard about Tony MacUspaig is true? Is that it?”

Isabel replied that she thought it might be useful to have evidence that she could use to warn Connie about Tony’s past.

“You couldn’t just tell her what you know?” asked Peter.

“She didn’t respond very well to Bea when she tried that,” said Isabel. “I think she’s going to need to be confronted with actual testimony from one of the women he’s been involved with.”

“And you’re going to go to all that trouble?” asked Peter. “Why doesn’t this Bea person sort out the mess she created in the first place?”

Isabel shrugged. “She feels out of her depth.”

“Is that an excuse?” asked Peter.

“No, but it’s an explanation. The poor woman’s very anxious. Sometimes we create situations for ourselves that just seem too…too overwhelming. I can understand how one feels the need to turn to somebody else and say, ‘Please sort it out.’ ”

Peter accepted this. “But the problem is,” he went on, “that you seem to be asked to do that rather often.”

Isabel looked out of the window. How quickly she found herself sucked into these affairs; how easy it was to take the first step and then discover that small step had mired one in further complications. It was so easy to engage; so difficult to extricate oneself.

“I promised Bea I’d help her,” she said quietly.

Peter pressed the fingers of his hands together, like a man beginning to pray; it was a gesture of conclusion. “In that case,” he said, “you have no alternative. Promises…”

“…must be kept,” said Isabel, completing the adage. “Pacta sunt servanda.”

Peter smiled. “Latin adds dignity, doesn’t it?”

“It helps,” said Isabel. “Or put it this way—it discourages people from disagreeing with you. Spout Latin to them and they tend to throw in the towel.” But festina lente, she thought; was pacta sunt servanda a firm rule or was it a recommendation that could, in some circumstances, be ignored? It seemed to her that more and more people in public life were prepared to ignore their own promises. Politicians did that all the time, sometimes requiring no more than a few weeks to change their tune entirely and forget the things they had just solemnly promised. Not that they actually forgot their promises—they just ignored them. Presumably they had no personal mottoes preventing them from doing this—a motto such as Do what you said you’d do, or My word is my bond.

Of course there were still people who made mottoes for themselves, and tried to live according to them. Never give up. Be kind. Help the weak. Courtesy always. There were any number of family mottoes that could be seen in heraldry books. Slowly these expressions of intention were beginning to look more and more threadbare—quainter, even, in an age of selfishness and individual self-indulgence—but they were still there.

Peter cleared his throat. “One thing I’d say, though,” he began, “is that if this man is who he is said to be—if he really has been on the hunt for wealthy women, then that means he could be dangerous. I imagine that if you got too close to him, and if he thought you might be on his track, then he could be…” He seemed to search for the right word.

“Awkward?” suggested Isabel.

“More than that,” said Peter quietly.

She opened her mouth to protest, but Peter held up a hand to stop her.

“I mean it,” he said. “You see, Isabel, you live in a rather rarefied Edinburgh. You mix in academic circles—you rub shoulders with musicians, philosophers, artists, all of those.”

Isabel winced. She did not like to hear this. She considered herself to be unexceptional; she would never have sought to confine herself to any particular circle, and it hurt to be seen as out of touch with the ordinary life of the city. I am not an elitist, she said to herself. I simply am not.

Aware of her discomfort, Peter used a gentle tone. “I’m not suggesting that there is something less real about your world. But there’s another, very different Edinburgh.”

She drew in her breath. “I know that, Peter. You don’t have to tell me.” She sighed. “I find it strange that people think that just because I lead what some would see as a comfortable life—”

“Which it is,” he interjected.

“All right—which it is. But just because I’m fortunate, it doesn’t mean that I don’t know what life is like for others. That’s really unfair.”

Her point struck home. “No, I’d never say that. I’m just saying: be careful.”

“He’s a doctor,” she said flatly.

“Doctors are people—like anybody else.”

“I’m sure I can look after myself.”

“You sure? What does Jamie think about this?”

