If there was sarcasm, intended or otherwise, in Isabel’s tone, then Jamie did not pick it up. “Yes,” he said. “He is impressive. And he suggested that we could work together on something. He’s interested in writing something for the bassoon and wants to try some ideas out on me.”
She absorbed this disclosure in silence. Of course it was perfectly reasonable that Jamie should work with other musicians and composers; of course he had to do that. But for some reason, she did not like the idea of his working with Nick Smart. She wanted Nick Smart to go away, to not be there.
She swallowed. “Good,” she said. “It sounds as if you’ll enjoy that.”
He’s without guile, she thought, and his reply had that note of boyish enthusiasm that so appealed to her. “Yes. I’m really excited about it. I love working with composers. And he’s the real thing, Isabel.” He picked up Charlie’s plate and scraped at the last vestiges of boiled egg. “But I can’t work out why he should want to work with me. Why me?”
Isabel looked at him, and looked away again sharply. She had an idea, but she would not spell it out for him. Not yet.
JAMIE HAD THE ENTIRE MORNING and part of the afternoon off. He had cut back on his teaching commitments recently in order to give himself more time for rehearsals and the occasional recording sessions that he had begun to do. This meant that he was also more available for Charlie, which of course Isabel encouraged, although Grace did not. Grace regarded herself as being responsible for Charlie during the day, in order to give Isabel time to devote herself to her work. Or that was how she dressed up her desire to keep Charlie to herself as much as possible. Fathers are all very well for when they’re older, she told herself, but when they’re small, as Charlie still is, they need women to look after them. Jamie picked up Grace’s unspoken jealousy, but sailed through it regardless.
That morning he would take Charlie to the museum, he decided. They could have something to eat in the cafeteria, and Charlie could be shown some of the working models of machinery, held up against the glass cases so that he could see the intricate whirring models within. He had watched these with some interest on the last occasion that Jamie had taken him there, although it was not clear whether he had the remotest idea of what was going on. A bassoon could equally well be a steam engine, and a steam engine a bassoon, thought Jamie, reflecting on the fact that for Charlie the world was probably just shapes and sounds.
Isabel had once remarked to Jamie that it would be interesting to know what would happen if a mysterious virus were to wipe out everybody older than four, leaving the world to infants and toddlers. Presumably all these small children would be like Charlie, faced with the models of machines, uncertain what everything was.
“Would we learn what everything was for?” she asked. “Or would we have to invent things all over again?”
“It would be one great feat of reverse engineering,” said Jamie.
Isabel was not so sure. “What about music notation?” she asked. “Would we eventually work out what musical scores meant, if we had nothing to base our knowledge on?”
Jamie thought we would, although he doubted whether anybody but the four-year-olds would stand a chance. “Those aged one, two, and three would pretty quickly fall by the wayside,” he said. “Because the four-year-olds, who might just be able to fend for themselves, would not do anything for the younger ones. Four is too young for altruism.”
She thought about this. Would it really be as William Golding had predicted in Lord of the Flies? The thesis behind that was that children left to their own devices reverted to savagery, but it was really just a mirror image of the savagery of the adult world; remove the adults and the children fell into tribalism and superstition. But if the resulting childish dystopia merely reflected the adult world, then what happened if one removed the adults—in other words, the authority figures—from the adult world? What if we really did kill God, what then? Would we all be rationally committed to the greater good, or would savagery be the norm? To kill God: the idea was absurd. If God existed, then he should be above being killed, by definition. But if he was just something in which we believed, or hoped, perhaps, killing him may be an act of cruelty that would rebound upon us; like telling small children that fairies were impossible, that Jack never had a beanstalk; or telling a teenager that love was an illusion, a chemical response to a chemical situation. There were things, she thought, which were probably true, but which we simply should not always acknowledge as true; novels, for example—always false, elaborately constructed deceptions, but we believed them to be true while we were reading them; we had to, as otherwise there was no point. One would read, and all the time as one read, one would say, mentally, He didn’t really.
But now Isabel had other things to think of. Charlie was going off with Jamie; Grace was tackling a large load of washing, somewhat grumpily, but tackling it nonetheless; and she had agreed to meet somebody for a cup of coffee at Cat’s delicatessen.
“Who are you seeing?” Jamie asked when she told him that she had the appointment. “Somebody about the Review?”
“No,” said Isabel. “It’s somebody we met at that dinner the other night. She was sitting on the same side of the table as you were. That woman who was there by herself. Stella Moncrieff.”
Jamie seemed largely uninterested. None of the guests had made an impression on him that evening, and he was unsure as to whom Isabel was talking about. “Oh yes.” He stood up to lift Charlie out of his high chair.
“Yes,” said Isabel.
He turned away from her, holding Charlie to him. Tiny fingers were grasping at his hand; there was sweet, milky breath on his cheek, soft breathing like that of a small animal. Words had such power, greater power, even, than music, and it still hurt him to hear Cat’s name; hurt him and filled him with a disconcerting feeling of excitement. Cat. It was a name redolent of desire, of sex—Cat. It still had that effect, when he knew that it should not, when he willed that it should become like any other name, stripped of its power to rekindle feelings that he did not want rekindled.
AS SHE WALKED along Merchiston Crescent, Isabel thought about what Jamie had said about Nick Smart. She should not become possessive; she knew that. It was the worst thing that she could possibly do, as it would be massively resented by Jamie if he were to detect it. If she was to keep Jamie, then she should not suffocate him; he had to have his freedom, had to have his own life, and that life included time spent with other musicians. I-Thou, she thought, remembering Martin Buber; the Thou has a part to it that I cannot possess. Neither could she expect to like all of Jamie’s friends, nor could he be expected to like all of hers. She did not care for Nick Smart, but that was because Nick Smart, she decided, had not liked her; that had been obvious on their first meeting. But why should he take against her? Her apparent faux pas over Melisma had been defused through her quick explanation, so that could not be the reason; there was something else. Because I am a woman, she thought; that was it. Because Nick Smart does not like women and, in particular, he did not like women who had claims on the man with whom he was engaged in conversation. I am not the jealous one here, she thought; there was an entirely other sort of jealousy operating.
She put Nick Smart out of her mind and thought about the telephone call that she had received from Stella Moncrieff. She had not masked her surprise at the call, and the other woman had evidently picked this up. “Yes, I know that this is unexpected,” she said. “But I had hoped to have the chance to speak to you privately the other night. Somehow the occasion didn’t arise. I hope you don’t mind my getting in touch with you now.”