Isabel accompanied Mimi to buy the provisions for the dinner. They walked into Bruntsfield; they could get some of the things from Cat, the others from the collection of small stores that lined Bruntsfield Place on both sides. They walked along Merchiston Crescent slowly, as if out for a stroll; Isabel was a quick walker, but not now, as Mimi stopped several times to remark on a glimpse of garden or to address remarks to cats she saw sunning themselves on low garden walls. “Paying my respects,” she said to Isabel. “This is their territory, you know.”
And Isabel saw that the cats appeared to understand this, and sidled up to Mimi, recognising their ally.
And then, on the way back, laden down with shopping bags, when they had stopped briefly at the top of East Castle Road, Mimi turned to Isabel and asked her how much she remembered of her mother. Nothing had provoked the question—it just occurred. “You were still so young when she died,” she said.
“Eleven is young. Memories of the years before that can become hazy. Unreliable even.”
“Some memories are clear enough,” said Isabel. “Walking along this street, for example. I remember that very well. I remember holding her hand and walking along here. Just as we’ve been doing.”
Mimi nodded. “I can see the two of you. I can see it.” She touched Isabel on the arm, briefly, the gesture of an older 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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cousin. “Whatever time it happens in your life—whenever it is that your parents die—you miss them, don’t you? It’s the end of such a chapter. Two of the most important actors in the play are written out.”
“I miss her a lot,” said Isabel. “I can’t say that I think of her every day, but I think of her often. She comes into my mind, as if she’s still here. A presence.”
“As it should be,” said Mimi.
“We idealise them, don’t we?” Isabel went on, swapping her bags from hand to hand to redistribute the load. “I’ve sometimes tried to imagine what it would be like to have a parent who did something really awful—what it would be like if one discovered that. I knew somebody who did, you know. The effect on her life was devastating. Everything changed for her. She was happy one moment and then the next . . .”
“What happened?”
“It was a girl I knew at university, at Cambridge. She was in my college; a rather sporty girl who played tennis, I think, and something else. She found out that her father had been seeing a prostitute. He was the chairman of a bank and this woman was blackmailing him.”
“That’s hardly unusual,” said Mimi. “And the fact that he was being blackmailed almost turns him into a victim, doesn’t it?”
They resumed their walk. “He would have been the victim of the story,” Isabel continued, “except, as they say, for one little thing. He tried to hire somebody to kill her. And he was discovered. The man he approached developed cold feet and went to the police. They wired him with a tape recorder and this gave them the evidence they needed. His trial was all over the papers, and this poor girl had to sit it out. Nobody spoke to her about it. In fact, somebody thoughtfully removed the newspa-9 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h pers from the common room on the day his conviction was reported. We all pretended it just hadn’t happened, whereas we should have talked to her about it. We should have given her some support.”
“Of course,” said Mimi. “But at that age one doesn’t want to face up to things like that. One thinks that cheerful denial is better. But I suppose it never is.”
Isabel wondered about that. She knew people who did very well on cheerful denial; rather better, she suspected, than if they faced up to the problem. Cheerful denial was certainly one way of dealing with an illness, and those who denied often fared better because optimism, and laughter, had a strong psycho-somatic effect. But this conversation was about parents. “I don’t know how I would have handled it if my parents had had affairs,” said Isabel. “Or tried to kill somebody. I think that it must be one of the most difficult things for children to handle— having affairs, that is. I know that people can’t help themselves—well, I count myself fortunate that I didn’t have that to deal with.”
Mimi was silent for a few moments. Then she said, quietly,
“No. It can’t be easy. It can’t be easy for anybody.”
They came to the top of Isabel’s street. In a garden on the corner, a large secluded square of land behind a high stone wall, the branches of a cluster of elms moved slowly in the breeze.
Behind them, the sky was clear, intersected by the vapour trail of an aircraft, heading west. Isabel pointed to the line of white, and Mimi looked up, through her large oval glasses. Isabel saw the sky reflected in the lenses, a shimmer of blue.
“One of the things I regret,” she said to Mimi as they looked up, “one of the things I regret most is never having known my
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known more about her if I had. As it is, I don’t really know that much.”
Mimi let her gaze move earthwards. “Of course, that’s what you call her, isn’t it? Your
“Would you be able to tell me about her?” Isabel asked suddenly. She looked at Mimi, her eyes filled with eagerness.
“Would you mind? Just tell me everything you know about her.
What sort of person she was—from the adult point of view. Was she happy? What moved her? Give me an idea of who she was.”
Mimi did not reply, and Isabel asked her again.
“Do you want the unvarnished truth?” Mimi asked.