She hesitated. She knew that Jamie worried about her, and she wondered now whether she should not pay more attention to his concerns. She had sometimes felt he was being over-protective, but was a husband not entitled to feel that way? And would it not have been worse had he felt indifferent? She wondered what it would be like to be married to somebody who did not care what you did; who never waited anxiously if you were late coming home; who never said “Take care” when you left the house or started a journey; who just said “Goodbye” and nothing more. Of course you did not want your husband to say too much; it was unnecessary for him to say “Love you” at the end of every telephone conversation, as so many people now did when talking on the phone to those close to them. That had become the equivalent of saying “Goodbye,” and it could be awkward if it became too automatic. If you became too accustomed to saying “Love you,” then you might just say it at the wrong time, like when you were saying goodbye to your bank manager on the telephone, or to your child’s teacher, or the plumber. That could lead to misunderstandings. And what about those whom you did not like very much? Would people start to say “Not too keen on you” when they ended conversations with them?

She realised that Peter was waiting for an answer. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was thinking.”

“About something that made you smile?”

“Yes.” She returned to his question. “Jamie? He worries. Not all the time, but sometimes.”

Peter said he was not surprised. “I can see why. You see, this man might not take kindly to somebody getting in his way. If he’s after this Connie’s money—and that’s a distinct possibility—then he’s not going to like you queering his pitch, is he?” He answered his own question. “No, he’s not. So he could do something unpleasant.”

“To scare me off?”

“Yes. Precisely.”

She thought Peter sounded a bit melodramatic, and told him so.

“In the cold light of day, perhaps,” Peter retorted. “But it does get dark, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, come on, Peter,” protested Isabel.

“Don’t frighten her,” said Susie.

They lapsed into silence.

Peter looked apologetic. “I didn’t mean to worry you,” he said. “But what I said is true, you know.”

“And I’m listening to what you say,” said Isabel. “I’ll be careful.”

“Very careful,” said Peter.

“Yes. Very careful. I promise.”

He smiled. “Another promise.”

Magnus started to cry.

“Back to you,” said Susie, handing the baby over.

Isabel cuddled him, his soft skin warm against hers, breathing in his milky, babyish smell. All animals, she thought—all mother animals know the smell of their offspring. He was hungry, and she would need to feed him. Like so many women, her life seemed to be all about the needs of others. Auden had said something about that, she reminded herself—something witty. We are here on this earth to help others, but he had no idea why the others were here.

—

SHE WENT OVER their conversation as she made her way back towards Bruntsfield. She valued Peter’s advice—over the years she had discussed various problems with him, and he had often got her to see things that she had missed. She was cautious in her assessments, of course, and tried not to leap to conclusions, but it suddenly occurred to her that she had often got things wrong. I am meant to be a philosopher, she reproached herself, and yet I must be ignoring some of the most basic rules about being sure that you really did know what you claimed to know. Perhaps I should take an introductory course in epistemology all over again; go back to school, remind myself of the basic rules of how to draw supportable inferences, how to question propositions, how to proceed from premises to conclusions in a way that did not offend any of the rules of logic. Perhaps I am just a failed philosopher…a failed philosopher who happens to have been in a position to get myself into an influential position as the editor of a journal of applied ethics by simply buying the journal.

It was a self-deprecating line of thought, but as she walked down the slope towards Holy Corner, the intersection where three churches surveyed three of the same sets of traffic lights, while Mammon, represented by a branch of the Bank of Scotland, glowered over the fourth, Isabel found herself wondering whether other people saw her as nothing more than a well-off dilettante. The thought lowered her spirits.

Sensing the negative direction of her thinking, she suddenly stopped, and stood immobile where she was on the pavement. A young man who had been immediately behind her had to swerve to avoid collision. As he walked past, he threw her an irritated glance. She muttered an apology that he did not hear. Apology changed to reproof—in her head: I’m entitled to stop walking if I wish. There’s no rule about standing where you happen to be and looking up at the sky or just breathing in and thinking…

She remembered something she had seen many years ago, on a visit to New York. She had been there with one of her aunts from the South, and she had noticed a street sign that said No standing anytime. The sign obviously referred to vehicles, but could be read just as easily by pedestrians, and she had been struck by its unintentional humour. What was one to do when confronted with such a sign? Was one to sit down immediately, right there on the New York sidewalk, obedient to the point of immobility?

