Or, should I say, it’s the absence of civility.”
“Decline, absence, same thing,” Grace retorted.
“Not quite,” said Isabel. “Decline means less than before.
Absence means not there—maybe never was.”
“Are you telling me that people used not to apologise for splashing other people?” Grace’s indignation showed through.
Her employer, she was convinced, was far too liberal on some matters, including young men in baseball caps.
“Some did, I expect,” said Isabel soothingly. “Others didn’t.
There’s no way of telling whether there are fewer apologisers these days than before. It’s rather like policemen looking younger.
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Policemen are the same age as they always were; it’s just that to some of us they look younger.”
Grace was not to be put off by this answer. “Well, I can tell, all right. Policemen are definitely younger, and manners have gone down the cludgie, right down. You see it every day in the street. You’d have to be blind not to notice. Boys need fathers to teach them how to behave.”
The argument, which was taking place in the kitchen, was like all their discussions. Grace defended a proposition and did not move, and they usually ended with a vague concession by Isabel that the matter was very complicated and would have to be thought about, but that Grace was certainly right, up to a point.
Isabel rose to her feet. It was almost ten past nine and the morning crossword called. She picked up the newspaper from the kitchen table, and leaving Grace to continue with the folding of the washing, she made her way to the morning room. Right and wrong. Boys need fathers to teach them the difference between right and wrong. This was true, but like many of Grace’s observations it was only half true. What was wrong with mothers for this role? She knew a number of mothers who had brought up sons by themselves, and brought them up well. One of her friends, deserted by her husband six weeks after the birth of her son, had made a magnificent job of his upbringing, against all the odds which single mothers face. He had turned out well, that boy, as had many others like him.
Toby had a father, and yet here was Toby two-timing Cat.
Had his father ever said anything to him about how one should behave towards women? It was an interesting question, and Isabel had no idea about whether fathers spoke to their sons about such things. Did fathers take their sons aside and say: 1 1 0
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“Treat women with respect”? Or was that too old-fashioned? Perhaps she could ask Jamie about this, as he certainly knew how to treat women with respect, unlike Toby.
Isabel suspected that the way men behaved towards women depended on much more complex psychological factors. It was not a question of moral knowledge, she thought; it was more a matter of confidence in self and sexual integration. A man with a fragile ego, unsure of who he is, would treat a woman as a means of combating his insecurity. A man who knew who he was and who was sure of his sexuality would be sensitive to women’s feelings. He would have nothing to prove.
Toby seemed confident, though; in fact, he oozed confidence.
In his case, at least, it was something else—perhaps the absence of a moral imagination. Morality depended on an understanding of the feelings of others. If one had no moral imagination—and there were such people—then one simply would not be able to empathise with them. The pain, the suffering, the unhappiness of others would not seem real, because it would not be perceived.
There was nothing new in this, of course; Hume had been talking about much the same thing when he discussed sympathy and the importance of being able to experience the emotions of others. Isabel wondered whether it would be possible to communi-cate Hume’s insight to people today by talking about vibrations.
Vibrations were a New Age concept. Perhaps Hume could be explained in terms of vibrations and fields of energy, and this would make him real to people who otherwise would have no inkling of what he meant. It was an interesting possibility, but like so many other possibilities, there was no time for it. There were so many books to write—so many ideas to develop—and she had time for none of it.
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hands. They looked at her situation, that of a woman of independent means, living in a large house, looked after by a full-time housekeeper, and with a part-time job as editor of some obscure journal that presumably had flexible deadlines. How could such a person be busy? they thought. Their own lives, in jobs which made more and more demands, were quite different, they imagined.
Of course, none of these reflections, relevant though they were to the moral issues which informed her life, addressed the quandary in which she now found herself. She had, by indulging in vulgar curiosity, discovered something about Toby of which Cat was presumably ignorant. The question before her now was that utterly trite one, which must have graced the columns of countless problem pages:
It may have been a familiar problem, but the answer was far from clear. She had faced it before, a long time ago, and she was not sure whether she had made the right decision. In that case, the knowledge had not been of unfaithfulness, but of illness. A man with whom she had worked, and with whom over the years she had become reasonably friendly, had developed schizophre-nia. He had been unable to continue working, but had responded well to treatment. He had then met a woman, to whom he proposed, and she had accepted. Isabel had decided that this woman was very keen to get married, but had never before been asked.
She was unaware of his illness, though, and Isabel had debated whether or not to tell her. Eventually she had said nothing, and the woman had been dismayed when she subsequently found out what was wrong with her
