The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (20 page)

“Do you think so?”

“Oh yes. Or close her down for a while. I know somebody whose butcher was shut for two weeks by those food hygiene people.”

Isabel winced. “If that’s going to happen, then it’s going to happen. Remember that I’m the victim here, not Cat. I was the one who was poisoned.”

He nodded his agreement. “Yes, but also remember that Cat doesn’t always see things in quite the same way as others do.”

Isabel knew that was true. “We’ll see,” she said.

“Yes,” said Jamie. “But, look, don’t worry. She can’t bite your head off.”

“She can try,” said Isabel.

Jamie glanced at his watch and pointed upstairs. Charlie would wake up from his afternoon sleep in a few minutes, if he had not already done so, and Jamie was planning to take him down to the canal at Harrison Bridge. A small flock of over-privileged ducks, fed to bursting point by visitors, had established itself along the canal bank, and Charlie loved throwing them bread. Afterwards, Jamie planned to take him into town by bus; Charlie delighted in travelling on the top deck of buses and would do so, uncomplainingly, for long periods, fascinated by this first-storey view of the city.

Isabel consulted the scrap of paper on which Jamie had noted Catherine Succoth’s number. She was not sure whether the judge would be at home in the mid-afternoon, but she could leave a message if she was out. The number, though, was not her home one, being answered by a court secretary. Yes, Lady Succoth might be available; he would check.

Isabel was put through. “I’m sorry I didn’t call back yesterday,” she said. “I got your message only today. My … my fiancé forgot to tell me.”

The judge laughed. “Men.”

“Yes, men.”

Isabel waited.

“Would it be possible to see you?” asked Catherine. “I can imagine that you’re very busy but there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

Isabel wondered whether the judge really believed that she was busy, or whether she was just being polite. It was easy to imagine the judge thinking that a philosopher would have time on her hands; most people thought that, after all, and Isabel had given up explaining that editing the
Review of Applied Ethics
was a real job that made real demands on her time. And she ran a house, too; made meals; looked after a young child, even if she had a housekeeper, which for most people, again, sounded like the height of privilege, of self-indulgence. It was not really; Grace was a high-maintenance housekeeper and Isabel kept her on because she believed that it was her duty to do so, Grace having worked for her father. It was her business, anyway, how she spent her money, and her time, and she had no obligation to justify herself …

“Dr. Dalhousie?”

“Yes, I’m still here.” She noticed the use of the doctoral title. Had the judge been checking up on her?

“Would you mind if I popped in to see you?”

Isabel assured her that she would not mind at all.

That afternoon—was there any chance of seeing her that afternoon? It was no notice, of course, but the judge was not sitting in court and could come to see her if Isabel had a few minutes, just a few minutes.

Isabel suggested that they meet for a cup of tea in the Elephant House, a café on George IV Bridge that was close to Parliament Square, where the judges had their chambers. She had been planning to call in at a bookshop on South Bridge and she could kill two birds with one stone. In using that metaphor, she wondered whether it would eventually be replaced by something else. People no longer killed birds with stones—or not in Scotland. People fired at them, or blasted them out of the sky, but did not kill them with stones. Metaphors were so bloody: people shot messengers, flogged dead horses, cut the throats of their competitors. Perhaps that was life; perhaps that was what it was really like.

Catherine sounded grateful. Isabel was going to ask her what it was that she wanted to discuss, but held back. She imagined that it had to do with Jane’s search. Did the judge want to find out the outcome? She had revealed that it was Rory Cameron who had been Clara’s boyfriend; was she now curious as to what had happened? Or did Catherine want to speak about something altogether different?

Was she perhaps going to ask Isabel to serve on some committee? People were always looking for volunteers to serve on the committees of their various causes, and Isabel did her fair share of that. She had no idea what Catherine Succoth’s charitable interests were, but she was bound to be the chairman of something or other. The lifeboats? Too obvious. Everybody supported the lifeboats, which raised vast amounts of money without having to do much persuading. It was because Britain was an island, perhaps, and its inhabitants felt a deep-seated need to know that there were lifeboats at the ready. Donkeys in North Africa? There was widespread outrage at the way donkeys were treated there, and the donkey charities did very well. There would be donkey committees in Edinburgh, no doubt, and they needed members, but again she did not quite see Catherine Succoth becoming exercised over the discomforts of Tunisian donkeys.

