The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

She turned to Jamie, faced him. He was looking into her eyes, smiling. He bent slightly, for he was taller than Isabel, and kissed her, first on the cheek, then on the lips. He put his arms about her shoulders; his hands were warm against her. She let the painting slip from her fingers, but it was not damaged, as it fell on the cushion of the chair, face up, Brother Fox still staring at them, unperturbed.

THEY WENT TO the Cafe St. Honore, a small French restaurant off Thistle Street. It was a favourite of Isabel’s; intimate, but not so intimate as to inflict upon one the conversations of those at neighbouring tables. A perfect size, thought Isabel, mirroring the size of Edinburgh itself.

“I should not like to be completely anonymous,” Isabel remarked, looking about her. “Imagine living somewhere like Tokyo, with twelve million people, or however many it is.”

“Perhaps Tokyo isn’t as anonymous as it seems if one’s Japanese. I suspect that people who live there don’t feel all that anonymous. And what about London or New York? Are they all that anonymous? At least for the locals?”

Isabel thought about this. “No, you’re probably right. We carve out our little villages, even in big cities. There’s our little village up in Merchiston. And Cat’s village in the New Town.”

“Exactly,” said Jamie, picking up the menu which a waiter had placed before him. “And when I walk through town, I usually see at least one of my pupils. Or the mother of one of them.” He paused, and smiled at a memory. “I went into a bar the other day, you know, and there was one of the boys from the school, bold as brass. He’s just sixteen, and I know which class he’s in. And there he was in a bar.”

“Did he see you?”

“I think so. He looked away pretty sharply, and then I think he left. He was with somebody.”

“Boys will be…,” began Isabel. Of course a sixteen-year-old boy would try to get into a bar if he thought he could get away with it; one should not be too surprised. But then she thought: What was Jamie doing in a bar? And when did he go to bars?

“Which bar?” she asked.

The question seemed to take him aback, and he hesitated before he answered. “Oh, just a bar in George Street.”

“A wine bar?”

“That’s what they call themselves.”

She looked at him. Had he been evasive? Or was it just her imagining things? She knew that she should not be possessive, but she could not help wondering whether he had gone into the bar by himself, or whether he had gone with somebody, or to meet somebody. People seldom went into bars by themselves unless they really needed a drink, or needed to kill time. Jamie needed neither—he was a light drinker, and he was always complaining about never having enough time. So he had gone in with somebody.

She looked down at the menu while she asked him. “And you? Were you with somebody?”

She concentrated on the menu, reading the same line over and over, conscious of the fact that the question, in all its intrusiveness, lay unanswered on the tablecloth between them.

Then he replied: “Sally. She used to play in the chamber orchestra. She doesn’t anymore, but I know her from that.”

Isabel did not look up. “Have I met her?”

His voice was even, matter-of-fact. “No.” He paused. “You’re wondering about her, aren’t you?”

“Of course not,” Isabel lied. But her voice betrayed the truth; she could not lie without her voice rising, breaking up, as if the words were clawed back and swallowed. They would never need a lie detector for her, she felt; the untruths would be so obvious to anyone with half an ear.

“Sally is going through a difficult time at the moment,” said Jamie. “Her husband has been diagnosed with MS and they’re taking it very badly. She needed a shoulder to cry on.”

Isabel looked up from the menu. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

For a moment, Jamie looked at her with what might have been reproach, but then he looked down once more at the menu. ”You mustn’t doubt me, Isabel,” he said quietly.

His words struck home. She reached out to take his hand. “It’s because I love you,” she said. “I can’t help that. I just do. I love you so much that I sit here thinking…Well, I just sit here thinking, What if he goes off with somebody else? What if he suddenly goes off me? I can’t help it.”

He looked at her with astonishment. “You think that?”

“That you’ll leave me?”

“Yes. Do you really think that?”

She nodded, almost guiltily. Would he understand? Would any man understand that this is what so many women felt? And they felt it even if their husbands or boyfriends showed no inclination to go off with somebody else. They felt that because they would all have met some woman who would have said to them, I thought that I knew him so well, and now this. And in her case there was that additional worry that came with the difference in their ages. She had kept her looks, she was still attractive, but the years would show, eventually. And would he still find her appealing when that happened? It was the fear that so many women had, and one could not dismiss it, because in so many cases it proved to be well founded. A younger woman came along, and male biology asserted itself.

She had taken his hand; now he moved so that it was he who took hers. “Isabel, listen. I’m the one who proposed to you. Remember? In Queen Street, after we had been at Lyon and Turnbull. I asked you to marry me then and you’re the one who said no. So if anybody should do any worrying about the other leaving, then…”

They had never discussed that occasion; it had been left where it stood, an awkward memory. Now she wondered whether she should say, Ask me again. And this time, she would say yes, and she would put all doubt behind her. She had declined the first time because she had not wanted to take his freedom from him; but that had been purely because of the difference in their ages. Had the time come to stop worrying about that? Peter