The Sunday Philosophy Club

Isabel shook her head. “No,” she said. “I just saw him.” This, of course, was a half-truth. There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one. Isabel had herself written a short article on the matter, following the publication of Sissela Bok’s philosophical monograph Lying. She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent 1 2 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h thought she had revised her position. Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reveal everything in response to a casual question by one who had no right to the information.

“You’re blushing,” said Jamie. “You’re not telling me something.”

So that, thought Isabel, was that. The whole edifice of philosophical debate on the fine nuances of truth telling is ultimately undermined by a simple biological process. Tell a fib and you go red in the face. It sounded so much less dignified than it did in the pages of Sissela Bok, but it was absolutely true. All the great issues were reducible to the simple facts of everyday human life and the trite metaphors, the axiomata, by which people lived. The international economic system and its underlying assumptions: Finders keepers, losers weepers. The uncertainty of life: Step on a crack and the bears will get you (which she had believed in so vividly as a child, walking up Morningside Road with Fersie McPherson, her nurse, carefully avoiding the cracks in the pavement).

“If I’m blushing,” she said, “it’s because I’m not telling you the whole truth. For which I apologise. I didn’t tell you what I did because I feel embarrassed about it, and for . . .” She hesitated.

There was another reason for not revealing what had happened, but now she had embarked on the road of disclosure; she would have to tell Jamie everything. He would sense it if she did not, and she did not want him to feel that she did not trust him. Did she trust him? Yes, she did. Of course she did. A young man like that, with his en brosse hair and his voice, could only be trustwor-thy. Jamies can be trusted; Tobys cannot.

Jamie watched her as she spoke. Now she continued: “. . . for 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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the reason that there is something that I did not want you to know. Not because I don’t trust you, which I do, but because I think that it has nothing to do with us. I saw something that we cannot do anything about. So I thought that there was no reason to tell you.”

“What is it?” he asked. “You have to tell me now. You can’t leave it at that.”

Isabel nodded. He was right. She could not leave the matter like this. “When I saw Toby in town,” she began, “he was walking down Dundas Street. I was on a bus and I saw him. I decided to follow him—please don’t ask me why, because I don’t know if I can give an adequate explanation for that. Sometimes one just does things— ridiculous things—that one can’t explain. So I decided to follow him.

“He walked down Northumberland Street. Then, when we got to Nelson Street, he crossed the road and rang the bell on a ground-floor flat. There was a girl who came to the door. He embraced her, pretty passionately I think, and then the door closed, and that was that.”

Jamie looked at her. For a moment he said nothing, then, very slowly, he lifted his glass and took a sip of his wine. Isabel noticed the fine hands and, for a moment, in his eyes, the reflected light from the wineglass.

“His sister,” he said quietly. “He has a sister who lives in Nelson Street. I’ve actually met her. She’s a friend of a friend.”

Isabel sat quite still. She had not expected this. “Oh,” she said. And then, “Oh.”

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YES,” SAID JAMIE. “Toby has a sister in Nelson Street. She works in the same property company as my friend does. They’re both surveyors—not the sort who go out with theodolites, but val-uers.” He laughed. “And you thought that the result of your gumshoe activities was that you had discovered Toby being unfaithful. Ha! I wish you had, Isabel, but you haven’t. That’ll teach you to follow people.”

Isabel had now recovered sufficient composure to laugh at herself. “I more or less hid behind a parked van,” she said. “You should have seen me.”

Jamie smiled. “It must have been exciting stuff. Pity about the result, but there we are.”

“Well,” said Isabel. “I enjoyed myself anyway. And it teaches me a lesson about having a nasty, suspicious mind.”

“Which you don’t have,” said Jamie. “You are not suspicious.

You are absolutely straight down the middle.”

“You’re very kind,” said Isabel. “But I have bags of failings.

Same as anybody else. Bags.”

Jamie lifted up his glass again. “She’s quite a nice girl, his sister,” he said. “I met her at a party which Roderick—that’s my sur-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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veyor friend—gave a few months ago. It was a rather different crowd of people from my own crowd, but it was good fun. And I thought that she was rather nice. Very attractive. Very tall, with blonde hair. A model type.”

Isabel said nothing. Then she closed her eyes, and imagined herself for a moment on the corner of Nelson Street, half hidden by the van, seeing Toby at the door, and the door opening. She could picture it quite clearly, as she had always been able to recall visual details with accuracy. Now the picture was clear. The door opened and the girl appeared. She was not tall, for Toby had stooped to embrace her, and she did not have blonde hair. Her hair, quite unmistakeably, was dark. Black or brown. Not blonde.