to the discovery, after reading Kant, that above the world of necessity there was a world of freedom. Was this not a slight exaggeration? Big Lou asked herself. But with whatever levity Proust invoked images of determinism, Big Lou herself took the subject seriously enough. She had several books on the subject in her collection, and after reading them – not with a great deal of enjoyment – she had come out in favour of free will. She was particularly persuaded by the argument that even if we cannot be shown to be free, we have to behave as if freedom of the will existed, because otherwise social life would be impossible. And that meant, in her view, that determinism was false, because it did not fit the facts of human life.
There was no good in having a theory that bore no relation to reality as it was understood and acted upon by people. That is what she thought about determinism. But then she asked herself about God, and became confused. If it were the case that people thought that they needed a concept of God in order to get by in life, then would that mean that only those theories of reality which had a place for God would be defensible? This, she thought, was doubtful. Unless, of course, one made a sharp distinction between social theories – which need not be provable, but which must at least work for the purposes we require of them – and other theories, which can be true and correct but which we do not need to be able to apply to day-to-day life. That was it, she thought.
The problem was that some people preached social philosophies that paid no attention to reality. Some French philosophers had a tendency to do this, Big Lou had noted: they did not care in the slightest if their theories could have disastrous consequences
– because they considered themselves to be above such consequences. It was perfectly possible to portray scientific knowledge as socially determined – and therefore not true in any real sense
– when one was safe on the ground in Paris; but would you ask the same question in a jet aircraft at thirty-five thousand feet, when that same knowledge underpinned the very engineering that was keeping one up in the air? By the same token, French philosophers had been able to admire Mao and his works because 252
they did not have to live in China at the time. And they knew, too, that what they preached would never be put into effect.
Big Lou stood before her window and remembered the young man who had come into her coffee shop wearing a tee-shirt with a picture of Castro on it. She had served him his coffee and then pointed at the picture.
“Do you really admire people who put others in prison for speaking their mind?” she had asked. “Would you wear that shirt if you lived under him?”
The young man had looked at her and smiled. “You’re so naive,” he had said, and taken his coffee to his table. And then, to follow this remark, he had turned to her and said: “Have you ever heard of false consciousness?”
“Aye,” said Big Lou. “I have.”
But the young man had laughed and turned to the reading of a magazine he had brought with him. Of course she had thought later of the things that she might have said to him, but she had remained silent and had merely gone to the door and locked it, discreetly. Ten minutes or so later, the young man had got up to leave – he was the only customer at the time – and had tried the handle of the door. When he realised it was locked, he had turned to her and demanded that she let him out, which she had done.
He had looked indignant, as she had taken her time to walk to the door and unlock it. So might the jailer in a prison swagger to his task. And as she opened the door for him she said: “You’re a university student, aren’t you? I’ve never been that, you know.
But don’t you think that I’ve just been able to teach you a lesson about freedom?”
She smiled at the memory – it had been a moment of gentle victory – and was smiling still when her telephone rang. She walked across the room to answer it and heard the voice of the man from Aberdeen, her chef, the man whose letter she kept in that special drawer, and whose voice she had not thought she would hear again.
“I’m in Edinburgh, Lou,” he said. “Can I take you out for dinner? Are you free?”
She thought of determinism. Of course she was free.
Eddie was the name of Big Lou’s friend from Aberdeen. He was waiting for her, as he promised he would be, in Sandy Bell’s Bar in Forrest Road. He was a tall man in his early forties, with dark, lank hair and an aquiline nose. She saw him immediately she entered the bar, and he smiled at her and nodded. For Big Lou this was a moment of great significance, as it always is when we see one whom we loved a long time ago, and might love still; it had been years, and she had thought of him often – if not each waking day, then almost every day; and now here he was, unchanged, it seemed, and standing there smiling at her as if they were friends who had not seen one another for a mere week or so.
She made her way over towards him, squeezing past a group of young men who were listening earnestly to something being said by one of their number. And in the far corner, sitting at a table, a fiddler worked his bow through a tune that could just be heard above the hubbub of conversation. The notes were jagged and quick, and she remembered that they had sat in a similar pub one evening in Aberdeen when a Shetland fiddler had been playing, and her heart gave a lurch and she wondered whether he would remember that too. Men did not remember these things; or they had their own memories.
When she reached him he put his glass down on the bar and leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the brow.
“Well,” he said. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Lou?”
She nodded. She would not cry, she had determined, but there were tears to be fought back. Discreetly, unseen by Eddie, Big Lou bit her lip.
“Aye, it’s been a good long time. And now . . .”
“And now here we are,” said Eddie.
She said nothing and glanced at the bartender, who was hovering. Eddie ordered her a drink – “I remember that you like Pernod, Lou. Pernod! Yes, I remember that well.”
“I don’t drink it very much any more,” she said. “But thanks, Eddie.”
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They looked at one another. She noticed that he had put on a bit of weight, but not much, and that there were
