The Careful Use of Compliments

system needs . . .” He stopped himself and looked up.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was tactless. I just wasn’t thinking.”

Isabel tried to smile. “Don’t worry. I know that you didn’t mean . . . didn’t mean to criticise.”

Unlike some, she thought. She had been a member—

briefly—of a mother and baby group in Bruntsfield and she had been given looks of disapproval by one or two of the mothers when she had revealed that she was not feeding Charlie herself.

Those women knew, she thought; they knew that there could be a very good reason for it, but they could not help their zeal. And she had felt guilty, although she knew that it was irrational to feel guilt for something that one could not help. Somebody had T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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once said to her that people with physical handicaps could feel guilty, as if the failure of a limb to work was the result of some fault of theirs. It had been a salutary experience for her, because she had never before experienced social opprobrium. She had never been a smoker and been frowned at disapprovingly by nonsmokers; she had never been in a minority of colour, and made to feel different, looked down upon unjustly. She had, of course, tried to imagine it, how it felt to be disliked for something one could not help, and had succeeded to an extent; now, in that petty moment of judgement, she had actually felt it.

She stole a glance at Jamie; stole: she did not like him to see her staring at him. There was something particularly appealing in the sight of this young man engaged in the tasks of father-hood. He held Charlie so gently, as if he were cosseting something infinitely fragile, and when he looked down at his son his face broke into a look of tenderness that became, after a second or two, an involuntary smile. It was difficult to explain precisely why this quality of male gentleness—a juxtaposition of strength and tenderness—was so appealing; yet every so often it was caught by a painter or a poet and laid bare.

After Jamie had finished feeding Charlie, they carried him to the bathroom, where his tiny bath had been placed on a table. The infant loved the water and waved his arms in excitement, kicked his legs.

“He’s so long,” said Jamie. “Look how his legs stretch out.

And his little body, with its tummy.” He reached out and placed a finger gently against Charlie’s abdomen, and when he took it away again there was a tiny white mark, which faded quickly.

“And here’s his heart,” he said, placing his finger where he might feel the beating within. “Little ticker. Like a little Swiss watch.”

Isabel laughed. “The naming of parts.”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

“Naming of parts?”

“A poem,” she said. “I remember reading it at school. We did war poetry for a few weeks and read an awful lot. There was a poem called ‘Naming of Parts.’ A group of recruits are being told the names of the various bits of the rifle. But what the poet sees is the japonica blossoming in neighbouring gardens, two lovers embracing in the distance, and so on. I thought it a very sad poem.”

Jamie listened. And Isabel thought of Auden, too, or WHA, as she called him, her poet. He had written “Musee des Beaux Arts” about much the same thing; how human suffering always took place against a background of the ordinary—the torturer’s horse scratching itself against a tree, a ship carrying on with its journey, all happening while Icarus plunged into the sea.

Isabel unfolded a towel, ready to wrap around Charlie. “So ordinary life continues,” she said, “while remarkable things happen. Such as angels appearing in the sky.”

Jamie reached carefully under Charlie and lifted him out of the shallow water. “Angels?”

“Yes. There’s a poet called Alvarez who wrote a lovely poem about angels appearing overhead. The angels suddenly appear in the sky and are unnoticed by a man cutting wood with a buzz saw. But then it was in Tuscany, where one might expect to see angels at any time.”

“Poetry,” said Jamie. “Even at bath time.”

He handed Charlie over to Isabel, and the baby was embraced in a voluminous towel. Jamie dried his hands and rolled his sleeves back down. Isabel noticed that his forearms were tanned brown, as if he had been out in the open. If I took him to Italy, she thought, he would be as brown as a nut.

Charlie settled quickly, and the two of them returned to the T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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kitchen. Isabel poured Jamie a glass of wine and began to cook their dinner. This had become a comfortable domestic ritual, which both appreciated, and it occurred to her that it would be simpler, and more satisfactory, if Jamie moved in altogether. As it was, he stayed some nights, and not others, and on the nights that he was not there she had begun to feel alone, even with Charlie snuffling and occasionally crying in his cot. But they had decided, each separately and without discussing it with the other, that it would be best to keep their own places. It was something to do with independence, Isabel thought, but neither of them used that word.

“Your day?” she asked as she took a saucepan out of the cupboard.

“Uneventful.”

“Nothing at all?”

“A rehearsal for Richard Neville-Towle’s concert. Ludus Baroque. I told you about it. At the Canongate Kirk. Are you going to come?”

Isabel put the saucepan on the stove. “Yes. It’s in my diary.”

Jamie picked up that day’s Scotsman newspaper and folded it neatly. He noticed that the crossword had been completed.