The Careful Use of Compliments (10 page)

As Isabel listened, her eye wandered back to the painting. Perhaps that was what made these paintings sad for her—the knowledge that McInnes would die in the very place he painted so lovingly. But this, she thought, was not a McInnes. If one looked at the two paintings on the wall, and then at this one, it just felt different. They were not by the same hand.

 

“
WELL?” SAID PETER
as they walked back along Hope Terrace.

“That was interesting,” said Isabel. “Thank you for arranging it.”

Peter stared at her quizzically. “Is that all you're going to say?”

Isabel looked up, at the thin layer of high white cloud that was moving across the sky from the west. Cirrus. “No, I'll say more if you want, but I'm not sure where to start. Him? Walter himself? A surprise. The way you'd spoken I thought of him as being much older. And there he is, living in that rather muse-umish house…”

“With his mother,” added Peter.

Isabel was surprised. “Really? I thought you said…”

“I thought that the parents were dead, but I was wrong. She's still with us, he told me. When you went out of the room to go to the loo, he said something about her. I was astonished. I've never seen her, but she's there apparently. She's only in her early seventies, but he says that she doesn't go out much.”

Isabel thought for a moment. Did that change anything? The idea of Walter Buie living in that house by himself, with his ill-tempered dog—whom they did not meet—intrigued her simply because she wondered why he chose to live by himself. What did he do about sex, or was he one of those asexual people—there were some, she knew—who did not care one way or the other, for whom sex was nothing too important, a minor itch at most. Was he gay? She found it difficult to tell these things, and often misjudged, particularly in the case of feminine men who were also resolutely straight. Or, finally, was it simply nobody else's business, and therefore none of hers? That was true, but she decided to allow herself one final speculation. If his mother was still alive, was he there by choice, or because he was under pressure to stay? Some parents held on, and made it difficult for their offspring to leave. Walter Buie could be an emotional prisoner, the victim of a retentive—very retentive—mother. And in that case, it was just possible that he was being made to sell the picture by his mother, who might be refusing to come up with the money that he thought he would be able to get from her. In that case, her conclusion that there was something wrong with the painting might be unjustified, and it might simply be a case of Walter's needing to sell it.

“I don't know what to think,” she muttered.

“You don't have to do anything,” said Peter. “You're under no obligation to him—nor he to you.”

Isabel smiled—not to Peter, but to herself. Peter was conscientious, but he was practical too. He made things work, whereas she could not help but be the philosopher. You and I are never going to agree on this, she thought. We are all under obligation to one another, deep obligation. I to you. You to me. Walter Buie to us, and we to Walter Buie. And we are even under obligation to the dead, whose serried ranks in this case include one Andrew McInnes, painter, husband, our fellow citizen, our brother.

But she said none of this. Instead, she said, “Look at that
cirrus uncinus
up there. Just look at it.”

Peter looked up at the sky, at the wisps of cloud, and at first said nothing. He wondered what the relevance of
cirrus uncinus
was. None, he thought.

“I would have described it as
cirrus fibratus,
” he said quietly. And that, he thought, should put her in her place. He liked Isabel, but every so often she needed to be reminded that she was not the only one who knew Latin.

Isabel turned to Peter and smiled. “The nice thing about you, Peter,” she said, “is that when you remind me not to be so obscure, you do it so gently.”

 

CHAPTER NINE

W
ITH THE INTIMACY
of a married couple—which they were not—but with the sense of novelty and awe of lovers—which they were—Isabel and Jamie prepared for their dinner with Cat. Isabel sat on the edge of her bed half dressed, examining a black cocktail dress and wondering whether it was the right thing for her to wear to Cat's; Jamie came out of the bathroom wearing only a white towel wrapped round his waist, his hair wet from the shower, tousled, small drops of water on his shoulders and forearms. She looked up at him and then looked away again because she did not want him to see her looking upon him. That was a wonderful expression, she thought;
looking upon
somebody suggested that one was devouring the other. One looked upon with lust, or with something akin to lust, and one would not want to be seen looking upon one's lover in the way in which a gourmet, sitting at the table, would look upon an enticing dish.

Jamie moved over to the dressing table and picked up a brush. Bending down to look into the mirror, he brushed his hair roughly, but it sprang back up, as it always tended to do.

“Don't worry,” said Isabel. “It looks nice like that. Your hair sticks up naturally. Lots of women would commit murder for that.”

“It annoys me,” says Jamie. “Sometimes I think I'll go to that place in Bruntsfield, you know the barbers near the luggage shop, and get a crew cut or one of those totally shaved styles. What do they call them? A number one, I think.”

“You couldn't,” said Isabel flatly. “It would be a crime.”

He turned to face her. “Why? It's my head.”

She wanted to say, No, it's not, it's mine too, but she stopped herself. That was what she thought, though, and even as she thought it, she realised that Jamie was on loan to her, as we all are to one another, perhaps.

She picked at a loose thread on the cocktail dress. “I think it would be a pity to look shorn. And don't you think that deliberately shaved heads look aggressive?”

“I'm not serious.” He paused. “Do you think I should get a tattoo?”

