Jamie looked towards the kitchen. He saw a chef dip a finger into a bowl and then lick it thoughtfully. A sociopathic chef would be a nightmare. “It’s the sort of thing that you might discuss with your friends,” he said. “The Sunday Philosophy Club.
You could discuss the moral responsibility of people like that.”
Isabel smiled ruefully. “If I could get the club together,” she said. “Yes, if I could get the club to meet.”
“Sunday’s not an easy day,” said Jamie.
“No,” Isabel agreed. “That’s what Cat says too.” She paused.
She did not like to mention Cat too much in Jamie’s presence because he always looked wistful, almost lost, when she did so.
C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N
E
WHAT I NEED, thought Isabel, is a few days free of intrigue.
I need to get back to editing the review, to doing the crosswords without interruption, to going for the occasional walk into Bruntsfield to have an inconsequential chat with Cat. I do not need to spend my time conspiring with Jamie in pubs and restaurants and brushing up against scheming corporate financiers with expensive tastes in art.
She had not slept well the previous night. She had said good-bye to Jamie after their meal at the restaurant and had not arrived back at the house until well after eleven. Once in bed, with the light switched out, and the moonlight throwing into her room the shadow of the tree outside her window, she had lain awake, thinking of the impasse which she feared they had reached. Even if the next move was down to Minty Auchterlonie, there were difficult decisions to be made. And then there was the whole business of Cat and Toby. She wished that it had never occurred to her to follow him, as the knowledge that she had acquired weighed heavily upon her conscience. She had decided that for the time being she would do nothing about it, but she knew that this was only shelving a problem which she would have to conT H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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front at some time or other. She was not sure how she would be able to deal with Toby when next she saw him. Would she be able to maintain her normal attitude, which, even if not friendly at heart, was at least as polite as circumstances demanded?
She slept, but only fitfully, with the result that she was still sound asleep when Grace arrived the next morning. If she was not downstairs, Grace inevitably came up to check on her, bearing a reviving cup of tea. She woke up to Grace’s knock.
“A bad night?” Grace asked solicitously as she placed the cup of tea on Isabel’s bedside table.
Isabel sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes. “I don’t think I went to sleep until two,” she said.
“Worries?” asked Grace, looking down at her.
“Yes,” said Isabel. “Worries and doubts. This and that.”
“I know the feeling,” said Grace. “It happens to me too. I start worrying about the world. I wonder where it’s all going to end.”
“Not with a bang but a whimper,” said Isabel vaguely. “That’s what T. S. Eliot said, and everybody always quotes him on it. But it’s really a very silly thing to say, and I’m sure that he regretted it.”
“Silly man,” said Grace. “Your friend Mr. Auden would never have said that, would he?”
“Certainly not,” said Isabel, twisting round in bed to reach for the teacup. “Although he did say some silly things when he was young.” She took a sip of tea, which always seemed to have an immediate effect on her clarity of mind. “And then he said some silly things when he was old. In between, though, he was usually very acute.”
“Cute?”
“Acute.” Isabel started to get out of bed, feeling with her toes for the slippers on the bedside rug. “If he wrote something which was wrong, which was meretricious, he would go back to it and 1 6 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h change it, if he could. Some of his poems he denounced alto-gether. ‘September 1st, 1939’ was an example.”
She drew the curtains. It was a bright spring day, with the first signs of heat in the sun. “He said that poem was dishonest, although I think it’s got some wonderful lines. Then, in Letters from Iceland, he wrote something which had absolutely no meaning, but which sounded magnificent. And the ports have names for the sea. It’s a marvellous line, isn’t it? But it doesn’t mean anything, does it, Grace?”
“No,” said Grace. “I don’t see how ports can have names for the sea. I don’t see it.”
Isabel rubbed her eyes again. “Grace, I want to have a simple day. Do you think that you can help me?”
“Of course.”
“Could you answer the phone? Tell anybody that I’m working, which I intend to be. Tell them that I’ll be able to phone them back tomorrow.”
“Everybody?”
“Except Cat. And Jamie. I’ll speak to them, although I hope that they don’t phone today. Everybody else will have to wait.”
Grace approved. She liked to be in control of the house, and being asked to turn people away was a most welcome instruction.
“It’s about time you did this,” she said. “You’re at everybody’s beck and call. It’s ridiculous. You deserve a bit of time to yourself.”
Isabel smiled. Grace was her greatest ally. Whatever disagreements they might have, in the final analysis she knew that Grace had her interests firmly at heart. This was loyalty of a sort which was rare in an age of self-indulgence. It was an old-fashioned virtue of the type which her philosophical colleagues extolled but could never themselves match. And Grace, in spite of her tendency to disapprove of certain people, had many other T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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virtues. She believed in a God who would ultimately do justice to those to whom injustice had been done; she believed in work, and the importance of never being late or missing a day through
“so-called illness,” and she believed in never ignoring a request for help from anybody, no matter their condition, no matter the fault that lay behind their plight. This was true generosity of spirit, concealed behind a sometimes slightly brusque exterior.
“You’re wonderful, Grace,” Isabel said. “Where would any of us be without you?”
S H E WO R K E D T H E E N T I R E morning. The post had brought a further bundle of submissions for the review and she entered the details of each of these in the book which she kept for the purpose. She suspected that several would not survive the first stage of screening; although one of these, “Gambling: An Ethical Analysis,” revealed, at first glance, some possibilities. What ethical problems did gambling occasion? Isabel thought that there was a straightforward utilitarian argument to this, at the very least. If you had six children, as gamblers so often seemed to do (another sort of gambling? she wondered) then one had a duty to steward one’s resources well, for the children’s sakes. But if one was well-off, with no dependents, then was there anything intrinsically wrong in placing, if not one’s last sou, then one’s surplus sous, on a bet? Isabel thought for a moment. Kantians would be in no doubt about the answer to that, but that was the problem with Kantian morality: it was so utterly predictable, and left no room for subtlety; rather like Kant himself, she thought. In a purely philosophical sense, it must be very demanding to be German.
Far better to be French (irresponsible and playful) or Greek (grave, but with a light touch). Of course, her own heritage, she 1 6 4