The Careful Use of Compliments

For unfair dismissal?”

“Yes,” said Jamie. “Make them pay for getting rid of you.

Make them pay for it.”

“It’s not all that simple,” said Isabel. “And I’m not even sure whether I’m a proper employee. It’s very much a part-time job.”

Jamie was not convinced. “You could try at least.”

Isabel shook her head. “It would be demeaning. And I don’t like the thought of litigation. I just don’t.”

“Go on, Isabel,” he said. “Do it. Don’t just let yourself be walked over. Do it. Stick up for yourself.”

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“I couldn’t.”

Jamie shrugged. “Well, think about it. Please just think about it.”

“All right,” she said. “I will.”

And she did, later that night, with Jamie beside her in her darkened room, she thought about it; and watched him, his arm across the pillow, so beautiful, she felt. If she did what he suggested, she could engage the most expensive, eloquent advocates to act for her, the cream of the Scottish bar. She could pay to have a spectacular day in court, in which her expensive lawyers would run rings around an inadequately represented Review. But she put the thought out of her mind because it was not her intention that she should ever, not even once, misuse the financial power which she had acquired through the laws of inheritance. If she had been wealthy through her own efforts it might be different; but she was not, and she would not depart from the code she had set for herself. It was hard, very hard sometimes; like the rule that a mountaineer makes that he should climb a certain distance each day, although the air is so thin and it is hard, so hard, to make the muscles do what one wants them to do.

C H A P T E R F I V E

E

DO YOU KNOW, I’ve never been to one of these before? My first time. I feel a bit like a schoolboy going into a bar.”

Jamie, seated beside Isabel, looked about the saleroom. A large number of people had turned up, thanks in part to the publicity attached to the sale of a private collection of Scots Colourists. This collection had been put together by a business-man who had done well with a small oil company and who had attracted attention by his colourful—and tactless—remarks.

The oil wells were on the shores of the Caspian, in one of those republics that people are not quite sure about—where it is and who runs it—and had suddenly dried up. There had been mutterings about geological reports and their manipulation at the other end, and the share price had plummeted. The sale of the Colourists was the result, along with the sale of a Highland sporting estate and a small fleet of expensive vintage cars. Of course people were sympathetic, but secretly delighted, as they are whenever those who boast of their wealth take a tumble.

The Colourists were prominently illustrated in the first few pages of the catalogue—landscapes, still lifes, a portrait of a 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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woman with an elaborate feathered hat—and there they were, in the expensive flesh, hanging on either side of the auctioneer’s podium. For the handful of saleroom voyeurs who came to auctions for the excitement of the high prices, this was the highlight of the day; these were the people who had taken the front row of seats although they had no intention of bidding for anything. They liked to watch the saleroom staff take telephone bids, connected to distant purchasers in exotic places, nodding to the auctioneer as the bidding went higher.

“Don’t wave to friends,” said Isabel. “Unless you want a painting.”

Jamie folded his hands on his lap. “Surely not?”

“It’s happened,” said Isabel, adding, “I think.”

The auction started. Isabel noticed Guy Peploe seated a few rows behind them; she smiled at him, and Guy made a thumbs-up sign for good luck. Now the Colourists started to fall: three hundred and twenty thousand pounds, two hundred and eighty thousand . . . Jamie let out a little whistle and nudged Isabel.

“Who’s got that sort of money?” he asked. “Galleries?”

“Even if it’s a gallery it will be for a private individual in the long run,” Isabel whispered. “Rich collectors.”

“Honest?”

“Probably. People with dishonest money tend to go for different things, don’t they?” She realised, as she spoke, that she did not really know what happened to dishonest money. She was a philosopher, who thought about what we should do and what we should not do, and yet what personal experience enabled her to speak with authority on these matters? She led a very sheltered life in Edinburgh. How many wicked people did she actually know? Professor Christopher Dove? Professor Lettuce? She smiled at the thought. If Dove was wicked, and she 5 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h really should give him the benefit of the doubt on that, then his wickedness was surely of a very tame nature, confined to academic machinations, jockeying for position on committees and the like. And yet wickedness like that appeared mild only because it occurred in a rarefied context; Trollope’s scheming clergymen may not have resorted to guns and knives—those were not the weapons of their milieu—yet, as people, they were probably just as bad as any Sicilian mafioso for whom the gun, rather than the snide remark, was the immediate weapon to hand.

After the Colourists had all been sold, a number of people rose and made their way out of the saleroom. That was the end of the excitement for them; there would be no more sums like that bandied about. Isabel and Jamie watched the paintings disposed of, and there were one or two highlights. An unflatter-ing portrait of a dancer, painted in the style of Botero by a Russian artist, went for forty-five pounds to a small man in an overcoat; a picture