The Careful Use of Compliments (19 page)

Isabel raised an eyebrow. The fact that one had a relative in Canada did not, she felt, automatically entitle one to pronounce on the subject of wolves, even if it gave one authority in some other areas.

“Wolves,” said Isabel, “have never been recorded as attacking man. They keep well away.” She felt tempted to add that she had been in Canada herself and had never seen a wolf, which was true and would therefore add empirical strength to the claim that wolves avoided people, but the full truth might require her to add that she had only been in Toronto, which somewhat diminished the force of the observation.

“Well, all I'm saying,” said Grace, picking up Charlie, “is that we would be better off without that fox. Particularly with Charlie. That's all I'm saying.”

The matter had been dropped, and Isabel had gone off to her study to deal with the mail. The fact that she had thought that she was soon to stop being the editor of the
Review
meant that she had let things slip, and the unopened correspondence had mounted up. Now she would have to think again in terms of future issues, have to deal with the unsolicited submissions, and would have to think, too, of the appointment of a new editorial board. She already had her list and was adding to it: Jim Childress in Charlottesville would be a great catch, and Julian Baggini, too, who already edited
The Philosophers' Magazine
but who might be persuaded to join. They would all be her friends, which would make the task of consulting the board so much more pleasant—no Lettuce or Dove.
Of Lettuce and Dove I am freed,
she said to herself, savouring the words, which sounded so like a line—and title—of a sixteenth-century English madrigal in the Italian style. It could be sung, perhaps, by the Tallis Scholars:

 

Of Lettuce and Dove I am freed

And of their schemings no more shall be heard

For they are gone with the morning dew

Yea, Lettuce and Dove are both departed…

 

There was a letter from Dove.

 

Dear Miss Dalhousie,

I have heard from Professor Lettuce that you have persuaded the owners of the
Review
to sell it to you. I have heard, too, that you will be appointing a new editorial board and that it is unlikely to include current members. I am, of course, sorry that you are seeing fit to dispose of the services of those who have given so much time to the
Review
over the years and who have always had its best interests at heart. I suppose that this is the prerogative of those who have the economic power to acquire assets which should, in a better-ordered world, be owned and operated for the common weal. However, I must say that I am surprised that a moral philosopher, which you claim to be (although I note that you have no academic position in that field), should act in a way which is more befitting of the petulant proprietor of a chain of newspapers. But that, I regretfully conclude, is how business is conducted today. I wish you, nonetheless, a successful further tenure of the editorial chair to which you have, it seems, become stuck.

Yours sincerely, Christopher Dove

 

She read the letter, and then reread it. It was, she had to admit, a small masterpiece of venom. To anybody who was unaware of the background, and who therefore did not know that the letter was from the pen of an arch-schemer, it might even have seemed poignant. But to Isabel, who knew what lay behind it, it was pure cant.
Cant for Our Times,
she thought.

She laid the letter to one side and picked up the envelope. Dove, she remembered, was famously keen on recycling and reused envelopes, sticking new address labels on them and sealing the flap with adhesive tape. Sure enough, this envelope had been used before and had a small label with her name and address stuck on the front. Idly she held the envelope up to the light and saw the writing underneath. The envelope in its first incarnation had been addressed to Dove at his home address. “Professor and Mrs. C. Dove” read the original.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
HERE WERE
two difficult tasks now. One was to speak to Cat—not an easy thing to do in her niece's current mood, but rendered doubly difficult by the Dove problem—and the other was to visit Walter Buie. She had spent the previous evening in a state of anxious anticipation, trying to concentrate on reading, then work, then a television adaptation of a novel she liked, but had failed in all three, as her mind kept returning to the difficult encounters that would take place the next morning. She had telephoned Jamie, who had been working late in rehearsal and had been unable to be present for Charlie's bath time. She had decided that she would tell him about Dove and Cat and seek his advice, but then had changed her mind. And then she decided that she could not broach the subject of her impending meeting with Walter Buie, but again had changed her mind. Jamie would tell her to avoid further involvement with that matter now that she had passed on her misgivings to Guy Peploe. She had found no comfort there, and had been reduced to saying to Charlie, as she picked him up to change him, “What am I to do, Charlie? What do
you
think?” But Charlie had simply gurgled in a noncommittal fashion, which provided at least some reassurance. It would be many years yet, she thought, before Charlie started to disagree with her.

