“Oh,” said Eddie.
Isabel watched him. There were so many people who knew very little about the world, and Eddie’s generation knew less than most. She wondered, in fact, what he did know. Would he know who David Hume was, or Immanuel Kant, or Aristotle?
“Aristotle,” she said, on impulse.
Eddie frowned. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I’ve never sold any myself. Has Cat ordered any?”
Isabel looked away and muttered something about checking on it. She had not intended to expose him, and she knew that she should not laugh. There were plenty of people who would not know who Aristotle was, but there were not many who would think that he was…a cheese.
She entered Cat’s office and switched on the lights. Cat had left a list of things to be done, and Isabel now went through it. There were to be several important deliveries, including a large one of Parmesan cheese—two wheels of it. Could she cut that up, Cat asked, and vacuum pack it with the vacuum-pack machine? Eddie knew how to operate that, Cat explained, although sometimes it made him anxious. She thought about this: Why should anyone be anxious about a vacuum-pack machine? She remembered her psychiatrist friend, Richard Latcham, telling her that free-floating anxieties could settle on anything—anxiety, like love, needs an object, and that could be anything.
A tempting smell of freshly ground coffee reached Isabel through the open door of the office. She put down Cat’s list and joined Eddie at the counter. The coffee was for her.
“Do you eat breakfast, Eddie?” she asked, as she cradled in her hands the warm mug he had passed her.
Eddie shook his head. “No. Never. I have a cup of coffee when I come in here and one of those biscotti things.”
She looked at him. He was wiry, flat-stomached; there was no spare flesh. Eddie was good-looking, she thought, in a very boyish way, with his close-cropped light brown hair and the freckles that dotted his cheeks. He could have been a Scottish version of a boy from a Norman Rockwell poster, Isabel thought; one of those boys who delivered newspapers from his bicycle or dispensed sodas in the drugstore, open-faced Midwestern boys who belonged to an altogether more innocent era. There was an innocence about Eddie—a sense of being slightly surprised by the world. And the world had surprised him, she remembered—surprised him badly.
“You should eat breakfast, Eddie,” she found herself saying. “You need it.”
The young man shrugged. “I’m not hungry in the mornings.”
Isabel looked at him again. If he lost a few more pounds he would begin to look anorexic. But did young men suffer from anorexia, as young women did? She vaguely remembered reading somewhere that they did, although much less frequently. Perhaps that was changing as boys became more like young girls.
It proved to be a busy morning, and when Isabel next looked at her watch it was almost one thirty. Things slackened off slightly then, and they each took a quick lunch break. Then, in the early afternoon, a dishevelled man came in and stood in front of the counter, staring at the cheese. Eddie asked him if he could help him, but was brushed away. He looked to Isabel for assistance.
As Isabel approached the man he raised his eyes and met her gaze. “I want some cheese,” he said. “I want some cheese.”
Isabel smiled encouragingly.
“What sort?”
“That one,” he said, pointing to a large piece of Gorgonzola.
Isabel peeled on a plastic glove and reached down to extract the Gorgonzola.
“I haven’t got any money,” said the man.
She paused. Her hand was just above the cheese. Eddie, standing behind her, nudged her gently.
She hesitated. The man had a cadaverous, hungry look about him, but it was not her job to feed him. This is a delicatessen, she thought; it is not a soup kitchen. But then, on impulse, she lowered her hand, took hold of the cheese, and lifted it out of the cabinet.
Eddie watched her as she began to wrap the cheese in grease-proof paper. He was glowering at her. “Cat wouldn’t…,” he whispered. “Cat…”
“Don’t worry,” Isabel replied. “I’ll pay for it.”
“Don’t bother to wrap it,” the man said suddenly. “I want to start it now.”
She let the wrapping paper fall away. She had noticed that the man had the lilting accent of the Western Islands.
“Where are you from?” she said, as she handed the cheese over the counter.
“Skye,” he said. And then added, “A long time ago.”
She smiled at him as he took the cheese, and watched as it stuck to his fingers, which were stained and dirty. He licked at his fingers, and then took a bite out of the cheese. She watched him, and thought of the place from which he had come, a place of mountains and green pastures, of a green sea coming in from the Atlantic, the edge of Scotland, the outer limits of a world. What had brought him here, from that place—a failed croft, a mothballed fishing boat, enlistment in the army? And now this penury and hunger in a prosperous city that had no place for him.
“It’s better with biscuits,” said Isabel, reaching for a packet of water biscuits off the shelf behind her. “Take these too.”
He took the biscuits and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat.
“Thank you,” he said, and turned to leave the shop.
Eddie glared at Isabel. ”Cat wouldn’t like that,” he said.
