Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

previously noting what had happened in Armenia. Some had said that was all very well, but then what about what Leopold did in the Congo? And were there not islanders, somewhere in the Pacific, whose ancestors stood accused of eating—yes, eating the original inhabitants of the lands they occupied? Most unfortunate.

And then there were the British who behaved extremely badly in so many parts of the world. There was the woeful story of the extinction of the Tasmanian aboriginals and so many other instances of cruelty and theft under the bright protection of the Union Jack. When would British history books face up to the appalling British contribution to slavery, which involved the Arabs, too, and numerous Africans (who were not just on the receiving end)? We were all as bad as one another, but at some point we had to overlook that fact, or at least not make too much of it. History, it seemed, could so quickly become a matter of mutual accusation and recrimination, an infinite regress of cruelty and oppression, unless forgetfulness or forgiveness intervened.

All of this was very interesting, but nothing to do with the running of a delicatessen. Isabel reminded herself of this and opened the safe with the code which Cat had noted down for her: 1915. The year that the Turks fell upon the Armenians, Isabel noted, though Cat could hardly have intended that. She 4 4

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h had never heard Cat mention the Armenians—not once. Nineteen fifteen were the last four digits of Cat’s telephone number, an altogether more prosaic choice.

She heard Eddie tipping the coffee beans into the grinder and savoured the smell of the grounds. Then she busied herself with putting the float in the till, and checked that there was an adequate supply of plastic bags for the packing of purchases. Now we are ready, Isabel thought, with some satis-faction. Trading begins. She looked at Eddie, who gave her a thumbs-up signal of encouragement. We feel the common feeling of employees, she thought; that peculiar feeling of involvement with those with whom one works. It was not like friendship; it was a feeling of being together in something which afflicts all humans—work. We are working together, and hence there exist between us subtle bonds of loyalty and support. That is why trade unionists addressed one another as brother and sister. We are together in our bondage, each light-ening the load of another; somewhat extreme, she reflected, for a middle-class delicatessen in Edinburgh, but nonetheless something to think about.

T H E M O R N I N G WA S B U S Y, but everything went well. There was one rather difficult customer who brought in a bottle of wine—half consumed—and claimed that the wine was corked and should be replaced. Isabel knew that Cat’s policy was to replace or refund in such circumstances, and to do so without question, but when she sniffed at the neck of the offending bottle what she got was the odour of vinegar and not the characteristic mustiness of a corked wine. She poured a small amount of F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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the wine into a glass and sipped at it gingerly, glared at by the customer, a young man in a rainbow-coloured woolly hat.

“Vinegar,” she said. “This wine has been left opened. There’s been oxidation.”

She looked at the young man. The most likely explanation, in her view, was that he had drunk half the bottle and then left it open for a day or two. Any wine would turn to vinegar in warm weather like this. Now he thought that he could get a fresh bottle of wine without paying. He must have read about corked wine in a newspaper.

“It was corked,” he said.

“Then why is so much of it drunk?” asked Isabel, pointing to the level in the bottle.

“Because I poured a large glass,” he said. “Then, when I tasted it, I had to throw that out. I poured another glass just to be sure, but that was as bad.”

Isabel stared at him. She was sure that he was lying, but there was no point in persisting. “I’ll give you another bottle,”

she said, thinking: This is exactly how lies prevail. Liars get away with it.

“Chianti, please,” said the young man.

“This isn’t Chianti,” said Isabel. “This is an Australian Shi-raz. Our Chianti is more expensive than this.”

“But I’ve been inconvenienced,” said the young man. “It’s the least you can do.”

Isabel said nothing, but crossed to a shelf and took down a bottle of Chianti, which she handed to the young man.

“If you don’t finish it,” she said, “make sure you put the cork back in and keep it in a cool place. That should slow down oxidation.”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

“You don’t need to tell me that,” he said truculently.

“Of course not,” said Isabel.

“I know about these Spanish wines,” he went on.

Isabel said nothing, but caught Eddie’s glance and his suppressed look of mirth. It was going to be fun, she thought. Running a delicatessen was different from running the Review of Applied Ethics, but, in its own way, might be every bit as enjoyable.

B E I N G B U S Y, she had little time to think about the impending arrival of Jamie, who had agreed over the telephone to meet her for lunch at the neighbouring coffee bar and potted plant shop.

Eddie ate his lunch in the delicatessen and did not need time off, he said, and so she was able to slip out at one o’clock when Jamie arrived.

The coffee bar was uncrowded and they had no difficulty finding a couple of seats near the window.

“This is rather like eating in the jungle,” Isabel said, pointing to the palm fronds at her back.

“Without the bugs,” said Jamie, glancing at the palm and the large Monstera deliciosa behind it. Then: “I’m very glad you could see me. I didn’t want to discuss this over the telephone.”

“I don’t mind,” said Isabel. And she did not. It was good to see him, and now that he was here, in the flesh,