What about distressed gentlefolk? They, too, had their charity, which gave stipends in appropriate cases—a worthy cause, of course—even if quaintly named. She pictured the distressed gentlefolk, a rather quiet, uncomplaining group of people, looking slightly pained at their distress but not wanting to make a fuss, lining up politely for their stipends in their increasingly threadbare tweeds and outmoded skirts.

She decided to walk. The day, which had begun in a blustery fashion, had turned still and somnolent. There was a buttery feel to the air—or so Isabel felt; Jamie had heard her describe summer weather in those terms and had been puzzled.

“Butter?”

She had explained how she reacted to the dappled sunlight in the Meadows, where the trees, in full leaf, were touched with gold: butter, she thought.

She looked at the skyline, at the crags and peaks of the Victorian buildings, at the spikes. “We are a spiky city,” somebody had once said to her. “Our skyline says it all.” And it was true, she decided: a skyline reveals a city’s purpose and character. Oxford had its dreaming spires; Manhattan its glittering towers; Edinburgh its eccentric spikes. And that, perhaps, is what we are, she thought. We are not a culture of smooth curves; Scotland was a
vertical
place, a landscape of crags, both metaphorical and real.

She reached the Elephant House ten minutes early. She expected that Catherine Succoth would be punctual—she gave that impression—and she was right. At precisely the time she had suggested, Isabel saw the judge come into the café and look about her. She noticed how Catherine entered the room confidently, with an air of authority. It was because of her office, Isabel thought; when you are a judge people stand up when you enter the court, and you must get used to it.

“I hope I’m not late.”

“Of course not. I was early. I walked across the Meadows, enjoying this …” Isabel gestured towards the window and the light outside.

Catherine sat down, smoothing her black skirt as she did so. She was, thought Isabel, the image of the sombre professional woman. She would have to be, Isabel supposed, at least while in chambers; on the bench Scottish judges wore red, providing a splash of colour. Would red suit Catherine Succoth? It would, she reckoned, although it was bound not to suit many with different colouring.

The café was busy, but Isabel had found a table near the window where they were sufficiently far away from others to be able to talk in privacy. Their nearest neighbour, a bearded man of scholarly appearance, was preoccupied with sorting out an unruly sheaf of notes. The Elephant House was more or less opposite the National Library of Scotland and served the scholars who populated its reading rooms. This man was one, Isabel thought, and she wondered what lonely furrow of scholarship he ploughed. History, perhaps. Something obscure: the history of trade between Scotland and the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The notes were about merchants’ records. Quantities of dried fish and wool transported from Fife. Salt. Lime. Wood for Dutch shipbuilders. Nails.

Catherine noticed Isabel’s glance. “He’s an historian,” she whispered. “I have one of his books. I’ve never read it.”

Isabel smiled. “I guessed he was.”

“Trade routes,” said Catherine. “Interesting … if you’re interested in that sort of thing.”

Isabel wondered how Catherine knew what she had only guessed. She would not tell Grace, because Grace would immediately say that it did not surprise her in the least. She would explain it in terms of telepathy, or something like that, whereas, as Isabel knew, it was merely sheer coincidence. It was quite within the bounds of possibility that there should be an economic historian sitting in the Elephant House and that a philosopher should come in and speculate, correctly, as to what the historian’s calling was.

Then Catherine said, “Actually, no. I’m wrong. I’m mixing him up. He’s somebody else altogether. He looks like the person I was thinking about, but he isn’t.”

Isabel nodded. “Oh well …”

Catherine took a spectacle case out of her pocket and laid it on the table, then put it back. Isabel noticed this. She’s nervous, she thought.

“I’ll come straight to the point. I want to apologise to you.”

