Why, Isabel wondered, had she shot him? And who was she? Women shot abusive husbands, in desperation, or husbands who went off with other women, in fury. It seemed unlikely, but she was talking about Texas, where guns, shamefully, were part of the culture. And that was an absurdity, she thought, and such a blot on American society, this little-boy fascination with guns and toughness. Something had gone so badly wrong.
The dinner finished reasonably early, as Tom and Angie had to drive back to the house outside Peebles where they were staying. In the hall outside, Angie said, “Now, Jamie. Everybody here is coming out to see us in a week’s time. They can’t leave you here in Edinburgh. Will you be our guest too?”
Tom looked up. He was slightly surprised, thought Isabel.
“Yes, why not?” he said. “It would be very pleasant. There’s plenty of room.”
Jamie looked uncertain. He glanced at Isabel, who smiled at him. “It would make the party,” she said.
“Thank you. I’d love that.”
After they had left, Isabel insisted that she and Jamie would 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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clear up as Mimi had prepared the meal. In the kitchen with Jamie, she closed the door behind her. “Well,” she said.
Jamie’s expression was passive.
“Well,” said Isabel again. “That was Tom and Angie.”
“Yes,” said Jamie, putting a plate into the dishwasher.
“That was.”
Isabel reached past him to put a couple of glasses on the top rack of the machine. “You seemed to get on well enough with her.” She picked up another glass and threw out the dregs. “I couldn’t help but hear something she said. Something about some woman shooting a man. What was that about?”
Jamie shrugged. “Some Dallas story,” he said. “Somebody who married somebody else. Some oil man. Then shot him. So she said.”
“Shot for his oil,” mused Isabel. “Tom had better be careful.”
For a moment Jamie said nothing. He stacked a few more plates and then turned to face Isabel. “Isabel,” he said, softly.
For a minute, Isabel thought that he was going to embrace her. It was the right moment; they were alone; he was standing close to her. Her heart raced in anticipation. But then she saw that he was shaking a finger at her in mock admonition.
“You have an overactive imagination,” Jamie said.
She turned away. She was tired, and he was right. Her imagination was overactive—in every respect. She imagined that people might dispose of one another for gain. She imagined that this young man, who could presumably have any girl who took his fancy, would choose to get involved with her, a woman in her early forties. She should rein in her imagination and become realistic, like everybody else. And you don’t need the complica-tions that would follow any deeper involvement with Jamie; that 1 2 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h is what she said to herself. Why spoil a friendship for the sake of the carnal? And the carnal inevitably spoiled friendships. It took friends to another land—away from their innocence, to a place from which they could not return to simple friendship.
And yet, remember, she thought, none of us is immune to shipwreck. Come, beckons the fatal shore: come and die on my white sands, it said. And we do.
C H A P T E R E L E V E N
E
THE FOLLOWING MORNING she made the decision to visit Florence Macreadie. There was an F. Macreadie listed in the telephone directory for St. Stephen Street and a quick call from Isabel established that she would be at home after eleven that morning—“after doing the messages”—and would be happy to see her; Isabel approved of the old Scots expression and liked Florence Macreadie all the more for using it. One did not go shopping in Scots; one went for messages.
She made her way to Stockbridge slowly, walking across the Meadows and down Howe Street, stopping to look into shop windows, and to think. While looking at a display of Eastern rugs in Howe Street, marked down in price, now
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h was a person who knew that there were no saints and that her mother had been a woman with human failings, and a younger lover. And a week ago she had believed in her own ability to resist temptation; now she knew that she, like everybody else, was too weak to do that. Two sets of scales, she thought, had fallen from her eyes. It was rather like growing up; the same process of seeing things differently and feeling different inside.
Mimi’s disclosure of her mother’s affair had raised conflict-ing emotions in Isabel. She had even felt cross with Mimi, in a shoot-the-messenger sense, but these feelings had not lasted long. She knew that she had given Mimi no alternative but to disclose what she knew, and indeed if anybody deserved censure for that it was Isabel herself. Ordinary consideration for the autonomy of others dictates that we should not browbeat information out of those who don’t want to give it. What we know, and what we think, is our own business until we decide to impart it to others. Secrecy about the self may seem ridiculous or unjustified, but it is something that we can choose if we so desire. And this is true even if the information is something of very little significance. Isabel had read of an author of naval histories who had considered questions from journalists as to his date of birth to be unpardonably intrusive. That had struck her as being absurd—unless he was unduly sensitive about his age, which might have been the
