The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (23 page)

She held Eddie’s hand as the nurse behind the desk referred to the file in front of
her.

“Everything’s fine,” said the nurse. “All the tests are clear.”

Isabel thought at first that Eddie had not understood. He gasped as the nurse spoke,
and half turned to Isabel. Then he started to sob.

“It’s fine, Eddie,” Isabel said. “Listen to what she said. It’s fine.”

Eddie turned back to face the nurse.

“Yes, it’s all right,” repeated the nurse. “Negative. Everything’s fine.”

“It takes a little time to sink in,” said Isabel, pressing Eddie’s hand gently.

“So …,” Eddie began, but stopped.

“So, you’re fine.” Isabel pressed his hand again. She looked at the nurse, who nodded.

The nurse began to say something about counselling and being careful; Isabel looked
away, as she did not feel that it was appropriate for her to listen at that point.
But it did not last long. Eddie said, “Yes, I know, I know,” and the nurse did not
persist.

They went outside, into the sun.

“That’s that,” said Isabel. “Happier?”

Eddie nodded. “Very,” he said.

Isabel looked at the sky. On the same day, within little more than a few hours, she
had seen two men cry, and had comforted both. She could not help but reflect on the
differences between these men: Duncan, middle-aged and wealthy, the product of an
expensive education and a family that was perfectly assured of its place in the world;
Eddie, whose life had been far harder in every respect, whose horizons had been so
much more limited, but who had a future before him. Would Duncan exchange lives with
Eddie if, by some miracle, he were given the chance? It was a peculiar thought experiment
that Isabel liked to engage in occasionally. Would one choose youth—and years—rather
than comfort and the security of being oneself? Would the elderly millionaire change
places with the indigent twenty-one-year-old?

They decided to walk back to their side of town. Isabel had a book to collect from
a bookshop on South Bridge and Eddie said that he would accompany her. “I just want
to walk,” he said. “I don’t think I could focus on anything right now. I actually
want to fly, you know, but I can’t, and so I’ll walk.”

She smiled at him.

Eddie continued: “I was worried for so long. I put things out of my mind and then
every so often it would come back to me and I would go all cold.”

“Anybody would,” said Isabel.

They made their way along Hanover Street and then up the Playfair Steps at the back
of the National Gallery. Below them, the railway lines caught the afternoon sun until
they were swallowed by the tunnel under the Gallery.

“When I was very young,” said Isabel, “I thought that the tunnel down there was Glasgow.
I was told that the trains went
to Glasgow and I saw them disappear into that tunnel. I thought that it must be Glasgow.”

Eddie laughed. “When I was seven, something like that, I used to go through to Glasgow
to see an uncle,” he said. “But he was never in. We went several times, but I don’t
think he was ever there.”

“What do they say? It’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive?”

“Do they?”

“Yes,” she said. “They do.”

They climbed the remaining steps in silence. Isabel thought about Eddie’s saying that
he wanted to fly. We all did. Who had not imagined themselves flying; who had not
dreamed that they could fly? The dream interpreters spoiled those dreams of flying,
which they said were not about flying at all. But they were; that, or freedom, perhaps,
but not about sex, as they insisted. Everything, they said, was about sex except … perhaps
sex itself. Isabel smiled: a dream about sex was really about flying—what would they
say to that?

They paused at the top of the steps and looked back over the New Town, now lying below
them. Isabel noticed that although neither of them was breathless from the exertion
of climbing the steps, Eddie’s face had coloured. She wondered about exercise: he
came to the delicatessen each morning by bus; perhaps he should be encouraged to walk
to work. But that was none of her business. You did not tell your friends to get fit
or lose weight. They made that decision themselves and then you complimented them
on the effort.

After collecting the book, Isabel treated Eddie to a cup of coffee in the bookshop
coffee bar. Eddie had cream on the top
of his, and she found herself pointing to the topping—rich, white, fatal—and saying,
“You can’t, Eddie!”

He looked at her in surprise. “What’s wrong with cream?”

