CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BY THE TIME Isabel left Holy Corner Wines it was shortly before one o’clock. For a few moments she hesitated before she made up her mind and started to walk back down Bruntsfield Place towards what she was reminding herself to refer to as Cat’s old deli. She would have lunch there and catch up, if he was not too busy, with Eddie. She had heard that he was having driving lessons, which pleased her, as it was a sign of growing confidence. She had a soft spot for the young man—as did most people who had dealings with him—and although he had grown into his new responsibilities in the deli, she still saw in him a certain fragility. People like that, she thought, could go back to square one if things went wrong, and then the whole business of repairing a shattered self-image could take a long time.
After a light lunch, she would go to the Douglas house in the early afternoon. As she waited for the pedestrian crossing light to change, she made a quick call to Laura to check that she and Bruce would be in. They would be, Isabel was told.
“Does this mean you have something for us?” Laura asked.
Isabel looked up at the sky. She did not think it was what they would want. “In a way,” she said. “I have some information, yes.”
“Did you speak to him?” asked Laura quickly.
“Not to Richard. No.”
She felt the disappointment down the line. Most people were unaware that telephones could transmit emotion, even when nothing was said, but Isabel felt they could. People spoke of “eloquent silence,” and that was much the same thing. We did not necessarily need words to convey what needed to be conveyed.
“I’ll tell you about it when I see you,” said Isabel.
The call ended, Isabel decided to put the matter out of her mind until later. Her visit, she feared, was not going to be easy, but it would mark the end of her involvement in the Douglas family’s affairs—an involvement that Jamie had been quite right to counsel her against. She would be more careful in the future and would not allow herself to get drawn into the problems of others quite so easily. St. Augustine’s plea came to mind: Make me chaste, Lord, but not just yet. No, I am determined, she thought, and her resolve was of immediate effect; I am going to be much firmer after this; I shall turn people down; I shall become remote and inaccessible. And immediately she knew that she could not. You should never refuse to hear somebody in their need. You should never turn a deaf ear to pain. And if you heard them, then how could you say: I shall not help you. It was impossible. She sighed. We are all on an individual wheel of life, and that is the one on which I find myself.
It was a quieter than usual lunchtime in the deli when Isabel arrived, but Eddie was busy with a customer at the counter. He looked up when she came in, and waved a hand in greeting. Isabel pointed to an unoccupied seat at the far end of the shop but Eddie shook his head. He pointed to another table, at which a man was sitting by himself, and signalled for Isabel to sit there. She did not recognise the man, who was looking down at a magazine spread out on the table.
Isabel was puzzled. “There?” she mouthed.
Eddie nodded. Temporarily excusing himself from the customer to whom he was attending, he came out from behind the counter and whispered in Isabel’s ear, “That’s Cat’s new man. That’s him. You can sit with him.”
Isabel was not ready for this. “That’s Gordon?” She sneaked a glance, and then looked away again when her eyes met his.
“Yes,” said Eddie, his voice still lowered. “He’s really nice. I’ve been talking to him. He and Cat are going to open a coffee shop.” He looked at Isabel; his eyes were bright. “He said he was keen to meet you. So, here’s his chance.”
Isabel was not keen to follow Eddie, but he now ushered her up to the table and introduced her to Gordon, who rose to shake hands with her.
“This is Isabel. You were wondering about her, and here she is.”
“I’m Gordon,” he said. “Cat said that she—”
Isabel stopped him. “I should have asked you round,” she said.
“I’m going to bring you some quiche,” said Eddie. And to Gordon, “She likes quiche, you see.” Then, with a certain pride he added, “I know these things.”
Isabel sat down. She glanced at Gordon. He was more or less what she had expected. Cat went for men with certain rugged good looks—she had once even been involved, for a short time, with a man who earned his living modelling underpants. Now she had done it once more, and chosen a man who would not have been out of place in a catalogue for men’s outdoor clothing. There was a pattern, she reflected, repeated with predictable regularity, and no doubt Gordon would fit right into it.
“Cat told you about our plans,” he said.
Isabel inclined her head. “Yes. A shop.” She glanced over her shoulder towards Eddie. Did Eddie realise that Cat and Gordon would be competitors?
Gordon intercepted her look. “Oh, it’s all sorted out with Eddie and Hannah. Cat’s spoken to them. And I was discussing it with Eddie earlier on.”
Isabel expressed her surprise. “I thought that perhaps they might be concerned.”
