The Charming Quirks of Others

“In spite of this unreliability business?”

“If I show him that I am happy to publish criticisms of my own work, maybe that will make him think again.”

“Think again about you?”

“Yes. About me.”

Jamie rose to his feet. He put Dove’s book down on the table and walked across the room to Isabel. He embraced her. He kissed her with a sudden, urgent passion. What have I done, she wondered, either to provoke this or to deserve this? She returned his kiss. It did not matter about Dove; it did not matter about Lettuce; they were nothing to her, now that she had this exquisite, gentle young man who had come so unexpectedly into her life. She had everything, while Dove and Lettuce had nothing. So she should forgive them and publish Lettuce’s review, even if it turned out to be—as she thought it would— a paean of praise to Dove and all his works. Let him do that; she had everything and could afford to be generous.

She disengaged from their embrace. “I’ll publish it,” she said. “I’ve decided.”

“If that’s what you want to do,” said Jamie. He looked at her tenderly. “You know, you’re a tremendously kind person. It’s one of the reasons I love you. Your kindness.”

She was taken aback. “There are many people much kinder than I am.”

He looked doubtful. “Name one.”

“You,” she said.

HE COOKED LUNCH—a light bowl of pasta with a few mushrooms; a salad. They ate in the kitchen, talking about a concert that he was due to be playing in the following week. She was beginning to know her way around the politics of music; she understood now the quirks of conductors, of concert hall managements, of temperamental, prickly administrators. Not enough effort, Jamie said, had been made to advertise this concert.

“And then, when they get a disappointing turnout, they wonder why,” he said.

“People can’t attend things they don’t know are happening,” said Isabel. And then laughed; it was such an obvious thing to say.

Jamie agreed.

She suddenly thought of something. “Have there been occasions when the players forgot to go?” said Isabel.

Jamie’s smile disappeared. “Don’t,” he said.

She looked at him inquisitively. “You?”

He looked down at his plate. “I can’t even bring myself to think about it,” he said.

She could see that he was distressed; what had started as a light-hearted conversation had become serious.

“You mustn’t let it worry you,” she said quietly. “Who amongst us hasn’t inadvertently done something awful?” She thought of her review of the dying man’s book. “We have to forgive ourselves, you know.”

He nodded. “They had to cancel. They had to refund the ticket money.”

“Forgive yourself.”

“Really?”

“Yes. People punish themselves—sometimes for years. But it’s not always necessary. Forgiveness allows everybody to start again, not to be burdened with a whole lot of old business.”

She thought of those studies of conversion that showed how people turned to a new faith or a new ideology to get rid of the burden of the past. They became new people, they thought, and could forget about what they had done before. She was not sure whether that was self-forgiveness or self-invention; they were different things, really, and she could not help but feel that self-invention was an easy way out. Not me, it said. A different person did that. Which could be quite true. We did become different people as we grew; the child is not the same person as the man.

She looked at Jamie thoughtfully. “What were you like as a little boy?” she asked.

He shrugged. “A little boy,” he said. “You know … a little boy.”

She tried to imagine him at the age of seven. “Your hair?”

“Same. And you?”

“I wore my hair in pigtails,” she said. “I had a doll called Baby Isabel and we had matching dresses. If I put on a gingham dress, then Baby Isabel wore the same.”

Jamie smiled. “Baby Isabel! What a lovely name. You must have loved her. Did you?”

Isabel looked away. “Baby Isabel was left on a bus,” she said. “I cried and cried. They tried to get me to pay attention to one of my other dolls, but it was Baby Isabel I wanted.”

He was silent. Then Jamie spoke. “You know something, Isabel? I murdered my teddy. I threw him over the Dean Bridge—you know, right over the Water of Leith, where the suicides jump. I threw my teddy over the edge. I don’t know why I did it. I suppose I might have wanted to see him fall, but the parapet was too high and I couldn’t. That was the end of him. My mother said, ‘Now you’ve done it. That’s the end of Teddy.’ ” He paused. “I’ve never talked about it. Never.”

She reached out to touch him. “I think you can forgive yourself for that too.”

He rose to clear the lunch things away. “All right, I forgive myself.”

“Good.”