The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

Jamie looked puzzled. “I’m sorry…”

“She says that he’s completely innocent. That’s what it’s got to do with me. An innocent man is now consumed with shame for something he didn’t do. That has something to do with all of us, I would have thought. And it just so happens that I have been asked by his wife to do something about it. That brings me into a relationship of—”

“Moral proximity with him,” said Jamie. “Yes, I know all about that. You’ve told me about moral proximity.”

“Well, then,” said Isabel. “There you have it.”

“But how can you believe her—just like that?”

“She seemed to me to be telling the truth.”

“But what wife wouldn’t? Of course spouses protest that their spouses are innocent. Mothers do it too. Presumably Mrs. Stalin took the view that her son Joe was widely misjudged. That he would never have run a terror.”

Isabel laughed. “One cannot expect objectivity from a spouse, I suppose. But then I have somebody else’s view to go on as well. That cardiologist I sat next to at the dinner told me that he was convinced that Marcus was innocent. He didn’t tell me at the time what it was that he was supposed to have done, but he did tell me that he thought he didn’t do it. That’s two views in favour of innocence.”

They had reached the end of the reservoir, and Jamie now glanced at his watch. “We should go back now,” he said. “We’ll need to settle him.” He planted a kiss on the top of Charlie’s head, on the tiny tam-o’-shanter he was wearing. Then, when they had started to retrace their steps, he said to Isabel, “I’m sorry I sounded so discouraging. You want to do this, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “I do.”

“Then I’m proud of you,” said Jamie. “Really proud.”

And with that he leaned over towards her and kissed her. She touched his hair. She breathed in. I am so in love, she thought, so deeply in love; and love of one is love of another, and another, until all humanity is embraced and the heavenly city realised, which will never happen, not even in your lifetime, Charlie, she thought.

WITH CHARLIE PUT TO BED, Jamie said, “I’ll cook.”

It was now almost nine in the evening and Isabel had not thought much about supper. She had a vague idea that they might have a plate of the moussaka that she had made the previous day and needed to be finished off, but she had done nothing about it and Jamie’s offer was particularly welcome. He would make pasta, he said; he had discovered some porcini mushrooms in the larder and some cream. “Not very adventurous,” he said.

“Delicious,” said Isabel. “And thank you. I want to look at some things in my study.”

She left him in the kitchen and went through to her study in the front of the house. She had a fax machine there, and there was often a small pile of papers disgorged at the end of the day, waiting for her attention: scribbled notes from the printers, queries from the copy editor, and, in this case, a report from a reader. That was what she had hoped for, and she caught her breath when she saw it.

She had sent Dove’s paper on the Trolley Problem to two referees, as was normal with any unsolicited paper. She had been scrupulously careful in her choice of referees; it would have been easy to pick a harsh one—and she knew at least one professor of philosophy, himself a seldom published man, who delighted in finding fault with the work of others and recommending against publication. Isabel would not use him as a referee, although when Professor Lettuce had been in charge of the board he had taken to doing so off his own bat. This man, whom Isabel had nicknamed the Harsh Critic, was friendly with Lettuce. Two peas from the same pod, thought Isabel; Lettuce seemed to attract vegetable metaphors, she admitted—the great turnip. No, she would not send it to the Harsh Critic because he would reject it more or less automatically—or would he? If he, the Harsh Critic, was friendly with Lettuce, then might it not be possible that he would be on good terms with Lettuce’s acolyte, Dove, the oleaginous one? In which case he would probably recommend in favour of publication, as he would not like to cause Lettuce to wilt. This made matters more complex. If she decided against the Harsh Critic, then she was taking away from Dove a chance that he would otherwise have, and she wanted to treat him with scrupulous fairness. But no, he would get a random referee, one chosen by her when she opened her address book at random…like this, and there he was, the obvious choice, her friend Iain Torrance. Iain, a theologian with a philosophical background, was as fair-minded a man as one could meet, and, what was more, he had a reputation for working quickly, as he had done now. For she saw lying there, having slid down from the desk on which the fax machine was placed, his faxed report—a neatly typed page of paper subscribed at the bottom with his signature: Iain.

She reached down to pick it up. Her hand, she noticed, was shaking. She perched on the arm of one of her library chairs; the seat itself was stacked with papers, the chair having long since ceased to be anything but part of her filing system. There were three paragraphs; two lengthy ones and a final, short one. She skimmed through the first two and then came to the third. It could not have been clearer.

“I much regret,” wrote Iain, “that I find no original insights in this paper. The arguments advanced by previous participants in the discussion are repeated, but not developed. And that part of the paper which purports to be a further refinement of the original conditions of the bystander’s plight do not add anything. Try as I might, I cannot think of any respect in which this paper helps a problem which already has a certain hoariness to it. Paper and ink are finite. I cannot recommend they be squandered on this article.”

She put down the report and closed her eyes briefly, as if to order her thoughts. Then she left her study and went back into the kitchen. The pasta was simmering on the stove, misting up the windows, but there was no sign of Jamie. Then she heard the piano, and smiled. They sometimes sang together, or he sang for her; now she heard him.

He stopped as she came into the morning room. He laid his hands gently on the keyboard, at rest, and smiled at her. She wanted to run to him, to hug him to her, this young man who had come to her so unexpectedly, who brought music, a child, beauty—all these things into her life. But she contained herself, and asked, “What was that again? It was so haunting.” It was.

“ ‘The Parting Glass,’ ” he said. “It’s one of those songs that has a complicated history. There are Irish versions and Scottish versions. Burns joined in and did a version too.”

“Of course. I’ve heard it before. Could I hear it again?”

“Here,” he said. “Take this glass of wine. And hold it. That’s how you should listen to it. Take a sip.”