Chapter Fifteen
Jamie was standing in the hall, ready to greet her.
“The boys have had their bath,” he said. “They’re upstairs. I told them you might read their story tonight.”
“Of course.” She put her bag down on the hall table.
“Are you all right?” Jamie asked.
She said that she was; she did not think that one’s first words on returning home should be ones of complaint. “It’s just that the deli was busy. Non-stop.”
He leaned forward to kiss her. “The boys are waiting. I’ll have a glass of wine ready for you when you come downstairs.”
She returned his kiss. Upstairs, the boys were already in their pyjamas. They smelled of toothpaste and flannelette. They were ready for their story, which was one she had read them time and time again; they could recite it almost word for word, and the ending, of course, was no surprise. But that did not seem to matter: the comfort of the expected, thought Isabel.
After she had said good night she made her way downstairs to the kitchen, where Jamie was waiting for her. He was standing over the cooker, stirring a pot; the table was already laid.
She noticed that there were three places.
“Company?” Jamie occasionally invited members of his chamber orchestra to join them when he was cooking dinner. He did not always let Isabel know in advance—not that she minded. She liked Jamie’s musician friends, except for one brass player who had been drunk when he last came to dinner and one percussionist who peppered his language with profanities. “He doesn’t mean any of it,” said Jamie, who was charitable in these matters, of the percussionist. “It goes with having to make a lot of noise.”
Jamie smiled as he answered her question. “Yes,” he said. “We do have company.”
“Who?”
He pointed towards the ceiling. “Upstairs.”
Isabel caught her breath. “Dawn?”
He nodded. “I went to see her. I told you I would.”
“And?”
“I invited her to join us for dinner.”
Isabel sat down at the table. “You’re going to have to tell me,” she said.
“Why she was so secretive?”
“Yes. The whole thing. The locking of the door. The failure to answer when we knocked and knew that she was in.”
He glanced at his watch. “She’ll be down soon.”
“You must tell me,” Isabel insisted.
“Shame,” he said. “She felt really ashamed about what she had done. She thought that you disapproved of her. She said she couldn’t face either of us. That…and there was something else.”
“What?”
He was about to respond when they heard approaching footsteps. “That’s her,” he said.
Isabel wanted him to whisper an answer to her question, but there was no time. The door to the hall was pushed open to reveal Dawn, poised to come into the kitchen, but still slightly hesitant, like a visitor not quite sure how she will be received.
It took Isabel a few moments to muster her welcome, but when she did so she rose to her feet and gestured for Dawn to join her at the kitchen table. “I’m so glad you were able to join us,” she said. She sounded formal, which had not been her intention, but she could not think of anything else to say. She almost added “at last” but stopped herself. That would have been interpreted in only one way by their guest.
Dawn took her seat, glancing at Isabel as she did so, as if fearful that the invitation might be rescinded.
“Dawn’s been busy,” Jamie said over his shoulder as he attended to a pot on the cooking range.
“You work night shifts, don’t you?” asked Isabel.
Dawn nodded. “Yes. I don’t mind too much doing them, though. Some of my colleagues do, of course, especially if they have children.”
Isabel smiled at Dawn. There was still an awkward atmosphere, but she was not sure how best to dispel it. Dawn’s behaviour had been odd by any standards; might it be best to air the matter? She could say “We were worried about you,” or something of that sort, but she thought that this might just make matters worse. It was what Isabel’s father used to call “an elephant situation”—where there was an elephant in the room, but nobody could mention the fact.
She cleared her throat. “Have you been comfortable enough up there?” she asked.
The question clearly embarrassed Dawn, who shifted in her seat as she sought to respond. “Yes, of course. It’s so…so quiet.”
“I was worried that the boys might make a noise during the day,” said Isabel. “If you were asleep after being on duty…”
Dawn interrupted her. “I didn’t hear them,” she said.
“They can be very rowdy,” Jamie interjected. “You know how small boys are. They make a soundtrack for themselves—all sorts of sound effects. Shouted orders, exploding sounds—that sort of thing. Battleground noises.”
“None of that reached me,” said Dawn. She looked down at her hands, folded together on her lap. Then she looked up, to meet Isabel’s eyes. “You must have wondered what was going on.”
Isabel had not expected this. For a few moments she did not reply. Then she said, “Not really.” It was so palpably untrue, and so she added, “Well, I suppose we did—to an extent.” She glanced at Jamie. He had his back to the table, as he attended to a pan on the stove; she could tell, though, that he was listening.
