Chapter Sixteen

“We read everything,” Roz Mack told Isabel the following day. “Contemporary. Classics. We’re not fussy.” She paused. “Except for some of us—who are very fussy.”

They were in Roz’s living room, waiting for the members of the book group to arrive. It would be a full attendance, Roz had said, because the weather was good and the members liked warm evenings. If the evening sky stayed clear, they would go outside for tea: Roz prided herself on her south-facing walled garden, and there was a lawn on which she could spread picnic rugs and cushions. “We sit there like those people in Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe,” she said, “although they seem so static, so posed, and somehow I don’t think they were talking about books.”

Isabel laughed. “Monet or Manet?” she asked.

“I get them confused,” Roz replied. “Nobody’s déshabillé, of course—not in our latitudes.”

“Then Manet,” said Isabel.

Roz nodded. “A couple of months ago we read Stendhal. It was The Red and the Black, and last year we tackled Anna Karenina. Every book group should tackle a big Russian novel at some point. It’s a rite of passage, I think. Survive your Russian novel and you’ll be fine.”

Except, thought Isabel, you aren’t fine, which is why I’m here—rather against my better judgement.

At that meeting, they were due to discuss Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. “I told you about that,” said Roz. “We’ve read one or two of her novels before this. She’s highly entertaining.” She glanced at her watch. “They’ll start arriving in fifteen minutes. They’re usually fairly punctual. I hope you didn’t mind coming a bit early.”

Isabel said that she did not mind.

“I wondered whether you had had any ideas,” Roz said. “I don’t want to put you under any pressure, but if you’ve been able to think of anything, then I’d be interested to know.”

Isabel confessed that she had not spent much time considering how she might be able to help. “I’ve been under a bit of pressure,” she said. “Work, and so on.” It was the so on that had been the trouble, of course, but she did not want to talk to Roz about Cat and Gordon, nor about Eddie and Calypso. Nor Dawn and the issues she had brought with her. And how could one explain Lettuce without sounding uncharitable? So she simply said, “My life has been a bit complicated recently.”

Roz looked surprised. “I didn’t expect you to say that. I don’t know much about your circumstances, of course, but I thought you led…well, a rather charmed life. Or do I mean charming? I’m not sure. Anyway, I thought that you had a rather nice job, editing a journal from home, and a comfortable house too, of course, and an agreeable husband—from what I hear.”

Isabel pursed her lips. “Are you sure you’re talking about me?” But then she realised that she should not make little of what she really did have, and so she said, “All of what you said is true. I’m very fortunate. I have all of that. But then, you see, I seem to get involved in all sorts of issues that prove to be rather demanding. Jamie says…”

“Your husband?”

“Yes. My husband says that I should lead a simpler existence, but how exactly do you do that?”

“Nobody’s life is all that simple,” said Roz. “I think people make a mistake when they look at others, don’t see much going on, and then conclude that the life that those others are leading is a simple one. Not so.”

Isabel agreed. “In his later years,” she said, “my poor father used to worry about shaving in the morning. You’d think that he was planning a major campaign. He’d easily spend an hour getting things ready—the brush, the shaving bowl and all the rest. There was always such a palaver. He didn’t have much else to do after he retired. All he had to do was shave.”

“Later life is full of mountains that are really molehills in disguise,” Roz remarked. “My mother was like that, bless her. She used to worry if the postman was late. We used to have a postman called Jimmy. He came from Skye, and he had that lovely Highland accent. She’d wait for him by the window. He’d stop and ring the bell even if he had nothing for her. He’d usually say, ‘Nothing for you today, Rosemary. Maybe tomorrow.’ He was so kind. Oh, I know it was a tiny thing, but it made all the difference.”

“Kindness,” muttered Isabel, almost to herself.

“Yes,” echoed Roz. “Kindness. Simple kindness.”

“Which lies at the heart of civilisation,” Isabel said. “If a society is unkind, then it has no chance of being civilised. It may think it has a civilisation, but it’ll be an imperfect one.”

They looked at one another. Then Roz said, “I wish I’d known you longer.”

Isabel was slightly taken aback. “Well, we’ve met now.”

