Jillian signalled to Eddie, who came to take her order for coffee. As Eddie left, she lowered her voice and said, “That young man—there’s something lost about him, don’t you think?”
Isabel was cautious. “Eddie?”
“Oh, you know him?”
“Yes. My niece owns this place, you see. I occasionally work here.”
Jillian blushed again. “I’ve been very tactless. Sorry.”
“Not at all. You’re right about Eddie. But I think he’s making progress. He’s more confident. He’s a nice young man.”
This seemed to please Jillian. “Good. I see so many young people because of my husband’s involvement with a school. Teenage boys. And I think we sometimes don’t realise just how hard it is for them these days. It’s much easier for girls, I think. Boys are more confused. They’ve lost the role they used to have—you know, being tough and so on. Brawn means nothing now.”
“Quite.”
“So you often come across boys who are quite lost. They retreat into themselves or their cults. Skateboarders are an example of that. Or at least some of them are.”
Isabel thought about skateboarders. It was not an attractive group, with their lack of interest in anything much except their repetitive twirls and gymnastic tricks. They tended to be teenagers, though, and teenagers grew up, although sometimes one saw older skateboarders, almost into their thirties, overgrown boys stuck in the ways of youth. She shuddered. Certain groups of people made her shudder: extremists, with their ideologies of hate; the proud; the arrogant; the narcissistic socialites of celebrity culture. And yet all of these were
“Skateboarders are typical of the refuge cult,” said Jillian. “They retreat into the group and don’t really talk to anybody else.”
Isabel said that she thought that many teenagers did that, and not just skateboarders. Yes, that was true, Jillian said, but skateboarders were an extreme example. “They block out the rest of the world, you know. They think that there are skaters and then there are the rest. It’s that bad.” She waited a moment, and then added: “I know about this, you see. Our son became one. He didn’t talk to us for two and a half years. Just a few grunts. That was all.”
“But he came back?”
“Yes. He came back. But he had wasted those precious years of youth. Think what he might have seen and done, instead of spending his time on streets, skating aimlessly. Just think.”
“We all have our ways of wasting time,” said Isabel. “Think of golf … What’s your son doing now?”
“He works for a hedge fund.”
She could not help but smile. “Oh.”
“Yes, it sounds ridiculous,” said Jillian. “But one’s children don’t always turn out exactly as one hoped. Do you …”
“I have a son. Still very young. He has yet to … to disclose his hand.”
Eddie returned. He had made Isabel another cup of coffee too. On the top of the foam he had traced in chocolate powder the shape of a four-leaf clover. She studied the clover design and then looked up at him. “It’s good luck,” he said, and winked.
“Sweet,” said Jillian, after he had left them. She dipped a spoon into the top of her coffee and licked it. “Do you mind if I call you Isabel?”
Isabel did not, although she was not sure about this woman. There was something imperious about her, something highhanded that made her doubt whether they could ever be close. If there was a clear division between friend and acquaintance, then Jillian, she decided, would remain an acquaintance.
“My husband, Alex, is on any number of committees,” Jillian said. “He was a businessman before we retreated to a farm near Biggar, and he’s been co-opted on to virtually every public body in Lanarkshire. I put up with it, and he seems to like it. He’s pretty busy, as you can imagine.”
“What’s the popular saying?” asked Isabel. “If you want something done, ask a busy person.”
“True. And he gets things done. He’s really good at that.” Jillian paused to take a sip of her coffee. “One of the things he does is serve on the board of governors of Bishop Forbes School. You know it? It’s just outside West Linton.”
“Of course I do,” said Isabel. “I was at school in Edinburgh. We used to get the boys from Bishop Forbes shipped in for school dances.”
“They still do that,” said Jillian. “They send them in to dance with girls. Being a boys’ school, they try to arrange some female contact for the boys. Not that the boys need much help in that respect.”
Isabel looked out of the window. She was remembering a school dance where one of the girls had claimed to have seduced a boy in the chemistry lab, having slipped away from the hall with him. They had not believed her, and had pressed her for details. She had burst into tears and accused them of ruining a beautiful experience for her. “You’re such a liar,” said one of the girls. And “Wishful thinking,” said another. The cruelty of children.
Isabel brought herself back to what Jillian was now saying.
“Alex is the chairman of the board of governors, as it happens. It’s his second term; I tried to get him to hand over to somebody else after he had done three years, but you know how some people are—they think they’re indispensable. That, and a sense of duty.”
Isabel was trying to remember Jillian’s husband. There had been a dozen or so people at the Stevensons’ house that night, and she found it difficult. There had been a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who could well have been the chairman of a board of governors. He had talked to her about art, she thought; about Cowie. Yes, they had talked about a Cowie retrospective that the Dean Gallery had put on.
