“Looks are nothing to do with it.” Isabel spat the words out.
“People tell themselves that. But who really believes it?”
“I do. People love others who are not at all prepossessing. Are you saying they don’t?”
Cat shook her head. She was not saying that; what she was saying, she explained, was that people made do with what they could get. Of course an unattractive person can be loved, but it is harder and they have to earn it. Whereas an attractive person is loved immediately and by any number of others. It was obvious, she said; obvious. Just look at couples. The beautiful fell for the beautiful, and got them; everybody else made do.
You silly, shallow woman, thought Isabel. You superficial … But her anger faded away in seconds; it was not real anger. Isabel would have been more outraged if it had not occurred to her at that moment that Cat was probably right. If Jamie had been as Cat described him, then it was at least possible that she would not have become involved with him; she might as well be honest with herself. But what a bleak conclusion that was: that it was the accident of looks that determined affection. Surely she was above such shallowness.
“Maybe not,” she said.
“Well, there you are,” said Cat.
They had moved on from the topic of looks, and Isabel had asked whether Cat’s friend was worried about her husband-to-be being sent off on active service. “We have so many small wars now,” she said. “The life of an army officer is not what it used to be. They used to play polo and go skiing; now they … well, they have to go out and get shot at. I suspect that not all of them appreciate that when they join the Army.”
“She says that she isn’t worried,” said Cat. “But I don’t believe her. Maybe these wars will end.”
Isabel doubted that. “There will always be another one, and another one after that. There’ll be no shortage of wars, I’m afraid. Has there ever been?”
At least these wars seemed increasingly to be fought by volunteers, she reflected, which was some consolation, even if not very great; and it was not a consolation that stood examination, being based on the assumption that they were real volunteers. Poverty and limited options were powerful recruiting sergeants, and neither of those burdens was exactly voluntary.
CAT WENT OFF to the wedding in London. Isabel left Charlie with Jamie and made her way to the delicatessen shortly after eight-thirty; that would give her time to grind coffee and make other preparations before she opened the front door at nine. There was always a busy period immediately after opening, during which regulars would snatch a morning cup of coffee. If she and Eddie had everything ready in advance, they could dispense coffee at the rate of one cup a minute; she had timed it once, in a time-and-motion mood, and announced the results to Cat, who had seemed unimpressed.
“But if you serve them so quickly,” Cat said, “then they won’t buy anything else. Their eyes will have no time to linger on chocolate and other essentials.”
“We could ask them whether they wanted any chocolate,” suggested Eddie. “That’s what they do in that place round the corner. They say: ‘Do you want a muffin this morning?’ And you shake your head and they look all disappointed.”
“I hate that,” said Isabel. “I hate people asking me if I want something else. If I wanted it, I would have asked. And quite frankly, I think it’s wrong in principle to implant muffin ideas in the minds of the public. For one thing, it undoes all the anti-muffin work of the government. They spend all that money on persuading us to eat healthy food and then along comes somebody asking whether we wouldn’t like a muffin.”
“What has the government got against muffins?” asked Eddie.
The discussion had proved inconclusive; Cat was aware of the fact that Isabel was unpaid for her help in the delicatessen, and you could hardly instruct somebody who was working for nothing, and who was, anyway, your aunt. So Isabel was left to serve coffee at the pace that she determined, and did so.
That morning, Eddie was in talkative mood. He supported a small football team from an obscure town in Fife—an arrangement that was the result of his father’s having been brought up there. This team, which bumped along the bottom of a secondary league, was of little distinction but could count on the near-fanatical loyalty of its supporters. Now, though, this support was being tested by a scandal that had even made the national papers. The team’s goalkeeper had been found to have taken a bribe to allow a goal through. The bribe had been sexual rather than monetary, the understanding being that if he allowed the goal he would be rewarded with the sexual favours of the girlfriend of one of the players in the opposing team. He had accepted this offer, but had not been duly rewarded—the girl in question said that she had never intended to carry out her side of the bargain. This had so outraged the goalkeeper that he had told his friends that he had been duped and that the young woman in question should feel ashamed of herself.
Isabel listened to this story with fascination. “He was perhaps a bit naive,” she remarked. “And talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Presumably that’s the end of his goal-keeping career.”
Eddie agreed. “He wasn’t much good anyway. But he shouldn’t have trusted her, should he? He should have made sure that she … well, that she carried out her part of the deal before he let the goal through. He was really stupid.”
Isabel, who was grinding coffee, momentarily stopped the machine. “But, Eddie, he shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
“No, he shouldn’t. But since he did, he should have done it differently.” Eddie paused. “And now everybody’s laughing at us. That’s what really gets me.”
“I’m very sorry.”
Eddie acknowledged the expression of sympathy. “It’s her fault,” he said. “No man can be expected to resist an offer like that, can he?”
Isabel shook the ground coffee into a jar. She glanced at Eddie. Was he suggesting that men are incapable of controlling themselves? She frowned: Was that what he really thought?
“Do you mean that?” she asked. “Do you really think he couldn’t have said no?”
He blushed. “I don’t mean that men shouldn’t say no to women like that. What I mean is that I blame the woman—I really do.”
Isabel said nothing. Perhaps that was the way Eddie saw the world, with women as temptresses, circling about vulnerable goalkeepers. She looked at her watch and signalled for Eddie to open the door. They could return to the subject later on—or perhaps not. Of course men could control themselves, and did so. Jamie did; the girl, Prue, who had set her sights on him had found that out. Poor girl … No, she thought; unfortunate, maybe, but calculating and prepared to steal a married, or almost married, man. But then so many people seemed utterly ruthless when it came to getting the person they wanted. Would she stand back if there were one person she wanted above all else, if she felt that this person was the only person in the world for her? Would she deny herself if it happened that the person she wanted belonged to somebody else? She was not sure. And that realisation depressed her as she served coffee that morning. When it came to those currents of the heart, who amongst us would not be prepared to do virtually anything to achieve what we wanted? People behaved like that all the time; reason, restraint, conscience—these were all small defences against the onslaught of passion, small defences against the tides of raw emotion that we all knew could so easily overwhelm us. And that had always been well understood by human society, which had put up all sorts of barriers against what it saw as destructive forces. Marriage, disapproval, self-deniaclass="underline" all cautionary responses to our human weakness, to the inescapable facts of human biology.