frustrated gratitude. Should one let people express their gratitude properly, even if one is embarrassed or reluctant to do so? There is an art in accepting a present, and indeed there is sometimes an obligation to let others give. Perhaps the family should have allowed him to meet them, and to thank them properly; one cannot put just any condition one wishes on a gift, a condition should not be unreasonable or demeaning. Isabel had always thought that legacies which stipulated that the beneficiaries should change their names were fundamentally offensive.
“You had no alternative,” she said. “That’s all you could do.
But I think that they might have allowed you to speak with them. You could argue that they had no right to insist on anonymity, given the natural desire that you would have to express your gratitude.”
Ian’s eyes widened. “You think I have the right to know? To know who he was?”
Isabel was not prepared to go that far. “No, I don’t think so.
But obviously you would know who he is once you spoke to them. Your right—if one can call it a right—is to be able to express your very natural and entirely understandable feelings of gratitude. You can’t do that at the moment—or you can’t do it properly.”
F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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He was silent for a moment. “I see.”
Isabel felt concerned. “I’m not necessarily suggesting that you should pursue that. I don’t have a particularly strong view about it. It’s just a thought—that’s all.” She paused. Was this what he wanted to speak to her about? Did he want her to trace the family for him? She would have to tell him that this was not what she did.
“You should know something,” she began. “Whatever people have said about me, I’m not in the business of going round and finding things out. If you want me—”
He held up a hand. “No, no. It’s not that at all. Please don’t think that—”
Isabel interrupted him. “I suppose that in the past I’ve become involved in, how might one put it, issues in people’s lives. But I’m really just the editor of the
He shook his head. “I had nothing like that in mind. I felt that . . . well, one of the problems that I’ve had to face is not being able to talk. My wife is worried sick over me and I don’t want to make it worse for her. And the doctors are busy and concerned with getting all the technical things right—the drug dosages and the rest.”
Isabel immediately felt guilty. She had not intended to inhibit him. “Of course I’m happy to hear about all this,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to sound so abrupt.”
He was silent for a moment. He had not yet tackled his mackerel fillets, and now he tentatively cut off a slice. “You see,”
he said, “I’ve had a most extraordinary thing happen to me, and I haven’t been able to talk to anybody about it. I need somebody who will understand the philosophical implications of all this.
That’s why it occurred to me that I could talk to you.”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“People rarely consult philosophers for their advice,” said Isabel, smiling. “I’m flattered!”
There was less tension in his voice as he continued. “All my life has been lived according to rational principles. I believe in scientific evidence and the scientific method.”
“As do I,” said Isabel.
He nodded. “Psychology and philosophy view the world in the same way, don’t they? So both you and I would take the view that unexplained phenomena are simply that and no more—
things that we haven’t yet explained but for which there is either a current explanation in terms of our existing understanding of things, or for which an explanation may emerge in the future.”
Isabel looked out of the window. He had simplified matters rather, but she broadly agreed. But was this the conversation that he had taken such pains to engineer: a discussion of how we view the world?
“Take memory, for example,” Ian went on. “We have a general idea of how it works—that there are physical traces in the brain. We know where some of these are. Mostly in the hippocampus, but there are other bits in the cerebellum.”
“London taxi drivers,” interjected Isabel.
Ian laughed. “Exactly. They found out that they had a larger hippocampus than the rest of us because they’ve had to memo-rise all those streets in order to get their licence.”
“At least they know how to get you there,” said Isabel.
“Unlike some places. I had to take control of a taxi in Dallas once and do the map-reading and direct the driver. I was visiting my cousin there. Mimi McKnight. And when I eventually arrived at her house, cousin Mimi remarked: ‘Every society gets the taxi drivers it deserves.’ Do you think that’s true, Ian?” She answered F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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her own question. “No. The United States is a good country. It deserves better taxi drivers.”
“And better politicians?”
“Undoubtedly.”
He ate a bit more of his mackerel, while Isabel finished her potato salad.
“Could memory be located elsewhere?” he asked. “What if we were wrong about the physical basis of memory?”
