Isabel felt that she could not let this pass. And she had been right; he was condescending. “I just don’t agree with that,” she said. “Not in the slightest. Most people are reasonably happy. They may not be ecstatic over their lot, but they’re happy enough to carry on. Look at us in this room tonight. Do you think most people here are unhappy?”
She looked around the table. The dinner party was in full swing and the noise level had risen as a series of animated conversations got under way. There was laughter, candlelight, and the glint of silver.
The doctor followed her gaze. Then he turned to her, his head inclined to allow for a discreet aside, although there was no danger of being overheard amidst the general hubbub. “Happy?” he said. “Do you really think so? If I look round this table, I can identify three cases of extreme unhappiness. Yes. Three.”
Isabel said nothing, and the doctor continued: “That man at the end of the table there is married to that woman over there. I take it that you don’t know them? Well, he’s having an affair with some younger woman down in London. His wife is furious and, naturally enough, very unhappy about it. He’s unhappy because he can’t go to London and live with his mistress because he has a business up here in Scotland. And a family. Bleak, I’d say.
“And then,” he went on, “that poor woman on the other side of Colin…”
Isabel glanced anxiously to her right. It occurred to her that the doctor had drunk too much wine and become disinhibited.
“No, don’t worry,” the doctor said. “Nobody can hear. She’s called Stella Moncrieff. And you may have noticed that she’s here by herself. She has a husband, though; they live in one of the flats down below. And right at this moment, I imagine, her husband is sitting down there by himself, thinking of what’s going on a few floors up.”
“Why isn’t—”
“Why isn’t he here?” the doctor interrupted. “It’s shame. She goes out by herself. He’s too ashamed to go anywhere. Nobody sees him anymore. Never shows up at the golf club—he used to play off a handicap of four. Never goes to the theatre, opera, what have you—nowhere. And all because the poor man’s ashamed of what he’s accused of doing.” He paused and reached for his glass. “Although I, for one, take the view that he’s entirely innocent. He didn’t do it. But that doesn’t make things any better.”
Isabel was about to ask what it was that he had done when the conversation suddenly shifted. Colin, who had been busy with his neighbour, turned to Isabel and asked her about the journal she edited. “Do many people read it?” he asked.
Pride made Isabel want to say that they did, but truthfulness intervened. “Not many,” she said. “In fact, sometimes we publish papers that I suspect next to nobody reads.”
“Then why publish them?” asked the doctor.
Isabel turned to him. “A simple utilitarian reason,” she said evenly. “Because it adds to happiness. In a very small way, but it does.” She paused. “And then, there are some conversations that may have very few participants, but which are worth having anyway.”
The doctor stared at her for a moment, and then looked down at his plate. On the other side of the table, Jamie caught Isabel’s eye; his look flashed her a message, but she could not make out what it was. It might have been Help, but then it might equally have been What are we doing here? Of one thing, though, she was certain: it was not I’m enjoying myself.
The doctor, looking up, witnessed the exchange, and threw a quick glance at Isabel.
“That’s Jamie,” whispered Isabel. “He’s here with me. And I can assure you that if he’s unhappy it’s a purely temporary condition.”
CHAPTER TWO
RAMSAY GARDEN,” said Isabel.
“Gardens,” corrected Grace, her housekeeper. Grace was punctilious in all matters and would not hesitate to point out mistakes, whether made by her employer or by anybody else. She was particularly fond of correcting politicians, whose pronouncements she weighed with great care, searching for inconsistencies—and for half-truths—of which she said she found many.
This time she was wrong. “Actually it’s Garden,” said Isabel. “Singular. Probably because the houses were built up around a small garden.”
Grace was glowering at her, but Isabel continued: “Mr. Ramsay’s garden, no doubt. The poet, that is, not his son the painter. He had a house there, I understand. He came to Edinburgh as a wigmaker and did extremely well. Then he became a bookseller and his son became an artist.”
Grace was tight-lipped. “I see.”
They were in the kitchen of Isabel’s house, Grace having just arrived for work. She had found Isabel at the table, the Scotsman crossword in front of her, a cup of coffee at her side. Grace regarded crosswords as a form of addiction, to be handled with the same caution as alcohol, and in her eyes to do a crossword so early in the morning seemed akin to taking a glass of whisky with one’s breakfast. And now, of course, there were sudokus, an even more dangerously addictive pursuit, although she had not seen Isabel stray over to them just yet.
There was no sign of Charlie, apart, that is, from a small red fire engine and an already-battered stuffed bear propped up against the leg of a chair. His absence, though, was quite normaclass="underline" Charlie was a child of habit, and he awoke every morning at five forty-five more or less exactly. Isabel would give him his breakfast and play with him for precisely two hours, when, with the same regularity with which Immanuel Kant took his daily walk in Königsberg, Charlie would begin to yawn. By the time Grace arrived he would be sound asleep, and would remain in that state until nine thirty, when he would awake with a hungry howl.
Isabel had adjusted remarkably quickly to these early starts to the day. She reminded herself that there were parents whose day began much earlier. At the informal mothers and toddlers group that she attended at the coffee bar at the top of Morning-side Road, there was a mother who was wakened each morning at three by a hyperactive son; she at least did not have to contend with that. And there was another respect in which she knew that she was inestimably privileged. She had Grace to help her with Charlie during the day, and Jamie, of course, to help her in the evenings. And when it came to babysitting, as it had the previous night, there was a sixteen-year-old girl farther down the street who was always available and keen to earn a little pin money. Nobody else in the mothers and toddlers group was in that position, and so Isabel was discreet; Grace had never been mentioned in that company, although, if asked, she would have admitted that she had help. Wealth, thought Isabel, was something that should not be flaunted—even indirectly—but one should not lie.
“And did you enjoy it?” Grace asked, moving to the sink, where a few cups had accumulated.
“Oh, it was the usual sort of dinner party,” Isabel said. “A fair amount of gossip. Chitchat. And we didn’t particularly enjoy it. In fact, Jamie didn’t enjoy it at all.”
She looked at Grace, and found herself wondering whether the other woman ever had meals with friends. Grace lived by herself; there had been a man, some time ago, but he was never mentioned, and Isabel realised that she did not want to talk about him. Once, only once, had Grace mentioned him, and had been on the point of saying more, but tears had intervened and the subject was dropped. He had been unfaithful, Isabel assumed, or merely indifferent perhaps; hearts can be broken in so many different ways.
Grace had friends, but Isabel was not sure whether they were the sort to meet one another for dinner; somehow she thought they were not. Many of these friends, although not all, were members of the spiritualist circle to which Grace belonged, and Isabel felt as if she knew them from the accounts which Grace gave of their meetings. The previous evening, for instance, when she and Jamie had been at the dinner in Ramsay Garden, Grace had been at a spiritualist meeting, and one of her friends, Georgina, had received a message.