but only a brief one. The Tom said, “We’re coming into town today. I don’t know how busy you are . . .”
She glanced at “The Ethics of Tactical Voting.” “I’d welcome an interruption,” she said. “If that’s what you were going to suggest.”
He sounded pleased. “I was. Could I drop by?”
Isabel hesitated, not through any unwillingness to see Tom, but through uncertainty about what he had in mind. Was Angie coming?
He answered the unspoken question. “Just me, I’m afraid.
Angie has a hair appointment and I believe that she has some shopping to do. So it’ll just be me.”
They agreed on a time, and Isabel went through to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. She was sure that Tom was not just calling for a casual chat; he had sounded as if there was something that he wanted to talk about. She was not sure what it was, though. Over the weekend they had conversed a lot together, and they had got on well, but it could hardly be a case of something being left unfinished. One did not come into town to discuss a point in an interrupted conversation.
She made her tea and returned, reluctantly, to her study. It would be three hours before Tom arrived, and in that time she could finish her editing of “The Ethics of Tactical Voting.” The other possibility was to let the paper go forward in its existing 2 3 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h form. That would please the author, she was sure, but it would involve a lowering of her own standards—not that anybody would read this particular article, anyway, and so perhaps nobody would notice. Or would they? There were people who thought about nothing other than voting behaviour; they liked this sort of thing. Psephologists. She sighed. There were psephologists.
TO M A R R I V E D at the house at three o’clock, exactly the time they had agreed upon. Isabel had just finished editing the article and was pleased with the result. What had been dull and unin- telligible had now become dull and intelligible, which was little achievement, but enough for the day. It was a warm afternoon and the air was still. They could sit out in her summer house, drink their tea, and Tom could say whatever it was he wanted to say. For a few moments she fantasised. He would say, “I’ve gone off Angie in a big way. I feel a bit bad about it. But I realized that . . . well, you were the one I really wanted. What about it?” And she would say, “Oh, dear, Tom, I’m so sorry. Bad luck for Angie, of course, but there we are. As for me, I’ve got a boyfriend at the moment and can’t take up your kind offer.
Thanks anyway.” She smiled at the ridiculous thought. Absurd fantasies were fun, provided one did not overindulge in them.
People could begin to believe their fantasies—she had known several who did. Her poor neurotic friend, Mark, who had been adopted, believed that he was really the son of a wealthy Glasgow shipowner who would come to claim him and induct him into his inheritance; he believed that in spite of the lack of any evidence.
“You’re dressed for tea in the garden,” she said to Tom when T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
2 3 3
he arrived. He was wearing a white linen jacket, open-necked white shirt, and loose beige trousers. She noticed the air of crumpled expensiveness about the jacket, and the belt through the loops of the trouser waist—a discreet, yachting-club stripe.
He laughed. “I have a Panama hat back home, but didn’t think I’d need it in Scotland.”
She led him into the garden, which seemed drowsy that afternoon. The summer house, which had been her father’s retreat, was at the end of the lawn, backed by rhododendrons and a high stone wall that gave the entire garden privacy from the neighbours. This was Brother Fox’s territory, of course, and one year he and his vixen, whom she never saw, had raised their cubs under the foundations of the summer house itself. She had heard them scratching there when she had been sitting in her chair, and she had thought of the warm, dark comfort of their den, and of the vixen, Sister Fox, she supposed, who might at that moment be licking the fur of her cubs with pride, and of their small eyes which even at that tender age were so full of fox knowledge and wisdom.
She poured the tea and passed him his cup. It had not occurred to her before that the Bell’s palsy might make it difficult for him to drink, but now she saw that when he raised the cup to his lips he had to turn it carefully to the side. He saw her watching.
“I have to be a bit careful,” he said. “When this first happened, I spilled coffee all over the place. I’m used to it now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to stare.”
He was quick to reassure her. “I really don’t mind. I remind myself that it really makes very little difference to the things I can do. And as for the disfigurement . . . well, we’ve all seen far 2 3 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h worse, haven’t we? People who have had bad facial burns. And dwarves. Imagine what they have to put up with. People embarrassed to look at them and not knowing how to speak to them.”
“But attitudes have changed, surely.”
He lowered his cup. “Maybe. Until this happened to me, though, I had no idea what people with . . . with disabilities have to put up with. The looks. The pity. Yes, that’s difficult to take.
The pity. It’s well meant, but we don’t want it, you know. And it also made me realise something that I never thought about. Dallas is part of the South, in its own way, and I never thought very much about what it was to be black in a white world. Now I think I know a little bit about what that might have been like. A bit late to get that education. This thing—this illness, just a virally damaged facial nerve—gave me wisdom. How about that? The wisdom of the facial nerve.”
She did not say anything, but she knew exactly what he meant. To be able to imagine the other, and the experience of the other, was what wisdom was all about; but nobody talked about wisdom very much any more, nor virtue, perhaps because wisdom was not appreciated in a world of glitz and effect. We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television—grey, lined, thoughtful.
Tom picked up his cup again and looked into it. “Coming to Scotland has been important for me,” he said. “We
