The Charming Quirks of Others (23 page)

Isabel listened, transfixed. In her mind’s eye she saw a high ice field, white in brilliant sun, and two men helping a third across a ladder bridge, below them a cavern of blue ice.

“John Fraser was a real hero,” said Iain. “I gather that there are many climbers these days who wouldn’t even bother to take somebody back—they’d just tuck them up in an ice hole somehow and leave a flag to mark the spot in case they were still alive when they came down again. Can you believe that? Can you really? Is this what we’ve come to?”

Isabel did not answer his question; she was thinking about how wrong her assumptions could be. She was not surprised by her wrongness; she often misunderstood a situation or reached entirely the wrong conclusion.

But then Iain said, “It’s such a pity about the other one, though.”

Isabel became alert. “What other one? Was there somebody else on that expedition who didn’t make it?”

He shook his head. “No, that other climb. The one in Scotland. Up north.”

Isabel spoke quietly. “Another tragedy?”

“Yes,” he said. “Chris told me about it. It happened a few years before they went to Everest.”

She enquired whether Chris had been present, and Iain confirmed that he had. “He didn’t see what happened, but he had a very good idea what took place.”

“Which was?”

“I don’t like to pass on rumours,” he said. “I have no proof. All that I have is hearsay.”

“I shall take that into account,” said Isabel. “Please tell me.”

He looked pained. She had just been immensely generous to him, and here he was, denying her a scrap of information. Well, even if he could not be absolutely sure about it, he could at least pass on what he had heard. “I’ve heard it said that John Fraser cut somebody’s rope,” he said. “He was climbing with a man called Cameron, who had been a friend of Chris’s, although he was a bit older. Cameron slipped, or fell, or whatever, and John Fraser cut his rope in order to save himself.”

He did not say anything more. He looked ashamed, as if he regretted crossing some imaginary line between simple narration and scandal.

“But if it’s a choice between two people,” asked Isabel, “then surely it’s understandable if one prefers oneself. And is there any sense at all in two people rather than one being carried down to their deaths?”

Iain weighed this for a moment. “I am not suggesting that he should not have done it. And I’m not even saying that he
did
it. All I’m saying is that this is what I was told. He cut a fellow climber’s rope in order to save his own skin. That’s all.”

Isabel was silent. Would she have cut another’s rope? How many people could honestly say that they would not? But then what if Jamie were on the other end of the rope? Or Charlie?

“Where did that take place?” she asked.

Iain seemed sunk in thought. “I’m not sure. It was in Glencoe, I think. One of those mountains that loom over you as you drive through the pass. One with a lot of gullies.”

The conversation went on for a short time more before Isabel, looking at her watch, said that she had to go.

“Do you still intend to …” Iain looked towards the painting.

Isabel reached out to take his hand. “Enjoy it,” she said. “It stays exactly where it is. I’ll get Simon Mackintosh to write to you. He’s my lawyer.”

“I know him,” said Iain. “I also knew Aeneas, his father.”

“Well, there you are,” said Isabel. “All arranged.”

“Isn’t Edinburgh marvellous?” he suddenly remarked. “That we can do all this on … trust.”

Isabel smiled. “It works very well,” she said. She wondered, as she left the house, whether that sounded smug. It might, she thought, but on the other hand every city had its way of working; every city, no matter how large, relied on the fact that people would know one another and act well towards their fellow citizens. What was wrong with that? Only those who believed in chaos would want it otherwise; or those who believed that we should have no sense of who we are, of where we are placed, and of what we owe to those with whom we have bonds of fellow feeling. There were of course many such people: many who hated the local, who hated the sense of identity that people had, who wanted us all reduced to the servitude of anonymity, living in vast impersonal states, governed from a distance by people whose faces we never saw, whose names we would never find out. They thought this somehow better. Let them think that; she would not. She would not be ashamed of loving her place, her city, and of doing her utmost to ensure that the things that gave it a sense of itself, the small, personal things that bound its people together, would survive. No, she would not.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, a Saturday, was a delicatessen day. It had been planned some weeks before and although Isabel had other things to do, she did not feel that she could ask Cat to change the arrangement. Cat was going to London for the day, leaving on the six o’clock train from Waverley Station and coming back on Sunday morning. The occasion was a lunch for a school friend who was getting married to an army officer.

They had discussed this couple a few weeks earlier, when Cat had first said that she hoped to go to the wedding. “He’s drop-dead gorgeous,” said Cat. “He’s called Jon, without an aitch.”

“Dropped his aitch?” asked Isabel. “Or born without one?”

Cat did not think this funny. “Who cares?”

“I don’t,” said Isabel. “But you did mention it. You said that he didn’t have an aitch. Usually Johns do.”

“I think it’s sexier not to,” said Cat. “Jon’s a really sexy name.”

Isabel said nothing. John Liamor spelled his name with an
h
and he was … well, he was sexy, which was why she had
married him. That had been her conclusion; after all that soul-searching and wondering where she had gone wrong, she had come to the conclusion that she had been seduced by his looks.

“I don’t think that one should concern oneself with the sexiness—or otherwise—of a person’s name,” she said. “And I don’t think that you should marry somebody because they’re drop-dead gorgeous.” She paused. Cat was turning red.

“I didn’t say—”

Isabel tried to calm her. “No, I didn’t say you did. I’m sure that your friend is marrying Jon for a whole lot of other reasons. All that I’m saying is that in general it’s a bad idea. Don’t go for a good-looking man just because he’s good-looking. Men make that mistake all the time. They go for looks and they end up with a woman they can’t stand, or who bores them rigid.”

