The Charming Quirks of Others

Jamie tackled a scallop, and then dabbed at his mouth with the starched table napkin. Isabel watched him. Napery, she thought: the word for table linen. Napery—the word had such a solid ring to it, suggesting houses that had drawers and trunks full of tablecloths and the like, neatly pressed and folded away, like old memories; napery and silver and plenishings— words that lawyers used when itemising the household effects of clients who had died and left such things behind them.

“What are you thinking of?” asked Jamie, putting down the napkin.

“Household effects,” she said. “That table napkin …” She pointed, and he looked at it in puzzlement.

“Nothing wrong with it.”

“No, of course not. I was just thinking of how we fill our houses with things. Rather too many things, in most cases.”

Jamie shrugged. “I don’t. My flat’s uncluttered. Or was … when I last visited it.”

She caught his smile, and returned it. Jamie only used his flat now to teach in, his pupils hauling their bassoon cases up the stone staircase to tug at his antiquated brass bell-pull and wipe their feet on the coir doormat with its Welcome legend and ingrained mud. He still used one room there as a bedroom, in the sense that there was a made-up bed in it, but he never stayed there now, and the flat had a cold, rather desolate feel to it. Charlie did not like it, and had fidgeted and fretted when Jamie had last taken him there.

“Your flat …,” Isabel began, but did not finish the sentence. Space, she reminded herself.

“Yes? My flat?”

Isabel waved a hand in the air, carelessly. “Your flat is your flat,” she said. “You like it—that’s all that matters.”

Jamie frowned. “But I don’t really like it,” he said.

She was surprised; he had never said this before. She wondered whether he wanted to get rid of it; he could teach just as easily in the music room in her house, and they were engaged, after all, and would be getting married in due course.

“Is there any point in keeping it, then? Do you want to sell it?”

Jamie looked away. She saw how the light accentuated his high cheekbones. She wanted to reach out and touch him; to put her hand against his cheek, which felt so smooth, and which she had become accustomed to touching, briefly, when she awoke and he was there beside her, his head on the pillow. How long would this beauty last? Five more years? Ten? Or was it more fleeting than that, as human beauty inevitably is?

She asked him again. “How about selling it? Wouldn’t you feel less … tied down?”

“I might,” said Jamie thoughtfully. “Do you think I should?”

She hesitated. “When we’re married, do we need it?” Space, she thought again.

“No, I don’t see why we should keep it.” He looked back at her. “Can we get married soon? I mean, really soon.”

She felt her heart beating within her. She closed her eyes, involuntarily. “Yes. I think we should.”

“In two or three weeks’ time?”

She felt her breath leave her; she had to force herself to breathe. “I think so.”

“I don’t want a great big wedding,” he said. “Do you mind? Something more or less private. You, me, Charlie.”

“If that’s what you want. Are you sure?”

He nodded, and reached across the table to take her hand. “Yes, it is.”

They had much to talk about. They would go to Old St. Paul’s, an Episcopal church where Isabel knew one of the clergy. There was a side chapel there—a tiny place—that would be suitable for a small wedding. The choir, though, might be asked to sing. Would Jamie object to that? He would love it, he said. They would be off to one side, out of sight, but it would be lovely hearing them in the background.

“You choose the music,” said Isabel. “Naturally.”

He agreed, but said that he wanted her to be happy with his choice.

“No,” she said. “You’re the musician.”

“Ireland,” he said. “Definitely Ireland, then. ‘Greater Love Hath No Man.’ Remember it?”

She did. “Many waters cannot quench love,” she said.

He sung, in response, barely above a whisper, “Neither can the floods drown it.”

“And what else?”

“Oh, I’ll think. We’ve got at least four centuries of music to choose from.”

Towards the end of the meal, when they were drinking coffee, Isabel said, “You know, I have an awful feeling about John Fraser. I know it’s ridiculous, but I can’t get it out of my mind.”

He looked at her with interest. “What do you feel?”

She knew that she had no grounds for saying what she was about to say. It was ridiculous—a complete whimsy. But the thought had occurred to her and it would not go away. “That he’s killed somebody.” She regretted the words even as she uttered them. It was an accusation—a gross defamation, even if the victim would never hear what was said of him. You can defame people, she thought, even if you speak the words into a void, to be heard by nobody. The wrong in such cases was not that you lowered them in the eyes of others—you did not do this,