The Careful Use of Compliments

unpleasing mottled appearance. The windows at the front, with their white-painted astragals, had that pleasant, harmonious feeling of Georgian design, and the sun was on the glass, making it flash silver and gold.

Isabel took to the house immediately—at least to that part of it she could see. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “One to one point six one eight.”

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Peter looked at her sideways.

“The golden mean,” Isabel said. “If we measured the height of those windows and then their width, the ratio between the two would be that: one to one point six one eight, or near enough.”

“Ah,” said Peter. “Of course.”

“Most of classical Edinburgh observes that ratio,” Isabel said. “And then the Victorians came along and got all Gothic.”

“But your house is pretty,” said Peter. “And it’s Victorian.”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “I’m not being disloyal to my house. It was a child of its time. But the ceilings are just a little bit too high for the width of the rooms. Not that I sit there and fret about it, but it’s true.”

They walked up the drive. Peter had telephoned Walter, so they knew that he was in. They stood at the front door; Peter pressed the small white button in the middle of a brass fitting to the right; please push was written on the porcelain; old Edinburgh—modern buttons just said push, the simple impera-tive, not the polite cousin.

Walter Buie answered the door. He was younger than Isabel had thought he would be; she had imagined a man in his fifties or sixties, whereas the person who stood before them looked to be in his late thirties at the most. He was a tall man, with a thick head of sand-coloured curly hair. He had a strong face and piercing blue eyes; Nordic, thought Isabel, a type that one still encountered in the north and west of Scotland.

Walter held out a hand to Isabel. “We’ve almost met in the past,” he said, and named a mutual friend.

They shook hands and Walter gestured for them to come in. There was a formality about the way he spoke, and in his movements—old Edinburgh, as Peter had described it. And he 1 0 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h was right, thought Isabel, as they went into a large, airy hall. But there was something contemporary about Walter too: a fresh-ness, an athleticism, which seemed at odds with the formal manner. It was difficult to see him as a lawyer who had dropped out of private practice, even if one could see him behind the wheel of a vintage Bentley.

Walter led them through to the drawing room, a perfectly proportioned room at the end of which three windows descended from the ceiling almost to floor level. On one wall there was a large, white marble mantelpiece on which a match-ing pair of famille rose vases stood on either side of a Tang horse. In front of a further expanse of marble, serving as a hearth, there was a low gilt table on which there stood piles of books and magazines. Isabel’s eye ran discreetly to the magazine titles— The Burlington Magazine, Art Quarterly, and one she could not make out.

She glanced at the walls. Opposite the fireplace a very large Philipson nude gazed out of a wide black frame; to either side of it were what looked like two Ferguson portraits of women in extravagant, ostrich-feathered hats. And then, on another wall, above a long, white-painted bookcase, were two medium-sized paintings which Isabel immediately recognised.

Walter saw her eyes move to them. “Yes,” he said. “Those are McInnes, too. They’re quite early ones, actually. I think that he did those when he first started going to Jura. That was before he married. He was fresh out of art college, but already he had that very mature style. That’s what got him noticed.”

Now that he had drawn attention to them, Isabel felt that she could move over and look more closely at the paintings. Other people’s possessions were an awkward thing, she thought; one should not snoop too obviously when one went 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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into a room—a close examination of one’s host’s books always seemed to be too much like an attempt to judge their tastes—

but pictures were different. The reason for hanging them on the wall was for people to see them—and that included guests.

Indeed, many collectors wanted one to see their paintings, which was why well- known painters fetched higher prices. They gave no greater enjoyment, necessarily, than others; but they were evidence of wealth. There were people for whom the whole point of having a Hockney was that those who did not have Hockneys could reflect on the fact that you had one and they did not. Isabel did not care for this; she had no desire that others should see what she had.

She approached the paintings to look at them more closely.

One was of a group of people cutting and stacking peats: a man and a woman worked with the stacks of dark blocks, while behind them, seated on the edge of the cutting, a young woman unwrapped a packet of sandwiches. It was a compelling picture, with a certain sadness about it, although she could not understand why it should be sad. That, perhaps, was why McInnes was considered such a good painter: he captured the moment, in the way in which a great painter must; a moment when it feels that something is about to happen, but has not yet.

And what was about to happen in this painting was sad, inexpressibly so.

She turned to the other painting. This was a landscape, with the unmistakeable mammary hills, the Paps of Jura in the background. There was nothing in the subject matter which made it exceptional—so many artists had painted the western isles—

but again there was that quality of attenuation of light, of sadness, that made the painting stand out.

She became aware that Walter was standing directly behind 1 1 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h her. She heard his breathing and she straightened up. His physical presence was powerful in a way which she would not have been able to define; but it was there.