“My name’s Ian, by the way,” he said, and she said: Isabel
“But don’t they prove that whatever the environmental influences, people behave as they do because of heredity?”
“They do not,” Ian said. “All that they show is that there is a genetic factor in behaviour. But it’s not the only factor.”
Isabel was not convinced. “But I read somewhere or other about these pairs of separated twins that keep turning up in America. And when they look at them they discover that they like the same colours and vote the same way and say the same sort of thing to the researchers.”
Ian laughed. “Oh yes, it’s wonderful stuff. I’ve read some of the papers from Minnesota. In one of them they found that twins who had been separated at birth had actually both mar-F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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ried women of the same name, divorced them at roughly the same time, and then remarried. And the second wives of each man had the same name. Two Bettys or whatever to begin with, and then two Joans.” He paused. “But then, Middle America’s full of Bettys and Joans.”
“Even so, the odds are very much against it,” said Isabel.
“Two Bettys is not too unlikely, but then to pick two Joans. I’m no statistician, but I should imagine that would be astronomi-cally unlikely.”
“But the unlikely can happen, you know,” said Ian. “And that, of course, can change everything we believe in. Single white crow, you see.”
Isabel looked at him blankly, and he continued: “That’s something said by William James. The finding of a single white crow would disprove the theory that all crows are black. It’s quite a pithy way of making the point that it won’t take much to disprove something which we take as absolutely firmly established.”
“Such as the proposition about black crows.”
“Precisely.”
Isabel glanced at Ian. He was looking away from her, out through the window of the shop. Outside, in the street, a bus had stopped to disgorge a couple of passengers: a middle-aged woman in a coat which looked too warm for the day, and a young woman in a T-shirt with a legend bleached out in the wash.
“You’re looking worried,” she said. “Are you all right?”
He turned back to face her. “I came across that quote from William James in an article recently,” he said. “Something rather close to home.”
She waited for him to continue. He had picked up his newspaper and folded it again, running a finger down the crease. “It was used as an introduction to an article about the psychologi-6 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h cal implications of transplant surgery, a subject obviously of some interest to me.”
Isabel felt that she should encourage him. “Well, I can imagine that these are major. It must be a massive disturbance for the system. All surgery is to some degree.”
“Yes, of course it is. But this article was about something very specific. It was about cellular memory.”
She waited for him to explain, but instead he looked at his watch. “Look,” he said, “I’m very sorry, but I’m going to have to dash. I agreed to meet my wife ten minutes ago, and she has to get back to her office. I can’t keep her.”
“Of course,” said Isabel. “You’d better go.”
Ian rose to his feet, picking up his newspaper and the empty salad tub. “Could I speak to you about this? Could I discuss it with you later? Would you mind?”
There was something in his tone which spoke of vulnerability, and Isabel thought that she could not refuse his request, even if she had wanted to. But, in fact, her curiosity had been aroused; curiosity, her personal weakness, the very quality which had led her into such frequent interventions in the lives of others and which she simply could not resist. And so she said: “Yes, by all means.” And she scribbled her telephone number on the top of his newspaper and invited him to call her and arrange a time to come round to the house for a glass of wine, if his regime allowed for that.
“It does,” he said. “A minuscule glass of wine, almost invisible to the naked eye.”
“The sort they serve in Aberdeen,” said Isabel.
“Very appropriate,” he said, smiling. “I’m from Aberdeen.”
“I’m sorry,” said Isabel hurriedly. “I’ve always found Aberdo-nians very generous.”
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“Perhaps we are,” he said, adding, “in a frugal sort of way.
No, wine is all right, in small quantities. But I have to avoid chocolate apparently. And that’s very hard. Even the thought of chocolate is difficult for me. It sets up such a yearning.”
Isabel agreed with this. “Chocolate involves major philosophical problems,” she said. “It shows us a lot about temptation and self-control.” She thought for a moment. There was a lot that one might say about chocolate, if one thought about it.
“Yes,” she concluded, “chocolate is a great test, isn’t it?”
T H E A F T E R N OO N PA S S E D as the morning had, in a flurry of business. Again
