She found herself gazing at the label of a bottle of olive oil which Cat had placed in a prominent position on a shelf near the table. It was painted in that nineteenth-century rural style which the Italians use to demonstrate the integrity of agricultural products. This was not from a factory, the illustration proclaimed; this was from a real farm, where women like those shown on the bottle pressed the oil from their own olives, where there were large, 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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sweet-smelling white oxen and, in the background, a mousta-chioed farmer with a hoe. These were decent people, who believed in evil, and in the Virgin, and in a whole bevy of saints. But of course they did not exist anymore, and the olive oil probably came from North Africa and was rebottled by cynical Neapolitan businessmen who only paid lip service to the Virgin, when their mothers were within earshot.
“You’re thinking,” said Cat, lowering herself into the other chair. “I can always tell when you’re thinking profound thoughts.
You look dreamy.”
Isabel smiled. “I was thinking about Italy, and evil, and topics of that nature.”
Cat wiped her hands on a cloth. “I was thinking of cheese,”
she said. “That woman sampled eight Italian cheeses and then bought a small block of farmhouse cheddar.”
“Simple tastes,” said Isabel. “You mustn’t blame her.”
“I’ve decided that I’m not too keen on the public,” said Cat.
“I’d like to have a private shop. People would have to apply for membership before they could come in. I’d have to approve them. Rather like the members of your philosophy club or whatever it is.”
“The Sunday Philosophy Club is not exactly very active,” she said to Cat. “But we’ll have a meeting one of these days.”
“It’s such a good idea,” said Cat. “I’d come, but Sunday’s a bad day for me. I can never get myself organised to do anything.
You know how it is. You know, don’t you?”
Isabel did know. This, presumably, was what afflicted the members of the club.
Cat looked at her. “Is everything all right? You look a bit low.
I can always tell, you know.”
Isabel was silent for a moment. She looked down at the pat-2 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h tern on the tablecloth, and then looked back up at her niece. “No.
I suppose I’m not feeling all that cheerful. Something happened last night. I saw something terrible.”
Cat frowned, and reached across the table to place a hand on Isabel’s arm. “What happened?”
“Have you seen the paper this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see that item about the young man at the Usher Hall?”
“Yes,” said Cat. “I did.”
“I was there,” said Isabel simply. “I saw him fall from the gods, right past my eyes.”
Cat gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It must have been terrible.” She paused. “I know who it was, by the way. Somebody came in this morning and told me. I knew him, vaguely.”
For a moment Isabel said nothing. She had expected no more than to tell Cat about what had happened; she had not imagined that she would know him, that poor, falling boy.
“He lived near here,” Cat went on to explain. “In Marchmont.
One of those flats right on the edge of the Meadows, I think. He came in here from time to time, but I really saw a bit more of his flatmates.”
“Who was he?” Isabel asked.
“Mark somebody or other,” Cat replied. “I was told his sur-name, but I can’t remember it. Somebody was in this morning—
she knew them better—and she told me that it had happened. I was pretty shocked—like you.”
“Them?” asked Isabel. “Was he married or . . .” She paused.
People often did not bother to marry, she had to remind herself, and yet it amounted to the same thing in many cases. But how 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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did you put that particular question? Did he have a partner? But partners could be anyone, from the most temporary or recent to the wife or husband of fifty years. Perhaps one should just say: Was there somebody else? Which was sufficiently vague to cover everything.
Cat shook her head. “I don’t think so. There were two flatmates. Three of them shared. A girl and another boy. The girl’s from the west, Glasgow or somewhere, and she’s the one who comes in here. The other one I’m not sure about. Neil, I think, but I may be mixing him up.”
Cat’s assistant, a silent young man called Eddie, who always avoided eye contact, now brought them each a cup of hot milky coffee. Isabel thanked him and smiled, but he looked away and retreated to the back of the counter.
“What’s wrong with Eddie?” whispered Isabel. “He never looks at me. I’m not all that frightening, am I?”
Cat smiled. “He’s a hard worker,” she replied. “And he’s honest.”
“But he never looks at anyone.”
“There may be a reason for that,” said Cat. “I came across him the other evening, sitting in the back room, his feet on the desk. He had his head in his hands and I didn’t realise it at first, but he was in tears.”
“Why?” asked Isabel. “Did he tell you?”
Cat hesitated for a moment. “He told me something. Not very much.”
Isabel waited, but it was clear that Cat did not want to divulge what Eddie had said to her. She steered the subject back to the event of the previous night. How could he have fallen from the gods when there was that brass rail, was there not, which was intended to stop exactly that? Was it a suicide? Would somebody really jump from there? It would be a selfish way of going, surely, 2 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h as there could easily be somebody down below who could be injured, or even killed.
“It wasn’t suicide,” Isabel said firmly. “Definitely not.”
“How do you know?” asked Cat. “You said you didn’t see him actually go over the edge. How can you be so sure?”
“He came down upside down,” said Isabel, remembering the sight of the jacket and shirt pulled down by gravity and the exposed flat midriff. He was like a boy diving off a cliff, into a sea that was not there.
“So? People turn around, presumably, when they fall. Surely that means nothing.”
Isabel shook her head. “He would not have had time to do that. You must remember that he was just above us. And people don’t dive when they commit suicide. They fall feetfirst.”
Cat thought for a moment. That was probably right. Occasionally the newspaper printed pictures of people on the way down from buildings and bridges, and they tended to be falling feetfirst. But it still seemed so unlikely that anybody could fall over that parapet by mistake, unless it was lower than she remembered it. She would take a look next time she was in the Usher Hall.
They sipped at their coffee. Cat broke the silence. “You must feel awful. I remember when I saw an accident in George Street, I felt just awful myself. Just witnessing something like that is so traumatic.”
“I didn’t come here to sit and moan, you know,” said Isabel. “I didn’t want to sit here and make you feel miserable too. I’m sorry.”