That was as much as she heard before she drifted back to sleep, and when she finally got out of bed at nine, the house was empty. The canal towpath was a good place to push Charlie in the new three-wheeled jogging stroller that they had recently acquired; they could go for miles, to Ratho, if they wished, and beyond. Isabel went downstairs in her dressing gown and opened the shutters in her study. The morning light on that side of the house was bright, and a band of it cut, butter-yellow, through the room, showing the particles of dust in their swirling dance. The air was not empty, she thought—nothing was.
The postman had come. He arrived early on Saturdays and considerately refrained from ringing the bell when he had a parcel, leaving it discreetly propped up against the door. “Your philosophy stuff,” he said of the bundles of manuscripts and proofs that found their way to her door. “Do you think I’d understand any of it? I doubt it.”
“You’d understand philosophy perfectly well, Billy,” she said. “Everybody’s a philosopher. You have views, don’t you?”
“Aye, I have my views.”
“Well, there you are then: you do philosophy. Would you like a copy of my journal—the philosophy magazine I edit? I can give you one.”
“No thank you.” And then, “That’s very kind of you, Isabel, but no thank you.”
On that morning, though, there were no parcels, but there were several large envelopes which were Review business, accompanied by a fistful of bills and a couple of personal letters. One of these letters was from an old school friend who lived in Cheltenham and wrote at irregular intervals to share with Isabel her complaints about her husband, a philanderer whom she perversely refused to leave. Isabel opened this letter with the usual heart-sinking feeling that her friend’s letters triggered.
I’m furious with Robert. He imagines that I don’t see a thing, but I see it all—he’s so transparent. He seems to be smitten with a dreadful blowsy woman who runs a small spaghetti restaurant down here. That’s all she cooks: spaghetti. In these days of more sophisticated tastes you’d think that the customers would want something a little bit more adventurous, but no, it’s just spaghetti. He went to Italy with her. He told me—promised me—that he was going to Rome on business, but what do I find in his shirt pocket when he comes back? Two boarding passes to Naples, one in his name and one in the name of la Spaghetti. And then he denied it. He said he had picked up another passenger’s boarding pass which he had found on the side of the basin in the plane’s loo. He had meant to hand it in, but forgot to so do. That’s what he said. Can you believe it, Isabel? Can you? That’s an excuse on a par with the famous The dog ate my homework, isn’t it?
It was a weak excuse, thought Isabel, but what if it were true? There were excuses that seemed extremely implausible, but which were actually true. There were, she imagined, dogs who did eat homework. It’s the sort of thing that a terrier might do; they often worried away at things they found lying around the house, and why not homework? She had known of a dog who had, in a single afternoon, polished off a box of chocolates (potentially fatal to dogs) and a set of stereo headphones. Such things happened. People did find boarding passes on planes and put them in their pockets with the best of intentions. And if one had such an excuse, and if it was genuine, then how must it feel not to be believed? But of course she did not believe him in this case.
She laid her friend’s letter aside. The husband would continue to philander and his wife would continue to complain about him. But they would stay together in their unhappiness, as people did. They remained. They endured.
The second letter was altogether more cheerful. Her psychiatrist friend, Richard Latcham, had found an article in a psychiatric journal which he thought might interest her. He had photocopied it and sent it to her. She paged through it: “The Psychopath and His Childhood.” Psychopathy starts very early, wrote the author. At six or seven, the psychopathic die is probably cast. There then followed several examples of well-known psychopaths: a famous newspaper proprietor, an actor, Lawrence of Arabia. There were photographs of them as boys, small boys, in shorts. Lawrence already looked cold; the newspaper proprietor already avaricious; the actor preternaturally vain and self-centred.
Isabel put the article down on a table and turned to Richard’s letter. “The enclosed should interest you. V. perceptive, I thought. And it goes to show how they’re all around us—psychopaths, Isabel. Watch out.”
And she suddenly thought: Marcus Moncrieff? He had been utterly indifferent to the rules of his own calling; he had been so proud. But he felt guilt—crippling, overwhelming guilt—and a psychopath would not have felt that. He would have simply got on with things; found something else. He would not have tortured himself over the death of the man in Glasgow.
She returned to Richard’s letter. He moved on from psychopaths and began to tell her about a dinner he had been to in Newmarket:
I drove over there in the Bristol. That’s the one you loved—remember it? It was the annual dinner of the Newmarket Society for the Apprehension of Felons and the Prevention of Crime. Yes, that’s what it really is called. It was founded in the nineteenth century and has just continued, although it doesn’t do anything about apprehending felons or preventing crime anymore. A lot of these societies forget about their original purpose, but still enjoy an annual dinner. Anyway, there I was with this group of lawyers and local businessmen and so on, and one of the committee members got up to say grace, as he always does each year: a mushroom compost manufacturer. He’s on the committee. And the grace he says is this: “They’re under starter’s orders…and they’re off.” And then he sits down. That’s what I like about this country, Isabel. It’s so utterly eccentric, so unpredictable.
Isabel looked at her watch. She had a feeling that Jamie and Charlie would be out for some time yet. Jamie sometimes walked down to his flat with Charlie to check up on mail; he might do that today. And once he was down there in Stockbridge, he often dropped into the Patisserie Florentin for breakfast and conversation with whoever might be there. Other fathers went there, he said, and talked while their children played about their feet. New men, of course, and to be encouraged.
She dressed, scribbled a note for Jamie should he come back early, and left for Bruntsfield. Cat had been back for a full week now, and although she had intended to drop in to see her, Isabel had not done so. Part of her hankered after the bustle of the delicatessen and would have traded her editor’s chair for the busy cheese counter. But another part knew that she was a philosopher at heart; that this is what she did, what she was most fulfilled doing. Perhaps the two could somehow be combined. There were philosophers’ cafés, of course, where people met and discussed philosophical issues. Isabel’s friend in Vancouver told her they were popular there and suggested that she set up one in Edinburgh. Perhaps a philosophers’ delicatessen, especially if Cat lost interest in the business and went off to Sri Lanka: Cheese and Philosophy, a place where people might come in, sample and buy cheese, and then join a discussion group. Eddie could assist, but would have to be taught the rudiments of philosophy first; just enough to prevent his letting slip that he thought Aristotle was a cheese. It could work, she thought, but it would have to join the list of things she would like to do one day, if she had time. And there never would be time now. Now there was Charlie, and Jamie, and the Review, for which she alone was responsible. As Charlie grew up there would be all his interests to take into account: his friends, his dance class…She stopped herself. Would Charlie dance? Why had she thought he would? She must be careful. Charlie was a boy—an entirely different creature from herself. She must open herself to the things that Charlie might be interested in as a boy: football, for example. And football left Isabel cold; she simply could not understand where the appeal lay in vying for the possession of a leather ball and kicking it. Did men need to kick things? She would ask Jamie. She had never seen him kicking anything, but perhaps he felt—in some deep, entirely masculine part of himself—the urge to kick something.