The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (21 page)

“That’s where they should remain,” said Jamie firmly.

“I agree,” said Isabel. “It’s a gift, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course. And you don’t take gifts back, do you?”

Jamie wondered whether that was an absolute rule. Could there not be circumstances
in which it became apparent that a gift was not appreciated or not being used? Surely
you could ask for it back in such a case? Isabel thought you could not. “You have
to put up with it,” she said. “You might hint. You might say something like: ‘Remember
that china tea service we gave you for your wedding? We love that pattern, and it’s
such a pity they’re not making it any more. I’d do anything—anything!—to get my hands
on more like it.’ ” She smiled. “And then you might add: ‘You’re so wise, keeping
it in a cupboard, unused.’ ”

“Not very subtle,” said Jamie.

“No. Perhaps not. But there are times when subtlety just won’t work, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps you should have been less subtle yourself,” he said. “Perhaps you should
have mentioned cucumbers.”

“Just dropped them into the conversation? Perhaps as an expletive.
Oh, cucumber!
Expletives don’t have to have a meaning. ‘Cucumber’ would do fine—like that marvellous
Italian expression,
caspita!
It doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s the equivalent of saying ‘heavens.’ ”

“But ‘heavens’ does mean something,” Jamie objected.

Isabel said nothing.

“And ‘cucumber’ means something too,” Jamie continued.

Isabel rose to her feet and crossed the room to the fridge in the corner. “I know
we’ve just had dinner,” she said. “But all this talk of cucumber is just too much.
I’m going to make myself a cucumber sandwich.” She turned and looked over her shoulder
at Jamie. “Want one?”

He did, and a minute or two later they were seated at the table again, a small plate
of thinly cut cucumber sandwiches in front of them. “Heaven,” said Isabel, as she
began to eat. “Singular. Heaven.”

AS ISABEL LET DUNCAN
into the house the following morning, she could see that he was nervous.

“I’m sorry that I’m so early,” he said. “I was worried what would happen if there
was a delay on the roads.”

She reassured him that it made no difference to her, as long as he would not mind
entertaining himself for half an hour or so. “I have to take my son to nursery school.”

He made an apologetic gesture. “Of course, of course. I’ll be fine.”

She left him in the sitting room with a copy of that morning’s newspaper. She had
started the crossword over her breakfast cup of coffee and had not got very far. She
enquired whether he did crosswords. He did. “Eight down,” she said. “ ‘A dirty child
will not like this command.’ Four words. It begins with an
o
.”

He took the paper from her. His hand, she saw, was shaking. He glanced at the crossword
and then looked up. “Order of the Bath,” he said.

Isabel laughed. “Yes! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I’m sure that you would have,” he said.

“It’s such an odd name for a chivalric order,” mused Isabel. “I gather it was something
to do with the fact that medieval knights were washed to purify them. Rather like
baptism.”

Duncan made a polite expression of interest, but she could tell that his mind was
elsewhere.

“Not that people bathed very much in those days,” said Isabel. “Do you know that a
Venetian ambassador expressed surprise that Queen Elizabeth I took a bath every month—even
when she didn’t need one.”

He did not laugh.

“You’re nervous,” she said.

He looked down at his feet. “Very.”

“I don’t think there’s any danger,” she said. “All these people want is money. I don’t
think they’re violent criminals or anything like that.”

“It’s not that I’m worried about,” Duncan said. “It’s my painting I’m worried about.
It could get damaged if they’re carting it around. These people will know nothing
about how to treat a
painting.” As he spoke, his anxiety gave way to anger. “It means nothing to them.
It’s just a way of extorting money. They don’t care about anything else.”

Isabel put a hand on his forearm. “There’s every chance we’ll get this back,” she
said. “They have no interest in damaging it.”

She wondered why she was trying to persuade him out of his anger. People had a right
to be angry when they were the victims of ill-treatment. We automatically tended to
calm them down, but perhaps we should let anger run its course. It had its function,
she imagined, which was … What exactly
was
the role of anger? Self-protection? Did anger serve the purpose of encouraging us
to avoid harmful situations in the future? Did it show us who our enemies were?

