The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

a musician.”

Isabel needed only a second or two to remember the lines that followed. “ ‘Frisch weht der Wind,’ ” she said. “ ‘Der Heimat zu / Mein irisch Kind / Wo weilest du?’ ” Fresh wafts the wind to the Homeland / My Irish child / Where do you linger?

Charlie started to cry. He had had quite enough of this.

“Mein scottische Kind,” said Isabel. “Warum weinest du?” My Scottish child—why do you weep?

“That will only make him worse,” said Jamie.

It did.

He addressed Charlie in Scots. “Whisht now, bairn. Dinnae greet.” Hush, child. Don’t cry.

Charlie was calmed.

“You see?” said Jamie.

They drove off, in the green Swedish car, with the castle towering above them, and above that a sky from which the clouds had drawn back to reveal an attenuated blue, cold and pure.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SATURDAY CAME, Isabel’s favourite day, and Jamie’s too—if there was no concert that evening. And that Saturday there was none, leaving him free to cook dinner, which he liked to do over the weekends. Charlie, for whom one day was very much the same as another, awoke early; he was ready for breakfast shortly after half past five, disturbed, perhaps, by the birds who had loud territorial business on a tree outside his window. Jamie heard him and slipped out of bed, telling Isabel that she could have a lie-in. “As long as you like,” he muttered drowsily. “I’ll take him down to the canal and then…”

That was as much as she heard before she drifted back to sleep, and when she finally got out of bed at nine, the house was empty. The canal towpath was a good place to push Charlie in the new three-wheeled jogging stroller that they had recently acquired; they could go for miles, to Ratho, if they wished, and beyond. Isabel went downstairs in her dressing gown and opened the shutters in her study. The morning light on that side of the house was bright, and a band of it cut, butter-yellow, through the room, showing the particles of dust in their swirling dance. The air was not empty, she thought—nothing was.

The postman had come. He arrived early on Saturdays and considerately refrained from ringing the bell when he had a parcel, leaving it discreetly propped up against the door. “Your philosophy stuff,” he said of the bundles of manuscripts and proofs that found their way to her door. “Do you think I’d understand any of it? I doubt it.”

“You’d understand philosophy perfectly well, Billy,” she said. “Everybody’s a philosopher. You have views, don’t you?”

“Aye, I have my views.”

“Well, there you are then: you do philosophy. Would you like a copy of my journal—the philosophy magazine I edit? I can give you one.”

“No thank you.” And then, “That’s very kind of you, Isabel, but no thank you.”

On that morning, though, there were no parcels, but there were several large envelopes which were Review business, accompanied by a fistful of bills and a couple of personal letters. One of these letters was from an old school friend who lived in Cheltenham and wrote at irregular intervals to share with Isabel her complaints about her husband, a philanderer whom she perversely refused to leave. Isabel opened this letter with the usual heart-sinking feeling that her friend’s letters triggered.

I’m furious with Robert. He imagines that I don’t see a thing, but I see it all—he’s so transparent. He seems to be smitten with a dreadful blowsy woman who runs a small spaghetti restaurant down here. That’s all she cooks: spaghetti. In these days of more sophisticated tastes you’d think that the customers would want something a little bit more adventurous, but no, it’s just spaghetti. He went to Italy with her. He told me—promised me—that he was going to Rome on business, but what do I find in his shirt pocket when he comes back? Two boarding passes to Naples, one in his name and one in the name of la Spaghetti. And then he denied it. He said he had picked up another passenger’s boarding pass which he had found on the side of the basin in the plane’s loo. He had meant to hand it in, but forgot to so do. That’s what he said. Can you believe it, Isabel? Can you? That’s an excuse on a par with the famous The dog ate my homework, isn’t it?

It was a weak excuse, thought Isabel, but what if it were true? There were excuses that seemed extremely implausible, but which were actually true. There were, she imagined, dogs who did eat homework. It’s the sort of thing that a terrier might do; they often worried away at things they found lying around the house, and why not homework? She had known of a dog who had, in a single afternoon, polished off a box of chocolates (potentially fatal to dogs) and a set of stereo headphones. Such things happened. People did find boarding passes on planes and put them in their pockets with the best of intentions. And if one had such an excuse, and if it was genuine, then how must it feel not to be believed? But of course she did not believe him in this case.

She laid her friend’s letter aside. The husband would continue to philander and his wife would continue to complain about him. But they would stay together in their unhappiness, as people did. They remained. They endured.

The second letter was altogether more cheerful. Her psychiatrist friend, Richard Latcham, had found an article in a psychiatric journal which he thought might interest her. He had photocopied it and sent it to her. She paged through it: “The Psychopath and His Childhood.” Psychopathy starts very early, wrote the author. At six or seven, the psychopathic die is probably cast. There then followed several examples of well-known psychopaths: a famous newspaper proprietor, an actor, Lawrence of Arabia. There were photographs of them as boys, small boys, in shorts. Lawrence already looked cold; the newspaper proprietor already avaricious; the actor preternaturally vain and self-centred.

Isabel put the article down on a table and turned to Richard’s letter. “The enclosed should interest you. V. perceptive, I thought. And it goes to show how they’re all around us—psychopaths, Isabel. Watch out.”

And she suddenly thought: Marcus Moncrieff? He had been utterly indifferent to the rules of his own calling; he had been so proud. But he felt guilt—crippling, overwhelming guilt—and a psychopath would not have felt that. He