“It’s a return to the womb,” said Isabel. “It’s how we felt once and how we want to feel again.”
She had not thought about it, but it sounded right, and was probably true. The living of our lives involved loss; loss at every point. Perhaps Charlie really did remember the comfort of the womb; it was not all that long ago, in his case. And what did she want to recover? Did she want her mother back, her sainted American mother? Or her father? Or the feeling of freedom and excitement she had experienced when first she went to Cambridge?
She looked at Jamie as he left the room, heading upstairs to the bath that he would run for Charlie. There would come a time, no doubt, when she would think back to these moments and regret them; not in the sense of wishing they had never been, but regret them in the sense of wishing them back into existence.
She followed Jamie upstairs. A line came to her, a snatch of poetry: John Betjeman, of all people, a snuffly romantic, who could write about love, though, with heart-stopping effect. There had been his Irish Unionist’s farewell to the woman he loved; Irish Unionists, she thought, have not had their fair share of poetry—all the best lines were claimed by the republican-minded Irish. But Irish Unionists fell in love and suffered for love in the same way as everybody else did, and could feel that they were in danger of drowning in love, as anybody could, and as she felt now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EDDIE SEEMED a different person. The blue jeans had been replaced with black ones—formal wear, thought Isabel, wryly—and the tee-shirt had yielded to a roll-top sweater in the green that Isabel’s father had always described as British Racing. His face looked scrubbed, his hair combed and damp, as if freshly sprinkled with water.
“You’re looking very smart, Eddie,” she said as she let him in the front door.
The compliment pleased him. He had looked uncertain when she had opened the door; now he smiled.
“I saw a fox, you know,” he said as he stepped into the hall. “Right outside. On the path. That far away from me. Just that far.”
“Brother Fox,” said Isabel. “He lives somewhere around here. We are in his territory. Did he look at you?”
Eddie nodded. “He didn’t seem frightened. He looked at me like this.” And here he made a face, narrowing his eyes. How like Brother Fox he looks, thought Isabel.
“He watches us,” said Isabel. “And he keeps other, less friendly foxes away.” She paused. “Sometimes I wish I could introduce him to the Duke of Buccleuch. He has a fox hunt, you know, down in the Borders. They need to talk.”
Eddie looked at Isabel in puzzlement; she said some very strange things, he thought. And her house…he looked about in awe.
“You’ve got a big place,” he said.
She thought of Eddie’s circumstances. Cat had said something once about where he lived; he was still with his parents somewhere, she believed, somewhere down off Leith Walk. Eddie’s parents were elderly, she now remembered; he had been something of an afterthought.
“It’s just a house,” she said.
He looked at her, as if expecting her to say something more.
“I mean, I’m used to it,” she went on. “I suppose it’s too large for me, but I’m just used to it. I don’t think of it as being big.” She sounded foolish; she should have said nothing. Those who live in big houses, she thought, should not apologise; it only makes matters worse.
“I wouldn’t know what to do in a place like this,” said Eddie. “I’d get lost.”
“Well, maybe.” She touched Eddie’s arm lightly. “Charlie would like to see you, I think. He’s just had his bath. Jamie’s with him.”
She led him upstairs. Eddie glanced at the paintings on the stairs and on the landing. “Are these all…all real?”
She smiled. “Yes, they’re real. If you mean are they actual paintings. Real paint. Not prints.”
“That’s what I meant.”
They were standing in front of a Peploe landscape. In the background she heard Charlie gurgling as Jamie uttered some nonsensical mantra. Eddie reached out as if to touch the painting, but checked himself.
“You can touch it if you like,” said Isabel. “It’s quite dry now.”
“Why are the hills blue like that?” asked Eddie.
She thought: Yes, that is a reasonable question to ask of the colourists, who saw the world in strong colours. Mull, and its hills, were blue; seen from the blue shores of Iona. “Because hills are often blue. Look at them. It’s the effect of the light.”
Eddie looked more closely at the picture. “Is this worth a lot of money?” he asked.
Isabel was momentarily taken aback. But she quickly recovered. She would have to be honest. “Yes, anything by Peploe is quite expensive these days. He’s a very highly sought-after artist. That’s what determines the price. Like Picasso. There’s nothing very special in a Picasso drawing, say, but it will still cost an awful lot of money.”
“How much?” asked Eddie.
“Picasso? Oh, well a drawing—a few lines dashed off on a sheet of paper—might be ten thousand pounds.”
“No, not that. This painting here. This Pep…Peploe.”
Isabel laughed, as much to cover her embarrassment as for any other reason. “I don’t think you should ask questions like that, Eddie. People don’t…don’t expect to be asked what things cost.”
She spoke gently, but her words silenced him. He looked down at the floor, and she immediately regretted what she had said.
She felt that she needed to explain. “Sorry, Eddie. You can ask me; of course you can ask me. It’s just that…well, you wouldn’t normally ask somebody else, somebody whom you didn’t really know.”
He bit his lip.
“I’ll tell you, if you like. Of course I’ll tell you. Although…” What would be the effect of his knowing? Envy? “I didn’t buy that painting; it belonged to my father. And he didn’t pay a great deal for it. Not in those days.”
He was still looking at the floor. She reached out and held his arm. “All right. If that went into an auction now, it would fetch more than one hundred thousand pounds. That’s what somebody told me, anyway.”
He looked up sharply. The offence that he had taken at her mild censure was now replaced by astonishment. “You could sell it for that? For more than a hundred thousand?”
She explained that she did not want to sell it.
“Why not? Think what you could do with a hundred thousand pounds.”
“Frankly, I can’t think of anything I’d spend it on. What do I need? I don’t want a new car. I’ve got a house. I’m lucky. I don’t need a hundred thousand pounds.”
She spoke freely, but as the words came out, again she felt that she was making a mistake. She did not need anything, but he did. He had no car, she assumed; and he certainly did not own a flat. I’m making it worse, she thought. But no, Eddie had not taken it in that way at all; he was thinking of something else. “So is that why you gave that man the cheese this afternoon? Because you don’t need to worry about money?”
She thought about this. He was probably right. If you had enough, you were more likely to be liberal to others; except, of course, as was always the case, for some. “Possibly,” she said.
“And what if I came to you and said, ‘Isabel, please give me five hundred pounds.’ What if I said that? Would you?”
She studied his expression, trying to work out whether he was asking for money. She decided that he was not.
“I’d give it to you. But I’d probably ask you first why you needed it. If you were in trouble, of course I’d give it to you.”
“Not lend it?”
“No. I’d give it.”
She watched him. His mouth twitched slightly; just slightly, at the edges of the lips. “Eddie? Do you need five hundred pounds? Is that what you’re telling me?”