Gordon shook his head. “No. We’re going to do coffee, but then coffee isn’t a big part of this business, is it? We’re going to do coffee and bakery items—croissants, baguettes and so on. I’m keen to do more baking, you see. I was a general chef, but I’m keen on baking, so it’ll be more of a patisserie. We’ll do fruit tarts—there’s a big demand for those.”
He smiled as he spoke, and Isabel found herself warming to the candour and friendliness of his manner. She should not have judged him, she thought, by his looks. His manner was sympathetic—and gentle. He was different from the man who had modelled underpants, from the Irish racing driver, from Leo, with all his leonine ways.
Gordon went on to discuss the leases they had signed and the progress he had made in installing equipment. He could do all that, he said. He had worked with a kitchen installation company some years ago, and had not forgotten how to do things.
“Then you went to sea?” asked Isabel.
“Not quite. I was a volunteer in Tanzania for three years.”
This was unexpected. “Doing?”
“Doing all sorts of things on an American mission, run by people from Missouri. There were always five or six lay volunteers, and most of them had a trade—they were carpenters or mechanics and so on. I was a general dogsbody. There was a school and a small hospital—a clinic, really. We had a sheltered workshop for albinos.”
Isabel was silent.
He shook his head, as if at an unpleasant memory. “They can have a difficult time.”
“The albinos?”
“Yes. For a whole lot of cultural reasons, but also because of the sun. They can’t go out as others can. They need special creams to protect them from the solar damage—and those are in short supply. Without them, they’re at a very high risk of cancer.”
Isabel frowned. What had happened afterwards? “But then you went off and cooked on yachts?”
“Yes. That somehow happened. You know how one’s life can take unexpected turns? I found myself becoming a rather specialised sort of chef.”
“It sounds very different from Tanzania. Not the most obvious progression, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“No, it wasn’t. The yachting world is very different. But now I want to settle down.” He paused and looked directly into Isabel’s eyes. “Now I’ve met your niece. It’s odd, though, to call her ‘your niece.’ I thought you’d be much older, you see, being Cat’s aunt…”
“You’re not the first to be surprised by that,” said Isabel. “There’s not a vast gap between us.”
He sat back in his chair. “I can’t tell you how happy I am. I’ve been hoping for a long time to meet somebody really reliable—somebody solid and dependable. In my job, I’ve met rather different sorts of women, you see. On the yachts the girls were…well, the only word is flighty. I know that sounds a bit old-fashioned, but they were, you know.”
Isabel swallowed. She opened her mouth to say something, but he had more to say.
“Cat and I really hit it off,” Gordon continued. “I’d been waiting for the right person, and so had she. It worked out so well.”
Isabel swallowed again. Cat had never waited. Not once. Did Gordon know? Did he know about Leo and all the other men?
“I’m pretty dull,” he said with a smile. “I’m the stay-at-home type.”
“Who’s nonetheless travelled all over the world,” said Isabel.
“That’s true, but…well, I don’t mind telling you, I haven’t had many girlfriends. Cat’s not the first, but she is the second. That’s important to me.”
Isabel saw that he was blushing, and she looked down at the floor in her own embarrassment. This man knew nothing about Cat. That was clear to her. And that meant Cat must have told him nothing about her past—it was difficult to reach any other conclusion.
She looked at him. She did not think she had misjudged this man. He was as he presented himself. And now she had to deal with the issue of what you should do when somebody is about to make a terrible mistake and you, unknown to them, have information that you feel they should have.
Eddie brought Isabel her quiche. “Cheese and mushroom, with salami and olives,” he said. “I know you like all of those.”
Isabel thanked him. “Eddie’s having driving lessons,” she said to Gordon. And to Eddie, “How are they going? When will you sit your test?”
Eddie sighed. “I need more practice. But the lessons are expensive.”
Gordon looked up. “I can take you,” he said. “You can get some practice in my car.”
Eddie beamed with pleasure. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” said Gordon.
Eddie went off smiling, and Isabel looked at her watch. This was further evidence of the impression she had formed. Gordon was a good man.
“I’m going to have to bolt this down,” she said. “I have an appointment.”
“No worries,” said Gordon.
“Jamie and I will have you and Cat round for dinner,” Isabel said, then added, “Soon.”
“That would be great,” said Gordon. “I’m looking forward to meeting Jamie.”
