The Lost Art of Gratitude

woman began a smile, but stopped, as if conscious of somehow transgressing the conventions of isolation with which as city-dwellers we immure ourselves. The bus moved on, and Isabel felt a sudden desire to run alongside it, to wave to the woman, to acknowledge the unexpected exchange of fellow feeling between them. But she did not, because she never acted on these impulses, and because it might have puzzled or even frightened the other woman.

She turned to Jamie. “Can you remind me of the words of ‘King Fareweel’?” she asked. She knew that Jamie had an impressive knowledge of Scottish music, including the more arcane corners of the subject. “King Fareweel” was mainstream, the sort of thing sung by Scottish patriots in moments of enthusiastic inebriation, and by nostalgic Jacobites in cold sobriety.

The question took Jamie by surprise, but Isabel often said odd things; he was getting used to it.

“Now a young prince cam’ to Edinburgh toon,” he began, half singing, half speaking, “And he wasnae a wee bit German lairdie / For a far better man than ever he was / Lay oot in the heather wi’ his tartan plaidie.”

“That’s it,” said Isabel.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT MORNING Isabel’s niece, Cat, telephoned at seven. Isabel had been awake since six and had taken Charlie on an outing in the garden. He had been late in starting to walk, but now seemed eager to make up for lost time, rushing off purposefully and quite indifferent to any falls that came his way. It was an exhausting business for her, if not for Charlie himself, as he had to be watched every moment. She had a playpen, which at least could give her time to get her breath back and do things that needed to be done in the house.

“Do people approve of those things?” Jamie had asked when the pen had been delivered. “Don’t some people look on them as little prisons?”

Isabel had read about this. “Some do,” she said. “But not everyone, by any means. It all depends on how long the child is in one. If they’re in it for short periods of time they can enjoy playing by themselves.”

“But not for hours.”

“No, not for hours. And nor should children be parked in front of the television.”

“Which we don’t have,” Jamie pointed out.

“No.”

Jamie had bought something called a baby bungee, an apparatus that gripped on to the jamb of a door and allowed the child to bounce up and down on a strong elastic rope. Charlie had loved it, but on the second occasion it had been used he had bounced off one side of the jamb and then back against the other. He had been slightly bruised, even if he had not complained, but the baby bungee had been retired to a cupboard. Charlie, she had decided, was a stoic by temperament, a useful thing in this life. If this stoicism came from anywhere—rather than being an entirely random quirk of personality genes—then it must have been inherited from Jamie, who was fond of saying “It happens” when faced with any frustrating development. Stoicism and defeatism, of course, can be kissing cousins, but Isabel would never find fault in Jamie’s quite exceptional ability to accept setbacks. She had never seen him angry—not once; distressed, perhaps, but not angry, and it seemed that Charlie was the same. Of course the tantrum stage still lay ahead of him, and that would be a stringent test of any stoicism he possessed; it was no use saying “It happens” to a three-year-old brewing a stamping attack.

“Sorry to phone so early,” said Cat. “Crisis.”

Cat was visited by crisis rather more often than others, but the difficulties these crises entailed always seemed genuine enough, even if they were clearly of her own creation. A crisis was a crisis, Isabel believed, and it was unhelpful to allocate blame. You did not ask the drowning man how he ended up in the river, nor point to the No Swimming notice—you rescued him; even if he happened to be Dove, Isabel thought, or Professor Lettuce. A delicious scene came into her mind: Dove and Lettuce had both fallen into a loch and were calling for help. Isabel, passing by, would not hesitate, of course, nor would she relish their evident discomfort as it dawned on them who their rescuer would be. But what if it were in her power to rescue only one of them? It was the familiar and horrific dilemma that must cross the mind of at least some imaginative or overanxious parents: Which of my children would I save? The thought is usually too appalling to contemplate, and the question is suppressed rather than answered.

But here it arose with Dove and Lettuce, both schemers and plotters of the same stripe, and in moral terms, Isabel reluctantly concluded, both of equal merit. The deciding factor in such a case would have to be age; all other things being equal, the sole remaining basis of just discrimination would be that Professor Lettuce, being the older of the two, had less claim for a future than the relatively youthful Dove. So Dove was saved. She did not like the conclusion, but doing the right thing, even if that took the form of making the correct choice in an entirely hypothetical situation, was often uncomfortable.

Cat waited for a reply. Isabel was thinking, she decided, and was probably mentally chewing over something altogether different, as often happened.

“You need me to do the delicatessen?” Isabel asked eventually.

“Yes, if you don’t mind,” Cat explained. “The boiler in the flat has gone on the blink and the engineer is coming. However …”

Isabel was familiar with such issues: the gas people were always unwilling to commit to a time, and would give only the most general indication of when it might be.

“They said that it could be either morning or afternoon,” said Cat. “And they wouldn’t budge. So I have to stay in all day to let them in.”

“Frustrating,” said Isabel. “Of course I’ll help. What about Eddie?”

Eddie was a rather vulnerable young man who lacked the confidence to look after the delicatessen on his own. Isabel believed that he was perfectly capable of doing so, and Cat did, too, but his anxiety had been acute on the few occasions on which he had been left in charge by himself.

“He’ll be there,” said Cat. “But you know the problem.”

Isabel said that she did, and the arrangements were made. Isabel had a key to the business and would open it up at ten to nine, to be ready for Eddie’s arrival. Cat promised that in the unlikely event of the gas engineer arriving