The Careful Use of Compliments

The air was warm and smelled of seaweed. The hotel looked out over the bay, which, having a low-lying island at its mouth, was a safe haven for boats; several sailboats bobbed at anchor and a small fishing boat, the sort used for inshore work, sat at its mooring, nets hung up over the boom. There was quiet, that quiet which settles in places where nothing is urgent, nothing is hurried.

They made their way into the hotel. Charlie had begun to niggle, and was taken immediately into the bedroom, where he was changed and fed. From the room, as she was administer-ing Charlie’s bottle, Isabel watched Jamie walk down to the 1 5 8

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h pier, where he stood, looking out towards the boats in the bay. As she watched him, she felt a tug of possession that surprised her by its intensity; and she experienced, too, a sense of vulnerability—the feeling that people get when they see that which they love and know that they might lose it. In the back of her mind, there were lines of song, half remembered, their memory triggered by the island scenery, something she had heard sung a long time ago, but which had lodged: I’m afraid the scorching suns will shine and spoil his beauty. That was it, but there was more, and it came to her, the melody of it too, not just the words:

My love’s gone across those fields with his cheeks like roses My love’s gone across those fields gathering sweet posies I fear the scorching suns will shine and spoil his beauty And if I was with my love I would do my duty.

She rose from the bed, where she had been sitting, and stood before the window, holding Charlie across her shoulder to bring up his wind. She looked across to where Jamie was standing in the distance, on the pier, and she waved. He turned round. She waved again, and he raised a hand in salute, and she whispered, I love you so much. I love you more than you will ever know, Jamie. More.

T H E Y H A D A R R I V E D in the late afternoon, so there was little time to do much before dinner, which was served at seven. After he came back from the pier, Jamie relieved Isabel of Charlie while she went for a walk along the road that led north past the distillery and the village hall. The sky had cleared again and was now mostly blue, with patches of high white cloud moving in from the Atlantic. At one point, beyond the village school, 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

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saw a flock of Greenland white-fronted geese, coming in off the sound, heading back to Islay; the beating of their wings was like muffled drums. She walked onto the beach, a strand of peb-bles interspersed with washed-up bladder wrack and whitened wood.

She knew when she had reached the point she was searching for. If she looked directly behind her she could see the roof of the distillery through the treetops, and behind that the fold of the hills. She took a few steps backwards and looked again, this time from a half-crouching position, as an artist would presumably have had a stool. This meant that he would not have seen the distillery roof, nor the cottage on the lower slopes beside the trees. Yes, it was exactly right.

Back at the hotel, Jamie put a finger to his lips when Isabel came into the room. Charlie was asleep, stretched out in his travel cot. “You’ve been gone for ages,” he whispered. “Where were you?”

Isabel took off her jacket and shook it. She peered down at Charlie and blew him a kiss. “Along the way,” she said.

“And?”

She smiled. “Nothing much. I saw some Greenland geese on their way back to Islay.”

Jamie looked at his watch. “I’m famished.”

Over dinner, when the conversation lagged, she said, “The painting that I almost bought . . .”

Jamie reached for his wineglass. “I knew that you had a reason for coming here. It’s something to do with that picture.”

Isabel searched his face to see if he was angry, but she saw only the triumph of one whose suspicions have been borne out.

“No,” she said. “I wanted to come here anyway—sometime. But I thought that . . .”

He grinned. “But you thought that you would interfere in 1 6 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h something or other . . . What is there to interfere with, by the way?”

She thought for a moment. There was nothing, really; and she did not interfere, as Jamie put it. He criticised her for helping, which was another matter altogether. “I don’t interfere,” she began.

He cut her short. “You do, Isabel. You can’t help yourself.”

She looked down at her plate, and he realised that he had offended her. He was about to tell her that the only reason he had said this was that her interfering just did not make sense to him. But he did not get round to this, as she had started her explanation.

“All I’m doing is looking,” she said. “It occurred to me that the picture which I was offered by Walter Buie, the picture which was in the auction, was not by McInnes. I wanted to come to Jura anyway, and I thought I would kill two birds with one stone.”

Jamie looked at her in astonishment. “A fake? You think it’s a fake?”

He had raised his voice, and a woman at the next table looked at him. Her eyes moved to Isabel and then back to Jamie. Isabel noticed the brooch she was wearing, a Celtic whorl design of some sort of sea creature, a kelpie perhaps.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “It could be. That’s what I thought.”

Jamie toyed with the stem of his wineglass. Isabel, he thought, had an overactive imagination. He did not disapprove of this; in fact, it was part of her charm—her imagination and her unexpected, drily witty remarks. He knew no other woman who talked like that, and he was proud of her.

“But why would you think that?” he asked. “Guy Peploe seems happy with it—and he’s an expert. And