She laughed, and he did too, and the towel round his waist fell down. Isabel felt herself blushing involuntarily, but stood up and went to pick up the towel before he could do so himself. She dried his shoulders with it, and then his chest. Jamie was not hirsute; he was like a boy, she thought, still.

They dressed. He said, “Will Charlie wake up, do you think?”

She did not think it likely. Grace was babysitting for them, and ensconced in the morning room, where Isabel kept the television. Charlie had been fed for the evening, and Isabel thought he would sleep through until midnight at least. “I doubt if we'll be all that late,” she said. She left the reasons for this unsaid, but Jamie guessed what she meant. He was beginning to wonder whether he should have accepted Cat's invitation. It might have seemed churlish to have refused, but now that he had accepted he felt a strong sense of anticipation over the meeting.

He decided to confide in Isabel. “I feel a bit jumpy about this,” he said. “I'm sorry. I just have these butterflies in my stomach.”

Isabel tried to reassure him. “The best way to deal with an old flame is to treat him or her as an old friend, or a cousin, maybe.”

He thought about this for a moment. “That's all very well, but I don't feel like this when I'm going to see an old friend. This is a different feeling.”

“Just don't worry,” she said. “Just stop thinking about it.” She reached out and took his hand. “Look, why don't we go downstairs and have something before we go? A…gin and tonic.”

“For Dutch courage?”

“Yes,” she said. “Although I must say that that expression has always seemed to me to be a bit unkind.”

“Are the Dutch naturally brave?”

“I suspect that they're the same as anybody else. Some are brave, some aren't. But it's got nothing to do with the Dutch themselves. It's the gin they made.” She squeezed his hand. “Don't let Cat intimidate you.”

“Why has she asked us?” he asked. “Why?”

Isabel could not answer the question, and did not try to. They went downstairs and into the drawing room, where she started to prepare the drinks while Jamie went into the morning room to speak to Grace. When he came back he said, “I'm going to call a taxi for Grace. She has a migraine coming on.”

Grace was prone to the occasional migraine, and would need to go to bed for twenty-four hours to ward it off. Isabel handed the preparation of the drinks over to Jamie. “You do this,” she said. “I'll phone for a taxi and get her organised.”

“Will we call off?” Jamie said. There was no disappointment in his voice.

Isabel, halfway out the door, gave him a look of mock surprise. “Why? Charlie can come in his carry-cot.” And why shouldn't he? she thought. Cat could no longer pretend that Charlie did not exist; she had been cool towards him, barely acknowledging him, but that could not go on.

Grace kept a migraine pill at the house. She had taken it, and was feeling slightly better, but Isabel insisted that she should go home and bundled her into a taxi. Then she returned to the drawing room, where Jamie handed her her glass.

She raised it to him and took a sip. “Strong,” she said, making a face.

Jamie grinned. “We've got a long evening ahead of us.”

There was a frisson to the drinking of a strong gin and tonic, but Isabel felt that she needed this. Jamie felt the same, and by the time he had drained his glass he felt more confident about the encounter with Cat; but that feeling still lingered, that anticipation, which he realised now was sexual excitement. He looked away from Isabel, as if she might see it in his eyes.

 

CAT HAD RECENTLY
moved to a flat in Fettes Row. It was on the third floor of a Georgian block, reached by a winding common stair that connected the landings of each flat. They had travelled across town by taxi, with Charlie obligingly asleep in his carry-cot on the floor of the cab, and now Jamie was carrying him up the last few steps to Cat's door. Isabel, standing behind Jamie, bent down and looked at her son. “How can she dislike him?” she muttered.

Jamie reacted sharply. “Who?” he asked. “Who dislikes him?”

Having kept off the subject of Cat with Jamie, Isabel had never mentioned to him the animosity that she had picked up in Cat's reaction to Charlie; and she had not intended to do so now. Her muttered words, thoughts inadvertently expressed aloud, had not been meant for his ears, but they would not be easily retracted now. But she tried nonetheless.

“I don't know if she does,” she said apologetically. “I sense something in her attitude, but perhaps I shouldn't go so far as to say that she dislikes him.”

Jamie frowned. He cast a glance down the stairs. “We could go home, you know,” he said, in a lowered voice. “We have a perfectly reasonable excuse, with Charlie. Babies and dinner parties don't mix.”

Isabel thought that she saw anger in him, which surprised her. Jamie was normally of a markedly affable temperament, but this appeared to have riled him. Of course he was a father, she reminded herself, and any parent, especially a newly besotted one, resents the thought that somebody else might find fault with his child; our children are perfect, especially when they have just arrived and not disclosed their hand. But she and Jamie had come this far, and she thought it likely that Cat had even heard the front door being opened and the sound of their coming upstairs. For a few moments Isabel imagined how it would be to leave now, to begin sneaking downstairs again, and then for Cat to open the door and look down at their retreating heads. A hostess might have cause to reflect on such a scene and to wonder why it was that her guests should feel compelled to leave before arriving, but would Cat do that? Isabel thought not, and nor, to be honest, would she do so herself: the light from such incidents rarely fell on ourselves and our faults.

