At Jamie’s suggestion, they met in a pub, the St. Vincent Bar, on his side of town. It was a small bar tucked away near the end of a wide Georgian thoroughfare that went down the hill from George Street. This road came to an architectural full stop at an imposing, high-pillared church on St. Vincent Street; beside it was a much more modest Episcopal church, also known as St.
Vincent’s, in which high rites were celebrated. This was the home, too, of a slightly eccentric order, the Order of St. Lazarus, the members of which paraded in ornate uniforms and claimed descent from Templar-like chivalrous organisations; harmless enough, thought Isabel, and evidently satisfying two deep-seated male desires—to have secrets and to belong.
The afternoon weather had held, and as Isabel made her way down the hill from George Street the high northern sky was still filled with evening light. It was shortly after eight, but it 2 4 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h would not get dark until well after ten, and even then the darkness would be attenuated by a lingering glow, the simmer dim as they called it in the far north of Scotland. The air was warm, too, but with that touch of freshness that reminded one that this was Scotland after all.
The door of the bar was wide open and there were several people sitting on the stone steps outside, enjoying the warmth.
Jamie was already there, sitting at a table just inside the doorway, a glass of beer on the table in front of him. When he saw Isabel his expression lightened. He rose to his feet and took her hands. Then he leant forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Isabel felt herself trembling, like a schoolgirl on her first date. He has obviously had no regrets, she thought; he feels now as he felt over the weekend.
She sat down at the table while Jamie went to buy her a drink. She looked around the bar, taking in the small groups of friends, the couples, the one or two solitary drinkers seated on stools at the bar itself. There was nobody she knew, which did not surprise her. This was not her territory. And the thought of territoriality made her think, inconsequentially, of Brother Fox.
She imagined that she might come into this bar and find him seated on a stool, his neat furry legs crossed elegantly, sipping a glass of . . . What would Brother Fox drink? Sherry perhaps, or something even more sophisticated, one of those cocktails with elaborate names that one saw listed in grander bars. Brother Fox would drink something called a “St. Francis,” she thought: two parts gin, one part lime and one part chicken. And Brother Fox would have a group of somewhat raffish friends—people like Charlie MacLean, perhaps, that man who wrote books on whisky and whose whisky-nosing she had once attended down 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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in Leith; he and Brother Fox would get on well, telling each other stories. Absurd, but she smiled.
Jamie came back with her drink. When he sat down, his knee touched hers under the table, but he did not move it.
“I’ve got a present for you,” Jamie said, fishing into the bat-tered leather music case that he habitually carried. It was a case that served every purpose, from carrying musical scores to trans-porting cartons of milk and groceries from the supermarket.
He took out a compact disc in a small plastic bag and handed it to her. “It’s a wonderful mixture of things,” he said.
“And some of them we’re going to have to do ourselves. I’ll try to do arrangements if we can’t find the music. And I suspect that we won’t be able to find some of these things.”
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re . . . you’re very sweet.” She took his hand briefly and squeezed it. She examined the disc.
“Mood Scottish,” she read.
“A play on Mood Indigo, I think,” said Jamie. “But don’t worry. It’s all very good. Some lovely stuff. Look.”
He took the disc and pointed to an item on the list of tracks.
“ ‘Sinclair.’ It’s a Faroese song about a Scottish soldier in Sweden. They went there a long time ago. By invitation, unlike most British soldiers . . .”
“I know all about that,” said Isabel. “That’s why you come across Scottish names in Sweden. Macpherson and such like.
But Swedish now.”
Jamie tapped the CD case. Isabel noticed his finger, which was tanned light brown. It was gentle; so beautiful. “This Sinclair was on his way to battle,” he said, “and was warned by a mermaid not to go. By a mermaid, mind you.”
“One should always listen to mermaids,” said Isabel. “They 2 4 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h address one so infrequently that anything they have to say must be important.”
He looked at her in surprise and burst out laughing. Nobody else would say things like that; just Isabel. That was one of the reasons he found her irresistible.
“He didn’t,” Jamie went on. “And he was killed as a result.
Poor Sinclair. But the song is wonderful—it goes on and on.
Very odd stuff.”
Isabel pointed to something else. “And some Peter Maxwell Davies,” she said. “ ‘Lullaby for Lucy.’ I met him up in Orkney once.”
“Max,” said Jamie. “We played his ‘Orkney Wedding.’ Complete with a piper. Very dramatic.” He paused, took the disc and examined the cover carefully. Then he handed it back to Isabel.
“We could listen to ‘Sinclair’ after dinner. Would you like that?”
“Yes. I would.” Her heart was racing.
“Or we could go to the flat now and have dinner there. In Saxe-Coburg. How about that?”
That, she thought, was even better. “Do you want me to cook?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll manage something.”
They finished their drinks in the bar and then walked down St. Stephen Street, back to Jamie’s flat.
“That flat round the corner,” Jamie said. “Have you decided?”
“I have,” said Isabel. “I shall buy it. Grace looked at it the other day and liked it very much. She also met our friend Florence. They hit it off. She’ll probably recruit her for her spiritualist meetings.”
“Florence is too rational,” said Jamie. “Still, it’s a happy ending.”
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“I suppose so. And there’s nothing wrong with happy end-ings, is there?”
“No,” said Jamie. “Except, perhaps, for that fact that they are rather rare.”
They passed a small antique shop on the way and Isabel paused in front of the window. “I knew the man who ran this shop,” she said. “He used to sit in a chair, right there, dressed in a black suit with a waistcoat and a rose in his lapel, and everybody who went in received a great welcome and a story. He had Scottish literature on those shelves over there, and all other writers, including English, were shelved under foreign literature. But he didn’t mean it unkindly. He was just making a point.”
Jamie pressed his nose against the glass. The chair was empty, the shop dusty. “A point about what?”
“About cultural assumptions,” said Isabel. Seeing the empty shop saddened her. There were pockets of character, of resist-ance, that held out against all the forces that would destroy local, small-scale things, even small-scale countries; little shops were on the front line, she thought.
“I don’t like shopping in great big shops,” she muttered.
Jamie looked at her in puzzlement. “Excuse me?”
She smiled, and drew him away from the window to continue down the street. “I don’t like the idea of little shops like that disappearing. That’s all. I like small things.”