Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 06 (25 page)

Grace made an indistinct gesture of assent; in her view, Isabel would never understand these matters—how could one ever see something that one was determined not to see?

“Do you think,” began Isabel, “that a man who loved his son would agree never to see him again? Let’s say that he had to choose between his career and his son?”

Grace gasped. “Jamie?”

“No, certainly not. Not Jamie. Somebody else.”

Grace looked out of the window. “Well, I’m glad it’s not Jamie. But if you want to answer that question, just apply it to Jamie. Imagine that it’s Jamie you’re thinking about. We know how much he loves Charlie. Would he do that?”

Isabel answered immediately. “Of course not.”

“Then there’s your answer,” said Grace.

E
VERY BIT THE ANGEL OF DEATH
,
Billy McClarty, scourge of foxes, chairman of the Dalkeith and Bonnington Model Railway Association, father and husband, stepped out of his van and made his way down the driveway to Isabel’s front door. He was carrying a metal-barred cage, heavy enough to give him a curious, unbalanced gait. The cage was surprisingly small if it were to accommodate a fox, but not built for comfort, of course. For most foxes finding themselves trapped within, this would be the condemned cell in which they would be incarcerated with their last meal—half a chicken, perhaps, or, if Billy’s advice had been heeded by the householder, a gamy portion of pheasant.

It was five o’clock, and Grace had gone home. Jamie had just returned and was having a shower, while Charlie and Isabel were playing with a set of building blocks that had been passed down to Charlie from a boy over the road who had outgrown them. Charlie was learning to balance one block upon another, three high, and then knock them down. He appeared to find this endlessly amusing; not much different, thought Isabel, from slapstick humour, from the antics of silent-film actors, from
those flickering scenes where people stood up and then fell over, and we all laughed.

When the bell rang and she realised that it could be Billy McClarty, Isabel lifted Charlie and deposited him in his playpen with a couple of his bricks for diversion.

Billy McClarty was wiping his shoes when she opened the front door. Isabel glanced at the cage. “Mr. McClarty.”

“That’s me,” said Billy. “Sorry I’m a bit later than I thought, but there was a wasp bike in Morningside—a big one—and I had to get up on someone’s roof.”

Isabel assured him that it did not matter. As she spoke, she noticed the tattoo across his right forearm—the Hand of Ulster, with
Ulster is British
in shaded lettering beneath it. It was well executed, the hand itself in red and the motto in blue. I was right, she thought: Billy McClarty is an Orangeman, a follower of William of Orange, who had put the Catholic James VII to flight. That might have happened in the dying years of the seventeenth century, but it was not too long ago to be a very live issue for some, the symbol of the securing of a Protestant monarchy. And that, in due course, became all tied up with freedom from being told what to do and think by priests—a cause that at least was about liberty, at any rate from Billy McClarty’s perspective. Catholics, of course, thought otherwise.

She led Billy McClarty round the side of the house to the garden. “We last saw him in those bushes over there,” she said, pointing to the deep bank of rhododendrons. “He may still be there, but I’m not sure.”

Billy McClarty took a step forward and peered into the undergrowth. “Good place for one of these fellows,” he said. “Dark. Private. Good place.”

“Like us, they need shelter,” said Isabel.

“Aren’t like us at all,” said Billy. “Aren’t like anything, these boys. Just foxes.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” said Isabel. “I meant that they have the same needs as we do. That’s what I meant.”

Billy McClarty sniffed at the air. “They don’t have the same needs,” he said. “Not at all.”

He took a step forward and crouched to get a better view of the ground under the rhododendrons. “He’s been burrowing down there,” he said. “I cannae see him now, but he’s been there all right. I’ll put the trap in there, I think. He’ll be by.”

“It won’t hurt him, I take it,” she said.

Billy McClarty reassured her. “The most that can happen—the most—is that he gets his tail stuck in the door. That’s all.” He stood up again and gestured towards the trap. “You got that chicken?”