Isabel nodded. She felt miserable. Her life, it seemed to her, was one constant unresolved dilemma, and just as she felt she was getting to the end of one issue, another reared its head. Gordon was a good man—those years in Tanzania spoke to that. And now he was getting involved with Cat, who did not deserve somebody who had spent three years helping albinos in Tanzania. It pained her to reach that conclusion, but it was unavoidable. Cat did not deserve this man, but did that mean that she, Isabel, had a duty to warn him? No, it did not, she decided—unless, of course, he asked. Then it would be different. If Kant had been worried about his niece misleading some decent, meritorious Königsberg boy, then he would not have lied if the boy had asked him about her past. But that was Kant, and Königsberg; and this is me and Edinburgh, she thought. Times are different and I just don’t have Kant’s consistency. It cannot have been easy to be Immanuel Kant, and so I shan’t try. I don’t have the energy. I just don’t.
But then it occurred to her that perhaps she was wrong—about this and about other things. Most of us think we’re right, she thought. Most of us tell ourselves that we have made sense of the world and that we understand what we see. But perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we’re wrong far more often than we imagine. Perhaps she was wrong about Cat. She assumed that Cat had not changed, and never would. Yet what evidence did she have for that? And even if there were to be some evidence to justify the conclusion that Cat had not undergone any road to Damascus moment and was much the same as she always was, should Isabel still deny the possibility that her niece might change in the future? Could the fact that she was now with Gordon be an indication of change on her part? Everybody deserves a chance, thought Isabel. That simple, hackneyed old saying was absolutely correct—as such simple, hackneyed old sayings so frequently are. That was why they were old sayings: They survived because they were true.
BEFORE THE FRONT DOOR at the Douglas house twenty minutes later, Isabel pressed the bell marked Please Pull. A few moments later the door was opened by Laura Douglas, who greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks.
“Bruce is so looking forward to seeing you,” Laura said. “He’s been watching the clock for the last hour. He’s always been the impatient type.”
“I’m not sure how much I have for you,” Isabel warned.
“But you did say you had something. You did say that, didn’t you?”
“I did, yes, but let’s wait until—”
“Of course. Come this way. Bruce is in the conservatory.”
Laura led Isabel through the house to a conservatory that looked out over a lawn and formal flower beds. “There’s still some summer colour left,” she said. “We try to plan things so that we have some late-flowering plants at this time of year.”
Bruce was waiting. He sprang to his feet and advanced on Isabel. I don’t want you to kiss me, she thought. He did not. He stopped short of her, and she wondered whether her body language had put him off. And her body language, she thought, might also reveal her disquiet over the conversation she felt she now had to have.
Bruce was looking at her intently. He said, “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
Isabel held his gaze. “Yes. There is, I’m afraid.”
“Is Richard all right?” asked Laura, her voice thin with anxiety.
“I haven’t seen him,” said Isabel. “But I assume so.”
Laura breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, thank heavens for that.”
Bruce now invited Isabel to sit down. A tray was already on the low table in front of their wicker chairs; without asking Isabel whether she wanted tea, Laura poured her a cup.
Bruce cleared his throat. “You can speak as directly as you like,” he said.
Isabel looked at him. “You may not like what I have to say.”
Laura gave her husband a nervous look. “Bruce is prepared,” she said. “We’ve talked about it. We’ve spoken to somebody who’s in a similar position.”
Isabel raised an eyebrow. She wondered what that position was. “You mean with an alienated son?”
Laura nodded. “That…and the other thing. The sexuality thing.”
Bruce took over. “Since you came to see us, we’ve done some soul-searching. My wife pointed out to me that I had been burying my head in the sand. I was ignoring the obvious, she said—and she admitted that she, too, was trying to put a rather different complexion on things. Not facing up to what was plainly what.”
“Yes,” said Laura. “And we both realised that this was not the right thing to do. We’re prepared to change. We’re prepared to accept the situation as it is.”
Isabel took a sip of her tea. She wondered where to start.
“Perhaps I should tell you straight away,” she began. “Richard and Paul are friends, but there’s nothing more to it than that. I don’t think they’re lovers.”
She saw Bruce wince at the word lovers. But then, after his initial reaction, he gave a start, as the implications of what she had said sank in.
“I think he may have wanted you to think that he and Paul were in a relationship,” Isabel went on. “But they don’t appear to be. Paul, I’m told, has a girlfriend. As does Richard.”
“But why, then—” began Bruce.
Isabel interrupted him. “He feels very angry with you. Yes, I’m sorry to say that, but that’s what Paul said. He suggested—and I can see this as a possibility, quite frankly—that Richard feels your whole attitude is wrong. He thinks that you haven’t even begun to understand where he is politically.”
Bruce made a face. “He’s all over the place. Romantic nationalism. He and his friends want a re-run of every battle we’ve had with the English since Bannockburn. They want to turn the clock back. The days of small states are over.”
