The Lost Art of Gratitude

and Jamie had to turn round to attend to him. So it was not until later, over dinner, that she told him of Minty’s unexpected frankness in the walled garden. Jamie listened attentively, sipping on the glass of New Zealand wine Isabel had poured him. She was trying the products of new vineyards and had chanced upon one they both liked.

When she finished, Jamie asked her whether she had believed Minty. “I’m not sure about her,” he said. “Even if you believe what she says—and it sounds rather unlikely, I would have thought—you still have to wonder why she’s telling you all this. What’s it got to do with you?”

He asked the question but almost immediately realised that he knew the answer. Isabel was about to interfere in matters that did not concern her. She did it all the time, as a moth will approach the flame, unable to stop herself. She had to help; it was just the way she was.

Isabel sensed what he was thinking. “I didn’t commit myself,” she protested. “But it was a real cri de coeur. She was frightened—she really was.”

“But what are you meant to do?” asked Jamie. “Why doesn’t she hire somebody? A close-security guard or whatever they call themselves. She’s got the cash.”

“It was difficult for her to speak about it,” said Isabel. “I don’t think that she would find it easy to open up to a total stranger.”

Jamie sighed. “Isabel, you’re a lovely, helpful person. Everybody knows that, and it means that anybody could take advantage of you. Minty’s as sharp as all get-out—she knows that you’re a soft touch.”

Isabel looked into her glass. “All I said was that I’d look into it. I gave no promises.”

Jamie shrugged. “Well, all that I would say is be careful. Don’t get in too deep. That woman’s dangerous.”

“Come on!” said Isabel. “She’s ambitious and a bit pleased with herself, but she’s not dangerous.”

“Well, her son is,” countered Jamie, and then laughed. “Just don’t get sucked in.”

“If I’m sucked in, I’m sure I’ll be spat out,” said Isabel.

Jamie was not sure what she meant by this, and neither, in fact, was she. So he drained his glass and stood up.

“Let’s go and sing something. Or rather, you accompany me and I’ll sing. What would you like to hear?”

Isabel thought for a moment. “ ‘King Fareweel’?” she asked.

Jamie agreed. She had enquired about the words a couple of days earlier, on Dundas Street, outside the Scottish Gallery. Why was she thinking about Jacobite songs?

“Because I saw a picture of Charles Edward Stuart,” Isabel explained. “The song came into my mind. That’s all.”

She sat down at the piano and played; Jamie sang. And when he got to the lines about Prestonpans, she faltered and stopped, her hands unmoving on the keyboard.At Prestonpans they laid their plans,

And the Heilan lads they were lyin’ ready,

Like the wind frae Skye they bid them fly,

And monie’s the braw laddie lost his daddy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t find this song very easy.” It was too painful to think of those boys deprived of their fathers, and these simple words made her think of how Jamie was so relishing being Charlie’s father. Charlie, her braw laddie, and his daddy.

“All right,” said Jamie. “Let me sit down there.” He gestured to the piano stool, which was wide enough for two. Isabel shifted over, and he sat beside her. He reached forward and played a chord, and then moved to another. “That’s it,” he said.

“That’s what?”

He repeated the chords. “That’s the tune I was going to compose,” he said. “ ‘Olives All Gone.’ Listen.”

He played a simple, rather sad melody; she thought it beautiful.Olives all gone, olives all gone,

The olives I loved, now they are gone,

Summer will bring more, you say,

The trees will bear fruit;

That may be true, my dear,

But the olives are gone.

Isabel listened, solemnly, then burst out laughing, to be joined by Jamie. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and he kissed her back, not lightly, but with passion.

She said, “Oh,” and he said, “Isabel Dalhousie, please marry me.”

CHAPTER SIX

THAT SHE SAID YES, and then yes, again, changed everything, but also changed nothing. There was no change in her world the next morning when she got out of bed to attend to Charlie; she was still Isabel Dalhousie, mother, with a child to look after and a house and philosophical review to run. She was still responsible for her somewhat unruly garden, with its attendant fox and rhododendron bushes; she was still the owner of a green Swedish car; she was still the aunt of the rather unpredictable and sometimes moody Cat; she remained a patron of Scottish Opera—to whom she reminded herself to send a cheque; all of that was the same. But now she was Jamie’s fiancee it seemed to her that her future—that bit of ourselves in which to a greater or lesser degree we live our lives—had changed utterly. Now the future was no longer a vague, uncharted territory; following Jamie’s proposal on the piano stool after the singing of his new song, “Olives All Gone,” it had acquired a shape.

Of course he had proposed once before. It was a year or so earlier, when they had come out of Lyon & Turnbull’s auction rooms and made their way to the Portrait Gallery restaurant. He had told her that he wanted to marry her; she had been reluctant and had put him off, not because she had any doubts about him, or his seriousness, but because she was concerned—overly concerned, perhaps—about his freedom. That was when she was more sensitive than she now was about the difference in their ages. But now she barely thought about it. So what? people had said. And the liberating effect of those two, sometimes immensely