She thanked Eddie for the coffee and he beamed at her.
“Did that Italian phone you yet?” he asked.
Isabel looked at him blankly. “Italian?”
F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
1 6 1
“Tomasso. He was in here earlier today. He asked Cat for your telephone number.”
Isabel glanced down at her coffee. “No,” she said. “He hasn’t phoned.”
She felt strangely agitated. She had offered to show him round the city—that was all—but the prospect of his getting in touch with her had an unexpected effect on her.
Eddie bent forward. “Cat’s giving him no encouragement,”
he whispered. “I don’t think that she thinks much of him.”
Isabel raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she doesn’t want him to feel that there’s more to it than friendship,” she said.
“I feel sorry for him,” said Eddie. “To come over all the way from Italy to see her and then this.”
Isabel smiled. “I suspect that he can look after himself,” she said. “He doesn’t strike me as being the vulnerable type.”
Eddie nodded. “Maybe,” he said.
He moved away. It was the longest conversation that Isabel had ever had with him, and she was surprised by the fact that Eddie had picked up on Cat’s attitude towards Tomasso. She had assumed that he would be indifferent to such matters, but now she realised that this might be a serious underestimation of the young man’s powers of observation. And of his inner life too, she thought. We ignore quiet people, the shy observers, the bystanders; we forget that they are watching.
She returned to her perusal of the Corriere della Sera, but it was difficult for her to concentrate. She thought of Tomasso, and of when she might expect his call. She wondered what he would want to do in Edinburgh. There were museums and galleries, of course; all the usual sites of Scottish history, but she was not sure whether that would be what he wanted. Perhaps 1 6 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h he would want to go out to dinner somewhere; she could arrange that. Cat would not come, presumably, and it would just be the two of them. What would Tomasso eat? He would not be a vegetarian, she thought: Italians were not vegetarians. They drank, they womanised, they sang; oh, blissful race of heroes!
She looked at the paper and struggled with a review of a book about suppressed photographs of Mussolini. Il Duce, apparently, took a strong interest in his appearance in photographs—
well, she thought, he was an Italian dictator, and if Italian dictators aren’t stylish, then which dictators would be? The paper showed a few samples. Mussolini on a horse, looking ridiculous, like a sack of potatoes, or spaghetti perhaps. Mussolini with a group of nuns flocking around him like excited sparrows. (He did not like to be in the same photograph as nuns or clerics of any sort; and why was that? Isabel asked herself.
Guilt, of course.) Mussolini dressed as an aviator, with white jacket and white flying helmet, in an open cockpit aeroplane—
he pretended to be able to fly while the plane was actually con-trolled by a real pilot, crouching on the floor. And when he entered the lion cage at Rome Zoo, a splendid show of public bravado, the lions had been drugged; they would have had no appetite that day for a stout dictator! She smiled as she read the review. What a distance now stood between those days and these; ancient history to so many people, but just one generation, really, and did not Italy still come up with flashy, vain politicians who were often on the wrong side of the law? And yet how could one not love Italy and the Italians; they were so very human, built such gorgeous cities, and made such good, loyal friends. If one had to choose a nationality, in the anteroom of birth, would it not be tempting to choose to be an Italian? Isabel thought it would be, although the options might all be taken up F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
1 6 3
before it was one’s turn and the grim news would be given: We’re sorry, but you’re going to have to be something else.
What, she wondered, would be the most difficult identity to bear? Probably that of being something in the wrong place—
one of those obscure minorities in some distant republic where all hands, and hearts, were turned against one.
So absorbed was Isabel in these ruminations that she did not notice the other tables in the delicatessen filling up. When she lowered the paper and reached for her cup of coffee, now cold from neglect, she saw that a number of people had entered the shop. Cat was at the counter attending to customers, and Eddie was hunched over the coffee machine in the background.
Isabel looked at the new arrivals and immediately froze. Two tables away, near the large basket of baguettes, were Rose Macleod and her partner, Graeme. They had both been served coffee by Eddie and were talking to one another. Graeme had in his hand a list which he showed to Rose, who nodded.
Isabel did not want to see them. Her embarrassment over her encounter with them was still fresh in her mind, and she did not imagine that they would particularly want to see her.
She quickly looked down again at her paper. If she sat there, absorbed in the news from Italy, they might not notice and they would eventually go away. But what if Cat came over to speak to her, or Eddie topped up her coffee? That would draw attention to her.
She tried to concentrate on the newspaper, but could not.
After reading the same sentence three times, the meaning jum-bled in her mind, she sneaked a glance at the other table, and looked directly into Rose’s stare. Now she could not very well look away, and so she began to force a smile of recognition. The other woman was clearly shocked by the encounter; she smiled 1 6 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h too, hesitantly, raised a hand in a gesture of greeting, and then dropped it again as if uncertain that it had been the right thing to do.
Isabel lowered her eyes to the paper again. She felt calmer; they had met, greeted one another after a fashion, and that would be that—they could go their separate ways. She thought, though, that if she had had the courage she would have walked across to the couple’s table and told Rose that she had misled her. Then she might have made a confession as to why she had come to see her in the first place. She could have given them the full facts, related Ian’s extraordinary experiences, and left it up to them to decide what to do about them. And if there were any remaining public duty, she could have encouraged Ian to contact the police and tell them too. And that would have been the end of the whole affair. But she did not do this, and thus remained enmeshed in a situation which was causing her grow-ing moral discomfort.
She looked again at the couple. Graeme was leaning forward and saying something to Rose, something urgent and angry. Rose was listening, but shaking her head. Graeme’s manner seemed to become more animated. She saw him lay a finger on the tabletop and move it up and down in a fussy, insistent way, as if emphasising a point. Then he turned and looked in Isabel’s direction, and she saw a look of pure malevo-lence directed at her. Meeting his gaze was like being assaulted physically—a tidal wave of dislike and contempt, moving across the room and crushing her.
He stood up, reached for his coat, and walked away from the table. Rose watched him leave. She almost got to her feet, but then sank back into her chair. Once he was out of the door, F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
1 6 5
she reached for her cup of coffee, picked it up, and made her way over to Isabel’s table.
“Do you mind?” Rose asked. “Do you mind my joining you?”