The man fingered his tie nervously. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said. Then, turning to Isabel, he repeated, “I’m sorry. I didn’t wish to interrupt.”
“We were just blethering,” said Robin, using the Scots word.
“Don’t worry.”
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He’s American, thought Isabel, from somewhere in the South. But it was difficult to tell these days because people moved about so much and accents had changed. And she thought of her late mother, suddenly, inconsequentially, her
She looked at the man and then quickly turned away. She was curious about him, of course, but if she held him in her gaze he would think that she was staring at his face. She moved away slightly, to indicate that he should talk to Robin.
“Isabel,” said Robin. “Would you mind?”
“Of course not,” said Isabel. “Of course not.”
She left Robin talking to the man while she went off to examine more paintings. She noticed that the woman had also come out of the smaller gallery and was now standing in front of an Elizabeth Blackadder oil of the Customs Building in Venice.
“Elizabeth Blackadder. She’s a very popular artist,” said Isabel casually. “Or at least on this side of the Atlantic. I’m not sure whether people know about her on your side.”
The woman was surprised. She turned to face Isabel. “Oh?”
she said. “Black what?”
“Blackadder,” said Isabel. “She lives here in Edinburgh.”
The woman looked back at the painting. “I like it,” she said.
“You know where you are with a painting like that.”
“Venice,” said Isabel. “That’s where you are.”
The woman was silent for a moment. She had been bending to look more closely at the painting; now she straightened up.
“How did you know that I was American?” she asked. Her tone was even, but it seemed to Isabel that there was an edge to her voice.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“I was over there when your . . . your husband spoke,” she said quickly. “I assumed.”
“And assumed correctly,” said the woman. There was no warmth in her voice.
“You see,” continued Isabel, “I’m half-American myself.
Half-American, half-Scottish, although I’ve hardly ever spent any time in the States. My mother was from —”
“Will you excuse me?” said the woman suddenly. “My friend was asking about a painting. I’m interested to hear the answer.”
Isabel watched her as she walked across the gallery. Not married, she thought. Friend. It had been abrupt, but it had been said with a smile. Although Isabel felt rebuffed, she told herself that one does not have to continue a conversation with a stranger. A minimum level of politeness is required, a response to a casual remark, but beyond that one can disengage. She was interested in this couple, as to who they were and what they were doing in Edinburgh, but she thought: I mean nothing to them. And why should I?
She went to look at another painting—three boys in a boat on a loch somewhere, absorbed in the mastery of the oars, the youngest looking up at the sky at something he had seen there.
The artist had caught the expression of wonderment on the young boy’s face and the look of concentration on the faces of his companions; that was how artists responded to the world—
they gaze and then re-create it in paint. Artists were allowed to do that—to look, to gaze at others and try to find out what it was that they were feeling—but we, who were not artists, were not.
If one looked too hard that would be considered voyeurism, or nosiness, which is what Cat, her niece, had accused her of more than once. Jamie—the boyfriend rejected by Cat but kept on by 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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Isabel as a friend—had done the same, although more tactfully.
He had said that she needed to draw a line in the world with
She had said to Jamie: “Not a good idea, Jamie. What if people on the other side of the line are in trouble?”
“That’s different,” he said. “You help them.”
“By stretching a hand across this line of yours?”
“Of course. Helping people is different.”