“A pheasant,” said Isabel. “It’s in the kitchen.”

“Even better,” said Billy McClarty, looking in the direction of the house. “You fetch it and we’ll set this up.”

She went into the kitchen and took the pheasant from the fridge, a whole bird, roasted for Brother Fox. When she returned to the garden, Billy McClarty had positioned the trap under the outer foliage of the rhododendron. He took the pheasant from Isabel, sniffed at it with approval and pushed it into the trap, up against the back. Then he pulled back on the small spring arm that would trigger the closure of the door once Brother Fox had succumbed to temptation.

The trap armed, Billy McClarty took a step back and inspected his handiwork. “Aye, that’ll do.” He turned to Isabel. “And then?”

“When he’s safely in there, I’ll call the vet.”

“And then?”

Isabel found herself irritated by Billy McClarty’s manner. It was condescension, of course—the condescension of a man who assumes superiority simply because he is a man. “I shall call the vet,” said Isabel. “I have already told him about this, and he’ll come out and treat his wound.”

Billy McClarty looked sceptical. “Foxes nip,” he said. “How will he be able to look at him without getting nipped?”

“I assume that he has a …” Isabel was not sure, but she was not going to let Billy win. “I assume that he has gloves. And a sedative.”

Billy McClarty shrugged. “I don’t know why you bother,” he said. “Nature, you know.”

“Because he’s suffering,” said Isabel. She stared at this man with his red Hand of Ulster tattoo and his tobacco-stained fingers. “Suffering, Mr. McClarty. Suffering calls for us to do something about it. Don’t you think that too?”

He stiffened. “You can’t fix everything.”

“No. You can’t. But you can fix some things.” She paused. He was looking at her with what amounted to a sneer. She would not tolerate that.

“I suspect you think that I’m just a sentimental woman,” said Isabel. “You do, don’t you?”

Billy McClarty shook his head. “No. Not me.” He was grinning like a schoolboy denying the obvious. Of course he did, and he did not care that she should know it.

“Yes, you do. I can tell what you think. And I can also tell that sometimes you can’t tell that people know what you think. Am I right?” She smiled as she said this, as if to indicate that the comment was not entirely hostile.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Billy McClarty defensively.

“Exactly,” said Isabel. She felt her heart pounding within her; any confrontation, even a small one, did this to her, brought on anxiety and its physical symptoms.

She indicated that they should go back towards the house, where she said she would pay him his one hundred pounds, fox or no fox. He looked sullen, but accepted the money quickly, and made his way down the driveway back to his van, tucking the twenty-pound notes into the side pockets of his trousers. Where the taxman will never see them, thought Isabel as she returned to Charlie’s playroom.

Jamie, freshly out of the shower, his hair still wet and ruffled, had removed Charlie from his playpen and was lifting and lowering him in controlled fall, a game which he called Aviation Boys, and which made Charlie shriek in high-pitched delight. Charlie had eyes only for his father now, and she smiled and left them to their game.

In the corridor she stopped for a moment, lost in thought, staring down at the floor as if transfixed by the pattern of red and blue lozenges on the Baluch rug. Her smile went away.
I should not have spoken like that to Billy McClarty. It was wrong.
He had condescended to her, not casually or inadvertently, but with intent. Even so, she should not have tried to put him down, as she had done, using her skill with words to derail him. Those who had words might on occasion use them against those who did not have them, but only with caution. It had been a cheap victory over a man whose life was much harder than hers, for all his bravado and his Orangeman posturing, and she felt embarrassed and ashamed, as anybody should feel after humiliating another, even when such treatment seemed richly deserved.

“SO,”
said Jamie. “Minty.”

They were sitting in the kitchen after dinner, a quiet time in the day that they both relished. The evening at this stage could go either way—into a companionable state of relaxation, or into a final period of work, during which Isabel attended to the affairs of the
Review
, or Jamie might practise in the music room or transcribe pieces for his students.