“Yes, but I wish it had been much before this. I feel that I’ve missed something. You’ve been there—living your life not far away from mine, just around the corner, really, and I’ve been here, and we could have talked about so much.”

Isabel was touched. “We’ll have the chance to talk in the future. We can have coffee together.”

“I’d like that,” said Roz. “But I feel I’d be intruding. You’ve already got your friends, and I suppose I’ve got mine.”

Isabel shrugged. “There’s always room for more.”

“But I thought you needed to simplify your life. Didn’t you say that?”

“Perhaps,” said Isabel. “But perhaps we should talk about Muriel Spark—before the others come.”

Roz sighed. “They’re going to argue,” she warned. “They’re going to spend their time needling one another over…over everything. Just watch it develop. It’ll be like an international crisis unfolding in slow motion.”

They discussed Muriel Spark, and were still doing so ten minutes later when the doorbell rang. “That’s them,” said Roz. “They’re here.”

Virginia and Gemma were at the door. As they entered the living room, Isabel remembered how much Gemma admired Virginia and how she echoed and endorsed her every opinion. Now, as they came into the room, Isabel thought that Gemma’s body language confirmed this view of the relationship; Gemma was considerably shorter than Virginia, who was tall and, Isabel thought, had the haughtiness that occasionally went with height, giving an impression of superiority in more than one sense. As Isabel greeted them, she noticed that Gemma was looking expectantly at Virginia—it was as if she was waiting to take her cue from a leader. And there was another thing that Isabel became aware of: It was almost as if Virginia was unaware of Gemma’s presence. So might a high official in the Sultan’s court, Isabel thought, seem unaware of the lowest of attendants.

Isabel said, by way of a conversation-opener, that she was looking forward to discussing The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. “I love Muriel Spark’s work,” she said. “She was such an amusing writer.”

Gemma glanced at her briefly, before quickly turning back to Virginia, as if to ascertain how this remark had been received by higher authority. Virginia pursed her lips. She had a small, disapproving mouth, Isabel decided: This was not a mouth out of which generous sentiments might be expected to emanate.

“Spark?” said Virginia, not directly to Isabel, but, in full ex cathedra manner, to an imaginary audience on the sofa.

“Yes,” said Isabel. “Muriel Spark.”

“A wonderful writer,” said Roz. “I love her work—I always have.” She paused. “And there are those who say that Jean Brodie is her greatest novel.”

“Impossible woman,” snapped Virginia.

Isabel was not sure whether she meant Muriel Spark or Jean Brodie. Neither, in her view, was impossible.

Roz seemed good-humoured. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said mildly. “I rather approve of Jean Brodie.”

Virginia’s nostrils flared. “Frankly, I don’t see what there is to approve of. Unless, of course, one approves of fascism.”

This remark was accompanied by a look of such condescension that Isabel felt she had to respond.

“I know what you mean about her political views,” she said. “But…”

“You’ll recall how she admired Mussolini,” Virginia interjected.

This was the signal for Gemma to lend support. “Mussolini,” she said, shaking her head in disapproval. “He was a fascist, you know.”

Isabel suppressed a smile. “So I’ve heard,” she said.

Gemma looked anxiously at Virginia, as if eager to find out whether she had said the right thing.

“What I was going to point out,” Isabel continued, “is that there was a lot of political naivety in the nineteen-thirties. People supported causes that they really didn’t know enough about. They might take a rosy view of a political party without realising that it really was very intolerant—or downright dangerous.” Anthony Blunt, thought Isabel: Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby…

“They knew,” said Virginia. “Don’t tell me that Jean Brodie didn’t know what European fascism was all about.”

Isabel pointed out that Jean Brodie was a fictional character. The only views that she might have—the only understanding—would be those attributed by the character’s creator. “I don’t think we can be sure about what Jean Brodie did or did not believe,” she said. “We can get clues from the text, of course, but they might be deliberately ambiguous clues.”

Virginia shook her head. “Jean Brodie was a fascist—in every respect. And she was in charge of all those impressionable young girls. Typical.”

Typical of what? Isabel found herself wondering. Was she suggesting that it was typical of the authorities to appoint the most unsuitable people to positions of influence over young people?

Virginia did not explain what she meant, but went on to say, “Jean Brodie was a romantic authoritarian—and a fantasist.”