“Bruce feels strongly about that,” said Laura.
Isabel waited a moment, and then said, “Has it occurred to you that Richard feels equally strongly? And that he may feel you take a rather limited view of the situation.”
“He may well do,” snorted Bruce. “But he’s wrong.”
“He might say that you’ve closed your mind to new ideas.”
He stared at her. She waited for a riposte, but it did not come.
“And there’s another thing,” said Isabel. “He thinks you treated a friend of his very unjustly. He hasn’t forgiven you for that.”
“What friend?” snapped Bruce.
“A school friend. One he had kept up with over the years. He applied to you for a job.”
Bruce glanced at Laura, who looked away. She knows, thought Isabel. At least she knows.
“There are business decisions to be made every day,” said Bruce. He spoke firmly, but Isabel could tell that this was bravado. Her words had struck home. He added, “And some of these are difficult.”
Isabel faced up to him. “I don’t know anything about the circumstances of this one, but Richard feels that you discriminated against his friend on the grounds of his sexuality.”
Bruce glared at her. “Sexuality, sexuality, sexuality—that’s all we hear about these days.”
Isabel remained calm. “Perhaps that’s because we didn’t listen enough in the past.”
Laura suddenly reached out for her husband’s sleeve. “Bruce, you know you were in the wrong. You told me that you—”
She was not allowed to finish. “Not here,” he said brusquely.
But she was not to be put off. “It was shameful. And I’m proud of Richard for standing up against it.”
Her words hung in the air, each one a dart, and each one found its target. Bruce seemed to deflate before their eyes.
Isabel looked appreciatively at Laura. “I think your wife is right,” she said quietly. “You did someone an injustice, and your son, to his great credit, stood up against it. Now if you are to have any hope of healing the rift that you—and yes, this is your work—have created, then you need to try to redress the wrong. You need to listen to your son—just listen to him, and even if the two of you are never going to agree, at least understand each other’s views. Show each other that courtesy.”
“He needs to listen to me too,” muttered Bruce.
“He probably will,” Isabel said. “If you say that you’re sorry. I know it’s hard, but it starts the process. A lot may follow from that.”
“Give Robert a job,” said Laura. “Somebody said that he’s marking time in a temporary post somewhere. Take him on—Richard will give you credit for that. Make your son proud of you.”
For a few moments, Bruce was silent. Then he said, “I’ll think about it.”
“Good,” said Isabel. “And speaking of apologies, I’m sorry that I’ve been rude to you. I did exactly what I’ve been trying to say people shouldn’t do—lapse into confrontation.”
Laura reached out to take Isabel’s hand. “Except sometimes one has to.”
“Perhaps,” said Isabel.
Isabel rose to leave. Her work was done. At the front door, Laura thanked her in a lowered voice. “I’m so grateful to you,” she said. “I’ve been feeling terrible about…about everything, really. About the divisions that are everywhere now—everywhere—even in families.” She paused. “When do you think people are going to start loving one another again?”
Isabel wanted to say something helpful, but all she could say was, “When they start.” That, she realised, was not much of an answer, but then she thought that perhaps it was.
She walked back towards Colinton Road, aware that the sky, which had threatened rain, was now clearer. The temperature of the air, she thought, was perfect. It was still the air of summer, but there was just that hint of autumn, that hint of sharpness that reminded us to appreciate what we had, to make the most of it.
She went over the events of the day—the conversation with Paul, the meeting with Gordon, and the tense and potentially confrontational discussion with Laura and Bruce. Each of these had been pregnant with risk, and yet each, in its way, had come to a resolution. The chat with Paul had been not only easy, but productive, and had revealed the troubling issue at the heart of the family rift. She remembered how, towards the end, Paul’s mobile had rung—but it was not his phone, but Richard’s, as he had said “Richard’s phone” and had promised to pass on a message. Then he had told her about Richard leaving his phone lying about. And she had briefly seen the home screen as he took it from his pocket and it had been a photograph of Paul, against the backdrop of the Highlands, or so she had decided. And she had not thought more about it because anyone might have a photo of himself doing something like climbing a hill—except that this was not Paul’s phone but Richard’s, and Richard had a photograph of Paul on his home screen. She had not thought about the implications of that.
She slowed down. What did having a photograph of somebody on your home screen actually mean? Did it suggest a relationship closer than simple friendship? She was not sure. She thought of her own phone. That had Jamie on it. When she opened it and the screen lit up, there was Jamie, pictured sitting on the lawn with a panama hat on his head, at an odd angle, and smiling. If you saw the phone, you would know immediately that its owner loved a man who sat on the grass and wore a panama hat. And Jamie’s phone had a picture of her on it. She was wearing a ridiculous scarf around her neck, but he found the photograph amusing. Again, a casual observer would say: The owner of that phone loves a woman who wears silly scarves.
