The Lost Art of Gratitude

She remembered that this was the day of the auction in London. “Oh. Well, that’s very good news.”

“It is. And there’s something else.”

“Oh yes?”

“We got it cheaply. One other person in the room was after it. And another phone bidder, apart from us.” He paused. “But that’s not what makes me feel rather excited.”

Isabel reached across her desk to the catalogue. The relevant page had been turned down at the corner and she went straight to it. Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, last real hope of the Stuart dynasty, looked out at her from a feigned oval. A very weak face, she thought; pretty, but weak. How could those tough Highlanders have fallen for such a foppish-looking pretender?

Isabel asked whether there was anything special about the painting.

“Have you seen that Nicholson book?” asked Guy. “The one on the iconography of Bonnie Prince Charlie?”

Isabel knew the book. There was a copy somewhere in her library.

“Go and take a look at the engraving of the Toque portrait of Charlie,” said Guy. “The one that was lost.”

Isabel was puzzled. “The engraving was lost?”

“No, the original painting. It was engraved by somebody before the painting was lost. So the only way we know what it looked like is through that engraving.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Take a look at it. Then tell me what you think.”

“Now? It’ll take some time to find Nicholson.” She looked at her shelves, her overstocked bookshelves. She imagined Nicholson himself lost in the piles and confusion of books. She imagined calling him, Professor Nicholson! Professor Nicholson! And a faint answering cry coming from somewhere in the midst of all those books.

“Not now,” said Guy. “Some time soon, though. Take a look. He has a picture of the engraving in his book.”

“And?”

“And it’s identical to our painting,” said Guy. “The one we’ve just bought.”

Isabel took a moment to digest this. She was not sure about the implications; she had bought the portrait with a view to putting it in a spare bedroom where her mother’s picture of Mary Queen of Scots had always hung. She had known that portrait all her life, and she knew that it was a special favourite of her mother, her sainted American mother. She was not sainted—not in the conventional sense; indeed Isabel had discovered that her mother had conducted an affair, but that did not change her view of her. Her mother had represented love, as most mothers do to most people; not that this love was always helpful. Boys, she knew, could be smothered by it, could feel that they had to escape, but she had never felt that. She wondered about Jamie’s mother, whom he rarely mentioned. His parents had separated and his father had moved to Spain. His mother had remarried, to a surgeon, when Jamie was at music college, and they had gone off to live in London.

Jamie had said that they wanted to come and meet Charlie, but they never had, which had secretly appalled Isabel. And hurt her too: she had decided that they must disapprove of her—why else would they not come and meet their only grandchild? Well, she would not force it, if that was how they felt. They might meet Charlie at the wedding—if there was a wedding in the formal sense. She realised that not only had they not talked about that, she had not even thought about it. She would like something quiet and understated, and she imagined that Jamie would too: a ceremony in St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, perhaps, with a full choir and her friend Peter Backhouse on the organ playing Parry’s “I Was Glad.” She smiled. On the other hand, there was always the Register Office in Victoria Street, which presumably had no arrangements for music, not even a tape recorder. She imagined that the Register Office would be fairly similar to Warriston Crematorium, both being functional places run for the convenience of citizens by well-meaning bureaucrats; both with no time for too much fuss; both dedicated, in the final analysis, to changing the status of those whom they served. Surely Jamie would not like that.

Guy’s voice came down the line: “Are you still there, Isabel?”

“Yes. I was just thinking.”

“About Toque?”

She looked up at the ceiling. “And other things.”

The conversation wound to a close. Guy would make further enquiries. In the meantime, Isabel should not raise her hopes too much, as there were always disappointments in the art world—so many pictures were not what their owners wanted them to be, and this might be no exception. “I think it’s likely to be exactly what it says in the catalogue. Dupra’s circle, not Toque. But I’ll have a closer look, just in case.”

She wondered how important one had to be before one was given a circle. She had no circle, she thought: just Jamie and Charlie and Grace … and Brother Fox, of course. Or she was in his circle: Circle of Brother Fox, Scottish, early twenty-first century.

“I am naturally cautious,” Isabel said, before Guy hung up. But even as she said this, she wondered whether it was true. And if it was, was it something to be pleased about, or something to regret? Was natural caution found in people who did something with their lives, or was it a quality of those whose lives ran narrowly and correctly to the grave? The question depressed her. She did not want to be naturally cautious, she decided; she wanted to throw caution to the winds and … and what?

Grace appeared at the door of her study, a duster in hand. This was unusual: Grace did not like dusting, and only rarely did so. “We’re almost out of dishwasher detergent,” she said. “I’m worried that we’ll run out. Could you get some more?”

Isabel looked up. “Let’s just risk it,” she said. If one was going to throw caution to the winds, one had to start somewhere.

Grace looked at her in astonishment. “Risk it?”