It was as yet undecided how this evening would develop. Isabel knew that she had submissions to read—articles sent in for publication in the
Review
—but she felt that she could not face them now and that tomorrow would do. So when Jamie enquired about her lunch with Minty she was ready to talk.

“Where did the two of you eat?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” said Isabel. “She put me off my food.”

She explained what had happened, and at the end, with some reluctance, she admitted to Jamie that she might have misjudged Minty—yet again.

“If you have to keep changing your view of whether somebody’s telling the truth,” he said, “then that means she’s a liar.” He looked at Isabel quizzically. “What did you say Peter said about her?”

“He called her wicked.”

“Then she probably is,” said Jamie. “He’s usually right about people.”

“He must get it wrong sometimes,” she replied. “And if people are wicked, will they necessarily be liars?”

Jamie was not sure. Isabel, though, was having further thoughts about her own question. The answer lay in character:
if one’s character was base, then one did base things across the board. But that did not mean that one might not be good in some parts of one’s life: one might show loyalty, for instance. Gangsters were loyal to each other—some of the time at least—and could be loyal to their country too. But was loyalty always something to be admired, or did it require a good object? It was no good being loyal to the Mafia or the KGB; loyalty in itself was neutral—it only showed its colours when you saw what somebody was loyal to.

Of course, if one … She stopped. A strange yelp came from the garden, followed by a rapid, high-pitched barking sound. She looked at Jamie, who spun round to face the window. “Brother Fox?”

“Yes.” He stood up, but he was taking his lead from her. This was Isabel’s plan, not his. “Now what?”

Isabel crossed the room to take a torch from a drawer. “We investigate. And then we call the vet.”

They went out into the garden. With the lights still on in the kitchen, the lawn was partly illuminated. Some light carried to the cluster of rhododendrons in which the trap had been concealed, but only some. Now the beam from Isabel’s torch played on the outer fringes of the vegetation and, as Jamie held aside the branches, into the dark interior of the shrubs.

Brother Fox’s eyes were two small headlights, yellowy discs moving behind the bars of the cage. And beyond that, the red of his coat, half in shadow, half revealed in the swinging torchlight.

Crouching down, Isabel spoke to him in a low voice. “Don’t be afraid. You know me, don’t you? You’ve seen me before. I won’t hurt you.”

Jamie joined her, crouching too. “Should I move him?”

“Yes.”

There was a metal handle on the top of the cage. Jamie reached out to take hold of this and began to pull the cage from under the boughs of the rhododendron. In the confines of his prison, Brother Fox twisted himself round and snapped at Jamie’s arm. But the bars prevented his doing anything other than snapping at air—and at metal. “He can’t get you,” said Isabel. “Poor thing—he must be terrified.”

“He thinks we’re going to kill him,” said Jamie.

Isabel bent down over the cage. Moving the beam of the torch across the fox’s body, she found the site of the wound. She thought she could smell it too—a rancid smell, the smell of infection that is only one step away from the smell of corruption. She looked at her watch. “Simon told us to ring whatever time we needed him. Will you keep him company while I go and phone?” Simon was a vet whom Isabel knew; she was sure that he would never ignore an animal’s pain. She was right. “I’ll look after him,” he had said. “A fox is an unusual patient, but I’ll do my best.”

She went into the house and made the telephone call. Simon was in, and agreed to come immediately. “Try not to stress him too much,” he said. “I don’t think foxes are easy patients at the best of times.”

She rang off and went to join Jamie in the garden. Jamie had moved away from the cage in the hope that Brother Fox would calm down, but it did not seem to have made much difference. Every few seconds a whimper came from the caged animal—a whimper that sounded like a plea—and this would be followed by a yelp or a howl. There was no mistaking the distress in the sounds, and Isabel wanted to block them from her ears. “I
can’t bear it,” she whispered to Jamie. “He’s appealing to us to help him.”