Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 05 (15 page)

Robin sipped at his tea. “Painters rarely paint for posterity. They portray the things that people want to admire at the time.”

Isabel frowned. She was not sure that she agreed. “
Guernica
?”

Robin put down his mug. “Yes, I suppose so. I suppose Picasso wanted to put that on the record.” He paused. The bird in the neighbouring tree had raised the pitch of his song, and for a few moments they both listened to the ringing challenge. Then Robin rose to his feet. “I almost forgot. That painting.”

Isabel looked up from the catalogue. “What painting?”

Robin was making his way back into the gallery. “Hang on a sec. I'll get it,” he said over his shoulder.

Isabel turned a page of the catalogue. A worldly wise infant looked out from his mother's knee; above his head, a thin circle of gold, a halo; in the background, a line of cypresses marched off across a landscape that was Tuscany or Umbria. She looked at the mother's face, at the expression of gentle solemnity that seemed to be the approved look of motherhood. Had she ever looked at Charlie quite like that?

Robin reappeared, carrying a small painting, a double handbreadth or so across, which he put down on the table in front of Isabel. “Here it is,” he said. “It came back from the framer yesterday.”

She gave a start. It was another fox; a small painting of a fox, standing in a clearing, sniffing the air.

“Brother Fox,” she muttered.

Robin sat down again and reached for the teapot. “Brother who?”

She picked up the painting and looked for a signature.

“Nothing,” said Robin. “No clue as to the artist. But rather well executed. A nice little painting.”

Isabel put the painting back on the table. “Yes,” she said. “It's nice. But…but why are you showing it to me?”

Robin looked puzzled. “Jamie said that you'd collect it. He bought it a few weeks ago and said that you'd be in for it.”

“My Jamie?”

“Yes.”

She was at a loss as to what to say. Robin, watching her, looked puzzled. “Is there something wrong with the frame? We thought it was rather a good choice.”

“No. The frame's fine.” Isabel looked at the painting again. The only conclusion she could reach was that Jamie had bought it for her as a present. But then why would he not have told her to go in and collect it, if that was what he had wanted? He had forgotten; that must be it. The important thing was that Jamie had bought it for her. He had come in and bought it for her. “He'll probably be in for it himself,” she said. “I won't take it now.”

She closed her eyes for a few moments, feeling again the sun on her brow. The moment was delicious, one to be savoured. I shall remember this, she thought. The painting would not have been cheap, and he would have paid for it with his hard-earned money. How many music lessons did a small painting of a fox represent? Twenty? Thirty? No matter: Jamie had specially chosen it for her, and that showed that he loved her, which is what she wanted to know, more than anything else. It was a moment of realisation, of understanding, and it took place against a background of sun and geraniums and the pure voice of a bird.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S
HE STILL FELT ELATED
when she sat down for the lecture in the George Square Lecture Theatre. So a child might feel on Christmas Eve, she thought—filled with anticipation for the gifts to come. But she did not analyse her sense of pleasure beyond that, and it was as well, perhaps, as Jamie had not given her a present before, if one did not count birthday and Christmas presents, which were reciprocal, anyway. The painting of a fox was a perfect choice; Brother Fox was their secret, the one that she shared with him. Grace saw him, of course, but did not like him, and in particular believed that he was slowly destroying the garden.

“There'll be nothing left by the time he's finished,” she had complained, after Brother Fox had succeeded in unearthing a cluster of bulbs that had been carefully planted the year before. Now they lay exposed, one gnawed slightly and then spat out, the others tossed carelessly about the edge of the lawn.

“Vandal,” Grace continued. “You know that man who came to deal with the wasps last year? That man from somewhere out near Peebles? Well, he told me that he knows how to deal with urban foxes. He traps them and then takes them out into the country and lets them loose.”

“That's what he says he does,” Isabel retorted.

Grace met the challenge with a stare. “Yes. That's what he does.”

“But I suspect that he doesn't,” said Isabel. “He just says that so that the urbanites feel all right about it. Dalkeith is very different from Edinburgh. They're not particularly sentimental out there. He'll kill them. And he can do it. Foxes are officially vermin.”

Grace said nothing, but pointedly picked up the bulbs and began to replant them.

“He has to live,” muttered Isabel, and left her to it.

“And so do bulbs,” said Grace.