Cat stared at her. “And you?” she said.

“What about me?”

“You’re hardly one to talk, are you?”

Isabel opened her mouth—wordlessly.

“Well, you aren’t, are you?” Cat went on. “Jamie. Look at him.”

Isabel gasped; Cat, though, was adamant. “I’m sorry, but you can’t criticise others for something you yourself do.”

“Are you suggesting that I have taken up with Jamie because of his looks? Are you really accusing me of that?”

Cat looked down at the floor. “I’m not accusing you of anything. However … forgive me for wondering whether you and Jamie would have got together if he had been … well, podgy and shorter than you. Or had halitosis and terminal dandruff. Do you think you would have? Do you really think so?”

“Looks are nothing to do with it.” Isabel spat the words out.

“People tell themselves that. But who
really
believes it?”

“I do. People love others who are not at all prepossessing. Are you saying they don’t?”

Cat shook her head. She was not saying that; what she was saying, she explained, was that people made do with what they could get. Of course an unattractive person can be loved, but it is harder and they have to earn it. Whereas an attractive person is loved immediately and by any number of others. It was obvious, she said; obvious. Just look at couples. The beautiful fell for the beautiful, and got them; everybody else made do.

You silly, shallow woman, thought Isabel. You superficial … But her anger faded away in seconds; it was not real anger. Isabel would have been more outraged if it had not occurred to her at that moment that Cat was probably right. If Jamie had been as Cat described him, then it was at least possible that she would not have become involved with him; she might as well be honest with herself. But what a bleak conclusion that was: that it was the accident of looks that determined affection. Surely she was above such shallowness.

“Maybe not,” she said.

“Well, there you are,” said Cat.

They had moved on from the topic of looks, and Isabel had asked whether Cat’s friend was worried about her husband-to-be being sent off on active service. “We have so many small wars now,” she said. “The life of an army officer is not what it used to be. They used to play polo and go skiing; now they … well, they have to go out and get shot at. I suspect that not all of them appreciate that when they join the Army.”

“She says that she isn’t worried,” said Cat. “But I don’t believe her. Maybe these wars will end.”

Isabel doubted that. “There will always be another one, and another one after that. There’ll be no shortage of wars, I’m afraid. Has there ever been?”

At least these wars seemed increasingly to be fought by volunteers, she reflected, which was some consolation, even if not very great; and it was not a consolation that stood examination, being based on the assumption that they were real volunteers. Poverty and limited options were powerful recruiting sergeants, and neither of those burdens was exactly voluntary.

CAT WENT OFF
to the wedding in London. Isabel left Charlie with Jamie and made her way to the delicatessen shortly after eight-thirty; that would give her time to grind coffee and make other preparations before she opened the front door at nine. There was always a busy period immediately after opening, during which regulars would snatch a morning cup of coffee. If she and Eddie had everything ready in advance, they could dispense coffee at the rate of one cup a minute; she had timed it once, in a time-and-motion mood, and announced the results to Cat, who had seemed unimpressed.

“But if you serve them so quickly,” Cat said, “then they won’t buy anything else. Their eyes will have no time to linger on chocolate and other essentials.”

“We could ask them whether they wanted any chocolate,” suggested Eddie. “That’s what they do in that place round the corner. They say: ‘Do you want a muffin this morning?’ And you shake your head and they look all disappointed.”

“I hate that,” said Isabel. “I hate people asking me if I want something else. If I wanted it, I would have asked. And quite
frankly, I think it’s wrong in principle to implant muffin ideas in the minds of the public. For one thing, it undoes all the anti-muffin work of the government. They spend all that money on persuading us to eat healthy food and then along comes somebody asking whether we wouldn’t like a muffin.”

“What has the government got against muffins?” asked Eddie.

The discussion had proved inconclusive; Cat was aware of the fact that Isabel was unpaid for her help in the delicatessen, and you could hardly instruct somebody who was working for nothing, and who was, anyway, your aunt. So Isabel was left to serve coffee at the pace that she determined, and did so.

That morning, Eddie was in talkative mood. He supported a small football team from an obscure town in Fife—an arrangement that was the result of his father’s having been brought up there. This team, which bumped along the bottom of a secondary league, was of little distinction but could count on the near-fanatical loyalty of its supporters. Now, though, this support was being tested by a scandal that had even made the national papers. The team’s goalkeeper had been found to have taken a bribe to allow a goal through. The bribe had been sexual rather than monetary, the understanding being that if he allowed the goal he would be rewarded with the sexual favours of the girlfriend of one of the players in the opposing team. He had accepted this offer, but had not been duly rewarded—the girl in question said that she had never intended to carry out her side of the bargain. This had so outraged the goalkeeper that he had told his friends that he had been duped and that the young woman in question should feel ashamed of herself.

Isabel listened to this story with fascination. “He was perhaps
a bit naive,” she remarked. “And talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Presumably that’s the end of his goal-keeping career.”

Eddie agreed. “He wasn’t much good anyway. But he shouldn’t have trusted her, should he? He should have made sure that she … well, that she carried out her part of the deal before he let the goal through. He was really stupid.”

Isabel, who was grinding coffee, momentarily stopped the machine. “But, Eddie, he shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

“No, he shouldn’t. But since he did, he should have done it differently.” Eddie paused. “And now everybody’s laughing at us. That’s what really gets me.”

“I’m very sorry.”

Eddie acknowledged the expression of sympathy. “It’s her fault,” he said. “No man can be expected to resist an offer like that, can he?”