The Right Attitude to Rain

works were displayed. The effect, thought Isabel, was pleasing, and her eye was drawn immediately to a large picture dominating one of the walls. Two figures were before a window, a man and a woman.

The man was staring out at a rural landscape, the woman looked in towards the room. Her face was composed, but there was a wistful sadness about it. She would like to be elsewhere, thought Isabel; as so many people would. How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment? Auden said something about that, she remembered, in his mountains poem.

He had said that the child unhappy on one side of the Alps might wish himself on the other. Well, he was right; only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.

She glanced about her. There were several people on the main floor of the gallery: a man in a blue overcoat, a scarf 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h around his neck, peering at a small painting near the window; a couple of middle-aged women wearing those green padded jackets that marked them immediately as leading, or at least aspiring to, the country life. They were sisters, Isabel decided, because they had the same prominent brow; sisters living together, thoroughly accustomed to each other, acting—almost thinking—in unison. But where were the man and the woman she had seen? She took a few steps forwards, away from the top of the stairs, and saw that they were standing in the small inner gallery that led off from the main floor. He was standing in front of a painting, consulting a catalogue; she was by the window staring out. It was the reverse of the large painting that she had spotted when she came in. She was looking out; he was looking in. But then it occurred to Isabel that in other respects the scene before her echoed the painting. This woman wanted to be elsewhere.

“Isabel?”

She turned round sharply. Robin McClure stood behind her, looking at her enquiringly. He reached out and put a hand lightly on her arm in a gesture of greeting.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’re standing in awe before our offering. Overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.”

Isabel laughed. “Overcome.”

Robin, his hand still on her arm, guided her towards a small picture at the edge of the room. Isabel glanced over her shoulder into the smaller room; they were still there, although the man had now joined the woman at the window, where they seemed absorbed in conversation.

“Here’s something that will appeal to you,” said Robin.

“Look at that.”

Isabel knew immediately. “Alberto Morrocco?” she asked.

T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

9

Robin nodded. “You can see the influence, can’t you?”

It was not apparent to Isabel. She leaned forward to look more closely at the painting. A girl sat in a chair, one arm resting on a table, the other holding a book. The girl looked straight ahead; not at the viewer, but through him, beyond him. She was wearing a tunic of the sort worn by schoolgirls in the past, a grey garment, with thick folds in the cloth. Behind her, a curtain was blown by the wind from an open window.

“Remember Falling Leaves?” Robin prompted. “That painting by James Cowie?”

Isabel looked again at the painting. Yes. Schoolgirls. Cowie had painted schoolgirls, over and over, innocently, but the paintings had contained a hint of the anxious transition to adolescence.

“Morrocco studied under Cowie in Aberdeen,” Robin continued. “He later discovered his own palette and the bright colours came in. And the liveliness. But every so often he remembered who taught him.”

“Morrocco was a friend of your father’s, wasn’t he?” Isabel said. Scotland was like that; there were bonds and connections everywhere, sinews of association, and they were remembered.

Isabel had a painting by Robin’s father, David McClure; it was one of her favourites.

“Yes,” said Robin. “They were great friends. And I have known Morrocco ever since I can remember.”

Isabel reached out, as if to touch the surface of the painting.

“That awful cloth,” she said. “The stuff that schoolgirls had to wear.”

“Most uncomfortable,” said Robin. “Or so I imagine.”

Isabel pointed to the painting beside it, a small still life of a white-and-blue Glasgow jug. There was something familiar 1 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h about the style, but she could not decide what it was. Perhaps it was the jug itself; there were so many paintings of Glasgow jugs—to paint one, it seemed, had been a rite of passage, like going to Paris. Artists, she thought, were enthusiastic imitators, a thought that immediately struck her as unfair, she conceded to herself, because everyone was an enthusiastic imitator.

“Yes,” said Robin. “Well, there you are . . .” He turned his head. The man whom Isabel had seen had left the inner gallery and was standing a few steps away from Robin, wanting to speak, but reluctant to interrupt.

“Sir . . . ,” began Robin, then faltered. Isabel saw his expression, the slight air of being taken aback and the quick recovery.

And she thought: This is what this man must experience every time he meets somebody; the shock as the distorted face is registered and then follows the attempt to cover the reaction. She remembered how she had once had lunch with a young man, the nephew of a friend of hers, who had come to seek her advice about studying philosophy at university. She had met him for the first time in a restaurant. He had come in, a self-possessed, good-looking young man, and when they had moved to the table she had seen the scar which ran down the side of his cheek. He had said immediately: “I was bitten by a dog when I was a boy.

I was thirteen.” He had said that because he had known what she was thinking—how did it happen? Presumably everybody thought that and he supplied the answer right at the beginning, just to get it out of the way.