“Possibly,” said Isabel.

“A fantasist,” echoed Gemma, giving Isabel a vaguely reproachful look.

“Probably with an unhealthy interest in teenage girls,” Virginia remarked.

Roz frowned at this. Gemma looked away in embarrassment.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Isabel. “She wanted to influence them. That’s not the same thing as wanting to seduce them.”

Gemma was staring out of the window. Virginia looked up at the ceiling.

Now Roz intervened. “We mustn’t have our discussion before the others arrive,” she warned. To Isabel, she said, “Sometimes that happens, you know. We start to discuss the book before the others arrive, and then we find that by the time we start, everything has already been said.”

“Of course,” agreed Virginia, but then went on to observe, “Spark’s a bit light—whatever one thinks of Jean Brodie. I find her writing shies away from the issue.”

Gemma nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It can shy away, I think. You need to engage, don’t you, Virginia.”

Isabel was irritated by this. She had always resented the way in which some people diminished the achievement of writers who, like Muriel Spark, dared to be witty and humorous. There was Virginia, who, as far as Isabel knew, had never published a word, patronising Muriel Spark, who had entertained and inspired so many. She gritted her teeth. How dare she! And as for Gemma, coming in on the coat-tails of this unjustified bit of intellectual snobbery—her comments were at best risible. She wanted to say something; she wanted to demolish, politely but firmly, this casual dismissal, but just as she was about to fashion a retort, the doorbell rang again.

“I imagine that’s everybody else,” said Roz.

Isabel bit her tongue. She smiled at Virginia, and at Gemma too. “We must discuss that later,” she said.

Virginia waved a careless hand, as if she were putting Isabel’s request on some lowly agenda of conversations of too little interest to be worth resuming. Only delayed by a few seconds, Gemma made a similar gesture. Angela, Fredericka and Barbara all arrived at the same time. Isabel recalled that Fredericka was said to dislike Angela; that Angela never read anything; and that Barbara also disliked Angela and was, in turn, dismissive of both Virginia and Gemma, although mostly of Virginia. Virginia, Isabel assumed, would have little time for Angela in view of her failure to read even the thin intellectual fare that made up the group’s chosen books.

They sat down. Isabel noticed that Virginia and Angela both made for the same chair, but Virginia reached it marginally before Angela and sat down with a deft twist of the hips before the other woman could lay claim to it. Once seated, Virginia looked at Angela with the smug relief that Isabel had last seen on the face of the winner of musical chairs at the last children’s party she had held for Charlie. Most guests at that function had been small boys from Charlie’s class at school, and the game had ended with a scrummage and damage to a small Victorian bedroom chair that Jamie had unwisely introduced into the game. But while one might expect such attitudes among the six- and seven-year-olds, one did not expect it in a book group in one of Edinburgh’s staider suburbs.

Angela moved to a place on a sofa, sitting down next to Gemma, who smiled at her in welcome. Isabel was not sure how those two got on, although she was coming to realise that the default position in this book group was, as Roz had implied, barely concealed hostility. As she thought of this, Isabel wondered if there was any point in Roz’s proceeding in the face of the deep-seated antagonisms and difference of opinion that had been so obvious to her, even from her brief experience of the group. Surely it would be better, she thought, to call it a day with these difficult individuals and to establish a new and harmonious group made up of people who appeared not to be at one another’s throats. Yet Roz persisted, and Isabel found herself admiring that. Resolving conflict was always a worthwhile goal, even if there were times when it involved considerable effort. Blessed are the peacemakers…Yes, she thought, although their efforts, unfortunately, did not always bear fruit. And this, she suspected, would be one such situation: The members of this book group, she felt, were fundamentally incompatible, and that, she decided, is what she would tell Roz when she broke to her the news that she would not be coming to another meeting after this one. “I would have liked to have helped,” she would say, “but there are limits to what anybody can do.”

Isabel found a seat next to Fredericka. She watched as Roz took her own seat and started proceedings.

“This is the second meeting that our new member, Isabel, is enjoying,” Roz began. “I’m sure that you’ll all join me in saying how glad we are to see her.”

