“Isabel!”
She continued to walk, but he grabbed the sleeve of her coat and pulled her towards him. The strength of his tug almost made her trip, but she righted herself.
“Please leave me.”
“No. I won’t. What’s wrong?”
She drew in her breath. “Leave me, you have to go and meet Nick Smart.”
He stared at her in astonishment. “Who?”
“Nick. That composer. The one we met at the Queen’s Hall.”
He frowned. “But I’m not. I’m meant to be seeing Tom Martin. He’s got the music for a recording we’re doing for Paul Baxter. Delphian Records. You’ve met him.”
She tried to remember what Nick had said. I’m seeing him later. Later that evening, or…People used the word later in different ways. Later could be next week, for all she knew.
She turned to him. Jamie was looking at her with a puzzled, almost hurt expression, and she knew at once that she had made a mistake.
“I’m sorry—” she began.
But he interrupted her. “Why did you think I was going to meet Nick? What gave you that idea?”
She realised that there was an implicit accusation in what she had said; an accusation that could be devastating.
“He spoke to me before the curtain went up,” she said. “He said he’d be seeing you later.”
He said nothing for a moment. He had been carrying his bassoon case, but had put it down when he had seized her. Now he picked it up with one hand and linked his other arm through hers.
“Let’s walk.”
She pointed at the case. “You can’t carry that all the way across the Meadows.”
“I can.”
“I’ll help you.”
They walked past the entrance to the Faculty of Music. A light was burning inside, in a high window; a practice room perhaps.
“If Nick said that he was seeing me later,” Jamie said, “he didn’t mean tonight. He meant some other time.”
Isabel affected nonchalance. “Oh, I see.”
Jamie looked at her enquiringly. “You don’t like him, do you?”
She hesitated. “I wouldn’t choose him as a friend.”
“For me or for you? A friend for me or for you?”
She had to be careful. “I wouldn’t want to choose your friends for you. They’re your business, not mine.”
He took a few moments to ponder this. “Nick may not be easy,” he said. “But I don’t want to be unkind to him. And he’s helping me with something.”
She waited for him to continue.
“You know I’m a hopeless composer,” he said. “I’ve studied composition, of course. We all had to. But it’s just not something that I’ve ever really had a talent for. And so I asked him to help me with something that I’d been working on for months, but getting nowhere with. And he did. He’s been knocking it into shape for me.”
She glanced at him. He was transferring the bassoon case from one hand to the other. “Let me carry it just for a little while.”
He rejected her help with a shake of the head. “It could be worse,” he said. “It could be the contra.”
She felt relieved by what he had said about Nick, but her curiosity was still nagging away at her. She had once heard something that he had written, a small bassoon solo, and she had liked it. But it had had no end, and he had explained that he could not think of how to resolve it. “There are rules for resolution,” he said. “But they don’t seem to be working.”
“What are you writing?” she asked. She tried to make the question sound casual.
Jamie sighed. “I didn’t want to tell you. But I think that since you appear to be…well, a little bit jealous, I suppose I should.”
“I’m not jealous.” It sounded unconvincing, and that, she decided, was because she was jealous. “Well, I am, actually.”
He smiled. “And do you know something? I’m glad that you’re jealous. I’m glad that you resent my spending time with other people. It’s nice to be…to be wanted like that.”
She was surprised. She had imagined that he would resent possessiveness on her part; instead, it seemed that he was flattered by it. She had misread everything—again. She had imagined that Nick Smart had some sort of appeal for him, but it was just Jamie’s kindness, that was all. Then she had been so careful, all along, right from the beginning of their relationship, not to appear as if she wanted to monopolise him, and now he said that he rather liked the idea of her wanting him all to herself. One can be wrong, she thought. One can be wrong about so much.
“Anyway,” Jamie continued, “I’m going to tell you. I’ve been working on a piece for you. An Isabel piece. For the second anniversary of our…our getting together. That’s what.”
JAMIE’S RESOLVE to carry the bassoon all the way back weakened at the edge of the Meadows, when they reached the point where the drive bisected the park. In the distance, the reassuring yellow light of a taxi wove its way towards them, and he made the decision; Isabel, who was herself tired, did not object. Within five minutes they were back at the house and Jamie paid off the taxi while Isabel went to open the front door.
Grace was full of indignation. She had been watching a television programme in which the expenses claims of a random group of parliamentarians had been scrutinised. One claimed, quite within the rules, a substantial sum for the removal of algae from his garden pond. Another had employed a number of relatives, none of whom struck her as being particularly qualified for their jobs.
“Our money,” snapped Grace.
“I think the removal of algae sounds ridiculous,” Jamie said.
“Of course to admit to algae is something,” Isabel mused. “I’m not sure that I’d actually admit to having algae.”
Jamie’s face broke into a smile. It was a typical Isabel remark, and he found it very funny. He had no idea why it should be in the slightest bit amusing, but it was. Grace did not think so.
“It wasn’t him that had the algae. It was his garden pond.” she said. “But I don’t see why the taxpayers should pay for that.”
The conversation switched to Charlie. He had been as good as gold. She had read him the story about the caterpillar that consumed everything in sight, and he appeared to have understood it. He had grabbed the book and torn one of the pages, but she had stuck it together again. Then he had gone to bed and went off to sleep without protest.
Isabel said good-bye to Grace at the front door and returned to the kitchen, where Jamie was standing in the middle of the floor, his arms stretched up, yawning. He lowered his arms and embraced her.
“I was having a stretch,” he said. And then, “You’re the most wonderful woman, you know.”
She felt his arms about her. He was lithe, like a sapling; spare. He was everything she desired; so beautiful in this, and every, light; so tender.
He kissed her and ran his hand down her back.
“Upstairs,” she said.
He switched off the kitchen light and they moved, hand in hand, to the foot of the stairs. Then Charlie started to wail, the sound drifting down from upstairs, a piercing, insistent howl.
She looked at Jamie and began to laugh.
“As between the claims of passion on the one hand,” she said, “and on the other the claims of a child’s crying—which are we programmed to respond to first? Which is the most urgent?”
“Passion?” ventured Jamie, but not seriously.
“I’m afraid not,” said Isabel. Her answer was the one that any woman would give, but not, she thought, any man.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
OF ALL THE TASKS involved in running the delicatessen, Isabel most enjoyed preparing Cat’s Special Mixture. This was convenient, as Eddie disliked anything to do with fish—“Why don’t they close their eyes when they die?” he had said, in serious objection—and Cat’s Special Mixture involved that fishiest of fish, anchovies. It was largely composed of olives, though: green olives that were pitted, chopped in half, and then mixed in colourful promiscuity with strips of red and yellow pepper. The whole was then marinated, with the anchovies, in extra-virgin olive oil, and the resulting mix was placed in a large bowl. It was not to everyone’s taste—and certainly not to Eddie’s—but Isabel enjoyed both making and eating it. And it helped her to think, she decided, sitting there with her hands covered in oil and the smell of anchovy in her nostrils.