had shot rubber-tipped arrows in her direction. One had hit her in the eye and he had been punished by their father. He had blamed her for his punishment, for telling on him.
She thought of Jamie. It would have been so much simpler if he had been her own age and she could have accepted his proposal of marriage there and then. It was bad luck, just bad luck to fall in love with the wrong person. People did that all the time; they fell in love with somebody who for one reason or another could never be theirs. And then they served their sentence, the sentence of unrequited, impossible love, which could go on for years and years, with no remission for good behaviour, none at all.
She looked up at the white expanse of ceiling. In her mind the most worrying thing about Cat’s invitation was this: Jamie had recovered from Cat—Isabel thought of it as a recovery—
but if he were to spend any time in her company his feelings for her might be reignited. It could happen. So should she conveniently forget to mention the invitation to him? Or should she go further and tell Cat that he did not want to come? For a short time the dilemma which this posed made Isabel forget her worries. If she simply did not pass on the invitation, she was merely omitting to do something; if she went further and told Cat that 6 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h he did not want to come then she was actually telling a lie. As to the omission, she was not sure what duty one had to pass on information to another. If A says to B please tell C something or other, does B have any obligation to do so? It would depend, thought Isabel, on whether B had agreed to take on the duty of passing on the message. If he had not, then a liberal individual-istic philosopher would probably say that he did not have to exert himself. That was liberal individualism, of course, with which Isabel did not always agree. Don’t go swimming with a liberal individualist, she told herself; he might not save you if you started to drown. No, liberal individualism was not an attractive philosophy. Except now. Now it offered a very attractive solution to her problem.
I’ll discuss the question with Jamie, she decided. And then she thought: How can I be so stupid? Oh, Christopher Dove, if only you could hear this interior monologue. If only. And you too, Professor Lettuce, you great slug!
She felt much better.
C H A P T E R S I X
E
TWO DAYS AFTER THE AUCTION, Isabel was seated at her desk, halfheartedly paging through a submission for the journal—
She picked up the receiver and gave her number. Cat always interrupted her if she did that. “I know your number,”
she would say. “I’ve just dialled it.” But, rather to her relief, it was not her niece, but Guy Peploe.
“I’m sorry that you didn’t get your picture,” he said. “I was crossing my fingers for you.”
“That’s what happens at auctions,” Isabel said. “And there’ll be another chance some day, no doubt.”
Guy laughed. “True words,” he said. “In fact, there’s a chance right now, if you’re interested. Not that picture, of course, but another McInnes. Interested?”
7 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel said that she was. But was it at auction?
“No,” said Guy. “Somebody has brought it in to the gallery and wants us to sell it on commission.”
Isabel thought for a moment. She was interested in seeing it, but she wondered whether she would want to buy it. The picture she had missed at auction had been a special one, as far as she was concerned, because of its link with the small study that she already owned; she had no particular desire to own a McInnes just because it was a McInnes.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll take a look at it some time over the next few days”
Guy hesitated at the other end of the line. “Sorry to press you,” he said, “but I think that you should come down more or less immediately. I’ve got somebody coming in later this afternoon to look at a number of other things who may well go for this one too. He buys for a collector in Palm Beach. This is exactly the sort of thing that his man in Florida likes.”
Isabel looked at her watch and then glanced down at the manuscript she was reading. “Look, Guy, I’m in the middle of something really tedious. It’ll take me about forty minutes to finish and then I can come. And can I bring Charlie?”
Charlie, she was told, would be very welcome: one could never start them on art too young. Isabel then returned to the paper she was reading. She had lost the thread of the argument, which was all about individual autonomy within the family, and had to go back several paragraphs to regain it. There was something wrong with this paper, she thought; something odd that she could not quite put her finger on. Then it occurred to her: the author did not believe what he was writing. He was making all the right arguments, saying all the right things, but he simply did not believe it. She looked at the title page, where his name 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
7 1
and institution were typed. Yes. It was just as she thought. That particular department of philosophy was known for its ideologi-cal position; one could not even get an interview for a job, let alone a job, unless one adopted a radical position. This poor man was uttering the shibboleths, but his heart was obviously not in them: he was a secret conservative! In this paper he had argued against the family, calling it a threat to individual autonomy, a repressive institution. That was the party line, but he probably loved his family and believed that the best way of growing up adjusted and happy was to have a mother and a father. But that was heresy in certain circles, and
She finished the paper and wrote what she thought would be a quick note to the author.
I shall pass your article on to the editorial board for a verdict. I am about to give up the editorship of this journal, and so you will probably be dealing, in due course, with the new editor, who will be Christopher Dove,
