The Charming Quirks of Others (10 page)

Cat glanced at Gordon, as if for confirmation. “Fine,” she said. “Take as long as you like.”

Isabel wondered what they would do. Babysitters usually watched television, or that is what householders assumed. But when they came in pairs … She recalled reading somewhere about a babysitter who was found taking a bath when the parents returned. Why not? Student flats, in which many babysitters lived, had uncomfortable baths and not enough hot water. Visiting a house with a good supply of hot water and clean towels
might be just too much of a temptation. And yet there was an element of trust involved: one did not imagine that a person left in one’s house would open drawers, for example, or read one’s correspondence, or even run a bath. That was what the story of Goldilocks and the three bears was all about: breach of trust.

She would have to look at this for the
Review
. What were the limits of trust in everyday life? What liberties could we legitimately take when we were entrusted with the property of others? Could you read a book you were looking after for somebody? Yes, she thought, you could. Drink from their bottle of water? No. Germs dictated that. Take fruit from a bowl? No. A nut from a dish of nuts? Yes. Sit in their chairs? Of course: chairs are public, and one only needs to seek permission to sit in another’s chair if the owner of the room is present; once you were by yourself, any chair was fair game. Except the chairs of really important people—one should not sit on a throne when left unattended in a monarch’s throne room; that really was going too far. And yet who would miss such an opportunity? There could surely be little doubt but that visitors to Her Majesty sat down on the nearest throne when Her Majesty went out to fetch something. And, indeed, polite American presidents actually engineered excuses to leave the Oval Office for a few moments so that their guests could run round and sit in the President’s chair for a few seconds. The only occasion when this had led to embarrassment was when President de Gaulle had visited the White House and had momentarily dropped off to sleep while seated in the President’s chair.

Isabel smiled. Cat glanced at her suspiciously.

“Parapsychology,” said Gordon. “Cat tells me that you’re going to a lecture on parapsychology.”

Isabel laughed. “I know that sounds a bit odd,” she said. “It’s rather complicated. My housekeeper, you see, is a great enthusiast for these things and keen that we should go. I’m not a believer in parapsychology myself. But …” She knew that she was telling only half the truth. The full truth, she thought, is that I’m trying to find out about three people, of whom you, Gordon, are one.

“Well, plenty of people take it seriously enough,” said Gordon. “And isn’t there evidence for the existence of telepathy?”

“No,” said Isabel. “Not as far as I know.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” said Jamie, and laughed.

Cat looked at him sideways. What was so funny?

Isabel changed the subject, asking Gordon about the school he was currently teaching at, Firth College.

Gordon nodded. “I’ve been there for five years now. I like the place.” He paused. “Although I’m currently in for another job.”

Isabel found herself warming to him. He need not have said that—a more … more closed person would have said nothing. She looked at his face; his expression was frank.

“A promotion?” she asked.

“Yes. A headship.” He looked at Cat, and at that moment Isabel realised that as far as Gordon was concerned, his plans included her niece.

“Well, good luck,” said Isabel. “I have the luxury, I suppose, of being self-employed. But I know what it’s like to apply for jobs.”

She thought of the last time she had applied for a job, which involved being interviewed by Professor Lettuce for the position of editor of the
Review
. The interview panel had consisted of three people: Lettuce, who had been in the chair; a woman
from King’s College London, who had gazed out of the window throughout the interview; and a slight, rather thin-faced man, who had been a fellow of a Cambridge college but who had looked, in Isabel’s view, like a bookmaker from Newmarket Racecourse. Lettuce had barely bothered to look up from the table when Isabel had come in, and the nature of their subsequent relationship had been dictated from that morning. Yet she had been given the job, presumably because nobody else had been prepared to do it for the salary offered, which was virtually nothing.

“Thanks,” said Gordon. “But I really don’t think that I stand much of a chance.”

