The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

“A trolley car,” wrote Dove, “is careering out of control down a slope. Ahead of it on the line are five people who have been tied there by a mad philosopher. You, however, realise that by flicking a switch you can divert the trolley onto a spur line. There is one person standing on the line. If you flick the switch, one person will be killed; if you do nothing, five will die. Do you flick the switch?”

I have never had any doubt as to what I would do, thought Isabel. I would flick the switch. It was perfectly simple. Unless, of course, Dove and Lettuce were among the five—She stopped herself. That was an uncharitable thought, and she realised that she should not think it. But the delicious, childish fantasy came back.

“It is not so simple,” Dove continued. “Since Philippa Foot first posed the problem, a number of writers have examined it in greater detail, most notably Judith Jarvis Thomson, who changed the conditions of the thought experiment by taking out the spur line and introducing an innocent fat man. This fat man is on a bridge directly above the trolley line. If he is toppled from the bridge directly in front of the trolley, his bulk will be sufficient to stop it and therefore save the five people farther down the line.

“For many, that changes the nature of the problem, in that the fat man was never at risk until you toppled him over the parapet. Your intervention there is different from your intervention in flipping the switch. In this paper I explore that distinction and introduce another complication: the fat man is not innocent at all, but a serial killer who has a few good years of murder ahead of him. Does this make it easier to throw him over the bridge?”

Yes, thought Isabel. Of course it does. I would not hesitate to throw a serial killer off a bridge, provided I was sure that this was the only way of stopping him. For a moment she imagined herself locked in a struggle with a fat man on a bridge, in much the same way as Sherlock Holmes wrestled with Moriarty above the Reichenbach Falls. Holmes toppled over, and she feared that she would, too, which was not the way the thought experiment was meant to end.

“No,” continued Dove. “We have no right to take upon ourselves a godlike power to save the lives of others. In this paper I examine why this almost counterintuitive conclusion is right.”

Isabel flicked through the pages that followed. Here and there a phrase caught her eye: we must respect the moral luck of others and moral desert cannot be allowed to determine life- and-death decisions. Oh, can it not? thought Isabel. She, for one, disagreed with that profoundly. We did not all have an equal right to life; she would have no compunction in saying that those who did some good for humanity should be preferred when it came to saving lives. If she was in a lifeboat and had only one place available, she would reach out to rescue Mother Teresa rather than Idi Amin, if both nun and dictator were in the water at the same time. And Mother Teresa, had she been in the boat, would surely make a similar choice, if she were faced with a drowning Idi Amin and a vaccine-research scientist. She would regret it, no doubt, and express sympathy for the floundering dictator, but surely she would do it.

She laid the paper down on her desk. The dilemma of the bystander at the switch was a difficult one, but there were other situations which seemed every bit as uncomfortable, even if they did not involve issues of life and death. And amongst these was the immediate question of what she should do with Dove’s paper. If she were petty, she would send it back to him with a straightforward rejection. She might even say something cutting, such as I regret that your paper does not meet the exacting standards of the Review. I do hope that you find another home for it. But that would be so cheap, so childish. No, she would have to send it out to referees, and at the end of the day she felt that she would have to publish it. If she did not, then Dove would have proved his point and would conclude that she had been swayed in her editorial decision by personal animosity towards him. She would not let that happen; Dove would be treated in exactly the same way as any other person who submitted a paper to the Review. He would be given equal treatment, which is exactly what he deserved.

Sometimes, thought Isabel, it is very difficult being a philosopher. How much easier it would be to be Jamie, who did not agonise over things, or Grace, who largely accepted things, or even Charlie, who did not yet know what things were.

CHAPTER THREE

ISABEL DID NOT SEE Jamie that evening. There was an unspoken understanding between them that he would be in charge of Charlie’s bath and they would both then share the hour or so of play that came before bedtime. Then she and Jamie would have dinner together, going over the day’s events, discussing Charlie and his doings and achievements, which were as wondrous to both of them as such things always are to parents. That evening, though, Jamie was involved in a rehearsal for a concert that he was to play in the following night at the Queen’s Hall, and that was where she was to see him next.

On the evening of the concert, she found him in the Queen’s Hall bar, sitting at a table by himself, nursing a large glass of orange juice and paging through an opera magazine. He rose to greet her, and they exchanged a kiss on the cheek. His hand, though, touched the side of her neck gently, a gesture that she found strangely intimate. It was all so new, even if it had been going on for more than two years now; so precious—so unlikely, too, but it had happened.

She sat down beside him. They were early—the concert was not due to start until half past seven, forty minutes away. In the background, in the green room that gave directly off the bar, they heard one of the singers warming up.

“Listen to this,” he said. “There’s a bit here about a performance of Lohengrin. Leo Slezak, the Czech tenor, was due to get onto a swan and sail off the stage. Unfortunately one of the stagehands sent the mechanical swan off before he had time to get onto it. So Slezak turned to the audience and sang, in German, When does the next swan leave?”

They both burst out laughing. “I can understand the view that Wagner’s inherently ridiculous,” Isabel said. “Even when the swans run on time.”

Jamie nodded. “But there are plenty of operas that one can’t really take seriously. I’ve always had difficulty with Pagliacci. Everybody seems to die onstage. I know it’s tragic, but somehow one would have thought that at least one or two of the principal singers would be left standing.”

He slipped the magazine into the small music case he had with him and turned to Isabel. “I’m sorry about the other night. I wasn’t—”

She interrupted him. “I’m the one who should say sorry. I dragged you there.”

“It’s not that I dislike these dinner parties,” Jamie continued. “It’s just that the people at that one…” He shrugged. “The chemistry wasn’t there. You know how sometimes things just zip along. I didn’t feel it.”

“I know,” said Isabel. “I could tell.” He had obviously not enjoyed himself, which had slightly surprised her, as