She felt calmer by the time the doorbell rang and she admitT 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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ted her guests. The evening had turned cool, and Cat was wearing a full-length brown coat which Isabel had bought her for a birthday several years ago. She took this off and laid it down on a hall chair, revealing a long red dress underneath. Toby, who was a tall young man a year or two older than Cat, was wearing a dark brown tweed jacket and a roll-top shirt underneath. Isabel glanced at his trousers, which were crushed-strawberry corduroy; exactly what she would expect him to wear. He had never surprised her in that respect. I must try, she thought. I have to try to like him.
Cat had brought a plate of smoked salmon, which she took through to the kitchen with Isabel while Toby waited for them in the downstairs drawing room.
“Are you feeling any better?” Cat asked. “You seemed so miserable this morning.”
Isabel took the plate of fish from her niece and removed the protective covering of foil.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m feeling much better.” She did not mention the journalist’s visit, partly because she wanted not to be thought to be dwelling on the subject and partly because she wanted to put it out of her mind.
They laid out the salmon and returned to the drawing room.
Toby was standing at the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Isabel offered her guests a drink, which she poured from the cabinet. When she handed his drink to Toby he raised it to her and gave the Gaelic toast.
Isabel raised her glass weakly.
“
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
Cat glanced at her. She hoped that Isabel would not be mischievous: she was perfectly capable of winding Toby up.
“Isabel speaks quite good Italian,” Cat said.
“Useful,” said Toby. “I’m no good at languages. A few words of French, I suppose, left over from school, and a bit of German.
But nothing else.”
Toby reached for a piece of brown bread and smoked salmon.
“I can’t resist this stuff,” he said. “Cat gets it from somebody over in Argyll. Archie somebody, isn’t it, Cat?”
“Archie MacKinnon,” said Cat. “He smokes it himself in his garden, in one of those old smoking sheds. He soaks it in rum and then puts it over oak chips. It’s the rum that gives it that wonderful flavour.”
Toby reached for another of the largest pieces.
Cat quickly picked up the plate and offered it to Isabel. “I go up and see Archie when I go to Campbelltown,” she said, placing the plate at Isabel’s side. “Archie is a wonderful old man. Eighty-something, but still going out in his boat. He has two dogs, Max and Morris.”
“After the boys?” said Isabel.
“Yes,” said Cat.
Toby looked at the salmon. “What boys?”
“Max and Morris,” said Isabel. “Two German boys. The very first comic-book characters. They got up to all sorts of mischief and were eventually chopped into pieces by a baker and made into biscuits.”
She looked at Toby. Max and Morris had fallen into the baker’s flour vat and had been put into a mixing machine. The biscuits into which they had been made were eventually eaten by 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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ducks. Such a Germanic idea, she thought; and for a moment she imagined that this might happen to Toby, tumbling into such a machine and being made into biscuits.
“You’re smiling,” said Cat.
“Not intentionally,” said Isabel hurriedly. Did one ever mean to smile?
They talked for half an hour or so before the meal. Toby had been skiing with a group of friends and he talked about his off-piste adventures. There had been an awkward moment when they had caused a halfhearted avalanche, but they had managed to get out of trouble.
“A rather close thing,” he said. “You know what an avalanche sounds like?”
“Surf ?” suggested Isabel.
Toby shook his head. “Thunder,” he said. “Just like thunder.
And it gets louder and louder.”
Isabel imagined the scene—Toby in a strawberry-coloured ski suit with a tidal wave of snow hurtling down
