case, as that particular author had invented an entirely fictional boyhood in Ireland for himself. In which case, one might learn to be wary of those who did not offer their age: had they invented a past?
It had been wrong, she felt, to press Mimi to tell her. The information she had elicited had not been all that unusual—
there were plenty of adulterous mothers—but what had shocked Isabel was that it showed that her mother had been just like she 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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was. That was the information that she had found difficult and had led to several nights of sleeplessness. Her mother had had an affair with a much younger man, which was precisely what Isabel wanted to do.
She moved away from the rug shop. A man inside, anxiously waiting for customers, had seen her and had been watching her. Isabel had looked through the glass, beyond the piles of rugs, and had met his gaze. She was sensitive to such encounters, because in her mind they were not entirely casual. By looking into the eyes of another, one established a form of connection that had moral implications. To look at another thus was to acknowledge one’s shared humanity with him, and that meant one owed him something, no matter how small that thing might be. That was why the executioner was traditionally spared the duty of looking into the eyes of the condemned; he observed him by stealth, approached from behind, was allowed a mask, and so on. If he looked into the eyes, then the moral bond would be established, and that moral bond would prevent him from doing what the state required: the carrying out of its act of murder.
Of course that was a long way from looking through the plate-glass window of a rug shop, but salesmen knew full well that once you engaged your customer in that personal bond, then the chances of their feeling obliged to buy were all the greater. Rug salesmen in Istanbul in particular understood that; their little cups of coffee, half liquid, half sludge, offered on a 1 2 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h brass tray, were intended not only as gestures of traditional hospitality, but also as the constituents of a bond between vendor and client. So, as Isabel retreated from the window and looked fixedly down the street, she felt the tentative bonds snapping like overstretched rubber bands. And then she was free, looking down the road towards St. Stephen Street, and only five minutes early for her meeting with Florence Macreadie.
Florence had returned only a short while before Isabel knocked at her door. Isabel noticed the coat that she was wearing, a dark-blue macintosh that was beginning to fray around the cuffs. Yet its cut was good and it had in its day been fashionable, or at least in good taste.
“I’ve just come back,” she said. “I haven’t had time to make coffee or anything.”
“I gave you very little warning,” said Isabel apologetically.
Florence gave a dismissive gesture. “Oh, I don’t stand on ceremony,” she said. “Anybody can come to see me any time.
Not that they do, of course. But they could if they wanted.”
She led Isabel through the hall and into the kitchen. The house was slightly untidier, Isabel thought, than it had been when she had been there last. But that had been during a viewing time, when everything was on show. One had to be tidy, the estate agents advised; and ideally there should be the smell of newly baked bread when prospective purchasers came in—it made them feel positive about the place.
Florence began to spoon coffee into a cafetiere. If the smell of newly baked bread was lacking, at least there was the aroma of fresh coffee grounds, as rich and tantalising. She shifted a pile of papers from one side of the table to the other. “I need to sort everything out,” she said. “But I keep putting it off. One 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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accumulates so much stuff in a place and yet it’s hard to throw it away. Or at least I find it hard. It’s like throwing away one’s past.”
Isabel glanced at the papers. They did not look like personal letters, but were old bills, letters from tradesmen, circulars. “Sometimes it’s good to do that,” she said. “It can be quite cathartic to get rid of everything.”
Florence sighed. “And yet, don’t you think that these little scraps of this and that make up our lives? Everything has its associations, painful or otherwise.” She paused, looking at Isabel with eyes that Isabel now saw were an unusual flecked grey.
“You know, when I was teaching—I was an English teacher, by the way—I used to keep the essays of some of my pupils. I still have them. I found that I simply could not throw them away. I kept them as a reminder of the young people who had written them. It’s so sad.”
“Why? Why is it sad?”
“As a teacher, you know, you frequently become very emotionally attached to the young people you see every day. How could it be otherwise? You get to love them, you know, and you miss them terribly when they go off and start their own lives.
Suddenly everything changes. You’ve been a major part of their lives for so long, and then suddenly they no longer need you. I always found that very sad.”
She finished talking and looked at Isabel, as if judging her response. Isabel realised that Florence was assessing her, as some people do when they are not sure whether the person to whom they are talking either understands or is prepared for a conversation of depth.
“I can understand that,” said Isabel. “Yes.”
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“I think it was the hardest thing about the job,” Florence said. “Saying goodbye to those young people. Although I suppose there were harder things from time to time.” She was silent, lost in memory. Then, “I had a very promising pupil,” she went on. “He was a very nice boy. But he had one of those childhood cancers, and although they tried all sorts of treatments they knew that it was a losing battle. He just wanted to get on with life
