The Charming Quirks of Others

None of this stopped them from enjoying the French atmosphere of Cafe St. Honore, nor from ordering coquilles St. Jacques and a bottle of Chablis.

“Well,” said Isabel. “Danish psychics?”

Jamie shrugged. “I’d like to see proof. Proof that stands up in the labs.”

Isabel thought about this. She understood why Jamie should insist on sound evidence for any conclusion, and part of her agreed with that. But she often acted on hunches, on the prompting of her feelings or on simple intuition. And labs were not always the answer, she felt: there were things that were invisible and undetectable by any physical means but that were none the less real: sorrow, pain, hope, for instance; or an atmosphere of tension or distrust in a room. “It may be that labs have an inhibiting effect,” she said. “Have you thought of that?”

Jamie reached for a piece of bread and dipped it into a small bowl of olive oil. The wine had arrived and was now being poured. “No. I hadn’t.” And she could be right, he decided. He had a friend who could not have his blood pressure taken accurately; every time the rubber cuff was placed around his arm, his heart began to thump and a misleadingly high reading resulted. Could it be the same with telepathy? Perhaps it worked only when the people present were in a receptive mood, in the same way that a composer or an artist may need peace and quiet before the Muse will speak.

“Who was that woman you were talking to?” he asked. “Before the lecture—the woman with the ginger hair?”

Isabel reached for her glass. “It’s to do with this school business.” She watched his reaction; she had not told him about her ulterior motive in accompanying Grace to the lecture. It was not that she wanted to mislead him; she just had not thought to do so. Some couples live in each other’s pockets, sharing every bit of their lives, every bit of information. That might suit some, but it was not what she—nor Jamie, for that matter—wanted. They both wanted room to lead independent lives, and that is why she did not tell him about everything that happened to do with the Review or with … this other side of her life. She could not bring herself to describe it as enquiries: that sounded far too arch, and investigations sounded downright hyperbolic. Isabel did not investigate things; she considered them.

“These principals?”

“Yes, or would-be principals.”

He waited.

“The woman with the ginger hair,” she continued, “is called Cathy. She’s the cousin of one of the candidates. Grace told me.”

Jamie reached for another bit of bread. “The trouble with this French bread,” he said, “is that it’s too tasty. You could fill up on it before anything else arrived.” He dipped the bread into the olive oil, allowing a small drop to fall back into the bowl. “So? Did you find out anything?”

“Yes,” she said. “I did. I managed to bring up her cousin’s name. I said, ‘Aren’t you John Fraser’s cousin?’ and before she had the chance to ask me whether I knew him, I said, ‘I haven’t seen him recently.’ That was absolutely true. I might have said, ‘I’ve never seen him,’ but at least I didn’t lie.”

Jamie looked at her. He smiled. “You didn’t lie? No, I suppose you didn’t. Not technically.”

“I didn’t lie,” she repeated firmly.

“All right. And what did she say then?”

Isabel told him that she had asked about John’s climbing. Did he climb as much in the summer as in the winter? Was he planning to go abroad?

“She was clearly very proud of him,” Isabel said. “Just as Grace had told me. But then, just after she said something about how he had been talking for years about climbing in the Andes, her face clouded over. You know how that sometimes happens? It’s as if a dark shadow has come over somebody. She stopped mid-sentence, as if she’d remembered something.”

Jamie was silent. They were sitting off to the side, away from the light, and for a moment it was as if they were completely alone in the room, rather than in a restaurant in which there were other diners, movement, warmth.

Isabel continued. “Then she said something very strange. She said that he was troubled in spirit. Those were her exact words. Troubled in spirit. I asked her why this was, but she didn’t answer me. She said that he wanted to come to one of the meetings, but hadn’t got round to it. She said that it was a pity, because it helped to talk to the one on the other side. Again, those were her actual words. The one on the other side.”

Jamie took a sip of his wine. “He’s lost somebody? Lots of the people at that meeting had lost somebody, I think. That’s why they go there.”

Isabel nodded. She had seen it at the previous meeting. “But who? Somebody he’s wronged, do you think?”

“Maybe.”

Isabel looked over Jamie’s shoulder. The waiter was approaching their table, plates balanced expertly in either hand. “If you had let somebody down badly and then … before you made your peace, they crossed over to the other side, as Grace would say, wouldn’t you want to speak to him?”

The waiter put the plates before them. The scallops, fresh and firm, had been arranged to make a peninsula across a shallow lake of sauce. Isabel sniffed at the steam rising from the plate. “If I had to give up everything,” she said, “seafood would be the last thing to go. I’d have a final scallop and say, ‘That’s it, that’s eating over.’ And then I’d cross over happy.”

Jamie laughed. He raised his glass to Isabel. “May that never be necessary.”

She had not been serious, of course, but the absurd, the fanciful, may bring grave thoughts in its wake. She and Jamie would not be together for eternity; one day one of them would leave or die—those were the only two certainties—and the other would be on his or her own. It was a thought that crossed the mind of everybody who ever entered into a relationship with another. It applied as much to friends as to lovers and spouses: one day somebody would see the other for the last time, and probably not know it. And there would be things left unsaid, little gestures—kindnesses—left undone, as there are in every part of life.