asked. “Go where?”
It was as if he had expected her to say no and was excited to find her saying yes. “Anywhere you like,” he said. “Somewhere in the west. Ireland even.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
She moved away. Charlie was becoming heavy. “We can’t. There’s the delicatessen. Remember? And you’re busy this week, aren’t you? I thought you said that you had the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.”
“We’ve both got things,” he said. “But Charlie’s free.”
Isabel laughed. “They get social diaries at a very early age these days,” she said. “I was reading about some mothers in a fashionable part of London who keep social diaries for their children. The kids have dinner parties. Dancing lessons. And so on.”
“I want Charlie to learn Scottish country dancing,” said Jamie. “He’s almost old enough. Once he can walk properly.”
They both laughed. Then Isabel looked at her watch. “We’ll have to get Charlie settled in good time,” she said. “Eddie’s coming for dinner.”
Jamie took Charlie from her. The little boy held on to her blouse, reluctant to let go. She laid a hand gently over his tightened fist; the tension went out of it and his fingers opened.
“Bath time,” said Jamie. “Why do you think they love bath time so much?”
“It’s a return to the womb,” said Isabel. “It’s how we felt once and how we want to feel again.”
She had not thought about it, but it sounded right, and was probably true. The living of our lives involved loss; loss at every point. Perhaps Charlie really did remember the comfort of the womb; it was not all that long ago, in his case. And what did she want to recover? Did she want her mother back, her sainted American mother? Or her father? Or the feeling of freedom and excitement she had experienced when first she went to Cambridge?
She looked at Jamie as he left the room, heading upstairs to the bath that he would run for Charlie. There would come a time, no doubt, when she would think back to these moments and regret them; not in the sense of wishing they had never been, but regret them in the sense of wishing them back into existence.
She followed Jamie upstairs. A line came to her, a snatch of poetry: John Betjeman, of all people, a snuffly romantic, who could write about love, though, with heart-stopping effect. There had been his Irish Unionist’s farewell to the woman he loved; Irish Unionists, she thought, have not had their fair share of poetry—all the best lines were claimed by the republican-minded Irish. But Irish Unionists fell in love and suffered for love in the same way as everybody else did, and could feel that they were in danger of drowning in love, as anybody could, and as she felt now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EDDIE SEEMED a different person. The blue jeans had been replaced with black ones—formal wear, thought Isabel, wryly—and the tee-shirt had yielded to a roll-top sweater in the green that Isabel’s father had always described as British Racing. His face looked scrubbed, his hair combed and damp, as if freshly sprinkled with water.
“You’re looking very smart, Eddie,” she said as she let him in the front door.
The compliment pleased him. He had looked uncertain when she had opened the door; now he smiled.
“I saw a fox, you know,” he said as he stepped into the hall. “Right outside. On the path. That far away from me. Just that far.”
“Brother Fox,” said Isabel. “He lives somewhere around here. We are in his territory. Did he look at you?”
Eddie nodded. “He didn’t seem frightened. He looked at me like this.” And here he made a face, narrowing his eyes. How like Brother Fox he looks, thought Isabel.
“He watches us,” said Isabel. “And he keeps other, less friendly foxes away.” She paused. “Sometimes I wish I could introduce him to the Duke of Buccleuch. He has a fox hunt, you know, down in the Borders. They need to talk.”
Eddie looked at Isabel in puzzlement; she said some very strange things, he thought. And her house…he looked about in awe.
“You’ve got a big place,” he said.
She thought of Eddie’s circumstances. Cat had said something once about where he lived; he was still with his parents somewhere, she believed, somewhere down off Leith Walk. Eddie’s parents were elderly, she now remembered; he had been something of an afterthought.
“It’s just a house,” she said.
He looked at her, as if expecting her to say something more.
“I mean, I’m used to it,” she went on. “I suppose it’s too large for me, but I’m just used to it. I don’t think of it as being big.” She sounded foolish; she should have said nothing. Those who live in big houses, she thought, should not apologise; it only makes matters worse.
“I wouldn’t know what to do in a place like this,” said Eddie. “I’d get lost.”
“Well, maybe.” She touched Eddie’s arm lightly. “Charlie would like to see you, I think. He’s just had his bath. Jamie’s with him.”
She led him upstairs. Eddie glanced at the paintings on the stairs and on the landing. “Are these all…all real?”