Isabel frowned. “I’m sure you’ve got nothing to apologise for. I—”

Catherine interrupted her. “I do,” she said simply. “I have to apologise for not telling you the truth.”

Isabel said nothing.

“When you came to see me the other day,” Catherine continued, “you had the good grace to confess to me that you had not told me the real reason for your visit. I had reached that conclusion anyway, but it was good of you to tell me.”

“I felt bad,” said Isabel. “I don’t like deception.”

Catherine seemed to weigh this. “Who does?” she said after a while. “I have to listen to deception all the time. When I sit on the bench at a criminal trial, I have to listen to lie after lie. The only consolation, I suppose, is that one develops the ability to tell the difference between truth and lies. They sound quite different, you know.”

“You develop antennae?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Or you could say you develop a nose. Same thing.”

Catherine looked away. She cannot meet my eye, Isabel thought.

“You came to me to tender your apology, and all the time I was standing there thinking,
I’m misleading you
. And yet I said nothing. I failed to tell you that the affair that Clara had with Rory Cameron was nothing. She went out with him briefly, I think, but she never really loved him. I don’t even know whether she slept with him. Possibly. Possibly not.”

“But she did sleep with somebody?”

Isabel’s question was blunt. The judge turned to face her. Now she held her gaze; Isabel saw that her hazel eyes were full of regret.
This woman is consumed by sadness
, she said to herself. Oh, Catherine, I understand.

Isabel answered her own question. “Alastair Rankeillor,” she said quietly.

The judge froze. “How did you know?”

Isabel could not answer, she was not sure how she knew. But if she tried to work it out, she imagined that it would be clear enough. She knew that Catherine had been in love with Alastair. She knew that there had to be some reason for her to conceal the facts. And for a woman like this to be concerned with Jane’s quest—the quest of somebody she had not even met—it had to be a powerful reason.

“I should have told you,” Catherine went on. “I should have said something, but …” She hesitated.

“But you didn’t want to say anything that could implicate Alastair?”

“If implicate is the word. Are you implicated in the existence of your child? I was concerned to protect him from an awkward disclosure. I imagine that not everybody wants to hear about long-lost children. Certainly, I don’t think that Alastair is the type to welcome such news.”

Isabel agreed. “Perhaps not. But then … then there’s the child to think about, isn’t there? In this case not a child, but a woman in search of her father.”

Catherine sighed. “I know, I know. It’s just that …” She stopped.

Isabel waited.

“It’s just that I love him, Dr. Dalhousie. I have loved Alastair Rankeillor from the moment I first met him all those years ago in a student flat in Buccleuch Place. I loved him with a yearning that I can’t even begin to find the words to express. It was like a pain. When he left me I felt so raw and empty I thought there was no point in continuing with anything. Outwardly, I recovered, but not inwardly, not deep down. I thought about nobody else, nobody, and even now I think about him every day, every single day.” She fixed Isabel with her gaze. “Isn’t that really rather pathetic? To live one’s life fixated on another person who’s gone off, left you; who’s out of reach? Isn’t that a complete waste of a life?”

Such questions are often rhetorical, but Isabel felt that Catherine expected an answer.

“You’re asking me what I think of that?”

Catherine nodded.

“I don’t think it at all pathetic,” said Isabel gently. “I think that there are many of us who go through a very similar experience, who lead our lives in the shadow of that which we have lost. It may be a place, it may be a person. But the effect is the same.”

Catherine was listening to Isabel as if she wanted to believe what she was hearing. The confident judge was gone; the vulnerable, heart-injured woman had taken her place.

“We’ve all lost something,” Isabel said. “Of course we have. That’s because our first glimpse of love is usually unrequited, or doesn’t last very long. And then we think we’ve had our chance and we’re never going to get the same chance again.”

“I’ve never believed that,” said Catherine. “I’ve never thought that you fall in love only once.”

“Neither have I,” said Isabel. “But what I do believe is that many of us have, usually when we are quite young, a passion, a falling in love—call it what you will—that is of very great intensity. And for some of it, it becomes the measure against which we judge everything that happens to us after.”

“That’s me,” said Catherine.