almost went to France, but decided that it would be Scotland this year.”
“Tarwhinn is a lovely place. You must be happy there.”
He took a careful sip of tea. “Oh, the house is fine. But it’s not really that. It’s just that I’ve been able to do some thinking.”
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She listened attentively. The sun had moved to fall through the open doors of the summer house, against the side of his trouser leg and on his left hand, which was resting on the arm of his chair. She noticed the signs of early sun damage on his skin, a dryness and freckles—Dallas, of course, and the harsh Texas summers.
“I don’t know how to say this, Isabel.”
She was about to pour more hot water into the teapot, but she stopped.
He took a deep breath. “Everything’s wrong,” he blurted out. “Everything.”
She did not know what to say. It was the engagement, obviously. He had made a mistake. People found out about other people when they went on holiday with them, and perhaps that was what had happened; it was a simple falling of scales from the eyes. And sometimes it took different surroundings to reveal a person’s inadequacies. Angie may have been fine in Dallas, where she made sense, but out there in Peeblesshire, amongst those hills, she could well seem strident, brittle.
Tom continued, “I can’t help myself. When I met you, I realised what sort of person I should really be looking for. Somebody like you.” He looked at her, gauging her reaction. She smiled, but her smile was weak and uncertain. He was sufficiently encouraged, though, to go on. “I suppose that I’m a little bit smitten with you. In fact, I’m downright smitten. There you are. I’ve said it. Sorry. It’s very rude of me.”
This was not welcome, but his manner was so formal, so polite, that it somehow seemed not in the least threatening. She reached across and placed her hand on his forearm. The linen of the sleeve was rough to the touch. “Tom, you don’t have to apologise. You—”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h He interrupted her. “I agonised over telling you, but then I decided I had to. I know that it’s ridiculous—”
“It isn’t.”
“Yes, it is,” he insisted. “You’ve got your friend, Jamie. I’m an engaged man, and I’ve got this . . . this face. I know that nothing can come of it. But I couldn’t bear just sitting there with this knowledge about myself and not being able to talk to anybody about it. That’s why I had to come and speak to you. I shouldn’t have.”
Her relief showed. He was not going to press her. “Of course you should.”
He looked at her. There was anxiety in his face. “You don’t mind?”
“Of course I don’t. I’m flattered. I really am. But, as I’m sure you’ll agree, it really doesn’t have much of a future, does it?”
He appeared to think about this for a moment. And Isabel, for her part, controlled the urge to smile at the thought of how this meeting had followed the script of her fantasy, thus far at least, although there had been no direct mention of Angie.
“And what about Angie?” she asked.
For a while he said nothing. Then, speaking quietly, he said,
“She doesn’t really care for me. In fact, I think she’d be quite happy to get rid of me.”
He looked at her to see her reaction. If he had expected her to be shocked, then she disappointed him, for she was not. It was as she had thought. She had known all along, in the way that one knows some things that cannot be explained, beliefs of unknown aetiology. She had just known that, and had felt embarrassed when she expressed the fear to Mimi. And Tom had known it too.
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She spoke very carefully. “How do you know that?” She would not tell him about her dream; it would be too melodra-matic. But she would make it clear that she did not think that what he said was outrageous.
He joined his hands together in a gesture that seemed close to hand-wringing. “I think she tried. We went to the Falls of Clyde. I was trying to get a photograph, right at the edge, from a place where I suppose one shouldn’t go because there was a sheer drop just a foot or so away, and suddenly I felt that I had to turn round. And I did, and Angie was right behind me.”
“And she tried to . . .”
He shook his head. “No. I lost my balance, and I started to go backwards. It was very strange. I was teetering, I suppose. It must have looked as if I were going to go over.”
“And?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if reliving the scene.
“She didn’t do anything. She just looked. She didn’t reach out.”
Isabel had felt a knot of tension within her, which now dis-sipated. It was that old favourite of the moral philosophers, the act/omission distinction. Was it as bad to fail to act as to act, if the consequence in each case was the same?
“You think that she should have done something?”
“Of course she should.” He paused. “I know that one might panic in such circumstances, one might freeze. But when that happens the eyes show it. I looked into her eyes and saw something quite different.”
“Which was?”
“Pleasure,” he said. “Or perhaps one might describe it as excitement.”
