The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (27 page)

“All right,” she said. “I’ll act normally. I’ll pretend she didn’t resign.”

“Good,” he said. He reached out to touch her, laying his hand gently on her forearm.
His skin was warm against hers, which was chilled by the evaporation of the wet from
the shower. She wanted to hold him; she wanted to take him in
her arms, but the towel was precarious and there was always an awkwardness between
the clothed and unclothed body. So she simply looked at him, and saw the colour of
his eyes, and the light within them, and the shape of his brow.

“I’ll tell her again how much we appreciate what she does,” said Isabel. “We do, don’t
we?”

“Of course. And I think she knows that.”

While Isabel dressed, Jamie went back downstairs and when she made her way into the
kitchen he could be heard in the music room beginning a session of practice: scales,
arpeggios, the technical limbering-up that even the most experienced professional
musician must undertake; musical press-ups, Isabel called it.

She entered the kitchen unannounced. Grace was seated at the table, a piece of paper
in front of her, and Charlie was perched on her lap.

“Four,” said Charlie. “No, six. Six, Grace! Six!”

“Six,” said Grace. “Yes, six.” And then she turned round and saw Isabel, and she immediately
lifted Charlie off her lap and stood up. Isabel did not see what happened to the piece
of paper; it was there and then it was not there, vanishing so quickly that she might
have doubted that she had seen it in the first place.

She felt her heart race. Mathematics! Grace had been teaching Charlie mathematics.
It was blatant and it dismayed Isabel, because she did not relish conflict and she
did not want to have to speak to Grace again, not so soon after the row that had led
to her resignation. Grace was quite capable of resigning again, and Isabel could not
face that. So she turned away and simply said good morning to Grace as if nothing
had happened; as if there had been no resignation, no mathematics.

She walked to the window and looked out. There was no reason to look out of that particular
window, which had no view to speak of. She was not looking out of it to see what the
weather was like, nor was she looking out of it to see whether Brother Fox might be
lurking in the rhododendrons which could be seen—just—if one craned one’s neck slightly
to get a sight of what was happening alongside the house. She realised that she was
looking out of the window because she did not have the courage to look in the direction
in which she should have been looking.
Blind eye
, she thought.
Turn a blind eye
.

And that thought changed everything. To turn a blind eye was morally reprehensible;
it was an affront to the whole concept of seeing—and it was the beginning, in so many
cases, of significant failure. No, she would not turn a blind eye. She would not allow
herself to be a moral coward.

She turned, her heart hammering within her. “I’m sorry, Grace,” she began. “The last
thing I want is for you to be upset. But please see it from my point of view. With
this mathematics …” She paused. The solution had come to her. “Look, I think that
it will be fine for Charlie to develop his mathematics. But why don’t we wait? How
about waiting a couple of years and then, when he’s six or so, we can look at it again.
Both of us. We can go and talk to somebody about it and do the thing together. I’ll
read that book of yours then and we might even be able to work from it. How about
that?” She paused again. Grace was looking down at the floor. “Are you listening to
what I’m saying?” asked Isabel.

Charlie answered. “Charlie listening,” he said solemnly.

Isabel bit her lip. She wanted to laugh.
Charlie listening
. Perhaps she might say that in the middle of some discussion
with Jamie:
Isabel listening
. It would be so comic, so disconcerting. It would derail anybody.

She could not suppress her amusement, even in this grave moment of challenge. She
smiled. And Grace did too.

“Mummy is shouting at Grace,” said Grace to Charlie.

“I wasn’t exactly shouting,” said Isabel.

“Well, I heard you well enough,” muttered Grace. “And that sounds fine by me. Now
I’ve got to go upstairs and start the washing.”

Isabel felt the tension flood out of her. Her heart returned to its normal beat.

“I really do understand why you wanted to do it,” said Isabel. “And we appreciate
that—both Jamie and I. We both appreciate it.”

Grace acknowledged the thanks. “That’s fine,” she said. “It’s probably a good idea
to wait anyway. He’ll be even better then.”

She stood up, straightening her skirt. Isabel noticed that it looked creased and rather
worn in the front, although Grace normally looked smart and attended to that sort
of thing. She felt a pang. She paid Grace generously—she always had, as had her father
before her—but by the very nature of things she had so much more than the woman who
worked for her, and she did not want there to be any sense of a victory having been
won.

“Another thing, Grace,” she said. “I’m sorry if you’ve been upset.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Grace. And then, in a quieter voice, “My fault.”

“Not Grace’s fault,” said Charlie suddenly. He had picked up the tension in the room,
and he now slipped his hand into Grace’s and squeezed it.

“Look,” said Isabel. “He loves you.”

Grace looked down. She hesitated, and then bent down and kissed Charlie on his brow.
She stood up. “Washing,” she said, and moved towards the door. Then she added, “One
of Jamie’s shirts is missing two buttons. Two! I’ll replace them this morning.”

“Thank you,” said Isabel, adding: “Men!”

It was a curious, inconsequential thing to say. Men lost the buttons on their shirts,
as did women, but there was no evidence, not one scrap, to show that men lost more
buttons than women did. However, Isabel suspected that they did, and this comment,
this single word, made her belief quite clear.

“I agree,” said Grace. She sighed. “Men.”

