The Sunday Philosophy Club

She reached Warrender Park Terrace and followed it round its slow curve. It was a handsome street, occupying one side of the road and looking out over the Meadows and the distant pinnacled roofs and spires of the old infirmary. The building, a high tenement in the Victorian manner, rose in six stories of dressed stone, topped with a high-raked slate roof. Some of these roofs were bor-dered with turrets, like the slated turrets of French chateaux, with ironwork devices at the point. Or the edge of the roofs had stone crenellations, carved thistles, the occasional gargoyle, all of which would have given the original occupants the sense that they were living in some style, and that all that distinguished their dwellings from those of the gentry was mere size. But in spite of these con-ceits, they were good flats, solidly built, and although originally intended for petit-bourgeois occupation they had become the pre-serve of students and young professionals. The flat she was visiting must have been typical of numerous such establishments rented by groups of three or four young people. The generous size of the flats made it possible for each tenant to have his or her own room without impinging upon the largish living room and dining room. It would be a comfortable arrangement, which would serve the residents until marriage or cohabitation beckoned. And of course such flats were the breeding ground of lasting friendships—and lasting enmities too, she supposed.

The flats were built around a common stone staircase, to 8 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h which access would be gained by an imposing front door. These doors were usually locked, but could be opened from the flats above by the pressing of a button. Isabel looked at the range of bells at the front door and found one labelled “Duffus.” She pushed it and waited. After a minute or so a voice sounded through the small speaker of the intercom and asked her what she wanted.

Isabel bent to speak into the tiny microphone on the intercom box. She gave her name and explained that she would like to speak to Miss Duffus. It was in connection with the accident, she added.

There was a brief pause, and then the buzzer sounded. Isabel pushed the door open and began to climb up the stairs, noting that stale, slightly dusty smell which seemed to hang in the air of so many common stairs. It was the smell of stone which has been wet and now has dried, coupled with the slight odour of cooking that would waft out of individual flats. It was a smell that reminded her of childhood, when she had gone every week up such a stairway to her piano lessons at the house of Miss Marilyn McGibbon—Miss McGibbon, who had referred to music which starred her; which meant she was stirred. Isabel still thought of starring music.

She paused, and stood still for a moment, remembering Miss McGibbon, whom she had liked as a child, but from whom she had picked up, even as a child, a sense of sadness, of something unresolved. Once she had arrived for her lesson and had found her red-eyed, with marks of tears on the powder which she applied to her face, and had stared at her mutely until Miss McGibbon had turned away, mumbling: “I am not myself. I apologise. I am not myself this afternoon.”

And Isabel had said: “Has something sad happened?”

Miss McGibbon had started to say yes, but had changed it to 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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no, and had shaken her head, and they had turned to the scales which Isabel had learned and to Mozart, and nothing more had been said. Later, as a young adult, she had learned quite by chance that Miss McGibbon had lost her friend and companion, one Lalla Gordon, the daughter of a judge of the Court of Session, who had been forced to choose between her family (who disapproved of Miss McGibbon) and her friendship, and who had chosen the former.

T H E F L AT WA S O N the fourth floor and by the time that Isabel had reached the landing, the door was already slightly ajar. A young woman was standing just within the hall, and she opened the door as Isabel approached. Isabel smiled at her, taking in at a glance Hen Duffus’s appearance: tall, almost willowy, and wide-eyed in that appealing, doelike way which Isabel always associated with girls from the west coast of Scotland, but which presumably had nothing to do with that at all. Her smile was returned as Hen asked her to come in. Yes, Isabel thought as she heard the accent: the west, although not Glasgow, as Cat had said, but somewhere small and couthy, Dunbarton perhaps, Helens-burgh at a stretch. But she was definitely not a Henrietta; Hen, yes; that was far more suitable.

“I’m sorry to come unannounced. I hoped I might just find you in. You and . . .”

“Neil. I don’t think he’s in. But he should be back soon.”

Hen closed the door behind them and pointed to a door down the hallway. “We can go through there,” she said. “It’s the usual mess, I’m afraid.”

“No need to apologise,” said Isabel. “We all live in a mess. It’s more comfortable that way.”

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“I’d like to be tidy,” said Hen. “I try, but I guess you can’t be what you aren’t.”

Isabel smiled, but said nothing. There was a physicality about this woman, an air of . . . well, sexual energy. It was unmistak-able, like musicality, or asceticism. She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.

The living room, into which Hen led Isabel, looked out to the north, over the trees that lined the southern edge of the Meadows. The windows, which were generous Victorian, must have flooded the room with light in the day; even now, in the early evening, the room needed no lights. Isabel crossed the room to stand before one of the windows. She looked down. Below them on the cobbled street, a boy dragged a reluctant dog on a lead.

The boy bent down and struck the dog on the back, and the animal turned round in self-defence. Then the boy kicked it in the ribs and dragged on the lead again.

Hen joined her at the window and looked down too. “He’s a wee brat, that boy. I call him Soapy Soutar. He lives in the ground-floor flat with his mother and a bidie-in. I don’t think that dog likes any of them.”

Isabel laughed. She appreciated the reference to Soapy Soutar; every Scottish child used to know about Oor Wullie and his friends Soapy Soutar and Fat Boab, but did they now? Where do the images of Scottish childhood come from now? Not, she thought, from the streets of Dundee, those warm, mythical streets which the Sunday Post peopled with pawky innocents.

They turned away from the window and Hen looked at Isabel.

“Why have you come to see us? You aren’t a journalist, are you?”

Isabel shook her head vigorously. “Certainly not. No, I was a witness. I saw it happen.”