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.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE 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?”