Cat was first on the list, because it was potentially the most painful encounter, and it would be best, she thought, to get it over and done with. In spite of Cat's recent jauntiness, Isabel felt that their underlying relationship seemed so bad now that any further deterioration was unlikely. They still spoke to one another, but Isabel could never gauge in advance what Cat's mood would be. Sometimes it was as if nothing had happened, but for the most part there was a simmering unforgiveness. If she had thought that this would last forever, Isabel would have felt despondent; but she knew that Cat would come out of this, as she had done before. There would eventually be a reconciliation following a gesture of some sort from her niece. Last time, it had been a basket of provisions from the delicatessen, left on the doorstep as a peace offering, and largely consumed by Brother Fox, who had found it before Isabel had. She thought that for him it must have been akin to the cargo awaited by the members of a Pacific island cargo cult, unasked for, delivered by an unseen hand.

Charlie remained behind with Grace—one did not take babies into a war zone—and Isabel walked, sunk in thought, along Merchiston Crescent to the delicatessen in Bruntsfield Place. Cat was behind the counter when she entered; there was no sign of Eddie or of any customers.

She received a reasonably warm welcome—the Dove effect, Isabel thought—and Cat offered to make her a cup of coffee. “Eddie's gone to the dentist,” she said. “I asked him when he had last been and he said two years ago. I made the appointment myself.”

“You shouldn't have to,” said Isabel. “One's own teeth are enough to look after. One should not have to worry about the teeth of others.”

Cat smiled. “But we do, don't we? I can imagine that you worry about others' teeth. It's exactly the sort of thing you worry about.”

“‘The loss of one tooth diminishes me,'” mused Isabel. “‘For I am involved in mankind.'”

“John Donne,” said Cat, looking triumphant. “You think that I don't know anything. But I do know about John Donne.”

“Well done. But I have never thought of you as one who knows nothing about Donne.”

“Good.”

They looked at one another for a moment and Isabel saw in Cat's eyes a yearning that they should return to their previous, easy ways with each other; when jokes like this, absurd, silly, could be made without thinking. For there was love there—of course there was—and it was a canker of resentment that had obscured it, a canker that could so easily be put out of the way, altogether excised. But now she had to risk provoking it again, by deliberately rubbing in salt, and she had no alternative, she thought. She had to warn Cat about Dove. She had warned her before about a man; now she had to do it again.

She looked down at the counter. There was a fragment of cheese that had been caught at the edge, a tiny bit of blue cheese, a miniature colony of organisms detached from its polis. She reached forward and wiped it away. “Christopher Dove,” she said.

Cat smiled at her. “Christopher. Yes.”

Isabel was not sure what to make of that. But now she had to say it. She could not put it off. “You know he's married?”

Cat stood quite still, her eyes fixed on Isabel, who looked away; she could not bear this. Oh Cat, she thought. Oh Cat.

“Married?” Cat's voice was small, and Isabel's heart went out to her.

“Yes. There's a Mrs. Dove, I'm afraid.”

Cat closed her eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

Isabel reached out across the counter. She wanted to take Cat's hand; if her voice could not show how she felt, her touch would. But Cat withdrew her arm.

“I'm telling you this because you ought to know it. You'd tell a friend, wouldn't you? You'd tell her if you knew that some man—some married man—was going to deceive her.”

Cat opened her eyes again. “You think he's deceiving me?”

It had not occurred to Isabel that Cat might know that Dove was married. She had assumed that Cat would not get involved with a married man, but that assumption she now realised—and it was a sudden, shocking realisation—was perhaps unjustified. Cat belonged to a generation that did not feel particularly strongly about marriage, in that many of them did not bother about getting married, and so perhaps they did not regard married people as being off-limits. I have been so naïve, she thought; so naïve.

She struggled to find the words. “Well…I thought that…I thought that you might have believed that he was single. It's difficult sometimes if…”

Cat interrupted her. “It's just fine for you,” she said. “You come here and tell me this…You're not content with taking Jamie from me; now you come along and…and spoil this. Why can't you just…”

Isabel couldn't believe what she was hearing.
Took Jamie from her?
She drew in her breath; there was so much to be said, as there always is in the face of an outrageous accusation. “I did not take Jamie from you. You can't say that. You got rid of Jamie.
You
got rid of him. He wanted you to take him back for ages, ages, and you wouldn't hear of it. Then you stand there and tell me that
I
took him from
you.
”

“No,” said Cat. “It wasn't like that.”

Isabel reached out again, but Cat turned away. “Cat!”

“Just leave me. Please, just leave me.”

The door of the delicatessen opened. Isabel looked round and saw that it was Eddie. He came over to the counter and smiled at her. Then he started to address Cat, whose back was turned. “My teeth are fine,” he said. “The dentist didn't have to do anything, except polish them. Look.”

He opened his mouth in a wide grin. Isabel made a gesture towards Cat. “I'm going,” she said. “Look after Cat, please.”

