Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

“I know the place you’re talking about,” said Isabel. “It has a strange name. Iguana, or something like that.”

“Everything has a strange name these days,” said Grace.

Isabel said nothing. The feeling of the previous evening had momentarily returned—a feeling of utter emptiness and of being alone. It was not an unfamiliar feeling, of course. She remembered that when she had first realised that John Liamor was being unfaithful to her, with a girl who had come to Cambridge from Dublin to talk to him about his research, this is what she had felt. It was the feeling of having something taken away from her, out of her, like being winded. But John Liamor was her past, and she was getting over him. For years she had been in his thrall, bound to thoughts of him, unable to trust men as a result. Should she now allow herself to be caught up in something which had the same risk of pain and rejection?

Of course not.

Grace was watching her. She knows, thought Isabel. She knows. It is that transparent, the disappointment of the woman who has learnt that her young lover is behaving exactly as a young lover should be expected to behave—except that Jamie and I are not lovers.

“It had to happen,” said Grace suddenly, looking down at the floor as she spoke. “He would have gone back to Cat if she would have had him, but she wouldn’t. So what is he to do?

Men don’t wait any more.”

Isabel was staring out of the window. There was a clematis climbing up the wall that divided her garden from next door, and it was in full flower now, large blossoms of striated pink. Grace F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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thought that she was concerned about Cat; she had not worked out that this was personal distress. And indeed there was every reason for Grace to think that, Isabel reflected, because otherwise she would have to conclude that this was a case of an aunt—yes, an aunt—falling for the boyfriend of the niece, which was an altogether unseemly thing to do, and not the sort of thing that happened in Grace’s Edinburgh. But aunts have ids, she thought, and then smiled at the thought. There would be no emptiness any more, because she would again will herself to be pleased.

“You’re quite right,” said Isabel. “Jamie could hardly be expected to wait for ever. I despair of Cat.” She paused before adding, “And I hope that this girl, whoever she is, is good for him.” The sentiment sounded trite, but then didn’t most good sentiments sound trite? It was hard to make goodness—and good people—sound interesting. Yet the good were worthy of note, of course, because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.

“Let’s hope,” said Grace, who had now opened a cupboard and was extracting a vacuum cleaner. As she brought it out and began to unwind the electric cord, she half turned to look at Isabel.

“I thought that you might be upset,” she said. “You and Jamie are so close. I thought that you might be . . .”

Isabel supplied the word. “Jealous?”

Grace frowned. “If you put it that way. Sorry to think that, it’s just that when I walked past that table the other day that’s how I felt. I don’t want her to have him. He’s ours, you see.”

Isabel laughed. “Yes, he is ours, or so we like to think. But 3 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h he isn’t really, is he? I had a dove. Do you know that line? The poet has a dove, and the sweet dove dies. But it could equally well fly away.”

“Your Mr. W. H. Auden?”

“Oh no, not him. But he did write about love quite a lot. And I suppose he must have felt very jealous, because he had a friend who went off with other people and all the time Auden was waiting in the background. It must have been very sad for him.”

“It’s all very sad,” said Grace. “It always is.”

Isabel thought about this. She would not allow herself to be sad; how sad to be sad. So she stood up briskly and rubbed her hands. “I’m going to have a scone with my coffee,” she said.

“Would you like one too?”

C H A P T E R F O U R

E

ISABEL HAD ARRANGED with Cat that she would call in at the delicatessen that afternoon and go over various matters. Cat was leaving for Italy the following day, and she wanted to make sure that Isabel knew how everything worked. Eddie knew most of the food-handling regulations and could see that everything was in order from that point of view, but Isabel would have to be shown the special customer list which gave the details of who needed what. And there was also the business of the burglar alarm, which was unduly complicated, and which must not be allowed to go off in error.

The delicatessen was only ten minutes’ walk from Isabel’s house. She made her way along Merchiston Crescent, past the line of Victorian flats that snaked along the south side of the road. Work was being done on the long building’s stonework, and several masons were standing on a scaffolding platform, while below them, at the foot of the structure, a stone-cutting machine whined and threw up dust. Isabel looked up and one of the men waved. Immediately to the side of the scaffolding, a woman stood at a window, looking out. Isabel knew who this woman was: the wife of a scholarly man who wrote obscure 3 2

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h books about pyramids and sacred geometry. This was one of the reassuring things about Edinburgh; if a person wrote about pyramids and sacred geometry, then the neighbours would know about it. In other cities even such an original might be anonymous.

She arrived at the delicatessen in Bruntsfield Place and found Cat standing be-aproned in the doorway.

“You look just like an old-fashioned grocer,” remarked Isabel.

“Standing there, waiting to welcome your customers.”