The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

impression that all that had changed. It was difficult to understand.

“But what I can’t work out,” she said, “is this: Why did you not say something? Why did you not reveal your suspicions that he had actually gone so far as to change data?”

Norrie pushed his plate away from him and glanced at his watch. “I’m going to have to dash,” he said. “I’m doing a couple of endoscopies this afternoon in an hour or so.” He paused, as if weighing whether to say something. Then he did. “All right, bearing in mind that this conversation is completely deniable: Marcus Moncrieff is my uncle. He’s my mother’s brother.”

He looked at her in a way that she thought said: You are admitted to a conspiracy; I think you understand. Then he signalled to the waitress to bring the bill.

“Edinburgh’s a bit like that,” he said.

CHAPTER TEN

JAMIE WAS PLAYING that evening at the Festival Theatre. Scottish Opera was doing Don Pasquale, and although Isabel had seen the production when they had first performed it in Glasgow, she had been invited to the opera, and a reception beforehand, by Turcan Connel, the firm of lawyers who represented her in such legal business as she had. It was one of their partners, Simon Mackintosh, who had purchased the Review of Applied Ethics for her the previous year, and he said that this transaction entitled her to at least some corporate hospitality.

Champagne was served in one of the suites alongside the grand circle. Isabel looked about her: she knew a number of the guests, but for some reason she did not feel much like socialising, so she busied herself looking at the framed theatrical memorabilia on the wall. There was the programme for a concert by Harry Lauder, the Scottish vaudeville artist of the 1920s, with a picture of the famous bekilted figure with one of the twisted walking sticks that became his trademark. He had opened the show with “Will Ye Stop Your Tickling, Jock” and had ended it with “Keep Right on to the End of the Road.” Isabel smiled; her father had loved Harry Lauder and had sung his songs to Isabel and her brother when they were children. “Keep Right on to the End of the Road” moved her still, mawkish though the words were in cold print. “Every road through life is a long, long road, / Filled with joys and sorrows too.” Trite? Yes, it was, but then the truth was often trite, but nonetheless true for that. And had Harry Lauder not sung that on the very day that he had heard of the death of his only son in the trenches of France? And he had insisted on going onstage to sing it when his heart must have been broken within him. People did that then. They were brave.

Or were they too brave, Isabel thought; too brave, with the result that they were imposed upon in the name of vainglorious patriotism, chauvinism, easily led to the slaughter? Should one be brave about the loss of one’s only son, or should one break down and weep for the waste, the pointlessness of the loss; rail against the whole monstrous system that sent young men off in droves to climb up those ladders and stumble through the mud into veils of machine-gun fire? Why should anyone be brave about that?

She remembered the Latin teacher at school translating “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”—it is a sweet and decorous thing to die for one’s country. “Horace, girls,” she said. “That’s from Horace’s Odes. Horace was a poet who wrote about the pleasures of living in the country.”

“Who died for his country?” asked one of the girls.

And the teacher had said, “No. He was talking about other people.” And left it at that.

She turned away from the Lauder programme and raised her champagne glass to her lips. Simon, who was standing with a knot of people near the door, saw her and came across to speak to her.

“Do you want to meet anybody?” he asked.

“No. Not really.”

He smiled. “I thought so. I know how you feel. Has it been one of those days?”

Isabel took another sip of champagne. “Yes,” she said. “But this helps.”

“The Review? Problems with that?”

Isabel shook her head. “I’m looking after Cat’s delicatessen, and I was worked off my feet. Then I had lunch with somebody who revealed something which made me think. Nothing personal, but something which, well, which shocked me. So I just feel a bit…”

Simon put a finger to his lips. “You don’t need to tell me,” he said. “I understand. Why don’t you just slip through to your seat. We won’t be offended. Catriona will come through in a moment and sit next to you.”

Isabel did as he suggested and left the reception to find her way to her seat in the grand circle. The house was filling up, and there was that low hum of conversation that precedes the curtain: people waved to one another here and there, programmes were studied in the half-light, jackets were taken off and draped around the backs of seats.

Isabel read the biographies in her programme. There was a Russian tenor, appearing in Scotland for the first time; there was a young singer fresh out of the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow; Don Pasquale himself had sung the role at Covent Garden and was shortly going off to Sydney. She turned to the summary; it was always helpful to refresh one’s memory as to the argument of an opera. Don Pasquale plans for Ernesto to marry a candidate of his choice, but Ernesto is really in love with Norina… Her attention wandered, and she looked about her. The man in the seat in front of her was whispering to his wife, pointing, discreetly enough, to a couple at the other end of the row. Isabel wondered what that was about. The wife shook her head. Disapproval? Or misidentification?

Her gaze wandered. Over to her right, she saw her friends Willy and Vanessa Prosser; they had not seen her, but she would go and have a word with them in the interval. And behind them…she stopped. A few seats away from her, but two rows behind, was Nick Smart—and he was looking directly at her.

She could hardly pretend not to see him, as she was half turned in her seat and looking directly at him. So she lifted a hand and gave him a halfhearted wave. He smiled, and rose to his feet. He was making his way over to speak to her.

He crouched down in the aisle, beside her seat. “How nice to see you,” he said.