“I’ve not met him yet,” Isabel admitted. “But preliminary reports . . .” She hesitated. There had been only one report so far, and that had come from Eddie. Was Eddie a good judge of these matters?
“Are favourable?” asked Mimi.
“Yes,” said Isabel. “But we shall shortly see. I hope you don’t mind, by the way, having something on your first evening. It occurred to me after I had arranged it that you might want a quiet evening.”
Mimi assured Isabel that she and Joe would be very happy to be entertained that night. “And I want to meet Patrick,”
she said. “Poor young man. Do you think he’ll mind being on display?”
“Nobody enjoys being on display,” said Isabel. But then she thought: Some do, and so she added, “Except actors. And narcissists.” Patrick could be both of these, she thought. She wondered whether a narcissistic actor would be an improvement on an unfaithful wine merchant, which is what Toby had been.
Motor insurance companies rated people according to occupa-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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tion when they assessed risk; poets and journalists paid a higher premium than lawyers and librarians. It had not occurred to her before, but now she saw it: the risk a man posed to a woman probably ran in parallel to the insurance risk he represented.
Dangerous drivers made dangerous lovers. Safe, reliable personalities made safe reliable boyfriends and husbands. But how dull!
“You’re smiling at something,” said Mimi.
PAT R I C K , a glass of wine in his hand, was sitting on the sofa, talking to Mimi. Joe, standing near the fireplace, was engrossed in conversation with Cat. Isabel, who had left her guests for a few minutes to attend to something in the kitchen, took in the scene from the doorway. There had been no awkwardness when Cat and Patrick arrived; just the smallest of warning glances, perhaps, between Cat and Isabel. Cat knew that Isabel was making an effort not to involve herself in her affairs, and appreciated this, but old habits, she knew, died hard.
They had spoken to each other briefly in the kitchen, when Cat had come through to help. “He seems very nice,” Isabel had said. It was a trite word—
“We get on very well,” said Cat quietly. “I thought that you’d like him.”
“He’s very good-looking,” said Isabel, smiling.
Cat, carefully placing canapes on a plate, looked at Isabel sharply.
“Well, he is,” said Isabel defensively. “I’m not accusing you 5 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h of going for looks. But if the looks are there, then all the better.”
She was not sure if she believed what she said. Of course Cat went for looks. It had been apparent to Isabel ever since Cat had been sixteen and had produced her first boyfriend that she was attracted to tall young men with regular features and blond hair. It was a cliche of male beauty, really, and Cat subscribed to it enthusiastically. Of course there was a biological message in it, as there was in all messages of beauty. In choosing me, it said, you choose somebody who is strong and reliable and who will give you strong children. Ultimately everything that the poets said about love was a romanticization of the fundamental biological imperative: find somebody with whom to produce children and who will help you raise them.
She did not have the chance to speak at length to Patrick until they were seated at the table. Exercising her prerogative as hostess, she had placed Patrick on her right, which would enable her to find out what she needed to find out. He proved forthcoming. He was a lawyer, he revealed. He worked for a firm that specialised in takeovers, which he called acquisitions. “We acquire companies,” he said simply. “I draw up lists of things that have to be checked. We call it compliance.”
Isabel raised an eyebrow. There was something soft about him, she thought. In spite of the masculine good looks, the chiselled features, there was something yielding and feminine about him. And yet here he was talking about pouncing. For a moment, a ridiculous moment, she imagined Patrick pouncing on Cat, his long limbs poised like springs, his thin, elegant fingers extended like claws.
“Redness in tooth and claw,” she muttered.
“Money doesn’t stay in a hole,” said Patrick casually, dipping his spoon into his soup. “It needs to be active.”
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Isabel felt herself becoming irritated. Money was an inanimate force. It was people who were active, who made money do things. “But these takeovers involve people losing their jobs,”
she said. “Isn’t that true? From what I’ve heard, the first thing that the new owners do is try to get rid of as many people as they can.”
Patrick put down his spoon. “Sometimes,” he said. “But companies aren’t charities. People can’t expect a job for life. Not these days.”
Isabel told herself that she should try to like Patrick. She had promised herself that she would give him a chance, and that she would not make any assumptions. But what she now felt was not an assumption. This was a conclusion: Patrick was self-satisfied. He was as shallow as Toby had been; more intelligent, perhaps, but just as shallow.
“Are you going to be a lawyer for the rest of your career?”
she asked quietly.
Patrick looked surprised. He took a piece of bread roll from his plate and broke it. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I
