he knew T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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that Isabel was generous, this seemed to be generosity taken too far. “How much is it going to cost you? Two hundred thousand?”
Isabel looked away. She did not like talking about money, and in particular she did not like talking about actual figures. It could be more than two hundred thousand, but the funds were there and she thought that what she did with them was her own affair.
“It could cost that,” she said quietly.
“And that’s an awful lot of money,” said Jamie. “A quarter of a million pounds. Just about.”
Isabel shrugged. “That’s what flats cost in this city,” she said.
“Why can’t Grace get a mortgage? Like everybody else?”
It was a perfectly reasonable question, and one which Isabel had asked herself. But the answer was that Grace was reluctant to take on debt and Isabel had given her word to her father that she would do what was necessary to look after her. In Isabel’s view, that meant that she needed to provide her with a roof over her head. And even if she had not made that promise, she would probably have done it anyway.
“Grace is not the sort of person who would like a mortgage,”
said Isabel.
Jamie frowned. “Well, all right. But why you? Why do you have to do it?”
Isabel looked quizzically at Jamie. “Are you trying to protect me?” she asked.
Jamie said nothing for a while, but then a smile broke out on his face. “I suppose I am,” he muttered. “You do some . . .
some odd things.” Then he added, “Sometimes.”
“Well, that’s very reassuring,” said Isabel. “I’m busy trying to do something for Grace. You’re busy trying to do something for 3 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h me. And Grace, in her own inimitable way, spends a lot of time trying to look after me and you too—to an extent. A nice illustration of what moral community is all about.”
The flat she was to look at that day was halfway along St.
Stephen Street, a street of second-hand shops and bars; a street which prided itself on its slightly bohemian character yet was too expensive for students who might fancy living in such a quarter. People who lived there had to tolerate a certain amount of noise from the bars and the restaurants, but enjoyed, in return, the convenience of the coffee shops and bakeries round the corner, and the sheer beauty of the architecture, which was classical Georgian. Isabel was not sure about it as an address for Grace, who might be hoping for something more conventional, but thought that she would take a look at it, in case it proved to be suitable. The price was about right, and she had been told that she might even be able to lower it if she found cause to shake her head and complain about something.
She had asked Jamie to look at the flat with her because she thought that his local knowledge might help. Jamie lived in Saxe-Coburg Street, which was only a couple of blocks away to the north, and he often walked along St. Stephen Street on his way into town. He had known some people who lived there, he said, and they had talked to him about the locality, although he was having difficulty remembering what they had said. “I think they liked it,” he said. “Or did they say they didn’t? Sorry, I just can’t remember.”
That had not been very helpful, and it had reminded Isabel, inconsequentially, of Wittgenstein’s account of his last meeting with Gottlob Frege. “The last time I saw Frege,” he said, “as we were waiting at the station for my train, I said to him, ‘Don’t you ever find any difficulty in your theory that numbers are objects?’
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He replied, ‘Sometimes I seem to see a difficulty—but then again I don’t see it.’ ” Isabel was not sure whether this was funny. She thought it might be, but stories told by philosophers which appeared to be funny were sometimes not funny at all, but very serious. And sometimes very serious remarks made by philosophers were, in fact, jokes, and intended to be taken as such.
Jamie had arrived at the cafe first that morning, and she found him already seated at the table near the window, paging through a musical score. He rose to greet her—Jamie always stood for women—and he reached out to shake her hand. They did not exchange a kiss of greeting; they had never done this, although it had become the social norm in some circles in Edinburgh. Friends, even friends of a single meeting’s standing, kissed one another when they met; or at least men and women did. Isabel was unhappy about this rash of kissing. A kiss, she thought, was an intimate gesture, which was not enjoyable in any way when you did not know the person very well. Indeed it could be embarrassing: spectacles could get in the way and lipstick be left on male cheeks. There were other arguments against it: the recent consumption of garlic had a tendency to make an impression, and it was, she assumed, a good way of passing on a cold.
She would have enjoyed kissing Jamie, though—even through a miasma of garlic. He is so beautiful, she thought. He is at the moment of his greatest beauty, round about now. He will never be so beautiful again.
“You look thoughtful,” said Jamie as they sat down together.
Isabel blushed. She could hardly say to him: I was thinking of what it would be like to kiss you. We often cannot tell people just what is going on in our minds, she thought, and so we hide 3 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h things. And that was inevitable—to a degree— although there was a danger, surely, that if one concealed too much it would show. One would become furtive.
“I was thinking, I suppose,” she said lightly. “I find I think too much. You yourself have accused me of that, haven’t you?”
He had. He had told her on several occasions that she complicated matters and that the world was simpler