But was that just too simple? Human relationships had become much more fluid than they used to be. Boundaries had shifted, and people were less concerned about showing their feelings for others. Two friends who enjoyed an entirely platonic friendship might have photographs of one another on their phones. You could love a friend and yet not be in what others would call a relationship. Perhaps they were simply in a “bromance.” David and Jonathan, she thought. And Paul had said that Richard had a girlfriend. Perhaps he did, but then what did he mean by “seeing” someone? And could Richard have both a girlfriend and a boyfriend? It also occurred to Isabel that Richard might have stronger feelings for Paul than Paul had for him. Or Paul might be secretly in love with Richard, who had no idea of his feelings for him. There were so many possibilities.
She would have to think about it a bit more—but not just now. People were complex; and the human heart had room for more than one view of the world and our place in it; love had many faces, but whatever form it took, it was still love, and that was what counted. She looked up at the sky. She had done all she could. It was not for her to explore more complicated dimensions of a situation that was already well on its way to being healed.
THEY DECIDED TO have early dinner that night so the boys could eat with them, and to have it outside. Charlie and Magnus had a small wooden cabin at the end of the garden, half concealed by shrubs, and they asked if they could have their meal there while their parents ate on the patio.
“The beginning of their detachment,” Jamie said. “Soon they’ll be embarrassed by us and want to walk on the opposite side of the road—you know how kids are. They don’t want their friends to think that they’ve actually got parents.”
“Embarrassment is an inevitable stage,” said Isabel. “We’ve all suffered from it. I used to be embarrassed by my father’s nose. I imagined all my friends would laugh at it.”
“What was wrong with it?” asked Jamie.
“Nothing,” said Isabel. “But when I was thirteen I thought it was the most conspicuous nose in Edinburgh.”
“But nobody bit it?” asked Jamie.
They both laughed. From the end of the garden came peals of childish laughter over some shared joke. Jamie looked at Isabel. “Bless their innocent little hearts,” he said.
He poured them each a glass of wine. Reading the label, he said, “Margaret River. Western Australia.” He took a sip. “This is lovely.”
“Citrusy,” she said, smiling. “Peach. A bit of flint.”
Jamie said, “Something odd happened today.”
She put down her glass. “I could say the same thing of my day. In fact, several odd things happened.” She lifted her glass. “But you tell me first.”
“The chamber orchestra made the appointment, and they chose the player who deserved to get it: Annette—the really great musician.”
Isabel tried to recall which one that was. “The one who wasn’t having the affair with the conductor?”
“We thought she wasn’t, but it transpired she was.”
Isabel asked him to explain.
“Laurence must have felt that it would look suspicious if he appointed his lover—even if she was the one who really deserved the job. So he laid a false trail. He trailed a rumour in front of the Mouse, who took it up and spread it about. So he let people believe that he was seeing Athene, but he wasn’t—or not seeing her in that sense. And all the time he was intent on his real girlfriend getting the job.”
“Which she deserved to get anyway?”
“Precisely.”
“How ridiculous,” said Isabel.
“Precisely. But you know something? Life is ridiculous—a lot of the time.”
“Ridiculous?” said Isabel. “Yes. Probably. But so precious.”
Was there anything wrong in what had happened in Jamie’s orchestra? The right result had been achieved, after all. She thought of something. “Murder in the Cathedral,” she said.
“Eliot?”
“Yes. The only lines I remember from the play: The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
“I seem to remember that too,” said Jamie. “But I’m not sure I’ve ever understood it.”
“There are some things we never understand,” said Isabel. “I suspect we each have a small list of things that pass our understanding.”
Jamie looked up at the sky. He saw a trace of cloud; not much: Ice crystals falling at a great height, that’s what those wisps of white were. And here, below, was Scotland, our small bit of an earth that we should all share and over which we should not be fighting.
“That pass our understanding.” He echoed the words that Isabel had just used, and thought of their source—the great trove of poetic language that had been left to us by Thomas Cranmer and others from all those centuries ago. He thought of how people handed language down, generation to generation, as a gift.
“Yes,” said Isabel; simply that: “Yes.”
There was no more beautiful form of English than the prose of that time. We had never improved on that language, she thought, and we never would. We needed poetry in our lives—poetry and love. Each was equally necessary, and there, in her garden, in those last sweet days of summer, she thought that she had both.