The members looked at her and, with the exception of Virginia, smiled. Isabel found herself gazing at Virginia, who sucked in her cheeks and turned away. There will be no dealing with you, Isabel said to herself. You’re…She searched for a word. Impossible, came to her. That was what some people were: It was as simple as that—they were impossible.

There were a few items of routine business, including fixing a date for the next meeting. Then Roz announced, “The book.”

There was an immediate silence. Isabel glanced at Roz; she saw tension in the way her hands were clasped; she saw anxiety in the way she looked about the room at the members disported before her. She saw how Roz’s gaze fell upon Virginia, and locked upon her, as a heat-seeking missile will lock in on its target. She saw the gaze returned, cold and unwavering, and she saw immediately the old, familiar challenge. Roz was where Virginia wanted to be: It was as simple as that. There can be only one leader of any group, and Roz was that person—by founder’s title, no doubt, but that was enough. It was her book group, and Virginia would like it to be her book group.

Isabel thought: This is the ancient story of any playground.

Roz dragged her eyes away from her challenger. “First question, I suppose,” she continued. “How many have read Jean Brodie before? I mean, before we took it on.”

There was some hesitation before hands went up. Nobody put her hand up immediately, and Isabel drew a conclusion from that. This conclusion survived what happened next, which was that every hand went up, Gemma’s being the last—raised only after a quick glance towards Virginia. Isabel decided that nobody had read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie before, even though it was one of the best-known Scottish novels of the twentieth century. Yet nobody wanted to admit to not having read it.

Isabel suppressed a smile. This was the Anna Karenina rule—the rule that said that everybody claimed to have read Anna Karenina, even if they had not. Not to have read Anna Karenina was not something to which people seemed willing to admit, just as they were not prepared to admit that they had never read Walter Scott, or Moby Dick, perhaps. Every culture had its shibboleths with which people were expected to be familiar. But the bar to be surmounted was not high: In Scotland, as long as one knew, even vaguely, who Walter Scott was, that would be enough to allow access to most circles, just as, in the United States, an awareness of the existence of a tree in A Separate Peace might be sufficient in undemanding circumstances. And here, unexpectedly, the Anna Karenina rule had just manifested itself among the members of this squabbling, irredeemable book group. Isabel allowed a smile to break across her face.

Fredericka noticed. She half turned to Isabel, and gave her an unfriendly look. Isabel noticed this, and realised that she had unwittingly made an enemy. Fredericka was perceptive—Isabel imagined that she might be the most intelligent of the members—and she had sensed, correctly, that Isabel knew that she, Fredericka, was not telling the truth when she raised her hand. Fredericka’s look had been one tinged with resentment, and that was exactly how people felt when their untruths were detected. They felt cross because somebody had seen through them.

Virginia broke the silence that followed the introductory plebiscite. “I rather like going back to a book I’ve read some time ago,” she said.

Gemma nodded her agreement with this observation.

“Although, of course,” Virginia continued, “a book has to have a certain density before one can do that.”

Gemma nodded her head. Of course that was right: Density was required.

Virginia was getting into her stride. “For example, Anna Karenina…”

It took all of Isabel’s self-control not to gasp. Anna Karenina! This was synchronicity of the most providential kind. Once again, Fredericka noticed, and turned a disapproving eye on Isabel. It was the sort of look one might get if one consumed popcorn at the opera.

Virginia had more to say about Tolstoy. “I can go back to Anna Karenina time and time again. But Muriel Spark…I don’t think so, somehow. Not that I’m saying that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a flawed novel. I’m not suggesting that.”

“No,” muttered Gemma. “Not that.”

Fredericka overcame her disapproval sufficiently to lean towards Isabel and whisper, “She’s the Greek chorus, you know. Her over there. Little Miss Mouse. She agrees with everything—and I mean everything—that Virginia says.” She paused. “Even when it’s patent rubbish, which it is—most of the time.”

Roz gave Fredericka a discouraging look, although Isabel did not think that the whisper had been loud enough to be heard. For her part, she felt that she could not respond. She was busy mentally composing a Venn diagram that demonstrated the channels and flow of the forces at work in the room. And it was at this moment that the solution occurred to her. It was so obvious. Of course. Of course.

But would he agree?

He might; in fact, she thought he probably would. He liked adventure—he always had.