The Lost Art of Gratitude

“I suspect you think that I’m just a sentimental woman,” said Isabel. “You do, don’t you?”

Billy McClarty shook his head. “No. Not me.” He was grinning like a schoolboy denying the obvious. Of course he did, and he did not care that she should know it.

“Yes, you do. I can tell what you think. And I can also tell that sometimes you can’t tell that people know what you think. Am I right?” She smiled as she said this, as if to indicate that the comment was not entirely hostile.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Billy McClarty defensively.

“Exactly,” said Isabel. She felt her heart pounding within her; any confrontation, even a small one, did this to her, brought on anxiety and its physical symptoms.

She indicated that they should go back towards the house, where she said she would pay him his one hundred pounds, fox or no fox. He looked sullen, but accepted the money quickly, and made his way down the driveway back to his van, tucking the twenty-pound notes into the side pockets of his trousers. Where the taxman will never see them, thought Isabel as she returned to Charlie’s playroom.

Jamie, freshly out of the shower, his hair still wet and ruffled, had removed Charlie from his playpen and was lifting and lowering him in controlled fall, a game which he called Aviation Boys, and which made Charlie shriek in high-pitched delight. Charlie had eyes only for his father now, and she smiled and left them to their game.

In the corridor she stopped for a moment, lost in thought, staring down at the floor as if transfixed by the pattern of red and blue lozenges on the Baluch rug. Her smile went away. I should not have spoken like that to Billy McClarty. It was wrong. He had condescended to her, not casually or inadvertently, but with intent. Even so, she should not have tried to put him down, as she had done, using her skill with words to derail him. Those who had words might on occasion use them against those who did not have them, but only with caution. It had been a cheap victory over a man whose life was much harder than hers, for all his bravado and his Orangeman posturing, and she felt embarrassed and ashamed, as anybody should feel after humiliating another, even when such treatment seemed richly deserved.

“SO,” said Jamie. “Minty.”

They were sitting in the kitchen after dinner, a quiet time in the day that they both relished. The evening at this stage could go either way—into a companionable state of relaxation, or into a final period of work, during which Isabel attended to the affairs of the Review, or Jamie might practise in the music room or transcribe pieces for his students.

It was as yet undecided how this evening would develop. Isabel knew that she had submissions to read— articles sent in for publication in the Review—but she felt that she could not face them now and that tomorrow would do. So when Jamie enquired about her lunch with Minty she was ready to talk.

“Where did the two of you eat?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” said Isabel. “She put me off my food.”

She explained what had happened, and at the end, with some reluctance, she admitted to Jamie that she might have misjudged Minty—yet again.

“If you have to keep changing your view of whether somebody’s telling the truth,” he said, “then that means she’s a liar.” He looked at Isabel quizzically. “What did you say Peter said about her?”

“He called her wicked.”

“Then she probably is,” said Jamie. “He’s usually right about people.”

“He must get it wrong sometimes,” she replied. “And if people are wicked, will they necessarily be liars?”

Jamie was not sure. Isabel, though, was having further thoughts about her own question. The answer lay in character: if one’s character was base, then one did base things across the board. But that did not mean that one might not be good in some parts of one’s life: one might show loyalty, for instance. Gangsters were loyal to each other—some of the time at least—and could be loyal to their country too. But was loyalty always something to be admired, or did it require a good object? It was no good being loyal to the Mafia or the KGB; loyalty in itself was neutral—it only showed its colours when you saw what somebody was loyal to.

Of course, if one … She stopped. A strange yelp came from the garden, followed by a rapid, high-pitched barking sound. She looked at Jamie, who spun round to face the window. “Brother Fox?”

“Yes.” He stood up, but he was taking his lead from her. This was Isabel’s plan, not his. “Now what?”

Isabel crossed the room to take a torch from a drawer. “We investigate. And then we call the vet.”

They went out into the garden. With the lights still on in the kitchen, the lawn was partly illuminated. Some light carried to the cluster of rhododendrons in which the trap had been concealed, but only some. Now the beam from Isabel’s torch played on the outer fringes of the vegetation and, as Jamie held aside the branches, into the dark interior of the shrubs.

Brother Fox’s eyes were two small headlights, yellowy discs moving behind the bars of the cage. And beyond that, the red of his coat, half in shadow, half revealed in the swinging torchlight.

Crouching down, Isabel spoke to him in a low voice. “Don’t be afraid. You know me, don’t you? You’ve seen me before. I won’t hurt you.”

Jamie joined her, crouching too. “Should I move him?”

“Yes.”

There was a metal handle on the top of the cage. Jamie reached out to take hold of this and began to pull the cage from under the boughs of the rhododendron. In the confines of his prison, Brother Fox twisted himself round and snapped at Jamie’s arm. But the bars prevented his doing anything other than snapping at air—and at metal. “He can’t get you,” said Isabel. “Poor thing—he must be terrified.”

“He thinks we’re going to kill him,” said Jamie.

Isabel bent down over the cage. Moving the beam of the torch across the fox’s body, she found the site of the wound. She thought she could smell it too—a rancid smell, the smell of infection that is only one step away from the smell of corruption. She looked at her watch. “Simon told us to ring whatever time we needed him. Will you keep him company while I go and phone?” Simon was a vet whom Isabel knew; she was sure that he would never ignore