“The point is,” said Jamie, “that you shouldn’t let things go with a house. If something needs attending to, then you should do it before it gets worse. My dad’s got a builder who keeps saying that to him.”
“And it’s true,” said Isabel. But then she remembered a conversation with a German friend, Michael von Poser, on one of his visits. He was a prominent German conservationist who believed that old buildings should be left to age gracefully. “And if 1 1 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h your ceiling should fall down,” he had said to Isabel, a twinkle in his eye, “then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard.
Think of it that way.”
Isabel told Jamie about this remark and they both laughed.
Then Jamie looked up at the ceiling, as if to detect signs of imminent collapse. “What about that flat in St. Stephen Street?”
he asked. “What’s happening about that? Have you put in an offer?”
Isabel did not respond immediately. She looked into her glass of wine. New Zealand white. “Cloudy Bay,” she muttered.
Jamie held his glass up to the light. “And so clear,” he said, smiling. “But the flat—are you going to go for it?”
“Do you think I should?” she asked.
“Of course. If you really want to get a place for Grace, then that seems to me to be perfect. It’s really nice. She’ll love it. And it’s not far for her to toddle up the hill to those spiritualist meetings of hers. Ideal.”
Isabel plucked up her courage. “Something has happened,”
she said cautiously. “Since you ask. My lawyer was in touch. We had noted an interest with her lawyers, and they had contacted us. They said that Florence Macreadie wanted me to have the flat and that she would take an offer, from me, of the asking price . . .” She paused. Then, “Less ten thousand.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. “Ten thousand under? Is she desperate or something? If it goes to bids then somebody’s bound to offer at least ten thousand
Isabel shook her head. “They didn’t,” she said. “Ten thousand under. There’s a reason.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” said Isabel. She had decided to tell him, but how was T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
1 1 1
she to put it? Although everything had changed for her, he was behaving as if nothing had happened the other day in his flat.
She felt slightly injured by this because it implied a certain indifference on his part, and she wanted to talk to him about it, to see what he had meant. But if she did so, then he might take fright, or he might be embarrassed, or he might . . . There were any number of ways in which he might respond.
She steeled herself. “Apparently Florence Macreadie thought that we were planning to buy the flat together.”
She looked at Jamie. But all he did was shrug and take a sip of wine from his glass. “So?” he said. “I was helping you. I can see why she thought that. People take friends to look at places they’re buying.”
“No,” said Isabel. “You’ve got it wrong. She thought that you and I were going to live in it. Together.”
Isabel was surprised by Jamie’s reaction. He smiled. “As flatmates? Would you do your share of the washing- up, Isabel?”
“As lovers,” she said quietly.
Jamie was silent. Isabel glanced at him, but he did not look at her. “I see,” he said.
“It’s ridiculous,” Isabel said. It was a ridiculous misunderstanding, that is; it was not ridiculous that she and Jamie should be lovers. Not now.
Jamie looked up, and for a moment she saw something in his eyes. She was certain of it. “Is it all that ridiculous?” he said quietly.
“Well, no . . .”
He seemed to be thinking of something for a moment, and she waited anxiously, but then he said, “Have you put in the offer?”
Isabel sighed. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t let her sell it to me 1 1 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h on the basis that we’re going to live there when we aren’t. It would be wrong. It really would.”
Jamie thought about this for a moment. “No. No you can’t. I can see that—now that I think about it.” He put down his wineglass. “I once bought a bassoon from a man who was drunk,” he said. “He had put an advertisement in the paper saying that he was selling a load of old musical instruments. I went along to his place, and he showed me a room with about seven old instruments in it, all in fairly sick condition. He had bought them, he said, at a garage sale. Some instrument-repair man had died and his family had sold the contents of his workshop. They were his project, but he died before he got round to restoring them.”
“And the man who advertised was drunk?” asked Isabel.
“Yes,” said Jamie. “It was about seven in the evening, and he had been in the pub with his friends. He told me he had. But he must have been there for hours. He was pretty far gone.”
