And yet, remember, she thought, none of us is immune to shipwreck. Come, beckons the fatal shore: come and die on my white sands, it said. And we do.
C H A P T E R E L E V E N
E
THE FOLLOWING MORNING she made the decision to visit Florence Macreadie. There was an F. Macreadie listed in the telephone directory for St. Stephen Street and a quick call from Isabel established that she would be at home after eleven that morning—“after doing the messages”—and would be happy to see her; Isabel approved of the old Scots expression and liked Florence Macreadie all the more for using it. One did not go shopping in Scots; one went for messages.
She made her way to Stockbridge slowly, walking across the Meadows and down Howe Street, stopping to look into shop windows, and to think. While looking at a display of Eastern rugs in Howe Street, marked down in price, now irresistible according to a placard in the window, Turkish delight, in fact, she reflected on the fact that when she had last walked past this shop, a week ago, and had briefly glanced at the rugs in the window, she had been a different person. She had been Isabel Dalhousie, of course, the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics and resident of Merchiston; those aspects of identity, the externals, had not changed, but others had. A week ago, she had believed in the saintliness—whatever that was—of her mother; now she 1 2 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h was a person who knew that there were no saints and that her mother had been a woman with human failings, and a younger lover. And a week ago she had believed in her own ability to resist temptation; now she knew that she, like everybody else, was too weak to do that. Two sets of scales, she thought, had fallen from her eyes. It was rather like growing up; the same process of seeing things differently and feeling different inside.
Mimi’s disclosure of her mother’s affair had raised conflict-ing emotions in Isabel. She had even felt cross with Mimi, in a shoot-the-messenger sense, but these feelings had not lasted long. She knew that she had given Mimi no alternative but to disclose what she knew, and indeed if anybody deserved censure for that it was Isabel herself. Ordinary consideration for the autonomy of others dictates that we should not browbeat information out of those who don’t want to give it. What we know, and what we think, is our own business until we decide to impart it to others. Secrecy about the self may seem ridiculous or unjustified, but it is something that we can choose if we so desire. And this is true even if the information is something of very little significance. Isabel had read of an author of naval histories who had considered questions from journalists as to his date of birth to be unpardonably intrusive. That had struck her as being absurd—unless he was unduly sensitive about his age, which might have been the case, as that particular author had invented an entirely fictional boyhood in Ireland for himself. In which case, one might learn to be wary of those who did not offer their age: had they invented a past?
It had been wrong, she felt, to press Mimi to tell her. The information she had elicited had not been all that unusual—
there were plenty of adulterous mothers—but what had shocked Isabel was that it showed that her mother had been just like she T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
1 2 3
was. That was the information that she had found difficult and had led to several nights of sleeplessness. Her mother had had an affair with a much younger man, which was precisely what Isabel wanted to do. I am like my mother in that respect. It comes from somewhere, and that is where. And somehow the thought that an ingrained biological drama was playing itself out in the next generation made her friendship with Jamie something less individual, less personal. This was not something which had arrived as a gift; it was simply tawdry behaviourism.
She moved away from the rug shop. A man inside, anxiously waiting for customers, had seen her and had been watching her. Isabel had looked through the glass, beyond the piles of rugs, and had met his gaze. She was sensitive to such encounters, because in her mind they were not entirely casual. By looking into the eyes of another, one established a form of connection that had moral implications. To look at another thus was to acknowledge one’s shared humanity with him, and that meant one owed him something, no matter how small that thing might be. That was why the executioner was traditionally spared the duty of looking into the eyes of the condemned; he observed him by stealth, approached from behind, was allowed a mask, and so on. If he looked into the eyes, then the moral bond would be established, and that moral bond would prevent him from doing what the state required: the carrying out of its act of murder.
Of course that was a long way from looking through the plate-glass window of a rug shop, but salesmen knew full well that once you engaged your customer in that personal bond, then the chances of their feeling obliged to buy were all the greater. Rug salesmen in Istanbul in particular understood that; their little cups of coffee, half liquid, half sludge, offered on a 1 2 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h brass tray, were intended not only as gestures of traditional hospitality, but also as the constituents of a bond between vendor and client. So, as Isabel retreated from the window and looked fixedly down the street, she felt the tentative bonds snapping like overstretched rubber bands. And then she was free, looking down the road towards St. Stephen Street, and only five minutes early for her meeting with Florence Macreadie.
Florence had returned only a short while before Isabel knocked at her door. Isabel noticed the coat that she was wearing, a dark-blue macintosh that was beginning to fray around the cuffs. Yet its cut was good and it had in its day been fashionable, or at least in good taste.
“I’ve just come back,” she said. “I haven’t had time to make coffee or anything.”
“I gave you very little warning,” said Isabel apologetically.
Florence gave a dismissive gesture. “Oh, I don’t stand on ceremony,” she said. “Anybody can come to see me any time.
Not that they do, of course. But they could if they wanted.”
She led Isabel through the hall and into the kitchen. The house was slightly untidier, Isabel thought, than it had been when she had been there last. But that had been during a viewing time, when everything was on show. One had to be tidy, the estate agents advised; and ideally there should be the smell of newly baked bread when prospective purchasers came in—it made them feel positive about the place.
Florence began to spoon coffee into a cafetière. If the smell of newly baked bread was lacking, at least there was the aroma of fresh coffee grounds, as rich and tantalising. She shifted a pile of papers from one side of the table to the other. “I need to sort everything out,” she said. “But I keep putting it off. One T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
1 2 5
accumulates so much stuff in a place and yet it’s hard to throw it away. Or at least I find it hard. It’s like throwing away one’s past.”
Isabel glanced at the papers. They did not look like personal letters, but were old bills, letters from tradesmen, circulars. “Sometimes it’s good to do that,” she said. “It can be quite cathartic to get rid of everything.”
Florence sighed. “And yet, don’t you think that these little scraps of this and that make up our lives? Everything has its associations, painful or otherwise.” She paused, looking at Isabel with eyes that Isabel now saw were an unusual flecked grey.