“I owe you an apology,” Dawn went on. “I’ve been a very bad guest.”
“But you haven’t,” said Isabel. “We’ve hardly seen you.”
“That’s what makes me a bad guest,” Dawn retorted. “You don’t ignore your hosts—you just don’t.” She paused. “But I did.”
Isabel raised a hand. “You wanted to keep to yourself. That’s understandable. You didn’t want to impose on us. There’s no need to apologise for that.”
“But there’s every reason,” insisted Dawn. “You took me in and then I stayed up in my room for half the time, pretending that you weren’t there. In my book that requires an apology.”
Once again, Isabel tried to assure her that no apology was expected—or required. But Dawn was not to be persuaded.
“I admit I was avoiding you,” she continued. “I felt so ashamed, you see.”
Isabel frowned. “You thought we would…”
“Disapprove,” Dawn supplied. “Yes, I thought you’d disapprove of me. For going off with Fionn.”
Isabel shook her head. “No,” she began. “I didn’t…”
“I feel so ashamed.”
“You don’t need to,” said Isabel. “People split up. These things happen.”
“But not in the way it happened. Not with me.”
Isabel was not sure what she meant. She looked at Jamie, but he was impassive. He was waiting for Dawn to say more, she thought.
“I drove away with Fionn…” Dawn continued.
Isabel shrugged. “Well, as I said, relationships end.”
“…in Andrew’s car.”
Taken aback, Isabel said nothing.
“And we wrote it off,” Dawn continued.
Isabel stared at her. “You crashed?”
Dawn inclined her head, her gaze now fixed to the floor. Her voice betrayed the misery she felt. “Fionn was driving,” she continued. “I told him it was my car. It was Andrew’s, although we both used it. I told Andrew that I wanted to borrow it to go to work. I lied to him.” She paused. “And it gets worse, I’m afraid. I left with Fionn while Andrew was away. He’d gone off to see my mother in hospital in Inverness. He went up by train. He was always very kind to her.” She stopped. Her misery was palpable. “I thought you knew about it. I thought that everybody knew.”
“I’d heard,” volunteered Jamie.
“From somebody in the orchestra?” Dawn asked.
“Yes.”
Isabel looked up sharply. If Jamie had known, then why had he not told her? Had he deliberately kept it a secret—and if so, why? He met her gaze, but looked away again quickly. Isabel felt a stab of betrayal. Jamie should have told her, and had not done so because he must have thought that had she known the full story, she might have been unwilling to offer Dawn shelter.
But then Jamie said, “What I meant to say is that I heard that you’d had an accident when you left. I didn’t know anything about whose car it was.”
Isabel and Jamie looked at one another. This explained his failure to mention it. She looked at him, and said sorry with her eyes. He returned her look. With his eyes he said, I understand why you thought that I had kept something from you, but I didn’t—I really didn’t. In such a way can couples communicate volumes without the utterance of a word.
Isabel said, “I can see why that didn’t look good.”
“No, it didn’t.” Dawn turned away. “I don’t know what I was thinking of.”
Jamie looked at Isabel again. His expression now was one of concern, as if Dawn’s discomfort was causing him physical pain. Isabel hesitated, but then responded. “I can see myself doing exactly the same thing,” she said, adding, hurriedly, as she noticed Jamie’s frown, “I mean, I don’t see myself leaving Jamie…” She glanced at him, as his frown became a tentative smile. “I didn’t mean that, of course. What I meant is that if I left somebody, I could see myself just not thinking about whose car I left in.”
“You’d leave by public transport, perhaps,” offered Jamie.
Isabel gave him a discouraging look, and he mumbled an apology. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t making light of it. What Isabel is saying, I think, is that when it comes to these things, we don’t always think straight.”
“More or less,” said Isabel. “What I’d say, I suppose, is that we’ve all done things that perhaps we would prefer not to have done—later, that is. We regret impulsive acts. We regret falling for somebody. The scales fall from our eyes and we wonder what we saw in somebody who, only a few days previously, we might have been prepared to follow to the ends of the earth.”
Jamie nodded his agreement. “Exactly. So you shouldn’t beat yourself up over this, Dawn. And as for the other thing…”
Dawn looked anxiously at Isabel.
“I haven’t told Isabel yet,” said Jamie. “I was going to, but then suddenly it was dinner time.”