“Don’t assume anything,” said Isabel under her breath. She wanted him to get the job now—and that complicated matters immensely: How could she be objective in her enquiry if she started off wanting one of the candidates to emerge unsullied and
papabile?
Life’s goalposts, and hurdles too, are never in the right place, she told herself; and they have the unfortunate habit of shifting within seconds. One sees them, and then suddenly they are no longer there, where they should be, but somewhere altogether elsewhere.

A
FTER THE DANISH LECTURE
, Isabel and Jamie said goodbye to Grace, who was going to have tea with a fellow member of her spiritualist circle in Stockbridge. They had seen this woman at the lecture, and had both noticed her eyes, which were grey and cloudy, as if in the advanced stages of some occluding condition, cataracts perhaps. But no, explained Grace, she saw perfectly well: “She sees more than we do—far more, I assure you.” Isabel had avoided catching Jamie’s eye when this was said, but she saw him discreetly mouth the word “Strange!” She shook her head in warning; this was not meant to be funny, and he was not to laugh. “Don’t even think of laughing,” she whispered as they walked away up the street. “These people have ways of telling.”

They had reserved a table at the Café St. Honoré in Thistle Street Lane, a restaurant that they had been going to for some years now. It was Paris transplanted, but without the falsity that sometimes goes with transplantation. Jamie, in particular, disliked Irish pubs outside Ireland. “All these O’Connor’s Taverns
and McGinty’s Bars and so on are completely bogus,” he had complained to Isabel. “I went into one with the band the other day and it was full of old Guinness signs. I looked closely at one of them and saw that it was made in China. And the barman, who had a name badge which said Paddy, was Russian, or sounded like it.”

“People have their dreams,” said Isabel. “And it’s harmless enough. We go to French bistros and Italian restaurants. What’s the difference between them and Irish pubs? The intention in each case is to provide you with an illusion. Don’t look out of the windows and you could be in Paris or Naples. That’s what people want.”

Jamie was not convinced. “It’s a Disneyland culture,” he said. “Insincere. Infantilised.”

She looked at him sideways. “I’m not sure about insincerity. Disneyland may not be to your taste, but I don’t think it’s insincere. They
mean
to be syrupy.”

“Mickey Mouse,” said Jamie dismissively.

She raised an eyebrow. “Mickey Mouse? I don’t see anything wrong with Mickey.” She paused; one did not associate Auden with Disney characters, but she recalled an interview in the
Paris Review
in which the interviewer had asked the poet, for some reason, what he thought of Mickey Mouse. And Auden had replied, “He’s all right.” She mentioned this to Jamie, who said, enigmatically, “Is he?”

“Yes, he is. Mickey’s decent. He represents the little person.”

None of this stopped them from enjoying the French atmosphere of Café St. Honoré, nor from ordering coquilles St. Jacques and a bottle of Chablis.

“Well,” said Isabel. “Danish psychics?”

Jamie shrugged. “I’d like to see proof. Proof that stands up in the labs.”

Isabel thought about this. She understood why Jamie should insist on sound evidence for any conclusion, and part of her agreed with that. But she often acted on hunches, on the prompting of her feelings or on simple intuition. And labs were not always the answer, she felt: there were things that were invisible and undetectable by any physical means but that were none the less real: sorrow, pain, hope, for instance; or an atmosphere of tension or distrust in a room. “It may be that labs have an inhibiting effect,” she said. “Have you thought of that?”

Jamie reached for a piece of bread and dipped it into a small bowl of olive oil. The wine had arrived and was now being poured. “No. I hadn’t.” And she could be right, he decided. He had a friend who could not have his blood pressure taken accurately; every time the rubber cuff was placed around his arm, his heart began to thump and a misleadingly high reading resulted. Could it be the same with telepathy? Perhaps it worked only when the people present were in a receptive mood, in the same way that a composer or an artist may need peace and quiet before the Muse will speak.

“Who was that woman you were talking to?” he asked. “Before the lecture—the woman with the ginger hair?”

