The Careful Use of Compliments

“Right,” he said. “That’s evidence of a sort, or at least it’s a reason to be suspicious, I suppose.”

A bell rang within, warning of the end of the interval. They turned round and went back into the vestibule.

“I don’t like this,” said Susie. “This is a criminal offence you’ve stumbled upon, Isabel. I’m not sure if you should get involved, you know. These things . . .”

“What Susie’s saying is that it’s dangerous,” said Peter. “And I think she’s right. So I think you should go and talk to Guy Peploe. Hand the matter over to him. He’ll know what to do.”

She did not take much persuading. “All right.”

“And you’ll definitely do this?” asked Peter. “I know about your tendency to . . .”

“Interfere?” asked Isabel, playfully.

“You said it rather than I,” said Peter.

L AT E R T H AT N I G H T , well after the concert, when Isabel lay sleepless, Jamie turned to her. He took her hand, stroking it gently. The room was in darkness apart from a sliver of moonlight that penetrated the chink in the curtains, like a searchlight in the night sky.

“You played so beautifully,” said Isabel. “Particularly in the Maxwell Davies.”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Jamie pressed her hand to his chest. His skin, she thought, was so smooth—like satin.

“Every note was perfect,” she went on. “It was.”

He moved her hand across his chest. She felt the beating of his heart, somewhere below her fingers, and that felt the most intimate of all. She might possess him, but she might not touch his heart.

“You shouldn’t say that,” he whispered. “Flatterer.”

“No, I mean it. I don’t give compliments I don’t mean.” She paused. They were whispering, though for no reason; but in the dark it seemed right to whisper, so as not to disturb the silence.

“When I was a boy I used to think that talking in the dark was what it would be like talking to God,” said Jamie. “Odd. I thought that he could hear us in the dark.”

Isabel was not sure about this. “The difference is that we can hear ourselves,” said Isabel. “That’s the difference.” It was that, she thought; that, and something to do with the accentua-tion of the hearing in the absence of other stimuli for the senses.

He turned and kissed her on the forehead. The back of his hand was upon her cheek.

“Tell me a story of a tattooed man,” he whispered. “You promised that you would.”

“Did I?”

“Yes, you did.”

She shifted slightly, so that his hand fell from the side of her cheek. She thought of a tattooed man, the sort of man one saw in Edwardian photographs, those photographs of side show exhibits of the past, every square inch of the body covered with inked designs, the sacred, the demoniacal, the confessional.

What could she say about this tattooed man? That he loved his 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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wife, the tattooed lady, and was proud of his son, the tattooed baby? It sounded like a couple of lines from a poem, but it was not; it was from nowhere. And such a story would be trite, she thought; trite and tragic at the same time.

“Your tattooed man, Jamie,” she began. “Let me see, now.

All right, the tattooed man.”

He sounded drowsy. “I’m listening.”

His drowsiness communicated itself to her, as a yawn will pass like an infection, from one to another. She felt a wave of tiredness coming over her. She wanted only to lie there with him, close to him in the darkness, and drift off to sleep. It was hard to speak, she was so tired, and anyway she thought that he was now asleep, with his breathing getting deeper, more regular.

She let her eyelids close, so that even the sliver of moonlight was blocked out. Before sleep claimed her she thought: We forget so many stories in our lifetime, some told, some that remained untold; some that we did not really know in the first place. The tattooed man / Who loved his wife, the tattooed lady /

And was proud of his son, the tattooed baby.

C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N

E

HE’S WEARING his Macpherson tartan rompers, I see,” said Grace, bending down to tickle Charlie under the chin. “Have you bought him his first kilt yet?”

Isabel had not, but would do so, she thought, when he was about three.

“To wear a kilt one must first be able to walk,” she said.

“And his little legs would get rather cold, I think.”

“What a figure he’ll cut,” said Grace, admiringly. “Charlie Dalhousie, apple of every eye at the school dances . . .” She broke off. Would Charlie be Charlie Dalhousie, taking Isabel’s name, or would he . . . She smiled nervously, in the awkwardness of the moment. There were few things that embarrassed Grace, but illegitimacy was one of them,