“Everything,” she replied, then thought again. “Well, no, not everything, but you
see, we have these things called arteries and …”

He was grinning at her. “Yes?”

“Another time. I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to run your life.”

His grin widened. “Unless I wanted you to.”

She toyed with the small packet of sugar—destined to be unused—that had come with
her coffee. “Which, of course, you don’t want.”

“Who says?”

The conversation had started lightly but there was now a tinge of seriousness. Isabel
frowned as she wondered where it was leading. He was Eddie, the young man who worked
in the delicatessen; she was his employer’s aunt; he was in his early twenties and
she was in her early forties. There were not quite twenty years between them, but
the gap was almost that large. He was damaged, and was hesitantly feeling his way
towards recovery; she would help in that—of course she would—but it would not be a
good idea for him to replace whatever had been missing in his relationship with his
parents with some form of substitute provided by her.

He answered his own question quickly. “I say …”

She looked away.

“I mean,” he continued, “that there’s something I really want you to do for me, Isabel.
Will you do it?”

She looked back at him. His expression was imploring.
Whatever he had in mind was important to him, and she could not simply brush him off.

“It depends, Eddie. Obviously it depends. You know that I’m happy to help you but
I can’t do everything.”

“I know that. And this isn’t everything. It’s dead simple.”

“What is it?”

He sniffed.

“Do you need a hanky?”

“No. I’m all right. Sometimes there are things that make me sniff. Something in the
air. Pollen maybe. But not here, I suppose.”

“You were telling me about this thing you want me to do.”

He sniffed again. “You know I’ve got this girlfriend?”

“Yes, Diane. I met her the other day at the deli, remember?” She paused. “Is everything
still all right there?”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. No problems with that.”

She said that she was glad to hear it. And then he went on, “Her parents are the problem.
They hate me.”

Perhaps it was an exaggeration to say that they hated him, but Diane had told Isabel
herself that her parents disapproved of him, considered him beneath them. And for
Eddie, the difference between hate and disapproval in such circumstances surely seemed
slight.

She tried to reassure him. “Hate is a very strong word, as we know, Eddie. Parents
often don’t see things the way their children do. They have their own ideas about
who are suitable boyfriends or girlfriends for their sons and daughters. They may
have ambitions for them—”

He cut her short, his anger now surfacing. “They think I’m no good.”

She wondered how to respond to that. He evidently understood exactly how they felt.

“I’m sure they don’t think you’re …” She searched for the right word. “Bad. I’m sure
they don’t think that. You’re not involved in drugs or anything like that.”

“I could be, the way they talk about me … So, if it’s not that, then what is it? Because
I’m not from their group or whatever? Is that it?”

She nodded. “To be frank, yes. People are like that.”

He shook his head in frustration. “So what do they expect me to do?”

She considered his question. It was, she thought, exactly the right question to ask,
as it exposed the moral flaw in Diane’s parents’ position. You can only blame people
for that which they have chosen to do—Aristotle spelled that out clearly enough. And
that meant that you should not hold it against somebody for being what he
is
. A person’s background, then, was the classic example of something for which he can
never be judged adversely.

“They shouldn’t expect anything of you, Eddie. There’s nothing wrong with being who
you are and you have nothing to be ashamed of or to reproach yourself about. Nothing.”

“So why do they hate me?”

They wished him to be something different, she said, and that was impossible, and
wrong. If they knew him properly, then they would surely realise that there was nothing
wrong with him; that he was a perfectly good choice for Diane.

He was alerted by what she said. “If they knew me properly?”

“Yes. I’m sure that if they knew you better they’d see your merits. You’re kind to
Diane, aren’t you? You treat her well?”

“Of course.”

“And the two of you are happy together?”

“Yes. Really happy. That’s why we want to live together, which they don’t want.” He
paused. “But listen, you said that if they knew more about me, they might not be so
hostile. That’s just what I want you to do for me. I want you to talk to them.”

“Diane’s parents?”