Isabel almost said, “It's my garden, and if I want to let the fox dig things up, then that's my affair.” But she did not. She could have said it, as it was true, and it was perfectly reasonable that one should allow a fox free rein of one's garden if one liked foxes, which she did. But she had never asserted her rights as employer and owner, and never would. Grace was treated as a colleague; requests to do things were never given as orders, and most of all Isabel never acted as if her money gave her power. It did—and she knew it—but she never abused it. Yet there were limits, which both understood. Grace could not call the man from Dalkeith to deal with Brother Fox because the garden was not hers; both understood that.

Now, sitting in the second row of the lecture theatre, she put the fox painting out of her mind and looked about her. Edward Mendelson's lecture had been widely publicised by the Scottish Poetry Library and by
The Scotsman,
with the result that several hundred people had bought tickets, and even if the lecture theatre would not be full, it would not look empty. She felt relieved; she had been to enough philosophy lectures where a small turnout had brought embarrassment to both speakers and hosts. In Cambridge there had been a professor who had always said the same thing on such occasions, even on fine days:
This weather keeps people in
and
It's so hard for people these days.
That had been greeted with nods of understanding, but she had always wondered why it was so hard for people these days. Was it any harder to attend a philosophy lecture than it had ever been? Surely not; if anything, it would be easier. Lecture theatres in the past had always been uncomfortable, perhaps deliberately so, in order to keep the audience attentive. The old anatomy lecture theatre in the university was famous for its discomfort; narrow, knee-bending benches racked steeply, almost vertiginously upwards—the better to allow a view, of course, of the dissection below, but hardly comfortable. And other lecture theatres had been little better; no soft seats, cold, noisy in the wrong way; everything that the modern lecture theatre or seminar room now eschewed. No, it was not hard for people these days, or rather, if life was still hard, then it was less hard than it had ever been before.

She looked up at the ceiling. Who had said
You've never had it so good
? Harold Macmillan, a long time ago—and he had been addressing the electorate. Politicians did not speak like that to the electorate these days. They might well say
I know how hard it is for people these days,
and people would like that, because they did feel that it was hard. And for some, many indeed, it was.

There was a programme, which she now studied in the lecture theatre's dim light.
Edward Mendelson,
it announced,
is the literary executor of W. H. Auden and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous critical works on Auden and is editing the poet's
Complete Works.
His subject tonight is guilt, neurosis, and the elucidation of a moral standpoint.

Guilt, thought Isabel, and found herself wondering what Marcus would be doing now—while she was sitting in this lecture theatre, he would be slumped in his armchair, she imagined, just as he had been when she visited their flat; sitting and staring out over the top of Princes Street to the hills of Fife beyond. He's innocent, she thought. He's an innocent man wrongly condemned to shame and the end of the career that had been his life.

Of course, there were other innocent men suffering for things they did not do. Isabel wondered what proportion of those in prison were innocent of the crimes of which they had been convicted. She had read somewhere that the figure for this was between five and ten percent, which meant that at least one in twenty of those in prison had simply not done what they were accused of doing. And in places where they executed people, then presumably some at least of those who faced death did so as innocent people. Did those who signed the death warrants or turned down the last-minute appeals for clemency ever think,
This might be an innocent man
?

She could not help the innocent in prison, but she could help a man who had been otherwise unjustly punished. Or, rather, she could try.

         

EDWARD MENDELSON
delivered his lecture. Auden, he said, had a strong sense of guilt, which was neurotic in origin. There was plenty of evidence for that in the poems, but should we concern ourselves with the roots of the poet's engagement with morality, or should we look rather at what the great artist has done to transform his personal neuroses into a vision of moral truth that we all can share? He put the question, and Isabel, from the second row, made her own choice without having to think about it very much. The work of art was what mattered to her—the moral statement that helped us to live better, which is what, she believed, the purpose of art was. She was not interested in the doubts and infirmities that preceded the lines that minted a truth: it was the lines themselves that mattered, and we should not diminish their force by diminishing the poet. Auden behaved badly on occasion, as we all did. He lived in domestic squalor, his personal conversation could be arch, he worshipped punctuality, he became irritable. But none of that diminished the truth of what he said. And there were other writers whose personal lives did not bear examination. At least Auden managed money sensibly. Writers—and musicians—generally handled money badly.