Isabel waited for the disclosure. She was not sure that she wanted to know anything else about Dawn’s desertion of Andrew and ill-starred affair with Fionn. She wanted potato dauphinoise, which she suspected Jamie had cooked for dinner, as that was what he always did. She loved him for that. I loved him for his potato dauphinoise…That sounded so ridiculous, she thought, but it was true, provided one added the rider that potato dauphinoise was one of the reasons why she loved Jamie—there were others.
Dawn, still looking anxiously at Isabel, was about to say something, but Jamie spoke instead. “Dawn was not alone in her room,” he said.
Isabel was surprised by the way in which Jamie imparted this information. He might have been gentler, she thought; this sounded almost like an accusation.
“I don’t think it’s any of our business,” Isabel said quickly.
“Timmy was there,” Jamie went on. “In fact, he’s still there.”
Isabel felt acutely embarrassed. She glared at Jamie.
“He’s a mouse, you see,” Jamie continued.
Isabel’s glare became more intense. Had Jamie been drinking while cooking his potato dauphinoise? It was quite unlike him to be so tactless, she thought. They would have to discuss this later.
“An actual mouse,” said Jamie, with a grin. “I told Dawn that you wouldn’t have minded—that you quite like mice, as far as I know. Or, at least, that you don’t have pronounced views on them.”
Isabel turned to Dawn. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not sure that I understand what’s going on.”
Jamie explained. “Dawn has a pet mouse. She wanted to ask us if we minded his coming with her, so to speak.”
Dawn interrupted him. “But I was…well, I suppose you could say that I was scared. I couldn’t face you because of what I imagined you thought of me. And so I smuggled him in. It became difficult. I felt that I was deceiving you after you’d been so kind to me. I felt completely wretched.”
Isabel wanted to laugh. She glanced at Jamie, and she saw that he felt the same way. She reached out to touch Dawn. “But what Jamie said is true. Of course I wouldn’t have minded. Why should I?”
“The only person round here who wouldn’t approve,” Jamie said, “is the fox in our garden. We have a fox who lives out there in our garden, you see. He’d probably eat Timmy, I suppose. We’ll need to keep them apart.”
Isabel felt a flood of relief. She had not imagined that the Dawn issue would resolve in this sudden, almost comical way. But then human drama is comic, she thought. Once you got up close to it, it was far less serious than it seemed, and tipped over, in some cases at least, into the absurd or the comic. So many human issues were about very small things, when you came to think of it: like misplaced shame and misplaced guilt. And misunderstandings. And mice.
“I must watch the potatoes,” said Jamie suddenly, turning back to the cooker and its simmering pots.
“Potato dauphinoise can curdle,” Isabel said to Dawn. “Just like life.”
Isabel remembered the keys that had been dropped in the hall. She wanted to ask about them, but then she thought: This is not the time.
They lay in bed. In the summer months, when Edinburgh was barely dark at midnight, they were careful to close the curtains in their bedroom, but that night Isabel left them open. Their room, then, seemed suffused with something that Isabel called “quarter-light,” because it was not quite the “half-light” of which people spoke.
“Are you asleep?” Isabel whispered.
She looked at him. Jamie lay with his arms outstretched, as if in surrender to the night.
“No. I was thinking.”
She touched his shoulder gently, her fingers no more than a feather upon his skin. He was always asking her what she was thinking about; she rarely asked him the same question. And yet now it seemed important to her that she should know.
“Robert Burns,” he said.
She was playful. “Oh yes? And why Robert Burns?”
“Not tonight, Mrs. Maclehose,” he muttered.
She remembered: Mrs. Maclehose was the woman in Edinburgh whom Burns loved, although their love was never consummated. She was the “Clarinda” to whom he dedicated his poems. It was one of the great love stories that never was.
She put a finger to his lips. He kissed it.
“I was thinking of what Burns wrote about that mouse—the one he disturbed with his plough. It’s such a wonderful apology to the poor little creature.”
“And to the world,” Isabel said.
“Do you think the earth will forgive us?” Jamie asked.
Isabel knew what he meant. “If we say sorry quickly enough,” she said.
“And will we?”
She could not answer that question. Who could? she thought.
She started to drift off. “Those keys,” she muttered. “Those keys we found in the hall.”
“I asked her about them,” Jamie said. “She said they belonged to a friend. She found them on the hall table after we put them there.”
“Why did she have a friend’s keys, I wonder,” asked Isabel.
“No idea,” said Jamie, and then added, “Not everything has to make sense in this life.”
“So it seems,” said Isabel.