AFTER THAT DRAMATIC START
, the rest of the morning went smoothly. With the return of Grace and the resolution
of the mathematics question—
quod erat demonstrandum
, Isabel could not stop herself from thinking—she was able to concentrate on her work.
The
Review
imposed many deadlines, not just those that loomed when it was due to go to press.
There were deadlines for the receipt of papers; there were deadlines for the obtaining
of reports on articles submitted for peer review; there were minor, self-imposed deadlines
for Isabel to answer letters and emails. Those two categories differed, of course.
Electronic mail, that pervasive, intrusive means of communication that could penetrate,
like the most sophisticated of missiles, the thickest bunkers of privacy, had to be
answered within three working days; letters could be left one week before an answer
was sent. Or so Isabel had decided, knowing that these periods were arbitrary and,
in the case of electronic mail, quite
out of kilter with expectations. Many people, she understood, expected emails to be
answered within hours, if not minutes, and judged others accordingly. One would-be
author of a paper on environmental ethics had actually complained to Isabel one afternoon
that she had not answered his email of that morning.
I contacted you some time ago
, he wrote at four o’clock,
and I was wondering whether your reply has been lost. I’ve looked in my spam folder,
but I don’t see it
. His original message had arrived at ten that morning, which meant that he considered
six hours to be more than enough time for a reply to be formulated, typed and sent.

Isabel had drafted a reply.
Dear Professor Grant, Your message was received this morning. I have read it but have
not yet had time to reply. I’m so sorry to test your patience in this way. I know
that six hours can seem a very long time, but please be assured that I shall reply
to you when I have had time to think a little bit about what you said in your message
and to give your remarks the weight they undoubtedly deserve. Yours sincerely, Isabel
Dalhousie (Editor)
.

She had not sent this message because she had felt, quite rightly, that it was cutting.
It was easy to cut; too easy sometimes, and so she had sent back a simple message:
I received your email. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. I.D
. Doing the right thing, she knew, was often not as enjoyable as doing the wrong thing.
The wrong thing often made for a better story, but it was still the wrong thing—nothing
could change that.

The deadline that morning had nothing to do with letters or emails, nor with anxious
printers waiting to press the buttons that would set their presses rolling. Rather,
it had to do with the gathering-in of reports on several papers on which an editorial
decision had to be taken. Isabel took this process very seriously,
being only too aware of the anxious state of those awaiting her response: researchers,
post-doctoral fellows, junior lecturers in neglected and unfashionable universities
and colleges in obscure places; the unrewarded infantry of the academic profession,
who needed publication in order to hang on to their poorly rewarded jobs. And behind
these people there were wives and husbands, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, who
were waiting at home and who might ask at the end of the day: “Have you heard from
her yet?” The
her
was Isabel. That weighed heavily.

Already she had one letter of rejection to write, and would have to do it that morning.
She had received three reports on a paper submitted for a special issue of the
Review
that would be concentrating on the ethical issues surrounding adoption. These issues
were manifold and more complex than one might imagine. There was the right to know
parentage, widely accepted now and the subject of a very good paper from someone at
Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina. They would publish that, and she
would write a response to this effect later that morning. That was easy.

Then there was a paper on surrogacy and the finality of the mother’s consent. Should
a surrogate mother be allowed to change her mind after the birth of the “commissioned”
child? Could she refuse to hand over the child fathered by one of the prospective
parents? Isabel imagined the scene and had made her mind up on that. Of course she
could: you could never snatch a child from its natural mother, no matter what pieces
of paper had been signed while the child was in utero. No, you could never do that.
But, asked the author of the paper, what of the rights of the father, or indeed of
the child? Teleologically speaking … Isabel sighed. No, one could not obscure the
issue by bringing in teleology. Mothers were mothers, and being
a mother meant that you had a right against all the world in respect of the baby that
had been part of you, within you, for months. No amount of philosophising could change
that fundamental, bedrock fact.

This paper was provocative and well argued, and both reviewers had agreed that it
should be published. So that presented no problems; but … Isabel picked up the file
that she had been subconsciously avoiding since entering her study that morning. The
topic was difficult, and one that had been the subject of some debate in the newspapers.
That fact alone meant that it deserved a place in the
Review of Applied Ethics
which was, after all, heralded by its very title as being involved in the day-to-day
world. “Should children be placed with families of a different ethnic group?” Isabel’s
initial reaction to the question had been one of puzzlement. Surely there was no reason
why this should not be done: loving homes and families had nothing to do with ethnic
groups. But then the complications, and the doubts, introduced themselves. What if
there were two sets of prospective parents—each belonging to a different group—or,
more likely, the choice was between remaining in a children’s home or being adopted
by parents from a different background? The solution, Isabel thought, would be to
ignore ethnicity altogether and concentrate on the home life that the child might
expect. Love was love, no matter in what social context it was offered. But not everybody
felt that, it seemed, and there were those who argued that taking a child out of its
community was to deprive it of a heritage; more than that, it could imply that one
group was actually preferable to another.

The paper on this subject was well presented and the argument was cogent. It defended
the implicit rejection in many parts of Canada of the adoption of native Canadian
children
into non-native families. The previous taking of native children out of their communities
was a form of cultural genocide, the author argued, and was responsible for cutting
off many children from their culture and roots. Isabel was aware of that shameful
past and could see the argument against allowing its continuation, even in an attenuated,
less culturally arrogant form. She saw that, but the two reviewers did not, and one
of these was Professor Lettuce.

Does the author of this paper really suggest
, his report asked,
that it would be better for a child to stay in an institution for its entire childhood—as
happens, I believe, only too often—rather than be given the chance of a life in a
non-native home, with loving parents and all the benefits and chances that go with
having loving parents? If he does, then I disagree most profoundly and would recommend
strongly against the publication of a paper with such a heartless message at its core
.

The other reviewer had been less bombastic, but had still been against publication.
I’m not impressed with the author’s conclusion that the appalling schemes of the past,
where native children were snatched from their parents, have much bearing on modern,
child-centred adoption regimes. Nobody is taking these children from their mothers
or communities. They are taking them from children’s homes. Should ideology stand
in the way of a child’s happiness?