She looked at her watch. Jamie had been dressing Charlie upstairs and she needed to
relieve him: he had to be at the Academy in forty minutes for his pupils, and he was
planning to call on Grace later. She left Duncan with the newspaper, inviting him
to tackle the crossword if he wished. Upstairs, Charlie was now ready. “Tiffin box,”
he said. “Don’t forget tiffin box.”

She led him downstairs, collected the tiffin box from the kitchen and made her way
out of the front door, Charlie walking beside her, his hand in hers. He was wearing
a pair of red shoes of which he was inordinately proud. “Red shoes go fast,” he announced.

“That’s right, they do, darling,” said Isabel.

She squeezed the tiny hand that was holding on to hers, and the tiny hand squeezed
back. She imagined what it must be like to have Charlie’s mind—to believe that red
shoes are faster than other shoes; to believe, as he did, that ducks could drive fire
engines and that pigs built houses of bricks and straw. There were plenty of people
who weren’t three-and-three-quarters
who believed equally implausible things … and went to war over them.

They made slow progress, as Charlie’s steps, in spite of his red shoes, were small.
A few yards away from the house Isabel noticed a car that had been parked in one of
the parking bays pull out into the road. She had not been paying particular attention
to it, but she glimpsed the driver briefly before he made off. He was vaguely familiar;
somebody from a neighbouring street whom she had seen walking in to Bruntsfield or
in the delicatessen, perhaps? Or had she met him somewhere else? Her gaze followed
the retreating car: she could just make out the back of the driver’s head now; nothing
more than that. And then it dawned on her. It was Patrick, or somebody who looked
very much like him.

She stopped in her tracks.

“Why we stopping?” asked Charlie.

“Because I’ve just seen something, Charlie. I’ve just seen something odd.”

They resumed the journey, but as they did so, Isabel went over in her mind the possible
explanations for Patrick’s presence. Coincidence led the list. Patrick might have
a friend in the area and might be visiting him; there was no law against visiting
your friends first thing in the morning. Or he had spent the night at a friend’s house
and was now going back to his flat. Or it was not Patrick at all.

Those were the innocent explanations. The less innocent included the possibility that
Patrick was watching his father, or, and this made Isabel’s heart skip a beat, that
he was watching
her
. If Patrick were in some way mixed up in the theft of the painting, then he could
be expected to have a close interest in the outcome of today’s meeting. The thieves
would be
concerned about the police coming to the meeting, and so they would naturally want
to be warned when Duncan came into town to pick up Isabel. That could explain Patrick’s
presence—if, indeed, it was Patrick whom she had seen.

After she had dropped Charlie off at the nursery, Isabel returned to the house, where
she found Duncan immersed in the crossword.

“It took my mind off things,” he said. “Not that I’ve made much progress with it—apart
from this.” He passed her the newspaper and she looked at the clues he had filled
in. Order of the Bath had helped him to get
The sea sounds like a man
(brine) and
A plucked instrument says Italian yes to group of notes; it has a keyboard
(harpsichord).

“Very clever,” she said.

“Not really.”

She looked at her watch. They could walk to Rutland Square if they had time—it was
only twenty minutes from Isabel’s house to the west end of Princes Street, and Rutland
Square was only minutes from there. But it was now nine o’clock and they could not
afford to be late. Isabel telephoned for a taxi and suggested that they wait for it
at the gate. “They don’t take long,” she said. Duncan nodded; he was still distracted,
she noticed, and she thought that she could make out beads of sweat across his brow.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said, as she locked the front door behind him.

He swallowed. “Yes, thank you. Thank you.”

They stood under the large tree at the front of the house. Somewhere in the foliage
a bird moved; that tree was popular with doves. Charlie was fascinated by them. “Doves
got bedrooms?” he had asked.

She looked up the street, attentive now to any cars that
were parked nearby. For the first time, she felt what she realised was fear. The people
they were about to meet did not belong to her world; they came from a world in which
the rights of others did not matter. She had assured Duncan that they would not be
violent, but how did she know that? The answer was that she did not.

