garden in his pram, and was sitting under the sycamore tree at the back. Isabel peered down at Charlie, who was sleeping on his back, his head shaded by the pram’s retractable hood. His mouth was slightly open and his right hand was holding the silk-lined edge of the blanket, the fingers where they were when he had fallen asleep.
“Something seemed to be bothering him this morning,”
said Grace. “He was all niggly and he wouldn’t settle. Girned a lot. Then he became a bit better. I gave him some gripe water.”
Isabel stayed where she was, bent over the pram, her face just above Charlie, but she looked sharply at Grace. “You gave him gripe water,” she said evenly. “And?”
“And it did the trick,” said Grace. “No more girning. Well, no more after about ten, fifteen minutes.”
Grace used the Scots word
But it was gripe water that concerned her. “I didn’t know we had any gripe water,” she said. And then, straightening up, she continued, “We don’t, do we? We don’t have it.”
“I bought some,” said Grace. “A few weeks ago.”
Isabel walked round the side of the pram. “And he’s had it before?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Grace. “Quite a few times. It really is effective.”
Isabel took a breath. She rarely felt angry, but now she did, 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
6 5
aware of the emotion welling up within her—a hot, raw feeling.
“But gripe water contains gin, doesn’t it? For God’s sake. Gin!”
Grace looked at her in astonishment. “Not anymore! It used to, I believe. I had it when I was a child, my mother told me.
She said that she would take a swig or two herself as well. But that’s years ago. You know how fussy people are these days.”
“So what does it have in it now?” asked Isabel. “I like to know what medicines Charlie’s taking, you know. As his mother I feel . . .” She knew that she sounded rude, but she could not help herself. And it did not help that Grace seemed so unapologetic.
“But it’s not a medicine,” said Grace. “It’s herbal. I think that the one I bought has fennel and ginger and some other things. It soothes the stomach, which is what they niggle about.” She looked up at Isabel. “You’re not worried about it, are you?”
Isabel turned away. She struggled to control her voice, and when she spoke she felt that it sounded quite normal. “No, I’m not worried. It’s just that I’d like to know if you give him anything unusual. I just feel that I should know.”
Grace said nothing, and Isabel did not look at her to gauge her reaction. She did not want to argue with Grace because she felt that it would be wrong for her to do so when Grace was her employee. That gave her an advantage over the other woman which she should not use; Grace could not fight back on equal terms, and that was unfair. But at the same time, it was not unreasonable of her, she felt, to insist on being asked before Charlie was given things like gripe water. Fennel! Ginger! Un-named herbs!
She began to move away, but Grace had something to say, and she stopped.
6 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“Cat telephoned.”
In the past, Cat had telephoned regularly. Then, with the breach in their relations, these calls had stopped; the significance of this was not lost on Grace, who said, “Yes. She actually telephoned.”
Isabel turned round. “What about?”
“An invitation. She wants you to go to dinner with her.” She paused, watching Isabel’s reaction.
Isabel decided to be cool about this. “Oh? That’s kind of her.”
“Jamie too,” said Grace. “She wants him to go too.”
Isabel’s manner remained cool, although this was a very unexpected development. “And Charlie?” she asked.
Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “She didn’t mention him.”
Isabel went into the house, into her study. For a few minutes she just stood there, inwardly seething. Grace had no right to take over Charlie like that. She was acting almost as if he were her baby, not Isabel’s. And it irritated her, too, that the other woman should behave as if she knew more about babies than Isabel did; there had been many instances of that, sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle. Isabel knew that Grace had always thought of her as somebody who was otherworldly, somebody who did not really know how things worked. Isabel had ignored this in the past, but she found it hard to do that now.
She sat down. Things were going wrong: the job, her failure of nerve in the auction, that odd exchange with Jamie over money, Grace giving Charlie gripe water, and now this odd invitation from Cat. Why would Cat invite Jamie? To interfere? To try to get him back?
Isabel looked down at the floor. The carpet in her study was an old red Belouchi that had been in the house for as long as she 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
6 7
could remember. She and her brother had played on it as a child. He had used it to make a tent from which he
