The Careful Use of Compliments

whom you may know. I am sure that he will be very sympathetic to the argument that you put forward in this paper, as he has often expressed views similar to your own. I think he believes them, but, and forgive me if I am wrong, I get the feeling that your heart is not behind the arguments you present. Not your heart. You see, there are occasions when a theoretically defensible position, based, say, on an argument of individual rights and equality, goes completely against what we see about us in the world. And what we see about us in the world is that the conventional family, where there is a loving mother and a loving father, provides by far the best envi-7 2

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h ronment for the raising of children. That’s the way it has been for thousands of years. And should we not perhaps take into account what the wisdom of thousands of years teaches us? Or are we so clever that we can ignore it? That is not to say that there are all sorts of other homes in which children may grow up very secure and very happy. Very loved too. But the recognition of that should not lead us to condemn and thereby weaken the conventional family ideal, which is what you do here.

Do you really mean that? Do you really think that we would be happier if we abandoned the conventional family? I’m sorry, but I don’t think that you do; you’re just saying that you do because it’s the position to take.

She read what she had written, and then read it again. Did she herself believe this? What was she providing for Charlie?

What did she want to provide for Charlie? She reached for her pen and crossed out the final sentence. But that made the letter useless; crossed-out words are still words. So she crumpled the letter up and tossed it into the bin. Then she reached for another sheet of letterhead and wrote: “Thank you. Interesting article. I’ll pass it on to the editorial board. You’ll hear from the new editor. I.D. ed.”

Coward, she said to herself as she rose from her desk. Just like him.

I S A B E L TOO K T H E B U S from Bruntsfield. Charlie slept contentedly in his sling; he had been fed and had shown no signs of colic or any other discomfort. Isabel had found the bottle of gripe water which had been purchased by Grace. She 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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moved the bottle to the bathroom cupboard; Grace might find it there if she looked, but Isabel’s act of reshelving it at least made her point. In fact, she thought Grace had picked up on her irritation at her taking Charlie over—that morning she had very pointedly asked Isabel if she minded if she took Charlie out into the garden to walk him round the flowers; previously she had done that without asking.

Charlie slept through the bus journey and was still fast asleep when they entered the Scottish Gallery. Guy Peploe and Robin McClure were in consultation with a client when Isabel went in, but Guy detached himself from the group and came over to greet her.

“It’s downstairs,” he said. “Come with me.” He reached forward and tickled Charlie under the chin. “My own are growing up so quickly. One forgets one used to carry them all the time.”

“Did you use gripe water?” asked Isabel.

Guy thought for a moment. “I think so,” he said. “Doesn’t everybody? It tastes rather nice, if I remember correctly. Very sweet.”

Isabel smiled. “It used to contain gin.”

“Mother’s ruin.”

They made their way downstairs. The lower floor housed three rooms, one given over to jewellery and glass and the other used for overflow exhibitions from the main gallery above.

When they went into the back room, Isabel saw the painting immediately. It was propped up against a wall, directly below a small Blackadder watercolour of a bunch of purple irises.

“That’s it,” said Guy. “It’s a stunner, isn’t it?”

Isabel agreed. The painting was not quite as large as the one in the auction sale, but it was clearly the finer picture, she felt, and Guy, she could tell, agreed.

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“It’s—” she began.

“Even better,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

She moved forward to look more closely at the painting. It was a picture of a boy in a small rowboat, on the edge of a shore.

It was clearly Scotland—and somewhere familiar in Scotland, she thought; behind the shore there were buildings of the sort that one sees in the Western Highlands, or on the islands, low, white-painted houses. And then a hillside rising up into low clouds.

“You can almost smell it,” she said. “The peat smoke, the kelp . . .”

“And the whisky,” said Guy, pointing to a small cluster of buildings portrayed on the left of the painting. “This is Jura, you know, as the other painting was. And those are some of the distillery buildings. See them? And there are some of the kegs outside.”

Isabel bent down again and peered at the passage that Guy had indicated. Yes, it was Jura, and that was why it seemed familiar. She had been there on a number of occasions to stay with friends at Ardlussa. That was towards the north of the island; this was to the south, near Craighouse, where the island’s only whisky distillery was.

She stood back from the painting. “What makes this so special?” she asked.

Guy stared at the painting. “Everything,” he said after a while. “Everything comes together in it. And it captures the spirit of the place, doesn’t it? I’ve been on Jura only once, but you know what those west coast islands are like. That light.

That peaceful feeling. There’s nowhere like them.” He paused.

“Not that one wants to romanticise . . .”

Isabel agreed. “And yet, and yet . . . We do live in a rather T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M