Isabel reached for her glass. “It’s to do with this school business.” She watched his reaction; she had not told him about her ulterior motive in accompanying Grace to the lecture. It was not that she wanted to mislead him; she just had not thought to do so. Some couples live in each other’s pockets, sharing every bit of their lives, every bit of information. That might suit some, but
it was not what she—nor Jamie, for that matter—wanted. They both wanted room to lead independent lives, and that is why she did not tell him about everything that happened to do with the
Review
or with … this other side of her life. She could not bring herself to describe it as
enquiries:
that sounded far too arch, and
investigations
sounded downright hyperbolic. Isabel did not investigate things; she
considered
them.

“These principals?”

“Yes, or would-be principals.”

He waited.

“The woman with the ginger hair,” she continued, “is called Cathy. She’s the cousin of one of the candidates. Grace told me.”

Jamie reached for another bit of bread. “The trouble with this French bread,” he said, “is that it’s too tasty. You could fill up on it before anything else arrived.” He dipped the bread into the olive oil, allowing a small drop to fall back into the bowl. “So? Did you find out anything?”

“Yes,” she said. “I did. I managed to bring up her cousin’s name. I said, ‘Aren’t you John Fraser’s cousin?’ and before she had the chance to ask me whether I knew him, I said, ‘I haven’t seen him recently.’ That was absolutely true. I might have said, ‘I’ve never seen him,’ but at least I didn’t lie.”

Jamie looked at her. He smiled. “You didn’t lie? No, I suppose you didn’t. Not technically.”

“I didn’t lie,” she repeated firmly.

“All right. And what did she say then?”

Isabel told him that she had asked about John’s climbing. Did he climb as much in the summer as in the winter? Was he planning to go abroad?

“She was clearly very proud of him,” Isabel said. “Just as
Grace had told me. But then, just after she said something about how he had been talking for years about climbing in the Andes, her face clouded over. You know how that sometimes happens? It’s as if a dark shadow has come over somebody. She stopped mid-sentence, as if she’d remembered something.”

Jamie was silent. They were sitting off to the side, away from the light, and for a moment it was as if they were completely alone in the room, rather than in a restaurant in which there were other diners, movement, warmth.

Isabel continued. “Then she said something very strange. She said that he was troubled in spirit. Those were her exact words.
Troubled in spirit
. I asked her why this was, but she didn’t answer me. She said that he wanted to come to one of the meetings, but hadn’t got round to it. She said that it was a pity, because it helped to talk to the one on the other side. Again, those were her actual words.
The one on the other side.”

Jamie took a sip of his wine. “He’s lost somebody? Lots of the people at that meeting had lost somebody, I think. That’s why they go there.”

Isabel nodded. She had seen it at the previous meeting. “But who? Somebody he’s wronged, do you think?”

“Maybe.”

Isabel looked over Jamie’s shoulder. The waiter was approaching their table, plates balanced expertly in either hand. “If you had let somebody down badly and then … before you made your peace, they
crossed over
to the other side, as Grace would say, wouldn’t you want to speak to him?”

The waiter put the plates before them. The scallops, fresh and firm, had been arranged to make a peninsula across a shallow
lake of sauce. Isabel sniffed at the steam rising from the plate. “If I had to give up everything,” she said, “seafood would be the last thing to go. I’d have a final scallop and say, ‘That’s it, that’s eating over.’ And then I’d cross over happy.”

Jamie laughed. He raised his glass to Isabel. “May that never be necessary.”

She had not been serious, of course, but the absurd, the fanciful, may bring grave thoughts in its wake. She and Jamie would not be together for eternity; one day one of them would leave or die—those were the only two certainties—and the other would be on his or her own. It was a thought that crossed the mind of everybody who ever entered into a relationship with another. It applied as much to friends as to lovers and spouses: one day somebody would see the other for the last time, and probably not know it. And there would be things left unsaid, little gestures—kindnesses—left undone, as there are in every part of life.