There was no point in muttering at people in the street, she decided, and she resumed her walk. Magnus was asleep, but there was no sign saying No sleeping anytime. That, at least, was something that officialdom allowed us to do—even in a heavily regulated society one might drop off if one wished—other than when one was driving, or doing something else that required full awareness. Judges sitting in court were expected not to drop off to sleep during proceedings, although every so often one did, and this came out during an appeal. The fact that the judge, or indeed any member of the jury, had been asleep could be fatal to a conviction. And quite rightly so, Isabel reflected.

This curious line of thought stayed with her almost all the way to Holy Corner. Was it in any way wrong to go to sleep at the theatre? People did just that, of course; a glance at the audience, especially during a tedious play, would often reveal people who had nodded off, some superficially out for the count, but others clearly enjoying a fairly profound sleep. Nobody paid too much attention to that, as long as there was no snoring—that changed everything, and those sitting about the sleeping member of the audience were fully entitled to tap the offender on the shoulder or even to administer a dig in the ribs. The justification for that, thought Isabel, was our entitlement to enjoy the performance free of disturbance from those who noisily unwrapped mints or chocolates, or who started to snore.

It occurred to her that there might be sufficient ethical issues involved in sleep to justify a special issue of the Review. She saw the cover and its title—“The Ethics of Sleep: A Discussion.” This could be accompanied by a picture of somebody lying asleep in bed, or perhaps one of those representations of the sleeper in art—Michelangelo’s Night, for instance, or any of those sleeping nymphs the pre-Raphaelites liked to paint. The Victorians approved of those, because the Victorians liked the idea of the elegant swoon and were always aspiring to the well-timed and graceful collapse into unconsciousness.

And what would go into the special issue on sleep? She was less sure of that than she was of the cover; there were issues, she imagined, around entitlement to sleep: there could even be a right to sleep set out somewhere in the list of recognised human rights. If we had a right to a reasonable amount of leisure—which we certainly did—then surely there was a right to get our necessary seven hours, or whatever it was, of sleep each day. That meant that employers could not expect their employees to work long hours that prevented their getting adequate sleep. That was a real problem, she knew, because there were many instances where people were expected to work ridiculously long hours or follow work rotas that must disrupt normal sleep patterns.

The ethical issues, she thought, were flooding in, and she was now thinking of the wording of the announcement and call for papers. Ever since Edison invented the electric light bulb, human sleep patterns have been under threat…She wondered whether that was too melodramatic, and decided that it was not. Electric light had changed everything; without it we were creatures of the cave, housebound by darkness, unable to do all the nocturnal things that we now took for granted. So that wording was not too extreme—human sleep patterns were indeed under threat, even if Edison might not have foreseen that when he first flicked that switch of his. But then at the time of invention people often failed to see the implications of the things they had dreamed up. The Wright brothers would not have foreseen the massive movement of peoples that would result from their invention, nor aerial combat, nor the living hell endured by those who had their homes directly under airport flight paths. Nor would Marie Curie have imagined Hiroshima.

She had reached Holy Corner. Her thoughts about sleep had lifted her spirits, and the doubts that had assailed her after her conversation with Peter were dispelled. She would return home, feed Magnus, cuddle Charlie—if he was back from nursery and in a mood to be cuddled—kiss Jamie, put out the recycling bin for collection, and sit down at her desk to draft the announcement of the special issue. That was quite enough for anybody, and if she had any thinking to do about this difficult situation that Bea Shandon had dropped her into, then those thoughts could be put off for a while. She would decide what to do the next morning, and would allow herself two days, at the most, to do whatever needed to be done. That was the key to dealing with matters like this—as indeed with most matters: you set a time limit and then you stuck to it. In theory.