The Charming Quirks of Others

now he did. “Tom Simpson,” he said. “The third name on that list of yours. There’s something about him that makes me suspicious.”

Isabel thought: A guilty look? Wrong colour of tie?

“Stupid,” said Alex. “He’s stupid, that man. Nobody else at the interview thought so—nor did his referees. But I think he’s not very bright.”

“But he could be a good administrator,” suggested Isabel. Did principals of schools have to be intellectuals? Surely what counted was the ability to motivate staff and students—and keep the parents happy. None of that relied entirely on intellectual ability.

Alex smiled. “Yes. They used to have school heads like that, but not any more. It’s changed a lot since our day. No, what worries me is that he claims to have a first-class honours degree—and a master’s with distinction. I somehow feel that’s just not possible.”

“You could check,” said Isabel. It would be a simple business to get in touch with the universities in question and ask.

“I have,” said Alex. “I took it upon myself to contact the registry of the University of Bristol. They said that he’d been there, but they wouldn’t reveal the class of his degree—something to do with data protection. You know how people won’t tell you what time of day it is because of data protection.”

Isabel laughed. “I heard of somebody who refused to give his name when asked. He said it was on the grounds of privacy.”

“Some people are strange,” said Alex.

“Very.” She paused. “And the others? Gordon Leafers and John Fraser?”

Alex shrugged. “I met them at the interview. John Fraser I knew slightly anyway. We had a couple of mutual friends.”

“That’s useful, isn’t it?” said Isabel. “What do they say about him?”

“They admire him. But they say that he’s rather gloomy. That was the word they used: gloomy.”

As well he might be, thought Isabel; with the life of that other climber on his conscience, he might well be gloomy.

“And Gordon?”

Alex’s answer came quickly. Gordon, in his view, was above reproach. “Everybody likes him,” he said. “An immensely attractive character.”

Yes, thought Isabel. Too attractive, perhaps? Or too attractive to married women?

A woman came into the room from a side door and signalled to Alex. “That’s dinner ready,” he said. “I believe Jillian has put you next to the current head. Harold Slade. You’ll like him.”

THEY FILED THROUGH to the dining room and took their places. When everybody was seated, Alex tapped his knife against a wine glass and stood up to speak. He was grateful to them all for coming, he said, and he hoped they would enjoy what they saw of Abbotsford. Scott would come back into fashion, he thought, and claim the imagination of a new generation. He was pleased to play a small part in this, and they could too.

Isabel frowned involuntarily; would an electronic generation, brought up on a diet of quick-fire humour and pyrotechnic cinematic effects, embrace somebody like Scott, whose stories could be weighed in pounds? And yet writers who wrote long books still survived: people still read Dickens and Stevenson; they still read Proust, for that matter, or claimed that they did.

“As long as people are interested in Scottish history,” said Alex, staring down the table as if to challenge those who were not, “then Scott will have his public.”

There were nods of agreement, and Isabel found herself joining in. The year before, there had been a gathering of the clans in Scotland and people had flocked from every corner of the globe to join in. These were people who lived in distant modern cities, in the Cincinnatis and the Canberras of this world, but who felt the pull of Scottish ancestry, even now; they had come to Edinburgh and watched Highland dancing and displays of every sort of Scotticism, lapping up the riot of tartan. And why not? People felt the need to come from somewhere, even if it was a long time ago and they were not sure exactly where it was and when. Blood links, she thought; that was what it was about. However tenuous such links were, people regarded them as standing between themselves and the void of human impermanence. For ultimately we were all insignificant tenants of this earth, temporary bearers of a genetic message that could so easily disappear. We had not always been here, and there was no reason to suppose that we always would be. And yet we found such thoughts uncomfortable, and did not like to think them. So we clung to the straws of identity; these, at least, made us feel a little more permanent.

Scott was part of that; this wonderful house, with all its reminders of the Scottish past, was part of it. Keep me from the pain of nothingness. The words came to her mind from somewhere, but she was not sure where: Timor nihil conturbat me, a play on that line of William Dunbar’s. It was not becoming nothing—death—that we must fear but being nothing.

This line of thought distracted her, and she did not hear Alex’s final observations before he sat down. Something further about Scott, and his feeling for Abbotsford. The speech over, in the outbreak of conversation that followed she turned to Harold Slade, seated beside her. They shook hands, and he announced that she had been pointed out to him by Alex Mackinlay as somebody who might come to the school one day and talk to the boys about doing a degree in philosophy. “If you think that’s a good idea, of course,” he said. “One of the interesting things that I have found in the past is that people don’t necessarily believe in what they do.”

Isabel laughed. “Oh, I believe in philosophy, Mr. Slade.”

“Harry, please.”

“Philosophy is something that you have to believe in,” she continued. “The moment you begin to think, you engage with it.” She paused. She was sounding pedantic, and did not want to. “I’d be happy to talk to the boys, Harry.”

He inclined his head. “Thank you. Perhaps you could manage it before I hand over. I’m going, you see.”

“I’d heard that. Singapore, isn’t it?”