The Careful Use of Compliments

She took an envelope off the top of the pile and slit it open.

“Dear Ms. Dalhousie, The enclosed paper may be suitable for publication in the Review of Applied Ethics and I should be grateful if you would consider it. The title is ‘The Concept of Sexual Perversion as an Oppressive Weapon’ and in it I examine some ideas which Scruton advanced in his book Sexual Desire.

As you know, the concept of perversion has been subjected to critical reassessment . . .”

She sighed and laid the paper aside. She received numerous submissions on the subject of sex; indeed, some philosophers seemed to imagine that applied ethics was more or less exclu-sively concerned with sex. Often these papers were interesting, but on other occasions they were distinctly scatological and she wondered whether she should be reading them with gloves on.

The absurdity of this struck her as quickly as the thought itself came to her, but it was amusing to think of editors handling such material with the protection of gloves, as if the grubbiness of the subject matter might rub off or infection might leap from the page.

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h A few days previously she had received a paper entitled “On the Ethics of Pretending to Be Gay When You Are Not.” If she had been taken by surprise by this title, then that was clearly the author’s intention. We expect the issue to be the ethics of pretending to be straight when you are not, he wrote, but that assumes that there is something shameful about not being straight. The conventional question, then, connives in the mar-ginalisation of the gay, and therefore any consideration of this form of passing should be from a viewpoint which recognises that some may wish to pass for gay rather than the other way round.

She smiled at the recollection of that paper, which she had circulated to the members of the editorial board for their verdict. The board would recommend publication, Isabel thought, even if they were not impressed by the content. “That’s exactly the sort of paper we should encourage,” one member of the board had already written. “We need to show people that we are not, as some suggest, old-fashioned in our approach.” This comment had come from Professor Christopher Dove, a professor of philosophy at a minor English university, and a man with a reputation for radicalism. It had been a dig at Isabel, who was herself thought by Dove to be old-fashioned. And she had risen to the occasion in her reply. “Thank you for your support,” she had written. “I wondered whether members of the board were ready for this sort of thing. I’m glad to see they now are.”

She picked up the next item, a bulky brown envelope which would contain, she thought, a catalogue of some sort. It did: Lyon & Turnbull, Forthcoming Sales. Lyon & Turnbull were a prominent Edinburgh auction house at whose sales Isabel had bought the occasional item, thus entitling her to their catalogues. This one was for a sale of furniture described as “good T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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antique furniture” and paintings, neither of which Isabel actually needed—in fact the house had too much furniture and too many paintings. But she found auction catalogues irresistible, even if she had no intention of buying anything.

She skipped through the pages of furniture, pausing only to study more closely a set of library steps in mahogany, with brass fittings. The estimate seemed discouragingly high, and she moved on to the paintings. That was where she stopped. Lot number 87 was a painting of a man standing on a shore, a stack of lobster creels just behind him, and behind the creels a mountain rising sharply. It was unmistakably the landscape of the Western Highlands of Scotland, with its grey rocks protruding from thin soil, the verdant green of the grass, the gentle, shifting light; and the man’s face, with its weather-beaten look, further proclaimed the place. She looked at the description underneath: Andrew McInnes, Scottish, b. 1958, Sea Livelihood. Below this, in smaller type, the auctioneers went on to explain: “McInnes was perhaps the most talented of the students to have passed through the Edinburgh College of Art in the last years of Robin Philipson’s tenure as principal. He rapidly acquired a substantial reputation, and this was reflected in the prices achieved by his paintings during the years immediately before his death.”

Isabel studied the painting intently. It was the expression on the man’s face that interested her. This was a man who knew hardship, but was not bowed by it. And there was a kindness too, a gentleness that was sometimes squeezed out of those who wrested their living from a hard place—the sea or a windswept island.

She reached for the telephone and dialled Jamie’s number.

At the other end of the line, the phone rang for a long time and 1 6

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h she was about to put the handset down when Jamie suddenly answered. He sounded breathless.

“You’ve just run up the stairs,” she said. “Do you want me to call back later?”

“No, I’ll be all right. I heard it when I was on the way up and then I couldn’t get my key into the lock for some reason. But it’s all right now.”

Isabel looked at her watch. It was eleven thirty. She could put Charlie into his baby sling and take him with her; he slept very contentedly in the sling because, she thought, he could hear her heartbeat and he imagined he was back in the womb, back to the simpler life that perhaps he remembered—just—

and missed.

“Would you like to see your son for lunch?” she asked.

“Of course,” Jamie answered quickly. She knew he would say that, and it gave her satisfaction. He loved Charlie, which was what she wanted. It did not matter whether or not he loved her—and she did not know whether he did—the important thing was that he loved Charlie.

“And we could drop into Lyon & Turnbull beforehand,”

Isabel suggested. “There’s something I want to look at.”

“I’ll meet you there,” said Jamie.

She put the telephone down and smiled. I am very fortunate, she thought. I have a child, and I also have a lover who is the father of the child. I have a large house and a job that allows me to do philosophy. I am happy.

She moved to the window and looked out into the garden.