He came to the door, clutching a music manuscript book.
“Isabel!”
He was surprised to see her but not discouraging.
“I’m still teaching,” he said, his voice lowered. “Come in and wait in the kitchen. I’ll be another”—he took her wrist, gently, and glanced at her watch—“another ten minutes. That’s all.”
“I wouldn’t have disturbed you,” she said as she entered the hall. “It’s just that . . .”
“Don’t worry,” he said, pointing in the direction of his studio. “Later.”
Isabel saw a boy in an Academy jacket sitting in a chair near the piano, holding a bassoon. The boy was craning his neck to see who had arrived. Isabel gave a wave and the boy, embarrassed, nodded his head. She went through to the kitchen and sat down at Jamie’s pine table. There was a copy of
There was an article on contrabass instruments and the illustra-1 3 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h tions caught her eye. A man stood beside a contrabass saxophone, one hand supporting it, the other pointing to it in a tri-umphant gesture. It was as if he had captured a rare specimen, which the instrument appeared to be, according to the article. It had been made by a factory in Italy which was still prepared to make such large instruments, in return for—she was shocked by the price. But what a beautiful piece of construction with all its gleaming keys and rods and great leather hole pads, like inverted saucers.
Jamie stood in front of her, the boy by his side.
“That’s a real stunner, isn’t it?” he said to the boy.
Isabel looked up. The magazine was laid flat on the table and the boy was looking at the picture of the contrabass saxophone.
“Would you like one of those, John?” asked Jamie.
The boy smiled. “How do you lift it?”
“They come with stands,” said Jamie. “I know somebody who has an ordinary bass saxophone, which is slightly smaller.
He has a stand for it. A stand with wheels.” He paused. “This is Isabel Dalhousie, John. Isabel is a friend of mine. She’s quite a good pianist, you know, although she’s too modest to say much about that.”
Isabel rose to her feet and shook the boy’s hand. He was at the easily embarrassed stage and he blushed. It must be very hard, she thought, to be so in between; not a man yet, but not a little boy either. Just something in between, and struggling with bassoon lessons.
The boy left, nodding politely to Isabel. Jamie saw him out of the front door and then returned to the kitchen.
“Well,” he said. “That’s the last adolescent for the day.”
“He seems nice enough,” said Isabel.
F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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“I suppose he is,” said Jamie. “But he’s lazy. He doesn’t prac-tise. He says he does, but he doesn’t.”
“Ambitious parents?” asked Isabel.
“Pushy mother,” said Jamie. “Edinburgh is full of pushy mothers. And most of them send their sons to learn bassoon with me.” He smiled. “All my bills are paid by pushy mothers. I thrive on maternal push.”
He moved over to the end of the kitchen and filled a kettle with water.
“Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” He looked at her, almost dolefully. “Come on. Tell me.”
Jamie was good at detecting Isabel’s moods; he could read her, she had always thought that. And it was a slightly alarming thought, because if he could read her as well as she imagined he could, then would he have had some inkling of her feelings for him—those feelings, as she called them—which she had now got quite under control and which were not a problem any longer? She was not sure if she would want him to have known; we do not always wish for those for whom we long to know that we long for them, especially if the longing is impossible, or inappropriate. It was so easy, for instance, for a middle-aged man to fall for a young woman because of her beauty, or her litheness, or some such quality, and in most cases the response from the young woman would be one of horror, or rejection; to be loved by the unlovable was not something that most people could cope with. And so feelings should be concealed, as she had concealed her feelings from Jamie—or so she hoped.
“I went to see them,” she said simply. “I went to see those people. Rose Macleod. The mother.”
Jamie sat down at the table. He folded his arms. “And?”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“I went to the house in Nile Grove,” Isabel said. “I spoke to the mother, who invited me in. She was a rather nice woman.
An interesting face.”
“And?”
“And I was just about to tell her about Ian’s vision of the man with the high brow and the hooded eyes when somebody arrived.”
Jamie urged her to continue. He hasn’t guessed yet, thought Isabel.
