professor of parapsychology done exhaustive tests on telepathic communication and come up with—nothing? And if groups of volunteers, hundreds of them, could sit for hours in his laboratories and try to guess what card somebody in the next room was looking at, and never get above the level of chance in their replies, then how could people insist that it was anything more than coincidence that they thought of somebody the moment before that person telephoned? Chance; pure chance. But chance was a dull explanation because it denied the possibility of the para-1 4 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h normal, and people were often disappointed by dull explana-tions. Mystery and the unknown were far more exciting because they suggested that our world was not quite as prosaic as we feared it might be. Yet we had to abjure those temptations because they lead to a world of darkness and fear.
And yet here I am, thought Isabel, walking through Char-lotte Square with Grace, bound for the spiritualist meeting rooms on Queensferry Road. It was part of her effort to be open-minded, she told herself; there had, after all, been people in Europe who had laughed at the idea of America before America was discovered by Europe. And there were people in Europe who still laughed at the idea of America; people who condescended to the New World. This infuriated her, because of the ignorance that lay behind such attitudes—on both sides. There were people in New York, or, more to the point, in places like Houston, who thought Europe—and the rest of the world—
quaint and unsanitary. And there were people in places like Paris who thought all Americans were geographically challenged xenophobes. Such narrow prejudices.
Mind you, there were at least some people in Houston who would probably find it difficult to locate Paris, or anywhere else for that matter, on a map, and who might be less than well informed about the concerns of French culture. That was indeed possible. She glanced at Grace as they walked round the south side of the square. Grace had left school at seventeen. But she had had, before that, the benefit of a traditional Scottish education, with its emphasis on learning grammar and mathematics, and geography. Would she know where Houston was? It would be interesting to know just what degree of Houston-awareness there was amongst people in general, and where Grace fitted into that. But could she ask her, directly? That F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
1 4 1
would sound rude: one did not say to somebody out of the blue, Where’s Houston? (Unless, of course, one was actively looking for it at the time.)
These were her thoughts when a heavily built man in a lightweight jacket, accompanied by a woman in a beige trouser suit, stepped up to them. The man extracted a folded map from the pocket of his jacket. Isabel noticed the fairness of his skin and the sun spots on the brow below the hairline.
“Excuse me?” he said. “We’re looking for the National Gallery, and I think . . .”
Isabel smiled at him. “You’re not far away,” she said. “You can reach it if you walk along Princes Street, which is just down there.”
She took the map from him and showed him where they were. Then she looked up. She had an ear for accents. “Texas?”
she asked. “Louisiana?”
His smile was warm. “Houston,” he said.
Isabel returned the map to him and wished them a successful trip. She and Grace began to cross the road.
“Houston, Grace,” said Isabel conversationally.
“I’ve never been there,” said Grace. “I went to Detroit once to see an aunt of mine who went to live out there.”
Isabel could not resist the temptation. “Some distance apart, aren’t they?” she said. “Such a big country. Houston and Detroit.”
“Depends on how you travel,” said Grace.
Isabel did not give up. “I sometimes get Houston mixed up,”
she said. “All these places. I get a bit confused.”
“Look at a map,” replied Grace helpfully. “It’ll show you where Houston is.”
Isabel was silent as they walked down the narrow lane that 1 4 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h led past West Register House to Queensferry Road. It had been an extraordinary coincidence that she should have thought of Houston, of all places, at precisely the moment that the visitor from Houston was about to ask directions. And it was unnerving, too, that this had all taken place in the context of thoughts about telepathy, and, to add to the strangeness of the situation, while she was on her way, as Grace’s guest, to a seance at the spiritualist meeting rooms, where they would presumably love to hear about such a thing.
They reached Queensferry Road, and Grace pointed to a building on the corner. “That’s the place,” she said. “On the third floor there.”
Isabel looked at the building on the corner of the road. It formed the end of an elegant terrace of grey stone, classical and restrained as all buildings were in the great sweep of the Georgian New Town. On the ground floor there were shop windows: a jeweller, with a display of silver, and a newsagent displaying the
They crossed Queensferry Road and entered through the blue door. A stone staircase led from a small entrance hall up to the floors above. The stairs themselves were worn, indented where feet had trodden on the stone for over two hundred years, gradually wearing it down.
“We’re at the top,” said Grace. “We’ve had trouble with this building, by the way. Lead pipes—everything had to be replaced.”
Isabel sympathised. It was all very well living in an aged city, but the pleasure came with a large bill attached to it in the form of maintenance costs. And even the spiritualists would F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
