The Sunday Philosophy Club

right condition, then all you have to do is to shift a bit of it, tread on it, even, and the whole thing gets going. Sometimes you can start them just by talking in a loud voice. The vibrations of your voice can make the snow start to move.”

Isabel smiled. She again imagined Toby on a mountainside, in his crushed-strawberry ski suit, talking loudly about wine. “Do you know I had the most wonderful bottle of Chablis the other day. Fabulous. Flinty, sharp . . .” There would be a pause, and the words “flinty, sharp” would echo across the snowfields, just enough to start the tidal wave of snow.

She checked herself. That was the third time that she had imagined him in a disaster and she should stop. It was childish, uncharitable, and wrong. We have a duty to control our thoughts, she said to herself. We are responsible for our mental states, as she well knew from her reading in moral philosophy. The unbidden thought may arrive, and that was a matter of moral indifference, but we should not dwell on the harmful fantasy, because it was bad for our character, and besides, one might just translate fantasy into reality. It was a question of duty to self, in Kantian terms, and whatever she thought about Toby, he did not deserve an avalanche or to be reduced to biscuits. Nobody could be said to deserve that, not even the truly wicked, or a member of that other Nemesis-tempting class, the totally egotistical.

And who were they, she wondered, these practitioners of hubris? She had a small mental list of those who might be warned, for their own protection, of how close they were to attracting the attentions of Nemesis—a list which was headed by a local social climber of breathtaking nerve. An avalanche might reduce his self-satisfaction, but that was unkind; he had his good 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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side, and such thoughts had to be put aside. They were unworthy of the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics.

“Music before dinner,” said Isabel briskly. “What have you brought with you? Let me take a look.”

THEY MOVED THROUGH to the music room, a small room at the back of the house, furnished with a restored Edwardian music stand and her mother’s baby grand piano. Jamie opened his music case and extracted a thin album of music, which he handed to Isabel for examination. She flicked through the pages and smiled.

It was exactly the sort of music that he always chose, settings of Burns, arias from Gilbert and Sullivan, and, of course, “O mio babbino caro.”

“Just right for your voice,” Isabel said. “As usual.”

Jamie blushed. “I’m not much good at the newer stuff,” he said. “Remember that Britten? I couldn’t do it.”

Isabel was quick to reassure him. “I like these,” she said.

“They’re much easier to play than Britten.”

She paged through the book again and made her choice.

“ ‘ Take a pair of sparkling eyes’?”

“Just so,” said Jamie.

She began the introduction and Jamie, standing in his singing pose, head tilted slightly forward so as not to restrict the larynx, gave voice to the song. Isabel played with determination—which was the only way to play Gilbert and Sullivan, she thought—and they finished with a flourish that was not exactly in the music but that could have been there if Sullivan had bothered. Then it was Burns, and “John Anderson, My Jo.”

John Anderson, she thought. Yes. A reflection on the passage 7 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h of the years, and of love that survives. But blessings on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo. There was an ineffable sadness in this line that always made her catch her breath. This was Burns in his gentler mood, addressing a constancy that by all accounts, including his own, eluded him in his own relations with women. What a hypocrite! Or was he? Was there anything wrong with celebrating qualities one lacked oneself? Surely not. People who suffered from akrasia (which philosophers knew all about and enjoyed debating at great length) could still profess that it was better to do that which they themselves could not do. You can say that it is bad to overindulge in chocolate, or wine, or any of the other things in which people like to overindulge, and still overindulge yourself. The important thing, surely, is not to conceal your own overindulgence.

“John Anderson” was meant to be sung by a woman, but men could sing it if they wished. And in a way it was even more touching when sung by a man, as it could be about a male friendship too.

Not that men liked to talk—still less to sing—about such things, which was something which had always puzzled Isabel. Women were so much more natural in their friendships, and in their acceptance of what their friendships meant to them. Men were so different: they kept their friends at arm’s length and never admitted their feelings for them. How arid it must be to be a man; how con-strained; what a whole world of emotion, and sympathy, they must lack; like living in the desert. And yet how many exceptions there were; how marvellous, for example, it must be to be Jamie, with that remarkable face of his, so full of feeling, like the face of one of those young men in Florentine Renaissance paintings.

“John Anderson,” said Isabel, as she played the last chord, and the music faded away. “I was thinking of you and John Anderson. Your friend John Anderson.”

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“I never had one,” said Jamie. “I never had a friend like that.”

Isabel looked up from the music, and out the window. It was beginning to get dark, and the branches of the trees were silhou-etted against a pale evening sky.

“Nobody? Not even as a boy? I thought boys had passionate friendships. David and Jonathan.”

Jamie shrugged. “I had friends. But none I stuck to for years and years. Nobody I could sing that about.”

“How sad,” said Isabel. “And do you not regret it?”

Jamie thought for a moment. “I suppose I do,” he said. “I’d like to have lots of friends.”