The Right Attitude to Rain

“Whatever,” said Isabel.

“Yes,” said Mimi, tossing the magazine aside. “Whatever.

And do take some advice from me on this, Isabel. You know that I don’t like to play the older cousin, but maybe just this once.

May I?”

Isabel nodded her assent. She could not imagine herself ever resenting advice from Mimi. “Yes. Of course.”

“Just let this thing evolve naturally,” said Mimi. “Stop thinking about it. Just for the moment remember that first you are a woman, then, second, you’re a philosopher. Can you do that, do you think?”

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It would be hard not to be a philosopher, because that is what she was, and, thought Isabel, you don’t easily forget what you are. But she could try, and she told Mimi she would. This satisfied her cousin, who only wanted Isabel to be happy, that was all. And Isabel wished the same for Mimi, and knew, too, that she would miss her when she went back to Dallas. They would write to one another, and speak on the telephone, but it was never the same as being in the same room, without three thousand miles of sea and half a continent between you.

On impulse she rose to her feet and bent down to plant a kiss on Mimi’s brow, which made Mimi smile, moist- eyed for a moment at this friendship between cousins, something one could never replicate afresh, even if one had the recipe, relying as it did on a long past, and so much that had been said and not said.

OV E R T H E N E X T T WO W E E K S Edinburgh basked in unusual warmth. Isabel found that she could sit out in her garden and work there, in a shady spot to avoid the heat in the sun. She had to water the lawn, which had started to dry out, and when she did so she caught the Mediterranean smell of settling dust, and the scent of thyme, too, wafting from her herb bed. It was a time of long afternoons and the humming sound of bees attracted by the low lavender hedge about her lawn. She and Jamie had several meals outside, lunches and dinners, sitting lazily on the grass itself or on the old canvas deck chairs which Isabel had taken from their dusty storage place in the garden shed. With his pupils away on holiday, Jamie had less to do than usual. He was working on a composition, he said, but it was going slowly:

“It’s about islands,” he said, and that was all he told her.

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel would find him gazing at her sometimes, just gazing, and he would smile when he saw that she had noticed. She asked him on one such occasion what he was thinking, and he replied, “About you. I’m thinking about you.” He said it with guilelessness, with a sort of innocence, and she felt something happen within her, some suffusion of warmth, that made her want to hold him, there and then, hold him to her.

He stayed for days at a stretch, going back to his flat in Saxe-Coburg Street only to pick up the mail and find things, a bassoon reed, a page of his composition which he had scribbled and left somewhere, a book he was reading. For much of the time they were alone, but once they invited friends round for a dinner at which they sat out until midnight, under a sky which was dark, but only just, dotted with faint stars. They talked, united in a common feeling of contentment and peace, and then sat silently, with neither saying anything for a long time, each looking up at the sky, alone in his or her private musing.

Isabel bumped into Cat in Bruntsfield, in the post office. It was an awkward meeting; Cat was polite but seemed embarrassed, and Isabel’s efforts at a normal conversation were too studied to be anything but stiff. They parted after a few minutes, nothing resolved. Isabel asked herself whether she should try another apology, but decided again that there was nothing for her to apologise for. It was taking a long time, but Cat would come round eventually. She almost told Jamie about it, but stopped herself because it occurred to her that he might interpret Cat’s jealousy as a sign that she wanted him back, which Isabel knew was not the case.

Then came the letter from Mimi. They were back in Dallas, and she complained about the heat. Joe had gone to a legal history conference in Denver. It was cooler there, he had told her, 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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and she wondered whether she should have gone too. Then: Something bad happened here a couple of days ago. Tom Bruce, who entertained us all, had a fire at his place near Tyler. He has a house there, and he goes there for weekends now and then. It went up pretty quickly, I’m afraid. He was in it at the time.

Isabel strained to make out Mimi’s handwriting. A word had been smudged, but the rest of the sentence was clear.

In spite of that . . . he managed to escape out a window.

The front door had been locked by somebody who had a key. He said that he didn’t bother to lock up at night. But the fire people thought that he had probably done so and had forgotten. I’ve done that myself, haven’t you? Forgotten whether or not I’ve locked something. But I imagine that somebody else might have had a key.

Tom was all right, apart from having breathed in smoke, which made them keep him in hospital for a night.

Hank and Barb Lischer saw him. They said that he was pretty shocked, but otherwise none the worse for it all. It’s not a very nice story, bearing in mind that the fire chief in Tyler says that the fire was deliberately started. He’s ada-mant about it. Apparently they can tell if gas has been used, and they said it had. So who did it?

Mimi then wrote, and underlined, We know, of course. She understood, and shared, Isabel’s liking for crosswords, and wrote, Take the saint from German anxiety, that is.

Isabel smiled at the clue, which was hardly a revelation. She would be more direct, though, and called Mimi immediately.

“I’ve had your letter,” she said. “That fire: you know, I know—do you think Tom knows?”