“I’m seeing a dermatologist,” said Cat. “I have a spot and the GP said that …”
“Oh, Cat …”
“Listen, don’t panic. People have spots. She said that it looked absolutely fine to her but she suggested that I have it checked.”
“I know, I know. It’s just that …” And here she almost said, I could not bear to lose you, but did not. “It’s just that I always worry when people have medical appointments.”
“Well don’t,” said Cat. “Anyway, could you …”
“I’ll be there,” said Isabel. “Do you need me to open up?”
Eddie would do that, explained Cat, but it would be helpful if Isabel were able to arrive shortly thereafter. “He’s all right to begin with, but he gets really anxious if he’s in charge by himself for too long. You know how he is.”
Isabel did know. She was fond of Eddie, whom she had known for some years now, and she was used to his vulnerability, even if she had never been able to understand it. It seemed strange to her that a young man who looked robust enough should be so lacking in confidence as to be incapable of being left in charge of a delicatessen. But she realised that this was what anxiety was like—it knew no rhyme or reason; just as a fear of the dark cannot be assuaged by the pointing out that there was nothing there, anxiety could be without foundation.
Something had happened to Eddie—some dark thing—that Cat knew about, but that she would not explain to Isabel. Isabel had not pressed her; if Eddie had told her in confidence, then she would not want Cat to break that confidence. She could guess, though, and she assumed it was to do with sex, and with the shame that went with that. Her heart went out to Eddie; she wanted to wrap her arms about him and say to him that he should not feel ashamed, that whatever had happened to him was not his fault, it was no doing of his, and was no reflection on him. She wanted to say to him that such things happened to both men and women and that it did not mean he was less of a man for it. But she realised that there must have been people who had already said all these things to Eddie and it had made no difference. You did not erase horror and shame with a few words; it did not work that way.
Eddie had made some progress, of course. There had been a girlfriend, and even if she was not what Isabel might have wished for Eddie—she was a Goth, a follower of a fashion for pallid looks and dark clothes—he seemed to grow while she was with him. She had gone, Isabel understood, and she did not think that she had been replaced.
“Isabel?”
“Sorry. I was lost in thought.”
Cat was used to this. Isabel thought too much, she felt. “I said: Will Jamie be able to look after Charlie?”
Isabel was moderately surprised by Cat’s question. Her niece had experienced great difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that it was her aunt—even if Isabel was a very young aunt—who had taken up with her former boyfriend, and there had been a time when she would have scrupulously avoided any mention of Jamie’s name. But that had seemed to become much easier, as this question revealed.
“Yes,” she said. “Jamie will do it, or Grace can if Jamie is teaching. Either way, Charlie will be entertained.”
Arrangements were made, and that morning shortly after nine Isabel made her way along Merchiston Crescent to the delicatessen on Bruntsfield Place. It was a warm morning—June had eased itself into July with a grudging rising of temperature—and the foliage in the gardens along her route was in riot. She dodged a particularly ebullient climbing rose that had sent tendrils into the path of pedestrians; indeed, on one of these tendrils, snagged on a vicious-looking thorn, was a small fragment of blue material. A passerby had been caught, Isabel decided, and had lost a bit of a blouse or a shirt. She stopped, and gingerly took the piece of cloth from the thorn. No, she decided, if the owner of the garden was not going to cut back this impediment to the safe use of the pavement, then she would, before anyone lost an eye on one of those thorns. Reaching up, she took hold of the rose where it crossed the iron railings of the fence and bent it sharply to one side. The plant gave, but not enough; now the tendril pointed down towards the ground, discouraged but not detached.
“Excuse me!”
Isabel gave a start as she heard the voice from the garden.
“Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?”
A man came into view in the garden; a man somewhere in his fifties, she thought, holding a garden rake.
“Your climbing rose had sent a shoot out over the pavement,” said Isabel. “It’s a bit dangerous, I’m afraid. I was just pruning it for you.”
The man took a step forward. He was wearing a khaki shirt and there were large damp patches under the armpits. His complexion was florid, his face rather puffed. She thought that he looked as if he had suffered a stroke at some point, perhaps not all that long ago.
“You can’t do that and that,” he said gruffly. “That’s my rose and rose. You can’t break its stems like that. Who do you think you are, are?”
“It was over the pavement. It’s already caught somebody. Look—here’s a piece of cloth I’ve taken off one of the thorns. And it could cause real damage. Somebody could get poked in the eye.”
The man took another step forward. She could hear his breathing now; it was shallow and rather fast. He was not healthy, she thought.
“Rubbish,” he said, his voice rising. “Rubbish and rubbish. You can’t take other people’s and people’s roses and break and break them. You can’t and can’t.”
Isabel said nothing. The curious repetition of words that marked his speech was strangely unsettling.
“So, so just you leave my roses and roses alone,” said the man.
Isabel took a step backwards. She looked at the garden rake in his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe you could prune them just a bit.”
The man frowned. “Prune and prune,” he said. “Yes.”
She walked away. She felt raw after the encounter; he was clearly suffering from a neural condition of some sort, and she should not blame him for remonstrating with her, but it still left her feeling uneasy. The speech difficulties suggested that somewhere in his brain there were lesions or misplaced connections, or perhaps connections that were not there any more. She looked about her, at the stone buildings and the metal shapes of the cars parked along the road. All that was so solid and resilient, while our brains were such soft and living things. A few cells went out of order, forgot their function or died, and that marvellous gift of language went awry. A few more cells might go, and then a blood vessel, and that brought the hammer blows of death. Just a tiny membrane, the sides of a fragile vessel, stood between us and annihilation and disaster.
When she reached the delicatessen, she found Eddie behind the counter. He smiled cheerfully.
“Cat left a note,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
She told him about what had happened on the way in. “There was a rose that had grown across the pavement—sent out one of those long shoots. It was full of thorns, and so I tried to break it off. Its owner got very excited about it. He spoke rather strangely—repeated himself.”
“Oh, I know him,” said Eddie. “He comes in here. He asks for cheese and cheese. And when I give him his change he says, ‘And thank you and thank you and you.’ It’s weird.”
“Who is he?” asked Isabel.
“He told me his name once,” said Eddie. “I just remember the first part. Gerald, I think. Something like that. He told me his life history, but there were people waiting to be served and they started looking impatient. He worked in Amsterdam for many years, he said. He was something to do with the bank.”
“Which bank?” asked Isabel.
Eddie shrugged. “Some bank. His wife is Dutch, he said. But I’ve never seen her.”