This was not welcome, but his manner was so formal, so polite, that it somehow seemed not in the least threatening. She reached across and placed her hand on his forearm. The linen of the sleeve was rough to the touch. “Tom, you don’t have to apologise. You—”
2 3 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h He interrupted her. “I agonised over telling you, but then I decided I had to. I know that it’s ridiculous—”
“It isn’t.”
“Yes, it is,” he insisted. “You’ve got your friend, Jamie. I’m an engaged man, and I’ve got this . . . this face. I know that nothing can come of it. But I couldn’t bear just sitting there with this knowledge about myself and not being able to talk to anybody about it. That’s why I had to come and speak to you. I shouldn’t have.”
Her relief showed. He was not going to press her. “Of course you should.”
He looked at her. There was anxiety in his face. “You don’t mind?”
“Of course I don’t. I’m flattered. I really am. But, as I’m sure you’ll agree, it really doesn’t have much of a future, does it?”
He appeared to think about this for a moment. And Isabel, for her part, controlled the urge to smile at the thought of how this meeting had followed the script of her fantasy, thus far at least, although there had been no direct mention of Angie.
“And what about Angie?” she asked.
For a while he said nothing. Then, speaking quietly, he said,
“She doesn’t really care for me. In fact, I think she’d be quite happy to get rid of me.”
He looked at her to see her reaction. If he had expected her to be shocked, then she disappointed him, for she was not. It was as she had thought. She had known all along, in the way that one knows some things that cannot be explained, beliefs of unknown aetiology. She had just known that, and had felt embarrassed when she expressed the fear to Mimi. And Tom had known it too.
T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
2 3 7
She spoke very carefully. “How do you know that?” She would not tell him about her dream; it would be too melodra-matic. But she would make it clear that she did not think that what he said was outrageous.
He joined his hands together in a gesture that seemed close to hand-wringing. “I think she tried. We went to the Falls of Clyde. I was trying to get a photograph, right at the edge, from a place where I suppose one shouldn’t go because there was a sheer drop just a foot or so away, and suddenly I felt that I had to turn round. And I did, and Angie was right behind me.”
“And she tried to . . .”
He shook his head. “No. I lost my balance, and I started to go backwards. It was very strange. I was teetering, I suppose. It must have looked as if I were going to go over.”
“And?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if reliving the scene.
“She didn’t do anything. She just looked. She didn’t reach out.”
Isabel had felt a knot of tension within her, which now dis-sipated. It was that old favourite of the moral philosophers, the act/omission distinction. Was it as bad to fail to act as to act, if the consequence in each case was the same?
“You think that she should have done something?”
“Of course she should.” He paused. “I know that one might panic in such circumstances, one might freeze. But when that happens the eyes show it. I looked into her eyes and saw something quite different.”
“Which was?”
“Pleasure,” he said. “Or perhaps one might describe it as excitement.”
She thought about this, and then asked Tom whether he 2 3 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h had said anything to her about it. He replied that he had not, and the reason for this was that he could not be sure. It was a terrible thing to accuse anybody of, and he found that he was not able to do it.
“But you can’t stay with somebody if you think that she’s capable of that,” said Isabel. “You can’t do that.”
He spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. “I’m engaged to her. All Dallas knows. I can’t turn round and . . . and end it just on the basis of a suspicion.”
Isabel felt a growing anger within her. “You can’t? Of course you can. People break off engagements all the time. That’s why we have them. A trial period.”
He looked at her helplessly. “I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t tell her.” He sighed. “And maybe I’m wrong anyway.
Maybe the whole thing is my imagination.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think it’s that. But the point is, surely, that you don’t want to marry her. You’ve just told me that meeting me made you feel that. You did mean that, didn’t you?”
He nodded vigorously. “I did. Yes, all that was true. This other thing—the thing at the falls—that’s something on top of it. An extra difficulty. But—and I know this sounds weak—I just can’t bring myself to break it off. She would be devastated.” He met her gaze, as if pleading. “I just can’t decide. I know I have to, but I can’t.”
“Why would she be devastated if she wants to get rid of you?”
Tom sighed. “I don’t know. I just don’t.”
Isabel decided. “Do you want my advice?”
“No. I have to make my own decision.”
“But you’ve just told me you can’t do that.”
Now he looked anguished. “I’d be a coward if I let somebody else do my dirty work, do my thinking for me.”
T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
2 3 9
“Yes,” said Isabel. “It would be cowardly. But all of us are cowards from time to time. I certainly am, and just about everybody else is, if they’re honest with themselves.” She looked at him searchingly. “One thing occurs to me, though. I take it that if she wants to get rid of you, she would want to do so after your marriage, not before. For financial reasons.”
He shifted in his chair, as if the question made him feel uncomfortable. “She stands to benefit from my death, even now.
I have already made arrangements. My lawyers advised it when we got engaged.”
“I see.” She picked up a small silver teaspoon from the tea tray and began to play with it between her fingers. “Do you think she might accept a settlement?”
“You mean that I should pay her off?”
“Yes. Because if she doesn’t really like you, then why is she engaged to you?”
“Money?”
“It looks that way,” said Isabel. “Don’t you think?”
Tom said something that Isabel did not catch. But then he repeated himself. “How horrible to have to put it that way,”
he said.
Isabel thought so too. Human affairs, though, were reduced to monetary calculation all the time, and marriage had traditionally been about money every bit as much as it had been about love.
He was staring at her. “Should I do that? Should I offer her money?”
“What do you think?”
“No,” he said. “I’m asking you what you think.”
“All right. Yes, I think that you might offer her something.
You don’t have to, but if it’s important to you that she releases 2 4 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h you, so to speak, then do it.” I should not be interfering, she thought. I have resolved not to interfere in the affairs of others, and now I’m doing this. But he had asked her, had he not? He had pressed her to give her advice, and she had done so. Did that amount to interference? She was not sure.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E
E
JAMIE TELEPHONED. He did so shortly after Tom’s departure, when Isabel had stacked the teacups in the dishwasher and returned to her study to work. He wanted to have dinner with her, he said, if she was free. Of course she was, although she tried not to say so too quickly. But she was quick enough.