“Is just a friend. Oh, I imagined that might be the case.
After the lawyer came back to me and said that you had been to see her. She said that . . . Well, I’m sorry to have to say this. She said that she didn’t believe what you told her—that you were, in fact, having an affair with that young man.”
It is not easy to hear the news that we have been spotted in our lies, and Isabel’s reaction, a simple human reaction, was to blush. This was burning shame, made physical, and Florence, seeing it, immediately regretted having said what she had.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have told you that. I made 1 3 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h it sound more serious than it was. And I’m sure that she mis-understood what you said. I’m sure that you didn’t deliberately mislead her.”
“I did,” said Isabel plainly. “I told her that Jamie and I were in a relationship. Those were my exact words.”
“Well . . .”
“I don’t know exactly why I did it,” said Isabel. “Pride, probably. Perhaps I was just fed up with being condescended to by married people. You know how it can be sometimes.”
Florence reached across and placed her hand on Isabel’s arm. “I’m single,” she said. “I know what you’re talking about.”
Isabel looked down at the design of the waxed tablecloth on the table. It looked French: a series of little pictures of a cornucopia disgorging its contents before a group of surprised picnickers: Déjeuner sur l’herbe transformed.
“It’s so ridiculous,” said Isabel. “A week ago my life was all very straightforward. Now it seems that I’ve talked myself into a whole web of misunderstandings and deceptions. All over nothing.”
Florence laughed, and her laughter defused the tension.
“Let’s forget about all that,” she said. “The point is this: I gather you’re buying this place for somebody who works for you. That’s reason enough for me to want to sell it to you.”
Isabel protested, but Florence was insistent. “If you could have seen some of the people who have been through this place since it’s been on the market, you’d understand how I feel.
Some of them were nice enough, but an awful lot of them were ghastly, just ghastly. Materialistic. Ill-mannered. And quite a few of them actually condescended to me. They thought, woman in her sixties. Very uninteresting. Unimportant. Practically non-existent. And then there was you, and that young man. And I 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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suddenly thought, Why should I sell this to somebody I don’t like? I don’t need the money. I’m comfortably off, with my teaching pension and the money and that house in Trinity left to me.
I don’t need anything more.”
She stopped to take a sip of her coffee. On the other side of the table, Isabel stared out of the window and thought about what Florence had said. She could see the logic of the decision and she knew that she should accept; to be able to accept is as important as to be able to give—she knew that.
“You’re being very generous,” she said. Then she hesitated, but just for a few moments, before she continued. “I can afford to pay more, you know. I’m not short of money.”
She felt the soft power of Florence’s gaze; those grey, understanding eyes. “I know that.”
But how did she know? thought Isabel. Do I seem well-off?
There is a well-off look, Isabel thought, but she did not imagine she had it. It was an assuredness that came with not being anxious; that and a well-tended air. But how did one distinguish between that and arrogance?
“Let’s leave it at that,” Florence suggested. “You can sleep on my offer and then, in, let’s say, two days, your lawyer can let us know whether you want to go ahead. Would you be happy with that?”
Isabel made a gesture with her hands, palms outwards, which indicated acceptance, and resignation too. Florence, smiling, reached for the cafetière to top up Isabel’s mug. “That young man,” she said. “You’re lucky to have such a friend.”
“Very,” said Isabel.
“You’re obviously fond of him,” said Florence, and then added, “And he of you, of course.”
Isabel again said, “Very.”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Florence put down her mug, exactly over one of the cornucopias. The picnickers, frozen in time, were dwarfed. “Could it not become a love affair?” she said quietly. She watched Isabel’s face as she spoke, and her words were hesitant, as if ready for withdrawal in the face of a hostile reaction. But Isabel was not offended by the question.
“It’s almost that,” she said. “I think we’re at a crossroads now. But I just don’t know.”
“But you should,” said Florence. “Look at yourself. You’re still quite young. You’re not my age. If he wants it too, then why deny yourselves?”
It’s not as simple as that, thought Isabel. There was the question of friendship and the hazardous conversion of friendship into erotic love. That was not always simple. “I can’t help myself,”
she said. “I keep thinking through the implications of things. I know that it’s a guaranteed way of never getting anything done, but it’s just the way I am. I don’t act spontaneously.”
“Then be prepared,” said Florence abruptly. “Be prepared to shed tears when you get to my age and you think back on lost opportunities. Somebody asked me to live with . . .”—there was the briefest hesitation, and then—“with her. I said no, because people would talk. They wouldn’t now, of course, but it was different then. They didn’t care about people’s happiness, did they? And I think that we would have been very happy together.
Just as friends, you know. Just as friends. She had a flat in the Dean Village, you know, under the bridge, looking out onto the mill pond. It would have been like living on an opera set. We would have been happy.”
“We shouldn’t care so much about disapproval,” said Isabel.
“But we do, don’t we?”
Florence was looking down at the floor. There was regret in 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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her expression. She looked up at Isabel. “Go on,” she said. “Go ahead. Have an affair with him.”
“And if it goes wrong?”
“That’s the last thing one thinks of on starting these things,”
said Florence. “Really, it must be. Otherwise . . .”
“Maybe.”
There was silence. Isabel had reached a decision, but she did not want to tell Florence what it was. The conversation had been an intimate one, with revelations on both sides, and she had a natural caution. She had not come here to talk about herself and her feelings and she had been slightly surprised by the way in which the other woman had encouraged her. Was it just because she had a romantic streak? There were people who were forever trying to bring others together; it appealed to them to have the world paired off, as if this brought resolution of some sort. But she did not imagine that Florence would think that way. In which case, was she obtaining some almost voyeuristic pleasure from encouraging the affair? Again, some people derived something of that nature from the contemplation of the affairs of others, which was not surprising, thought Isabel, because much of our lives are spent in thinking about what others are doing, watching them, emulating them.
“I really must go,” she said, rising to her feet.
Florence did not get up. “I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” she said. “This is none of my business.”
Isabel shook her head in denial. “You haven’t offended me at all. You’ve made me think. That’s all.”
As she made her way down the stone staircase to the front door, Isabel encountered the cat she had seen on her first visit to Florence’s flat. He was sitting on a chair on a landing, his tail hanging down beneath the seat. He watched her warily as she 1 3 4