In the taxi, Duncan sat quietly, not attempting to make conversation but staring out
of the window at the houses and at the cluster of shops at the top of the road that
led down to the canal. They passed a church on which a large banner had been hung.
We must love one another
, it said. We must, she thought. And Auden came to mind, again, as he did in the most
unexpected circumstances. It was “1st September 1939,” the poem that people in New
York read and sent to one another after that fateful September day in 2001. They found
comfort in it because it was about the ending of a world and the despair that this
will bring. He had originally written: “We must love one another or die,” and had
changed it to: “We must love one another
and
die.” Auden disowned the poem, considering it mendacious; but it had a grave beauty
about it. Things that are not sincere can be as striking as those that are, and insincerity,
thought Isabel, can—curiously—end up being sincere.

She turned to Duncan. The taxi had stopped at the lights outside the King’s Theatre;
the traffic was moving slowly. “Your son,” she said. “Your son, Patrick. I thought
I saw him.”

He looked puzzled. “You met him?”

“I did. At a concert. I thought I’d told you that when I came out to Doune.”

“Did you? Perhaps you did. I can’t remember, I’m afraid.”

“I thought I saw him,” she said.

He frowned.

“I mean, I thought I saw him this morning. In a car. On my street.”

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at his brow. “You probably did.”

Now it was Isabel’s turn to look puzzled.

“He drove me to your place,” said Duncan. “I called on him this morning. I wanted
to leave my car near his flat. You can park up there. Your area has these regulations.”

Isabel felt relieved. The innocent explanation meant that she had not been imagining
things—it had been him—and at the same time served to defuse the awkward possibility
that Patrick was somehow involved in the theft of the painting.

“He knows what’s happening this morning?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Duncan. “I told him.” He looked down at his hands. “My son and I are,
regrettably, not close.”

She said that she was sorry to hear that.

“Thank you. I’m afraid that he’s something of a disappointment to me.”

He looked at her as he spoke, and she felt that he was asking something of her. Did
he want reassurance? Did he want some sort of comfort?

“I suspected that,” she said.

“Why?” There was a note of surprise in his voice.

She chose her words carefully. “I formed the impression that you might …” She faltered.
What did she want to say? That he and Patrick inhabited different worlds?

“Go on,” he said. “Please go on. Tell me what you think.”

She had not imagined that she would discuss it with him, but now he was asking. “I
can understand how it’s sometimes difficult,” she said.

“It is,” he said. “It is difficult.”

“I have a friend whose son is gay,” said Isabel. “She found it hard at first, but
she realised that what really counted was his happiness, and he was happy. She …”
She trailed off. Duncan was staring at her in incomprehension.

“I really don’t know what you mean,” he said.

She struggled to find words. It had suddenly dawned on her that either he did not
know or that she had been mistaken in her conclusion that Patrick was gay. Perhaps
the assumption was misplaced—one cannot read the lives of others on a cursory meeting.

Duncan now looked confused. “My son …,” he began, and then, looking down at the floor
of the cab, he lapsed into silence.

“I’m sorry,” said Isabel. “I really don’t know your son.”

He did not meet her eyes. “There is a political difference between us,” he said. “My
own views are liberal—middle-of-the-roadish. I’m not particularly political, I suppose.
But he … he’s an extremist, I’m sorry to say. He’s in with a very leftish bunch—not
the Labour Party or any of the other mainstream options of the left, but the real
hard left—a small outfit in Glasgow. He gives them money. Castro is his hero, as far
as I can make out. I try to point out to him that Castro took many prisoners of conscience
over the years, but he won’t hear any of it. He even laments the passing of the Soviet
Union. He forgets about the Gulag, the KGB, the millions who perished under Stalin.”

Isabel listened. Had the traffic not been so slow, they would have been at their destination
by now; as it was, they were stuck in a line of cars outside the Usher Hall. “People
change,” she said. “The scales may fall from his eyes. And …” She hesitated, unsure
whether to broaden the discussion, but decided to do so. “And if you look behind the
party allegiance, you may find some
fine sentiments. The left generally want people to have good lives, don’t you think?
They want people to have their material needs satisfied, to be lifted out of poverty.
Perhaps your son—”