The Lost Art of Gratitude

Jamie smiled. “He likes music. I sang him ‘Dance to your Daddy’ the other night, and he cooed with pleasure. I need to sing him ‘The Train to Glasgow’ some day, if I can find the words. All about a fortunate boy getting the train to Glasgow.”

“Children like simple tales,” said Isabel.

“And we don’t?”

Isabel thought about this. It was just too easy to say that adults did not like stories that were simple, and perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps that was what adults really wanted, searched for and rarely found: a simple story in which good triumphs against cynicism and despair. That was what she wanted, but she was aware of the fact that one did not publicise the fact too widely, certainly not in sophisticated circles. Such circles wanted complexity, dysfunction and irony: there was no room for joy, celebration or pathos. But where was the fun in that?

She answered his question. “We probably do. We want resolution and an ending that shows us that the world is a just place. We’ve always wanted that. We want human flourishing, as Philippa Foot would put it.”

“One of your philosophers?”

“Yes, Professor Philippa Foot. She wrote a book called Natural Goodness. I would offer to show it to you had I not just agreed not to burden you with philosophy.”

“I like the sound of her,” said Jamie. “Professor Foot. Is she naturally good?”

“I think she is,” said Isabel. “Though usually people who are naturally good have to work at it. The goodness may be there, but they have to cultivate it, work to bring it out.” She paused. “She’s the granddaughter of an American president, Grover Cleveland. One does not necessarily expect an Oxford philosopher to be the granddaughter of anybody like that.”

Jamie was lost in thought. “If you’re not naturally good—let’s say that your inclinations are, in fact, distinctly on the bad side, then can you become naturally good? Or will it just be superficial?”

They were almost at the gate. “I think you can,” said Isabel. “Change your nature, that is. I suppose it depends on what sort of faults you’re talking about.”

“What if you only have one?” asked Jamie.

“That would be a rather short list,” said Isabel. “Have you only got one fault? Most of us have rather more.” She frowned. “I have, for example …”

Jamie cut her off. “None.”

“Oh, I do.” She wondered whether he truly thought that.

Jamie pushed the gate open. “Is this really the sort of thing you spend your time thinking about?” He smiled at her as he ushered her through.

“I am a moral philosopher,” said Isabel.

Jamie was still thinking about faults. “What are the really difficult ones?”

“Addictions,” said Isabel. “Faults that aren’t necessarily people’s fault.”

Jamie stopped. “Drinking too much? Alcoholism?”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “I don’t think that people choose to be alcoholics, or heroin addicts for that matter. And if they don’t choose, then how can it be their fault?” We are responsible, she explained, only for those things that we choose; everything else happened to us—we did not do it.

Jamie objected. “Maybe they should have shown more self-control to begin with?”

“But if they don’t have that capacity for self-control?” Isabel said. “If they’re weak? You don’t choose your character, you know.”

“Don’t you?”

They resumed their walk down the path. Jamie reached for his key. “What if you know that you have to practise certain things? As musicians have to? We aren’t born being able to play the piano.”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying: in order to become better people, we must practise,” Isabel said. Jamie had a nose for philosophy, she thought, but she was not sure that this was what she wanted. The best sort of relationship, she thought, was where each person had a private area, a place of mental retreat. She did not necessarily want to talk to him about these things; he did not belong here. He lived in a world of music, and beauty, to which she was readily admitted but in which she did not really have a right of abode. We live where we belong, she thought; that is where we really live. But although she understood this, she did not think she could spell this out to him, as it would sound condescending, which it certainly was not, or unfriendly, which it even more certainly was not. There was a time when men had said to women, Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that; what outrageous, patronising condescension. And women, or so many of them, had suffered it meekly, because they had been trapped.

They heard a squeak from within. Grace must have returned early from the walk by the canal and had now brought her charge into the hall. Held up by Grace, Charlie was able to look at them through the letter box while Jamie fumbled with his keys. Isabel bent down and stared into the bright eyes that watched her, jubilant at her return, brimming with delight. Dogs, she had read somewhere, think each time their owners leave the house that they have lost them for ever. Did small children think the same, she wondered; for if they did, each parting must seem like the beginning of a lifetime apart, each return a reunion with those one thought one would never see again. Or was it exactly the opposite with children? Did they think that we were always there, that we would never go away, and that our occasional absences were no more than a temporary interruption of our attention, as in a hotel when room service is for some reason suspended?

THERE WERE TWO TELEPHONE CALLS before Cat came round with Bruno, both of them important, but only one of them welcomed. The one that Isabel was pleased to receive was from Guy Peploe, who telephoned her shortly after lunch with the simple message, “We got it.”

Isabel, whose mind had been on her editing, asked what they had got.

“Charles Edward Stuart.”