something special for breakfast,” she said.
He sat up in bed, reaching for the cup of tea she had brought him. “Mushrooms,” he said. “And scrambled eggs with some of that truffle oil in them—not a lot, just a few drops.”
“And?”
“And a piece of very thin toast.”
“And?”
“And a mug of Jamaican coffee with really hot milk. Not milk heated up in the microwave but scalded in a pan.”
She smiled, and watched him get out of bed, his limbs caught in the sunlight. I do not deserve somebody so beautiful, she thought, or so gentle; but none of us deserves good fortune, perhaps—it comes our way, dispensed at random, irrespective of what prayer flags we string across our mountain passes, what chants and imprecations we devise; it simply comes.
She stopped herself. Do I really believe that? I do not, and never have; in thinking it I have simply succumbed to a defeatist impulse. Even young children understand that often, if not always, we get what we deserve; Charlie, at his tender age, is beginning to learn that good behaviour is rewarded with a treat. And there was no reason why she should not have been given Jamie: she was attractive and she had looked after herself. Jamie himself had referred to what he called her Pre-Raphaelite beauty; “Holman Hunt might have painted you,” he had said. She had protested that she found this most unlikely, but she had been flattered, and she had filed the remark away in her memory, to be taken out and reflected upon, as such compliments should be, when one was feeling one’s worst, on a bad-hair day.
ISABEL HAD OPENED UP the delicatessen by the time Eddie arrived. Eddie always looked sleepy when he turned up for work. He was rarely late, but he still managed to look as if he had tumbled out of bed only a few minutes ago—which he might well have done. Isabel knew that Eddie did not eat breakfast. “I’m not hungry,” he had said when she asked him. “The thought of breakfast makes me ill.” But within half an hour or so she would see him pop a piece of cheese or a slice of Parma ham into his mouth.
“Breakfast?” she asked.
“It’s different,” said Eddie, slicing off another sliver of cheese.
“There’s nothing wrong with having a snack.”
When Eddie came in that morning Isabel noticed that he had a scratch on his face—a line of punctured red that ran down from the cheekbone and ended just above the edge of the jaw. Her eye went straight to it, and he noticed that, as he instinctively reached up to touch his cheek.
Isabel caught his eye. “Have you washed that?”
Eddie looked away. “Washed what?” he mumbled.
Isabel touched her own cheek, as if in sympathy. “That scratch. Let me take a look at it. Cat keeps some disinfectant in the cupboard.”
She took a step towards Eddie to get a better view of the scratch, but he withdrew sharply. “I only wanted to look at it,” said Isabel. “It won’t hurt to put something on it. It looks a bit angry to me.”
“You can’t just go round putting disinfectant on people,” said Eddie.
Isabel smiled. “I suppose you can’t. Or at least not on people you don’t know …” She imagined herself in the street, dabbing disinfectant on passers-by, as a religious proselyte might thrust a tract into a stranger’s hand; absurd thought. But surely it was just as intrusive for people to buttonhole others with a view to converting them to a religion. She had often thought of the massive presumption of such earnest missionaries, that they should imagine that a few words from them should be able to overturn another’s whole theology or philosophy of life. Did they really expect that one would say, “My goodness, so I’ve got it wrong all my life!” The offensive presumption here was that the one’s world-view should be so shallow as to fold up in the face of the approach of the other. But that is how ideas spread, she supposed, and sooner or later if you put your proposition to total strangers you would come across one who was ready for plucking by the first person of conviction who crossed his path.
Isabel remembered the circumstances of a well-known essayist’s conversion to communism. He had gone to a party and drunk too much. He had woken up in the company of a woman he did not really like. And when he went to the window to look out on to the street, he saw that the weather was freezing; subsequently he found out that the engine of the car he had borrowed from a friend had frozen and was ruined—he had forgotten to put in antifreeze. In such circumstances communism offered a fresh start—a cleaning of the old slate—and he converted.
She became aware that Eddie was looking at her resentfully. “All right,” she said. “It’s your own business.”
“It is.”
Isabel felt momentary annoyance. All she had done was to offer help, and yet he was treating her as if she had proposed some sweeping infringement of his autonomy. “As a matter of interest, Eddie,” she said, “if you saw me coming in with a scratch on my face, would you ask me what happened? Would you want to help?”
He continued to stare at her.
“Well?” pressed Isabel.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”
Isabel felt that she had proved her point. “So you understand, then, why I offered. You’d do the same for me.” She paused. “How did it happen, Eddie?”
Eddie turned away. “A branch. I was down near the canal and I walked past this bush—you know, one of those fruit ones, blackberries—and it scratched me. The council should cut those things.”
“Oh well,” said Isabel. “A scratch from a thorn shouldn’t be too dangerous. But you should watch it. If it starts to throb, then that means that it’s infected and you should go to the doctor.”
Eddie seemed relieved that the interrogation was over. He went behind the counter and placed the cheese- cutting boards in position. Then, while he filled the large espresso machine with water from a jug and ran a cloth over the steam nozzle, Isabel went through to Cat’s office to retrieve the cash float from the lock-up cupboard. She
