The Lost Art of Gratitude

not sure that she would want to live with a usurer. A reformed investment banker, of course, would be another matter.

She immediately reproached herself for that thought. It was immature, unjust, and above all uncharitable. She knew bankers, and liked them. There was an ocean of difference between a usurer, properly so called, and a banker. Usurers exacted excessive interest, whereas bankers extracted … moderate interest. We needed bankers, and they were entitled to the same moral respect as anybody else. Most of them did their jobs with integrity and care; some did not, of course, but there were plenty of greedy people in other professions, and philosophers were in no position to claim the moral high ground that they spent so much time and effort identifying for others. Look at Rousseau, who was so rude and ungrateful to David Hume in spite of all that Hume did for him. Look at Schopenhauer, who refused to speak to his mother for years. And look at me, she thought, who has just thought uncharitable thoughts about an entire section of commercial humanity …

“Well done,” said Isabel.

Minty’s pleasure at this compliment was manifest. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s hard, you know, for a woman. They claim that the playing field is level, but it isn’t really. The men still do private little deals amongst themselves. They still … huddle.”

“And women?” asked Jamie, in a tone of innocence. “Isn’t there an association of professional women in Edinburgh that’s women-only? I played in a quintet for them once—at a dinner. All women. I was the only man there.”

Minty laughed. “Yes, there is. There’s more than one, in fact.”

“So women huddle too?” Jamie had a sense of fairness and little time for the hypocrisies of the age.

Minty was not ready to concede so easily. “We have to. We have to do it to make up for past injustice.”

Jamie nodded. “I see.”

It was clear that Minty now regarded the topic as resolved—in her favour. Jamie might be an attractive young man, but he was still a man. She turned to Isabel and asked her about the Review. Isabel explained that she still edited it, but as owner. Minty had the good manners at least to return the compliment that Isabel had paid her. “That’s something,” she said.

Minty’s order arrived and they continued their lunch. The conversation flowed rather well, Isabel thought, and when, at the end of the meal, Minty suggested that they exchange telephone numbers, her views on the other woman were beginning to change.

“Roderick is having a second birthday party on Sunday,” said Minty. “I know it’s no notice, but why not bring Charlie? They seem to get on very well.”

They do not, thought Isabel, but did not say it. She accepted, and Minty, who had some shopping to do, left.

Jamie, who seemed relieved that Minty had gone, now said, “So, what did Dove write?”

Isabel’s mind was elsewhere. She was thinking of the invitation; it would be Charlie’s first party. Would there be olives? “What?”

“Dove. What did he write? You said it was a bombshell.”

Isabel nodded. “He accused me of plagiarism,” she said. “Or of aiding and abetting it.”

Jamie’s eyes widened. “Let’s sort him,” he said. Then he laughed. “I don’t mean physically. Or maybe I did. But if I did, then I don’t mean it any longer. It just slipped out.”

Isabel reassured him that she had not taken him seriously. “We all say things like that,” she said. “Or think them.”

Jamie looked thoughtful. “Revenge fantasies. There was a conductor once—I wanted to …” His thoughtful look turned to one of shame. “I wouldn’t ever have done it.”

Isabel put on a look of mock censure. “I should hope not.”

“It would have been very therapeutic, though,” mused Jamie.

LUNCH—and defending himself against his new friend, Roderick McCaig—had exhausted Charlie, who was now sitting quietly on Isabel’s lap, fighting a losing battle to keep his eyes open. He would sleep, of course, in his pushchair, and Jamie now lifted him gently into it and strapped him in.

“I’ll take him for a sleep-walk,” he offered. “You go to the gallery. Half an hour?”

Isabel accepted the offer. The Scottish Gallery, run by her friend Guy Peploe, was a few doors down the road from Glass and Thompson, and she wanted to talk to Guy about an auction that was coming up in London. Isabel appreciated art and made the occasional foray into the art market—something she did with discretion and a degree of embarrassment. She sensed that Jamie did not entirely approve of the buying of expensive paintings, and she usually shielded from him the sums she actually paid for her acquisitions. In her view, of course, they were entirely justified; surely it was more selfish to leave money squirrelled away in a bank account than to recycle it? The people from whom she bought the paintings spent the proceeds no doubt—that was the reason they were selling them in the first place. And was it not generally better that money should circulate—which was, after all, its fundamental purpose?

She had mentioned this to Jamie—gently—and he had listened carefully. “I suppose so,” he said. “I don’t really understand economics though. If you left it in the bank, wouldn’t it be working anyway? Being lent to people?”

“But this is going even further,” argued Isabel. “I’m effectively giving it away. Nobody will be paying me interest once I’ve parted with the money.”

Jamie frowned. “But you’re not really giving it away. You’re getting something in return.”

“Those paintings have to hang somewhere,” Isabel retorted. “What point do they serve if they’re doing nothing?”

The conversation had petered out after that. Neither really knew anything about the subject; all Jamie knew was that he did not really have any money and was not particularly interested in acquiring it, while Isabel, who had money, knew that it was not only an opaque subject but a rather dull one too. If money could be changed into art, that at least made it more interesting.