“Yes. Talk to them. Tell them that I’m OK. Tell them that there’s no reason why we
shouldn’t get this flat. Tell them—”

She stopped him. “I’m not sure, Eddie. I don’t think I should interfere.”

He looked incredulous. “But Cat says that you’re always interfering. She says that
you get mixed up in all sorts of things and that you help people. She told me. And
everybody knows it. They know that if they need something sorted, they can go to you.”

Isabel looked at her watch. “You have to get back to work,” she said. “Cat’s expecting
you.”

“But you haven’t answered me.”

She picked up her coffee cup. The coffee was almost too cold to drink. “Give me some
time to think,” she said briskly. “I need to think about it.”

“Do you think you can? Do you think you can speak to them?”

She put down her cup. “I don’t know them,” she said. “How can I go and speak to people
I don’t know?”

“You do that for other people,” he muttered.

She knew that what he said was true. She spoke to people for other people. But she
also knew Diane’s difficulties over setting up home with Eddie were not simply to
do with parental opposition.

“I’ll think about it,” she said, picking up the plastic bag that
contained her book. It was a book she had ordered a week ago, Scanlon’s
What We Owe to Each Other
. She needed it for an editorial she was writing on contractualism in moral philosophy
and … she smiled; she needed it for her life.

“What’s so funny?” asked Eddie nervously.

She wanted to cheer him up. Half an hour previously he had been talking about wanting
to fly; now he seemed morose. “What’s so funny? Life,” said Isabel. “Come on, Eddie.
Let’s get going.”

SHE WAS BACK
at the house in time to collect Charlie from nursery. Jamie was at home, practising,
in case Isabel should be late and he would need to do the Charlie collection. Her
return liberated him; he had promised to see a friend about a recital they were planning
and he needed to get away. He was anxious, though, to hear about Isabel’s morning.

“You saw the painting?”

She nodded. “Yes. Can we talk about it later, though? I’ll have to go for Charlie.”

He looked relieved. “Did you see them—the thieves?”

“Yes.” She stopped. Were those men the thieves or the intermediaries? Did it make
much difference? “I saw the people who had the painting. I didn’t see very much of
them, though …”

Jamie’s eyes widened. “They were masked?”

“Nothing so melodramatic. It all happened rather quickly—and they were wearing scarves.
I couldn’t really give you a description of them. Thirty-ish? One had earrings. There
was a certain amount of tension and aggression, but we weren’t hurt.” She turned.
Talking about what had happened made her
feel somehow queasy. Was this how people felt after a traumatic experience? Weak at
the knees, sick, fearful perhaps? Or even dirtied? She had heard about how people
who were the victims of assault could sometimes blame themselves for what happened.
Was that happening to her?

To change the subject, Isabel asked about Grace. “Will you tell me about the peace
mission? Later?”

Jamie’s face fell. “Some messages of peace fall on stony ground.”

“Oh.”

He nodded. “I’ll try again.”

She wanted him to do that. The house seemed empty without Grace. And it would be dustier
too and Jamie’s shirts would be unironed and she would miss hearing about the latest
goings-on with the local council and their iniquities, and the failings of the bus
service, and the spiritualist meetings … There was so much that Grace brought to her
life, as any friend or colleague does. That, Isabel thought, was what made the texture
of our lives: the doings, the little ways of those about us. We defined ourselves
socially as much as we did individually, perhaps even more so, and that, or course,
meant duties to others … including to people like Eddie. But I can’t, she said to
herself; I can’t go out and interfere in the lives of people I’ve never met, who would
not thank me for giving them my opinion on a matter that is no affair of mine. No,
I can’t. And yet Eddie has asked me to do this and if he has no claim on me, then
who does?

CHARLIE WAS BREWING
a cold and would not settle to any activity that afternoon. By the time that Jamie
came home at
seven in the evening, Isabel was ready for a glass of wine. Charlie had been put to
bed and had dozed off quickly in spite of his runny nose and incipient cough.

“Should I be worried?” she said to Jamie. “I really want a glass of wine, and that
makes me wonder whether I should be concerned.”