A tall, slender young woman opened the door. Her eyes went to Isabel first, then to Charlie, and finally to Jamie, where they lingered. Isabel glanced at Jamie, who, if he had looked at the young woman to begin with, had now looked away. Our eyes give us away, she thought; they move to the beautiful, to the attractive; they slide off the others; they flash out our emotional signals as clearly as if they were Aldis lamps. Jamie seemed irritated, almost flustered. We have barely arrived, Isabel thought, and the evening's becoming difficult.

The young woman gestured for them to enter. “I'm Claudia,” she said. “Cat's flatmate.”

“Of course.” Isabel had heard that Cat had taken a flatmate when she moved into Fettes Row, but she knew nothing about her other than that she came from St. Andrews and that she played golf, which almost everyone in St. Andrews did. This information had come from Eddie, who had met Claudia when she came into the delicatessen. He had curled his lip around the word
golf,
and Isabel had scolded him. “You may not like it, but others…”

“Get their kicks from whacking a little white ball around,” he said. “Yes, sure.”

“Each of us has something,” she said. She felt inclined to ask Eddie how he spent his spare time, but hesitated. Eddie was more confident now, but there was a fragility to him, a vulnerability, that was just below the surface. Yet he could not expect to make scornful remarks about golfers and get away with it. So she said, “So, what do you do, Eddie? In your spare time? What do you do?”

The question had taken him aback. He looked at her, almost in alarm. “Me?”

Isabel nodded. “Yes, you.”

“I chill out.”

She laughed and straightaway regretted it, as his face had immediately crumpled. He was still too weak; whatever had happened, that thing that Cat knew about—and it must be some time ago by now—had damaged him more than people might imagine. Quickly she reached out and touched his forearm. He pulled back. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that chilling out—well, it doesn't tell us much. Maybe to you…” Absurdly, the thought came to her of people sitting in a cold place, scantily clad perhaps, chilling out, beginning to shiver…

Claudia led them into the hall. Like many flats in the New Town, this was a generous, classically proportioned space, in this case not very tidy—Cat had a tendency to disorganisation in her personal life, and Isabel noticed the pile of mail that lay unopened on the hall table, alongside a muddle of unsolicited advertisements for pizzerias and Indian restaurants. Claudia saw the direction of her gaze and laughed. “We meant to tidy it up for you,” she said, “but you know how it is.”

“I feel more comfortable with a bit of clutter,” said Isabel. “And you do too, don't you Jamie?”

He tried to smile, but the result was halfhearted. Isabel noticed that Claudia was staring at him again. This made her wonder whether Cat had told her flatmate that Jamie was an ex-boyfriend. And would she then have gone on to explain that he was an ex-boyfriend
stolen
by an
aunt
? If she had, then Isabel might as well play the part of the brazen cradle snatcher, the ruthless man eater; which she could never do, she thought—or at least not with a straight face.

Claudia asked where they would like to put Charlie. He could have her bedroom, if Isabel thought that would be suitable. “It's at the back,” she said. “It's quiet. It looks over towards Cumberland Street.”

She took them into the room. There was a double bed with an Indian-print bedspread, a small bookcase, a writing table. Above the bed there was a print of a Hopper painting, a young woman at a table, the light upon her. They put Charlie's carry-cot on the bed and Jamie bent down to adjust his blanket.

“He's out for the count,” Jamie said. It was his first remark of the evening, and Isabel noticed that Claudia seemed to listen to it with grave interest, as if Jamie had said something profound.

Then Cat came into the room. She was carrying a small piece of paper towel and she was wiping her hands with it. She looked at Isabel, but while she was looking at her she said, “Hello, Jamie.” Then, “Hello, Isabel.”

Isabel gave Cat a kiss, a peck on the cheek. As she did so, she felt the tension in the other woman, a tightness of muscle. “And there's Charlie,” said Isabel. “Fast asleep.”

Cat glanced down at the carry-cot. She did not bend down to kiss him, nor did she touch him; she just looked. “Hello, Charlie,” she said.

Isabel watched her. She had not looked at Jamie, not once, and that hardly boded well for the evening. The recipes for social disaster were varied and colourful; within the small compass of Edinburgh dinner-party lore, they included the going to sleep of the host—at the table—during the soup course, the soup on the same occasion being so heavily salted that it was inedible and had to be left in the bowl by the guests; an argument between guests leading to the early departure of the offended party; and, of course, inadvertent guest-list solecisms, such as the placing, on one famous occasion, of the survivors of acrimonious divorces next to one another. Her own worst experience had been the moment when, at a lunch party, a guest had blithely asked whether anybody had ever been tempted to commit an act of violence, and the hostess unfortunately, in a moment of dissociative aberration, had attacked a former lover and been convicted of assault, to the knowledge of all present except the questioner. Ill-judged remarks led to periods of embarrassment that could be measured in minutes, or sometime even seconds; tonight's awkwardness, by contrast, might be measured in hours, if Cat was going to refuse steadfastly to look at one of the guests. This could be done—Isabel had heard of a woman in Edinburgh who cut another woman seated opposite her by looking through her for an entire dinner. That required some skill, and demonstrated, too, how human effort might be misapplied.