She left the delicatessen and began to walk down the street in the direction of Chamberlain Road. The brow of Church-hill rose gently in front of her, and at the end, beyond the rise, were the Pentlands, blue at this distance, with a mantle of low cloud. She had once read a poem somewhere, by an Irish poet she seemed to recall, which suggested that we could all be saved by keeping our eye on the hill at the end of the road. What he meant by being saved was not clear. We could not be saved, she thought, from anything just by looking at a hill; certainly not from the raw pain that came from divisions between people, between brother and brother, sister and sister, aunt and niece. Then it occurred to her: one might be saved from taking one's petty concerns—and one's petty feuds—too seriously if one looked up at the hills. That must have been it.

 

WALTER BUIE'S DOG
, a Staffordshire terrier, mesomorphic, muscle-bound in the way of a small pugilist, growled at Isabel, baring stumpy, discoloured teeth. Such was his halitosis that even from where she stood, a good three feet from the unfriendly animal, she could smell him.

“Now then, Basil,” said Walter, reaching down to pull at the dog's collar. “We must not be unfriendly.”

He pulled the dog away and it slunk off, with the air of a small-time thug whose plans for a fight have been defeated, but only temporarily.

“Such a nice dog,” said Isabel. “Staffordshires have such character.”

The compliment pleased Walter Buie, who beamed back at her. “How kind of you to say that. Some people find Basil a bit…a bit difficult to get to know. But he's got a good heart, you know.”

Isabel raised an eyebrow involuntarily. “Every dog has something to offer,” she said. She was going to say something more, but could not.

“Exactly,” said Walter. “But look, do come in. I didn't mean to keep you on the doorstep.”

They made their way into the drawing room.

“My mother,” said Walter. “I don't believe you've met her.”

Isabel had not expected to find anybody else in the room and was momentarily taken aback. She recovered quickly, though, and moved over to the window where the elderly woman was standing. Walter's mother had half turned round and extended a hand to Isabel. Taking it, Isabel felt the dry skin, the roughness. She looked at Mrs. Buie and saw the recessed eyes, the folds dotted with liver spots.

“I was going to make tea,” said the older woman. “Walter, let me do that. You stay and talk to…”

“Isabel.”

“Of course.” The eyes were fixed on Isabel, but they were still. There was little light in them. “I knew your mother, you know. We played bridge now and then.”

Isabel caught her breath. Her mother; her
sainted American mother.

“She was such an attractive woman,” said Mrs. Buie. “And amusing.”

Isabel thought: Yes, she was. So many people said that—that she made people laugh.

“And your poor father,” Mrs. Buie added.

Isabel said nothing. She wondered what would follow. Did Mrs. Buie know about her mother's affair—the affair that Isabel herself had found out about only when her cousin had revealed it to her, on being pressed to do so by Isabel herself? Perhaps she did, but it seemed strange that she would mention it on a first meeting, unless, of course, she had become disinhibited. Age brought that sometimes, with the result that all sorts of tactless things might be said.

But Mrs. Buie had nothing more to add and made her way out of the room to make the tea.

Walter Buie gestured to a sofa near the window.

“The painting?” he said as they sat down. “You said you had some information for me.”

Isabel looked past him to a picture on the wall above his head. It was, she thought, a McTaggart. He caught her eye.

“McTaggart,” he said. “My mother's.” He gestured around the room. “These are all hers. She's the one with the collection.”

“But you bought the McInnes?”

He nodded. “I did.”

She decided that she should wait no longer. “I don't think it's a McInnes,” she said.

She watched him very closely. At first it seemed that he had not heard her, or had mistaken what she had said. He had been smiling when their conversation had started, and he was still smiling. But then it was as if a shadow had passed over his face. The face has a hundred muscles, she thought; even more. It has such a subtle surface—like that of water, sensitive to changes of light, to the movement of wind—and as indicative, every bit as indicative, of the weather.

“I don't understand,” he said.

“You don't know that it's a forgery?” She felt her heart beating within her; she was accusing him now, and she was suddenly aware that it was the wrong thing to do. But the accusation had slipped out.

“Are you suggesting—” He broke off. He was looking down at the carpet, unable to meet her eyes. But it was not guilt, she decided; it was pain.

“Please,” she said, impulsively reaching out to lay a hand upon his sleeve. “Please. That came out all wrong. I'm not suggesting that you tried to sell me a forgery.”

He seemed to be puzzling something out. Now he looked up at her. “I suppose you thought that because I wanted to sell it quickly.”

“I was surprised,” she said. “But I thought that there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation.” That was a lie, she knew. I am lying as a result of having made an unfair assumption. And I lied, too, when I paid a compliment to that unpleasant dog of his. But I have to lie. And what would life be like if we paid one another no compliments?

Isabel thought now that he was debating with himself whether to say something. When he spoke, it was with hesitation, and his voice was lowered. “I have to sell it,” he said. “Or, rather, had to. If what you say is true, then…”