“Of course not. And I’m sorry we didn’t have the chance to talk.”
She had been on the point of inviting Stella to the house but had stopped herself and suggested instead that they meet for a cup of coffee at Cat’s delicatessen. This would give her the ability to bring the meeting to an end when she wanted to; it was difficult to do so when the other person was a guest in one’s house; short of lying about having to go out, of course.
Now, as she stood before Cat’s window and stared admiringly at the imaginatively arranged display of foodstuffs, she found herself looking forward to the meeting with Stella Moncrieff. There was something to be discussed, she thought, and the most likely topic, surely, was the other woman’s husband and what had happened to him. Isabel’s curiosity had been aroused by what had been said to her at the dinner, and now, she thought, she would get a further explanation as to why he should be ashamed to show himself in public. The modern world was a tolerant place: even murderers brazened it out these days; they wrote their memoirs, telling all, and publishers fell upon them with delight. There was no shame there, she thought, unless the memoirs included an apology to the victims, which they usually did not; on the contrary, they sometimes blamed the victims, or the police, or their mothers, or even, in the case of one set of memoirs, the mothers of the police. Mothers, of course, were to blame for a great deal; Vienna had established that beyond all doubt. But that was another matter; the immediate question was that if shame had been so convincingly rendered old-fashioned, de trop, then why should anybody feel unable to attend a dinner party on the simple grounds that he stood accused of doing some nameless thing? And what could that have been? Some sexual peccadillo, no doubt, that made him seem ridiculous; some sad story of middle-aged loss of self-control, a momentary aberration, a little thing, probably, but enough to drive him into shamed retreat. The press, in particular, was cruel, rushing to cast the first stone, luxuriating in the humiliation of its victims.
She went inside. Although two of the four coffee tables in the corner were vacant, there were quite a few other customers examining or ordering food from the counter. Cat, who was serving cheese to a tall, rather angular woman, looked up when Isabel came in and smiled a greeting. Isabel smiled back; the days of open warfare in her relationship with Cat were over now, or so she hoped. Even if she seemed slightly remote from him, Cat had accepted the existence of Charlie and had forgiven Isabel for having him with Jamie, her former boyfriend. Nor did Cat resent Jamie’s presence in her aunt’s life, although Isabel was careful to avoid situations where she was together with Jamie in Cat’s presence, just to be on the safe side.
Isabel decided that Cat would be too busy over the next little while for them to talk, and so she made her way directly to one of the spare tables and sat down. There were always interesting overseas newspapers in Cat’s delicatessen, often Corriere della Sera, but sometimes examples that were more recondite, for Scotland at least: The Straits Times, The Globe and Mail, The Age, several days old, perhaps, but nonetheless interesting for that. Today she found a copy of The Washington Post dated four days previously, and she began to page through it, skipping over the political news of electoral campaigns that seemed to go on and on forever. There was a review of a new opera at the Kennedy Center, together with a picture of the composer and librettist at the premiere, alongside various society figures. The society figures dressed as expected, one of the women sporting a tiara and all of the men having that air of slick grooming and benevolence that accompanies real wealth. Rich people, thought Isabel, never look anxious in photographs; they look relaxed, assured, untouchable by the worries of lesser mortals.
“Isabel?”
She looked up. Eddie, Cat’s timid assistant in the delicatessen, the damaged boy who had been taken on and nurtured, was standing before her, wiping his hands on the floury-looking apron he was wearing. More progress, thought Isabel; there had been a time when Eddie had been unwilling to don the apron on the unexpressed grounds that it was unmascu-line, or those were the grounds that Cat and Isabel had inferred. Now he felt sufficiently sure of himself to wear it, and Isabel felt pleased. Little by little, whatever trauma it was that Eddie had experienced—and she had a good idea of its nature—was receding in the face of his increased confidence.
“Nice apron,” she said.
The words came out automatically, but it occurred to her just as automatically that she should not have said anything.
Eddie hesitated. He looked down at the apron and then looked up again. He smiled.
“It’s really for lassies.”
Isabel shook a finger at him playfully. “No, Eddie. We don’t say that sort of thing anymore. Men do women’s work, or what used to be women’s work, and vice versa. It’s the same with clothes.”
Eddie looked at her disbelievingly. “You mean that men wear women’s clothes? Dresses?”
Isabel shrugged. “Some do,” she began, and then laughed. “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant to say that the categories of what’s for men and what’s for women have blurred. We share so much now.”
Eddie decided that the conversation had gone far enough. “Are you going to have coffee?” he asked. “Cat said I wasn’t to keep you waiting.”
Isabel explained that she was expecting to be joined by somebody, but that he could bring her a coffee anyway if he did not mind coming back for a second order once her guest arrived. Eddie nodded.
“And what are you up to these days, Eddie?” she asked.
“The usual.” He paused. “Well, the usual, and something else. I’m taking a course.”
Isabel expressed her pleasure. She had hoped that Eddie would eventually get round to obtaining some sort of qualification. He was intelligent enough, she thought; once again it all came down to confidence. She enquired what the course was. He had once mentioned a catering certificate that one could start by post and then go on to finish at catering college. Was it that?
“Hypnotism,” announced Eddie.
Isabel stared at him. “Hypnotism?”
“Yes. I’ve been doing it for six weeks now. There’s one lecture a week—Thursday nights at college. You don’t get an actual certificate, but you do get a bit of paper at the end saying that you’re licensed to hypnotise people.”
Isabel thought this unlikely. “A licence? Surely not.”
Her disbelief took Eddie aback, and he started to become defensive. “It’s not the sort of hypnotism you see at those shows,” he said. “We don’t make people eat an onion and think that they’re eating an apple. We don’t make them see things that aren’t there.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Isabel. “I should hate to find myself eating a raw onion at your behest, Eddie.”
“It’s about hypnotising people to help them stop smoking or…or doing other things that they don’t want to. Bad habits. Hypnotism can cure bad habits.”
“I’m sure it can,” said Isabel.
“And past lives,” Eddie went on. “You can take people back to their past lives.”
Isabel thought: We’re in Grace’s territory now. Had Eddie been put up to this by Grace? “Are you sure?” She looked at him enquiringly and he inclined his head. He was perfectly serious.
“My friend Phil is in the class too,” said Eddie. “He allowed one of the girls—I forget her name—to regress him. I was there. I watched it. It was at Phil’s place after the class. We’d gone back there and Phil asked to be regressed.”
Intrigued in spite of herself, Isabel asked what Phil had been in his previous life. “A coal miner,” said Eddie. “A coal miner up in Fife. Somewhere near Lochgelly.”
That, thought Isabel, is progress. There were too many exotic previous incarnations; too many Egyptian princesses, too many figures of minor royalty, too many Napoleons, no doubt. A coal miner from Fife had the ring of authenticity about it.