She slipped out at the end of the lecture. A well-known Edinburgh bore, famous for his buttonholing of distinguished visitors, had positioned himself at the foot of the steps that led down from the stage. There would be no escape for Edward Mendelson now unless the organisers of the lecture were prepared to be ruthless and sweep their guest past the bore; push him over, perhaps. She glanced over her shoulder as she left the theatre: a phalanx had assembled around the lecturer and somebody was gesturing for him to accompany them, but the bore was on to them, and like a rugby forward he nimbly dodged past the literary editor of
The Scotsman,
wove past the professor of English literature, and positioned himself in front of Edward Mendelson. “Professor Mendelson, something you said rather interested me…”

Isabel walked out of the lecture theatre bemused. The bore was an earnest man who believed in a civilised society of conversation and debate, an Edinburgh of the Scottish Enlightenment; but such an Edinburgh would always exclude those who tried too hard. So he had become a lonely man, accustomed to the glassy looks of others; she should make more effort with him, she thought, because all of us should take on our allocation of lame ducks. But the last time she had seen him, at the opening of a special exhibition at the Royal Scottish Museum, he had addressed her on the subject of wind farms, and as he spoke she had suddenly formed a mental image of the bore talking endlessly at high volume, while before him spun round the blades of a small power-generating windmill, driven by the hot air.

She detached herself from the crowd milling round the entrance to the lecture theatre and made her way out into George Square. It was not yet Festival time, but a small group of men was already erecting the Spiegeltent in the gardens of the square; later there would be marquees, crowds, and performers, talented and otherwise. She walked along the cobbled lane in front of the university library; a student, engaged in conversation on a mobile phone, gestured to emphasise his point. He was angry, thought Isabel, and she wondered what the cause of his anger could be. Betrayal? Infidelity? The selfishness of a flat-mate? She wanted to say to him: Does it really matter? But it did matter, of course, as these small things do.

She walked on and became aware that somebody was walking immediately behind her. She slowed down, and the person behind her drew abreast. She glanced sideways: Nick Smart.

His manner was casual. “I saw you at the lecture,” he said. “I was surprised.”

She looked at him quickly, but did not keep eye contact. It annoyed her that he should be surprised to see her at the lecture; Auden was her poet, and this was her city. Why should he be surprised? Was it because he thought that she was somehow unworthy of Auden?

“I wouldn't have thought he was your sort of poet,” Nick went on.

Isabel stopped. She turned to face him. “Why do you say that?” she demanded. She felt hot—and angry.

Nick shrugged. “Just not your sort.”

She suddenly thought: He's laying claim to him, and I'm excluded.

“What sort of poet would you expect me to like?” she asked, and then, “I find that sort of assumption rather irritating…”

Her reply did not seem to disturb him. That smug expression, she thought; that demeanour of condescension. But then his expression changed. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to offend you.”

She started to walk again, and he continued with her; they were stuck with one another at least until the end of the lane, unless one of them were to turn and walk back.

“Don't think about it,” she said. “It's all right.”

“You've taken against me,” said Nick. “I don't know what I've done, but you've taken against me.”

“I don't know why you think that,” said Isabel. Of course I have, she thought, but how can one confess pure dislike—to the object of the dislike?

Nick shook his head. “Maybe I'm imagining it.”

“Maybe.”

They had reached the end of the lane, and Isabel began to bear left, towards the Meadows. “I hope that you enjoyed the lecture,” she said.

Nick mumbled something that she did not hear, and moved off in the opposite direction. She watched him for a moment and felt, almost immediately, a strong sense of regret. Nick Smart was an unhappy man—that was apparent. He was, she imagined, lonely; living in a strange city where he had no past, no links, could not be easy. And she had allowed a visceral dislike to overcome her sense of what she should do, which was to forgive him his condescension, his egregious elegance, and at least say something kind to him, which she had not done. She stopped and turned round. He was walking up one side of George Square, along the edge of the gardens in the centre. He was looking at the ground, his head sunk.

Isabel hesitated. It was wrong, she knew, quite wrong, to allow gratuitous bad feeling to exist between oneself and another. She should run after him; she should apologise; she should try to restore courteous relations between them. She stood still; by now Nick Smart was almost at the top of the square, and in a few moments he walked off to the right and disappeared. It would have been easy, but now it was too late—taking a few steps to apologise was one thing, running after somebody was another, or seemed to be another; it was as if by turning the corner he had walked out of the circle of her moral concern. She turned away and began to walk home. It was as good an illustration as any, she thought, of the proposition that we forget about those who are distant from us, whom we cannot see—the starving in some far-off land, the oppressed whose suffering is known only by vague report, the man who has walked round a corner. I have broken relations with him, she said to herself, and as she thought this she was reminded of a curious habit she had had as a young girl. If ever she said something uncharitable to another, she would ask herself,
What if that person died right now? How would I feel?