There were attics up there, rooms looking out of the sharply rising slate roofs, out towards the Forth and the hills beyond, rooms let out to students and later, during the summer, to the musicians and actors who flocked to Edinburgh for the Festival.
As she walked up towards Bruntsfield she could make out the door that led to the narrow hall and, up five long flights of stone stairs, to the flat where more than twenty years ago her school-friend Kirsty had at sixteen conducted an affair with a student from Inverness, her first boyfriend and lover. Isabel had listened to her friend’s accounts of this and had felt an emptiness in 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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pit of her stomach, which was longing, and fear too. Kirsty had spoken sotto voce of what had happened, and whispered, “They try to stop us, Isabel. They try to stop us because they don’t want us to know. And then we find out . . .”
“And?” Isabel had said. But Kirsty had become silent and looked out of the window. This was the private past; intimate, unquestioned, precious to each of us.
Reaching Bruntsfield, she found herself outside Cat’s delicatessen. She could not walk past without going in, although she tried not to distract Cat when she was busy. That time in the afternoon was a slack period, and there was only one customer in the shop, who was in the process of paying for a baguette and a tub of large pitted olives. There were several tables where people could sit and be served coffee and a small selection of food, and Isabel took a seat at one of these, picking up an out-of-date copy of Corriere della Sera from the table of newspapers and magazines beside the cheese counter. She glanced at the political news from Italy, which appeared to be a series of reports of battles between acronyms, or so it seemed. Behind the acronyms there were people, and passions, and ancient feuds, but without any idea of what stood for which, it was much like the battle between the Blues and Greens in Byzantium—meaningless, unless one understood the difference between the orthodox and the Monophysites who stood behind these factions.
She abandoned the paper. Eddie, Cat’s shy assistant, to whom something traumatic had happened that Isabel had never fathomed, took the money for the baguette and the olives and opened the door for the customer. There was no sign of Cat.
“Where is she?” asked Isabel, once they had the shop to themselves.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Eddie came over to the table, rubbing his hands on his apron. His nervousness in Isabel’s presence had abated, but he was still not completely at ease.
“She went out for lunch,” he said. “And she hasn’t come back yet.”
Isabel looked at her watch. “A long lunch,” she remarked.
Eddie hesitated for a moment, as if weighing up whether to say anything. “With her new boyfriend,” he said, adding, after further hesitation, “Again.”
Isabel reached for the folded Corriere della Sera and aligned it with the edge of the table, a distracted gesture, but one which gave her time to absorb this information. She had resolved not to become involved in the question of her niece’s boyfriends, but it was difficult to remain detached. Cat’s short-lived engagement to Toby had led to a row between Isabel and her niece—
a row which had been quickly patched up, but which had made Isabel reflect on the need to keep her distance on the issue. So when Cat had gone to Italy to attend a wedding and had been followed back by an elegant Italian considerably older than she was, Isabel had refrained from saying very much. Cat decided not to encourage her Italian visitor, and he had responded by flirting with Isabel. She had been flattered in spite of herself, and tempted too, but he had not really meant it; flirtation, it seemed, was mere politeness, a way of passing the time.
The only boyfriend of Cat’s of whom she approved was Jamie, the bassoonist, whom Cat had disposed of fairly quickly, but who had continued to hanker after her in the face of every discouragement. Isabel had been astonished by his constancy to a cause that was clearly hopeless. Cat had told him bluntly that there was no future for them as a couple, and while he respected her and kept his distance, he secretly—and someT H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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times not so secretly—hoped that she would change her mind.
Isabel could not understand why Cat should have abandoned Jamie. In her view, he was everything, and more, that a woman could want. He was striking in appearance, with his high cheek-bones, his dark hair that he tended to wear short, and his Mediterranean, almost olive complexion; unusual colouring for a Scotsman, perhaps, but one which in her eyes was fatally attractive. And he was gentle too, which added to his appeal. Yet Cat spelled it out to Isabel in unambiguous terms: I do not love him, Isabel. I do not love him. It’s as simple as that.
If Cat was not prepared to love Jamie, then Isabel was.
There was a gap of fourteen years between them, and Isabel realised that at Jamie’s age this was significant. Would a young man in his twenties want to become involved with a woman who was in her early forties? Some women of that age had younger lovers—and there was nothing shameful about it, but she suspected that it was the women who started such affairs, rather than the young men. Of course, there might be some young men who would be looking for the equivalent of a sugar daddy, and who would seek out an older woman who could pay the bills and provide some diversion, but most young men were not like that, unless, as sometimes happened, they were looking for their mother.
Isabel could never have Jamie; she could never possess him, precisely because she loved him and she wanted what was best for him. And what was best for him was undoubtedly that he should meet somebody his own age, or thereabouts, and make his life with her. Of course that was best for him, she told herself. He would be a good father, he would be a good husband; he did not need to anchor himself to somebody older than him.
He did not. But she still loved Jamie, and at times she loved him 1 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h achingly; but she controlled that, and only occasionally, in private, did the tears come for what just could not be. At least she had his friendship, and that was something for which she felt grateful. She did not have his love, she thought. He is fond of me, but he does not return what I feel for him. Let the more loving one be me, wrote Auden, and Isabel thought, Yes, that is what I feeclass="underline" let the more loving one be me. And it is.
She would not interfere, but who was this new boyfriend?
She looked up at Eddie. Could he be jealous? she asked herself.
The tone of his voice had sounded resentful, and she supposed that it was quite possible that he saw the arrival of a new man as being in some way a threat to his relationship with Cat. She was kind to him; she encouraged him; she was the ideal employer.
Eddie could not expect to amount to much in Cat’s eyes, but at least he was there, in her life, somehow, and he would not want that to come to an end.
“Well, Eddie,” said Isabel. “That’s interesting news. I hadn’t heard. Who is this new man?”
“He’s called Patrick,” said Eddie. He put his hand a good six inches above his head. “He’s about so high. Maybe a bit less.
Fair hair.”
Isabel nodded. Cat inevitably went for tall, good-looking men. It was all very predictable. “This Patrick,” she asked, “do you like him?”
She studied Eddie’s reaction. But he was watching her too, and he grinned. “You want me to say that I don’t,” he said.