The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

than one occasion the author of such a paper had become threatening, even if only from a distance.

She went into her study and laid the bundle of envelopes on the table. There had been a run of fine weather and the morning was a warm one; even her study, on the wrong side of the house for the morning sun, seemed hotter than usual, and Isabel crossed the room to open a window. As the heavy Victorian casement slid upwards, the outside air rushed in, carrying the smell of freshly mown grass from the neighbouring garden, and perhaps the slightest trace of something else: flowering gorse, possibly, or blown roses.

She stood in front of the open window for a moment, feeling the flow of air over her bare arms. Who was it who stood naked in front of an open window, even in winter, and took what he called his “air bath”? She had to search her memory for a good minute or so before the answer came: Lord Monboddo, the eighteenth-century judge and philosopher; he who, in his curious way, predicted Darwin, but was ridiculed for his insistence that men once had tails. She liked the idea of an air bath; she liked breezes and winds, she found them interesting. The winds must come from somewhere when they blow… The haunting line of Auden came back to her —WHA, of course. Yes, the winds came from somewhere—but that was not the point of the observation; the point was there were mysteries that we could not solve, answers we could not give.

She returned to her desk and to the task of dealing with the pile of mail. She extracted Jim Childress’s letter and read it first; it was a quirk of hers to read first those letters she looked forward to receiving, leaving the least welcome to last. Jamie had noticed this and suggested that she should do it the other way round, but Isabel had pointed out that irrational habits were exactly that—irrational.

She read what Jim had to say. She had asked him to review a book, and he had agreed but had proposed a review article, which he said the book merited. Isabel would agree to that, of course. Then there was the bill from the printer—quickly dealt with—and after that, the manuscripts.

The first two were unexceptional. A recent book had raised the issue of why the genetic enhancement of human beings was wrong and had argued that this was because human nature was a gift; one should not renegotiate a gift. The first paper took exception to this, arguing that there were other, more powerful reasons for not interfering in our genes. Isabel read the paper quickly and looked up at the ceiling. She felt uncomfortable at the thought of people enhancing themselves—becoming supermen and superwomen. But why? People educated themselves and went to the gym to do precisely that—to improve themselves intellectually and physically. If that was acceptable, then what was wrong with doing it through genetic engineering in the womb? Perhaps the answer lay in the motives of the people who would want to do that. They would do it to be better than the rest of us, to have an advantage. But any athlete, striving towards physical perfection, was motivated by exactly that; so it was all about selective egalitarianism, thought Isabel.

That paper would certainly be sent to referees for review, and she hoped that they would recommend publication. Then the second paper, a rather dull article about good Samaritanism—again, that would be sent to reviewers even though it lacked any discernible passion. It was a tenure piece, she thought; some poor untenured professor somewhere in an obscure university needed a publication or two to keep his job. Well, that was one of the ways in which the Review of Applied Ethics could make the world a better place, at least for untenured professors of philosophy.

She slit open the third envelope and noticed immediately the headed paper of the accompanying letter. She drew in her breath and read quickly to the bottom; there was the signature, bold as brass: Christopher Dove. She read the letter again, more slowly this time.

Dear Ms. Dalhousie,I enclose with this letter an article that I have recently completed and that I think is suitable for publication in the Review. You may be familiar, of course, with the famous Trolley Problem that Philippa Foot raised all those years ago in Virtues and Vices. I have recently given this matter considerable thought and feel that I have a new approach to propose. There are a number of other editors keen to take this piece (both here and in the United States), but I thought that I would give you first option. I do this because I am keen to show that there is no ill will—on my part at least—in respect of the way in which I was treated last year.I would be grateful if you could let me know as soon as is convenient—and certainly within the next three weeks or so—as to whether you wish to publish this article. Sorry to rush you—it’s just that I am under some pressure from the other journals to let them run it, and it would be kind not to keep them waiting too long. I’m sure you understand.

Yours truly, Christopher Dove

She put the letter down on the table, noticing as she did so that her hand was shaking. Isabel had no colleagues—a consequence of being the only editor and sole proprietrix of the Review of Applied Ethics—so there was nobody she could turn to and say, as one does in an office, Take a look at this or Would you believe this? She wanted to do something like that now, but could not, and so she contented herself with a sharp exhalation of breath, a cross between a sigh and a gasp, which may have sounded odd but which expressed perfectly what she felt at that moment. Then she picked up the letter again and began to enumerate its various effronteries and, not to beat about the bush, lies.

To begin with, there was Dove’s choice of the words you may be familiar with: that may have sounded innocuous, but was in reality a piece of naked condescension. Of course she would be familiar with the Trolley Problem, one of the most famous thought experiments of twentieth-century philosophy—and twenty-first-century philosophy, too, as the problem continued to rumble along, as everyone knew. Everyone professionally involved in philosophy, that is, and that included Isabel. To suggest that she may be familiar with it was to imply ignorance on her part; what Dove should have written was you will of course be familiar with. That was the principal insult.

Then there was the lie. Dove said that his paper was being sought after by other editors, but how could he say that, given the strong convention that one did not submit the same paper to two journals at the same time? And even if he had, and one or two other editors had accepted it, then why would he now submit it to her? It might be that he considered the Review of Applied Ethics to be more prestigious than the other journals involved, but if that were the case, then surely he would have submitted it to the Review first, or at least simultaneously. No, Dove was lying, and the reason for his lie was that he was trying to bounce Isabel into accepting an article that was much sought after. Well, she thought, I will not be bounced.

Finally, there was Dove’s sally about having been treated badly in the past. It was true that Isabel had dismissed him from the editorial board, along with his co-plotter, the ridiculously named Professor Lettuce, but she had done so only because he and Lettuce had conspired to remove her from the editorship. That was why she had decided to buy the Review and clean out the Augean stables. So he was in no position to claim that he had been treated badly; the composition of her editorial board was entirely up to her, and she had decided that it would include neither Dove nor Lettuce. They had been informed of this decision and thanked for their past contribution; as conspirators they could hardly complain.

She turned to the paper which accompanied Dove’s letter: “Taking the Trolley One Stop Further: A Reexamination Along Different Lines.” That, thought Isabel, is a mixed metaphor: stops and lines were different features of trolleys, and it was confusing to bring them both in. Dove was trying to be clever, in an elegant, postmodernist way, but she was not impressed.

She read past the title page, which was followed by a page-long summary.