The lifeboat issue had grown, and had eventually become two issues of the
And here the issues became very much ones of the real world, Isabel thought, because real people did die every day, in very large numbers, because the resources of the lifeboat were not fairly distributed. And if we might feel squeamish about throwing a real and immediate person out of a real lifeboat, then we had fewer compunctions about doing those things which had exactly that effect, somewhere far off, on people whom we did not know and could not name. It was relentless and harrowing—
if one ever came round to thinking about it—but most of our luxuries were purchased at the expense of somebody’s suffering and deprivation elsewhere.
She stopped work at twelve. The house was quiet, as Grace had the day off and Joe and Mimi were not due back from Tarwhinn House until that evening, having spent an extra night there. Isabel had returned with Jamie late on Sunday afternoon, driving back to Edinburgh in her green Swedish car in silence.
It was not an awkward silence, though; neither, it seemed, felt 2 2 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the need to talk. Jamie had reached across and touched her lightly on the arm, and smiled, and she had smiled back at him; everything that they wished to say had been said earlier that weekend and it was as if they were replete.
But now Isabel felt restless. She could stay and have lunch in the house, but she did not relish the thought of sitting there by herself. What she wanted to do was to phone Jamie, just to hear his voice, but she could not do that as he was in rehearsals all day. And she thought, too, that it would be the wrong thing to do. She should not appear too keen . . . She stopped, and smiled. When had she last thought like this? Fifteen, sixteen—
the age at which one spent hours pondering the reactions of boys to one’s tactics. No, of course it was different; this was mature reflection, this was realism. Jamie would not want to feel crowded, and she would not crowd him.
She decided that she would have lunch at Cat’s delicatessen. It was often quiet during Monday lunchtime for some reason, and she was sure to find at least one of the tables free.
And she could offer to lend a hand in the early afternoon if Cat wanted a break; when she had run the delicatessen while Cat had been in Italy she had developed a taste for it and was happy now to help out when she had the time. Of course, Cat’s new employee, Miranda, might be there, so there might be no need.
Miranda
It had the same effect on her as the sound of chalk on a black-board will have on others, or pumice stone on the surface of a bath: a chilling, nerve-wrangling effect. Eddie should not take his eyes off the ham, he should not; although the slicer had a T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
2 2 3
protective device which meant that it would be difficult to remove a whole finger, it could still remove a top if one were not careful. She winced. When she was young there had been a butcher in Morningside Road who, as was common with butchers in those days, had cut off two fingers. He used to amuse children by placing the stub of one of them into his ear, or occasionally at the entrance to a nostril, and this caused boys to laugh with delight and girls to squeal with horror and disgust.
There were no butchers like that any more; a lesson, somewhere, had been learned; the state had intervened.
Isabel pointed to the slicer and grimaced. “Careful,” she mouthed.
Eddie smiled and returned to his work, sending shavings of Parma ham down onto a square of greaseproof paper below. The customer whom he was serving watched the process intently.
When she had finished serving the customer, Miranda came over to the table where Isabel had sat down and greeted her warmly.
“I’ve worked here two days already,” she said. “And it’s great.
Cat’s a great boss, and Eddie’s a sweetie, he really is.” She lowered her voice. “At first I thought that there was something wrong with him, I really did. Then I think he realised that I wasn’t going to bite his head off and he was really nice to me.
He showed me where everything is and he . . . Well, he was just very helpful.”
“He’s a bit shy,” said Isabel. “But we like him very much.”
“Has he got a girlfriend?” asked Miranda.
Isabel was slightly taken aback by this question. Was Miranda interested in Eddie? That seemed a bit unlikely; she could hardly imagine Eddie with this outgoing Australian, but then perhaps that was what Eddie needed—a girl who would make 2 2 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the first move. She could not imagine his making the first move, or indeed any move. Or was there another reason for the question: a veiled enquiry as to whether Eddie was interested in girls at all?
Isabel glanced across the room. Eddie had finished with the ham and was busy measuring out stoned black olives into a small white tub. She had felt that she had got to know Eddie better when they had worked together, but when she asked herself what she knew about him—about what he did in his spare time, about who his friends were—she came to the realisation that it was very little. He sometimes went to the cinema on Lothian Road—he had mentioned that once or twice—and there was a band that he liked to follow—Isabel could not remember its name and had called it the Something Somethings when she had asked him about it. But that was all she knew about him; that, and the fact that there had been some traumatic incident some time ago. She would not tell Miranda about that, though, as it had nothing to do with her.
“I don’t know about girlfriends,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t talk about his private life. And I don’t think that he likes us to ask.”
