They discussed the details. Cat would be leaving in ten days’ time. If Isabel came for a hand-over day before then, she F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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could be shown the current stock and the order book. Consign-ments of wine and salamis were expected while Cat was away, and these would have to be attended to. And then there was the whole issue of making sure that the surfaces were cleaned—
a fussy procedure subject to an entire litany of regulations.
Eddie knew all about that, but you had to watch him; he was funny about olives and often put them in containers marked down for coleslaw.
“It will be far more difficult than editing the Review of Applied Ethics, ” said Cat, smiling. “Far more difficult.”
Which might have been true, thought Isabel, although she did not say it. Editing a journal was largely repetitive work: sending letters to reviewers and assessors; discussing deadlines with copy editors and printers. All that was mundane work; reading the papers and dealing with authors was a different matter. That required insight and a large measure of tact. In her experience, the authors of papers which were turned down almost invariably proved resentful. And the more incompetent or eccentric the paper—and there were many of those—the more truculent the disappointed author became. One such author—or his paper—lay on her desk before her at the time.
“The Rightness of Vice”: a title which reminded her of a recent book she had reviewed, In Praise of Sin. But while In Praise of Sin had been a serious investigation of the limits of moralism—
and ultimately claimed to be in favour of virtue—“The Rightness of Vice” had no truck with virtue. It was about the alleged benefits for character of vice, provided that the vice in question was what a person really wanted to do. That was defensible—
just—thought Isabel, provided that the vice was a tolerable one (drinking, gluttony, and so on), but how could one possibly argue in favour of the sorts of vices which the author of the 1 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h paper had in mind? It was impossible, thought Isabel. Who could defend . . . She went over in her mind some of the vices explored by the author, but stopped. Even by their Latin names, these vices barely bore thinking about. Did people really do that? The answer, she supposed, was that they did, but she very much doubted that they would expect a philosopher to spring to their defence. And yet here was an Australian professor of philosophy doing just that. Well, she had a responsibility to her readers. She could not defend the indefensible. She would send the article back with a short note, something like: Dear Professor, I’m so sorry, but we just can’t. People feel very strongly about these things, you know. And they would blame me for what you say.
They really would. Yours sincerely, Isabel Dalhousie.
Isabel put the thought of vice behind her and turned her attention back to Cat. “It may be difficult,” she said. “But I think I’ll manage.”
“You can say no,” said Cat.
“Can, but shall not,” said Isabel. “You go to the wedding.”
Cat smiled. “I’ll reciprocate some day,” she said. “I’ll be you for a few weeks and you can go away.”
“You could never be me,” said Isabel. “And I could never be you. We never know enough about another person to be him or her. We think we do, but we can never be sure.”
“You know what I mean,” said Cat. “I’ll come and live here and reply to your letters and so on while you get away.”
Isabel nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind. But there’s no need to think of reciprocation. I suspect that I shall enjoy myself.”
“You will,” said Cat. “You’ll enjoy the customers—or some of them.”
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CAT S TAY E D, and they ate a light supper in the garden room, enjoying the last of the evening sun. It was June—close to the solstice—and it never became truly dark in Edinburgh, even at midnight. The summer had been slow to come, but had now arrived and the days were long and warm.
“I’ve been feeling lazy in this weather,” Isabel remarked to Cat. “Working in your shop is exactly what I need to wake me up.”
“And Italy is exactly what I need to wind me down,” said Cat.
“Not that the wedding itself should be quiet—anything but.”
Isabel enquired who was getting married. She knew few of Cat’s friends, and tended to get them mixed up. There were too many Kirstys and Craigs, Isabel thought; they had become interchangeable in her mind.
“Kirsty,” said Cat. “You’ve met her with me once or twice, I think.”
“Oh,” said Isabel. “Kirsty.”
“She met an Italian last year when she was teaching English in Catania. Salvatore. They fell for one another and that was it.”
For a moment Isabel was silent. She had fallen for John Liamor in Cambridge all those years ago, and that had been it too. She had gone so far as to marry him and had tolerated his unfaithfulness until it had been too much to bear. But all these Kirstys were so sensible; they would not make a bad choice.
“What does he do?” Isabel asked. She half expected Cat not to know; it always surprised her that her niece seemed uninterested in, or unaware of, what people did. For Isabel, it was fundamentally important information if one were even to begin to understand somebody.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Cat smiled. “Kirsty doesn’t really know,” she said. “I know that’ll surprise you, but she says that whenever she’s asked Salvatore he’s become evasive. He says that he’s some sort of busi-nessman who works for his father. But she can’t find out exactly what this business is.”
Isabel stared at Cat. It was clear to her—immediately clear—what Salvatore’s father did.
“And she doesn’t care?” Isabel ventured. “She’s still prepared to marry him?”
“Why not?” said Cat. “Just because you don’t know what happens in somebody’s office doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t marry them.”
“But what if this . . . this office is headquarters of a protection racket? What then?”
Cat laughed. “A protection racket? Don’t be ridiculous.
There’s nothing to suggest that it’s a protection racket.”
Isabel thought that any accusations of ridiculousness were being made in exactly the wrong direction.
“Cat,” she said quietly. “It’s Italy. In the south of Italy if you won’t disclose what you do, then it means one thing. Organised crime. That’s just the way it is. And the most common form of organised crime is the protection racket.”
Cat stared at her aunt. “Nonsense,” she said. “You have an overheated imagination.”
“And Kirsty’s is distinctly underheated,” retorted Isabel. “I simply can’t imagine marrying somebody who would hide that sort of thing from me. I couldn’t marry a gangster.”
“Salvatore’s not a gangster,” said Cat. “He’s nice. I met him several times and I liked him.”
Isabel looked at the floor. The fact that Cat could say this merely emphasised her inability to tell good men from bad. This F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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