The Right Attitude to Rain

what we were interested in, and, sometimes, what we believe—

even if we said we didn’t! That was why we sometimes criticised others for doing exactly what we would want to do ourselves but did not dare—which meant that the writer might not be believed in protesting that the words on the page were nothing to do to with him. They could well be.

Mimi thought of somebody she knew who often spoke of a mutual friend’s tendency to consult the plastic surgeon. “Such a conservationist,” the critic said. “She deserves some sort of award.”

And Mimi had politely observed that perhaps she, the critic, would like to do the same thing, which had not gone down well, because, she thought, it was true. But it had stopped the remarks.

“Sometimes we say things which are the—” Mimi began, but Isabel, who had not heard her, had started to say something else.

“I know that the dreams of others are tedious,” she said.

“And I know I shouldn’t bore you with these things. But I had an extremely odd dream last night.”

“About Brother Fox?” asked Mimi.

“No,” said Isabel. “About Tom and Angie. Your friends.”

“You must have been thinking about them during the day,”

offered Mimi. “I find that what I dream about very much reflects what has been on my mind that day. It happens all the time.”

Isabel turned away from the mahonia and faced Mimi. “It was very odd,” she said. “Quite disconcerting, in fact.”

“One shouldn’t let dreams worry you,” said Mimi reassuringly. “Everybody does disconcerting things in dreams.”

“Oh, I behaved myself,” said Isabel. “I don’t think I had much to do or say in the dream. I was there, I suppose, because 1 7 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h I saw what happened. But I didn’t do anything. I was just standing there, a bit shocked, I think.”

Mimi raised an eyebrow. She waited for Isabel to continue.

“We were somewhere over in the west of Scotland,” Isabel went on. “I think that it was on the Mull of Kintyre, or somewhere like that. We were in a house near the sea, and there was a room with one of those extraordinary cases of little stuffed animals dressed up in outfits, riding tiny bicycles, playing croquet.

You know those strange things? The Victorians loved them.

They would gas kittens, send them off to the taxidermist, and then put them into a sort of tableau vivant, or tableau mort, I suppose. An orchestra of kittens, with minute instruments. A court scene with kitten jurors and kitten lawyers.”

Mimi made a face. She liked cats, and indeed had been the owner of a dynasty of distinguished cats, including Arthur Brown, an immense and dignified furry ball, who had been much admired by all in that part of Dallas, and who had died, suddenly, on the kitchen floor, of a heart attack, much as overworked busi-nessmen dropped on the golf course. “I don’t approve . . .”

“Neither do I,” Isabel supplied. “But there was one of those cases in the room, and then in came Tom and Angie. They looked at the case, and walked out of the room. Then Angie came back in alone and started to read the Scotsman on the sofa. She turned to me and said, ‘I’ve killed Tom, you know.’ And that was it.”

Mimi laughed. “Imaginative stuff!”

“I woke up feeling quite sad,” said Isabel.

“One would.” Mimi paused. “Of course there’s a motive, isn’t there? She would be better off if she did that. And the university would be worse off.”

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 did not see what this had to do with SMU, and she asked Mimi to explain.

“Tom said years ago that he was going to make a major bene-faction to Southern Methodist,” said Mimi. “To the law school, in particular, but also to the Meadows School of the Arts. But then when Angie came along he stopped talking about this. Joe was very disappointed. He thought that she had got round him in some way. Anyway, all the law school people decided to take the long view. They thought that Angie would not be around for ever and that once she had got whatever settlement she had in mind, Tom would come back to the idea of giving money to the university. Joe hopes that too, but he’s not so sure that Angie is a temporary fixture. He thinks that Tom would be more likely to go first. So there you have it.”

“Of course,” Isabel said wryly, “that gives people a motive to dispose of her, rather than Tom.”

“Perhaps,” said Mimi. “But remember that the people who would benefit are all very respectable. They wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that.” Of course they might dream of it, she thought, but not consider it. But Isabel would know what she meant.

“No,” said Isabel. “Of course not. But I’m afraid that I can see Angie doing what she did in my dream. She just could, couldn’t she?”

“No,” said Mimi. “I don’t think that she has the imagination.”

She paused, looking at her watch. “But, anyway, Isabel, this sort of thing simply doesn’t happen. Outside novels, of course.”

“Novels have nothing to do with real life?”