B O O K S B Y A L E X A N D E R M c C A L L S M I T H
I N T H E I S A B E L D A L H O U S I E S E R I E S
The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
The Right Attitude to Rain
I N T H E N O . 1 L A D I E S ’ D E T E C T I V E A G E N C Y S E R I E S
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
Blue Shoes and Happiness
I N T H E P O R T U G U E S E I R R E G U L A R V E R B S S E R I E S
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
I N T H E 4 4 S C O T L A N D S T R E E T S E R I E S
44 Scotland Street
Espresso Tales
The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa T H E R I G H T A T T I T U D E T O R A I N
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T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E
T O R A I N
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h p a n t h e o n b o o k s
n e w y o r k
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Alexander McCall Smith All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Random House, Inc. and Edward Mendelson, Executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden, for permission to reprint excerpts from “Heavy Date,” “In Memory of Sigmund Freud,” and “Funeral Blues,” by W. H. Auden from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and the Estate of W. H. Auden.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCall Smith, Alexander, [date]
The right attitude to rain / Alexander McCall Smith.
p. cm.
eISBN-13: 978-0-375-42462-5
eISBN-10: 0-375-42462-8
1. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Fiction. 2. Women editors—Fiction.
3. Housekeepers—Fiction. 4. Americans—Scotland—
Edinburgh—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6063.C326R54 2006
823’.914—dc22
2006043214
www.pantheonbooks.com
v1.0
This book is for Edward Mendelson
T H E R I G H T A T T I T U D E T O R A I N
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C H A P T E R O N E
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TO TAKE AN INTEREST in the affairs of others is entirely natural; so natural, in fact, that even a cat, lying cat-napping on top of a wall, will watch with half an eye the people walking by below. But between such curiosity, which is permissible, and nosiness, which is not, there lies a dividing line that some people simply miss—even if it is a line that is painted red and marked by the very clearest of warning signs.
Isabel adjusted the position of her chair. She was sitting in the window of the Glass and Thompson café at the top of Dundas Street—where it descended sharply down the hill to Canonmills. From that point in the street, one could see in the distance the hills of Fife beyond: dark-green hills in that light, but at times an attenuated blue, softened by the sea—always changing. Isabel liked this café, where the display windows of the shop it had once been had now been made into sitting areas for customers. Edinburgh was normally too chilly to allow people to sit out while drinking their coffee, except for a few short weeks in the high summer when café life spilled out onto the pavement, tentatively, as if expecting a rebuff from the ele-4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h ments. This was a compromise—to sit in the window, protected by glass, and yet feel part of what was going on outside.
She edged her chair forwards in order to see a little more of what was happening on the other side of the road, at a slight angle. Dundas Street was a street of galleries. Some were well established, such as the Scottish Gallery and the Open Eye, others were struggling to make a living on the work of young artists who still believed that great things lay ahead. Most of them would be disappointed, of course, as they discovered that the world did not share their conviction, but they tried nonetheless, and continued to try. One of these smaller galleries was hosting an opening and Isabel could see the crowd milling about within. At the front door stood a small knot of smokers, drawing on cigarettes, bound together in their exclusion. She strained to make out the features of one of them, a tall man wearing a blue jacket, who was talking animatedly to a woman beside him, gesturing to emphasise some private point. He looked vaguely familiar, she decided, but it was difficult to tell from that distance and angle. Suddenly the man in the blue jacket stopped gesturing, reached forward and rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder. She moved sideways, as if to shrug him off, but he held on tight. Her hand went up in what seemed to be an attempt to prise off his fingers, but all the time she was smiling—Isabel could see that. Strange, she thought; an argument conducted in the language of smiles.
But more intriguing stilclass="underline" an expensive car, one of those discreet cars of uncertain make but with unambiguous presence, had drawn up on the café side of the street, just below the level of Isabel’s window. It had stopped and a man and a woman had emerged. They were in a no-parking zone, and Isabel watched as the man pressed the device on his key ring that would lock the T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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doors automatically. You are allowed to drop things off, thought Isabel, but not park. Don’t you know that? And then she thought: People who drive cars like that consider themselves above the regulations, the rules that prevent those with humbler cars, and shallower pockets, from parking. And these people, of course, can afford the parking fines; small change for them. She found herself feeling irritated, and her irritation became, after a few moments, animosity. She found herself disliking them, this man and woman standing beside their expensive car, because of their arrogance.
She looked down into her coffee cup, and then up again.
No, she thought. This is wrong. You should not dislike people you do not know. And she knew nothing about them, other than that they appeared to imagine that their wealth entitled them to ignore the regulations by which the rest of us had to abide. But then they might not know that one could not park there because they were from somewhere else; from a place where a double yellow line might be an invitation to park, for all she knew. And even as she thought this, she realised that of course they were not from Edinburgh. Their clothes were different, and their complexions too. These people had been in the sun somewhere, and their clothes had that cut, that freshly dry-cleaned look that Scottish clothes never seem to have. Scottish clothes are soft, a bit crumpled, lived-in, like Scottish people themselves really.
She craned her neck. The two of them, the man considerably older than the woman, were walking down the road, away from the car. They paused as the man pointed at a door, and the woman said something to him. Isabel saw her adjust the printed silk scarf around her neck and glance at the watch on her wrist, a small circle of gold that caught the sun as she moved her arm.