The Charming Quirks of Others

She nodded. I could give up working, she thought. I could spend all my time with Charlie, which is what I would love to do. But would I be any happier? And would it make much difference to Charlie? She looked at her son, who was now tackling one of the soldiers given him by Jamie. Being a parent was such a gift, and everybody said that it was a fleeting one. So precious, those years, hang on to them, Isabel. That had been Cousin Mimi from Dallas. They had been talking about what it meant to have children, and Mimi had warned her of how quickly the childhood years went past—not for the child, but for the parent.

It was true. Already she found it hard to remember what Charlie was like as a tiny baby. Again, that was something that people had warned her about: Take photographs and look at them regularly, just to remind yourself. There was a popular song, was there not? She turned to Jamie; he knew about these things and could reel off the lines of the most obscure songs. How do you do it? I don’t know, I just do. I remember songs. I forget lots of other things—the capital of Paraguay, for example—but I remember songs.

She asked him, “Isn’t there a song about it?”

He looked up, and smiled. “About what? Boiled egg?”

“About how children grow up so quickly.”

He thought for a moment. “Fiddler on the Roof. I think the song’s called ‘Sunrise, Sunset.’ It asks how it all happened so quickly, how they grow up, become so tall, while nobody’s watching.”

She remembered. “It’s true, I think.”

Jamie shrugged. “I suppose so. But I don’t think we should worry about it. We’ve got years ahead of us. He’s not all that tall just yet, are you?” He pinched Charlie gently on the cheek and the little boy burst out laughing, as if sharing in some vastly amusing joke.

“The years shall run like rabbits,” she said, remembering what Auden had said, but refraining from telling Jamie, who sometimes sighed when she mentioned WHA.

“Like rabbits?”

Charlie chuckled. “Abbits,” he spluttered.

Hearing this, Isabel thought of its crossword potential. Cockney customs? Abbits. Senior members of monasteries? Abbits. Not the right thing to do? Bad abbits.

She smiled. “What’s the joke?” asked Jamie.

“The loss of a letter changes everything,” she said.

Jamie reflected. The years did run like rabbits, he supposed. Rabbits ran quickly, shot off, and then disappeared, which is what the years did. He dealt with a final piece of egg-smeared bread and then looked up to see that Isabel herself had disappeared …

 … INTO HER STUDY. She had a number of letters to deal with, some opened, some still in their envelopes, lying accusingly on her desk. The postman tended to the apologetic, particularly in respect of large parcels, which he knew contained manuscripts or books for review—work, in other words. He had arrived very early that day and had said, “This one’s really heavy,” as he passed her a large padded envelope franked in Utah. He glanced at the customs declaration stuck on the front of the package. “A book,” he said. And then, rather quickly, “I’m sorry, we’re not meant to read anything but the address. It’s just that …”

“Willy,” she said, “you’re the model of discretion. I couldn’t do your job. I’d die of curiosity as to what was in the letters I was delivering.”

Willy looked sheepish. “Yes, it’s tempting, isn’t it? I never look at letters, even if the envelope has been torn and some of the inside is showing. I look the other way.”

“And postcards?” asked Isabel, innocently.

He blushed. “You can’t help but see,” he said. “You have to read the name and address and the message is right there—sometimes just a few words. How can you not see them?”

“You can’t,” agreed Isabel. “And that’s fine. If people write things that are meant to be confidential on a postcard, then it’s their own fault if somebody else reads it. Caveat scriptor—let the writer beware.”

Willy handed her a sheaf of other letters from his bag. “I’ve seen some pretty odd postcards,” he said.

Isabel’s curiosity was piqued. “Such as?”

Willy hesitated. “You won’t tell anybody?”

“Of course not. Except Jamie. Do you mind if I tell Jamie?”

“That’s all right,” said Willy. “Well, I had to deliver this postcard, see. I won’t tell you where. Not far from here—not your street, though. Anyway, it was a plain postcard—no picture—and on the message bit the sender had written, clear as day, ‘I didn’t do it—you’ve got to believe me. It was Tom. I saw him. And he knows I know. So if anything happens to me, make sure to tell Freddie that Tom’s the one they should blame.’ ”

Isabel smiled. “Well, well! So now we know too. Except …”

“Except we don’t know who Tom is.”

“Yes,” she said. “How frustrating. He could be getting away with … with murder, I suppose. It could be, you know.”

Willy nodded. “I thought of that. But what could I do? It could all be about something very ordinary. Something like cheating.”

Isabel considered this. There was an obvious inference that it was not something inconsequential; one did not fear for one’s safety if one knew about something minor. So it had to be something that Tom would go to some lengths to conceal, even to the extent of removing the writer of the message. She pointed this out to Willy, who thought about it for a few moments, and then said that he agreed.

“There is something you could do,” she said. “Do you know the person to whom you delivered the postcard?”