The Novel Habits of Happiness (13 page)

She led the way upstairs. Mick paused before one of the paintings on the stairs and looked at Isabel enquiringly. “Who did that?” he asked.

It was a study of a woman washing clothes in a tub; through the window behind her were hills and a slice of sky.

“It's by a painter called Adam Bruce Thomson,” said Isabel. “It belonged to my father. He liked his work.”

“Look at her face,” said Mick, leaning forward. “Look at the character in it.” He turned to Isabel. “When was it painted?”

“Nineteen-thirty-something,” said Isabel. “And it has that feel to it, don't you think?”

“Definitely,” said Mick. “It's a bit like Bawden or Ravilious, don't you think?”

She had thought that; she had always thought that. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you're right.”

“I love it,” said Cat. “I really like that woman's face. She's so strong.”

“It's the opposite of a contemporary face,” said Isabel. “Contemporary faces are so indulged, so pampered. This is a face that's had some work to do.”

Mick clearly agreed. “A working face.”

“Let's go and see Charlie,” prompted Cat.

They continued upstairs. Isabel thought: Cat has never expressed an interest in any of my paintings before this—never.
I love that face.
It was the first time she had said anything about anything in the house; the first time.

Charlie's door was always left a few inches ajar, for the sense of security it gave him. As they stood before it, Isabel put a finger to her lips in a gesture of silence. Cat nodded; Mick smiled.

“There he is,” whispered Isabel as she quietly pushed the door open.

He was lying on his back, one arm under the duvet, the other above it. His lips were slightly parted—a tiny bow of a mouth, the teeth just visible. His hair was ruffled, a bit spiky even, as if it had been washed and then not properly dried before he went to bed. Beside him, half propped up against the pillow, were a teddy bear and a stuffed fox, the bear's jacket a bright blob of red against the white of the bedclothes.

“See,” whispered Cat. “See him.”

The remark was addressed to Mick, and Isabel drew back involuntarily, as if she had suddenly found herself eavesdropping on a moment of intimacy between two others.

Then Cat continued: “Isn't he just…delicious?”

Mick nodded. “He's a great lad,” he whispered back.

Charlie stirred slightly in his sleep and then turned over on his side, pulling the duvet up towards his chin. Isabel gestured that they should leave; he was a light sleeper and she did not want him to be woken.

They crept out, returning the door to its barely open position, and began to make their way downstairs.

“You must be very proud of him,” said Mick.

“Well, we are, I suppose,” said Isabel.

“I've got a young nephew not much older than him,” Mick continued. “Robbie. You met him, Cat—remember? He's always…well, he always seems very dirty.”

Isabel laughed. “They are. Boys have a special affinity for mud and dust. It sticks to them.”

“And to men,” said Cat.

“I don't think so,” said Isabel. “Jamie's very clean. He showers every day without fail. You should know…” She cut herself off. She had been intending to say that Cat should know because she had, even for a brief time, lived with Jamie. But it was the wrong thing to say in the circumstances, and she tried now to cover it up. “We should be careful what we say about men,” she said, in mock conspiratorial tones. “They might be listening.”

“Don't worry,” said Mick. “We only hear what we want to hear.”

“Like most people,” said Cat.

Was that true? Isabel answered her own question, privately, with a convinced no. The trouble with generalisations was that they were generalisations, which in itself was a generalisation.

THE WARMTH OF THE EVENING
meant that they were able to sit outside on the lawn before dinner. Jamie had put out the white-painted garden furniture—the metal table and its four chairs—and had placed on the table alongside the vegetarian canapés a plate of smoked salmon and brown bread triangles. A bottle of prosecco, hastily chilled in the kitchen freezer, stood in a ceramic wine cooler.

They sat down, and Jamie poured the wine. “I was going to make Bellinis,” he said. “But I didn't have any peaches. There were a couple of pears in the larder, but I don't think you can use pears for Bellinis.”

“I've already had my fruit for the day,” said Cat.

Isabel looked at her. “Five pieces? Isn't that the Government recommendation?”

“It's none of their business,” said Jamie.

Isabel disagreed. “Oh, I think it is. If the Government has to pick up the bill when we get ill, then surely it has the right to tell us how to avoid getting ill in the first place.”

Jamie agreed, reluctantly, and with qualification. “To an extent, yes. But where does it stop? Wear cycling helmets when you use your bike? Don't drink more than two units of alcohol a day? Don't stay out in the sun in case you get sunburnt? Use dental floss?”

“But you should,” said Cat. “Of course you should use it. And if anybody doesn't know that, then the Government has every right to tell them. Don't you use dental floss?” She paused, but did not wait for an answer. “Did I tell you what I saw at the airport?”

“What airport?” asked Jamie.

“At the airport in Cyprus. Last year, when I went there. There was a British family waiting to go home. Typical stodgy-looking parents in straw hats and three kids.” As Cat spoke, Isabel thought: You sound so dismissive—you would never wear a straw hat at an airport, would you?

“The kids were about, oh, eight, nine, something like that,” Cat continued. “But they were bright red from being in the sun—absolutely bright red. Lobsters. Their parents had obviously let them go out without any sun block and they'd been fried.”

Jamie said, “There'll always be parents like that. You can't make people intelligent.”

“Yes you can,” said Mick. “You can educate them.”

“Get them to see how stupid they are?” asked Cat.

Isabel felt the need to save Cat from sounding too intolerant; Cat was, after all, her niece. She raised her glass. “To the Government,” she said.

Mick looked puzzled. “The Government?” he asked. “Seriously?”

Isabel smiled. Were there people who sat about in the garden and toasted their government?
Is this what I've become?
“Not entirely. I suppose I don't wish them ill, of course. I may not have voted for them, but once they're in, well, they're the Government and they have a thankless task.”

“You get the governments you deserve,” said Jamie. “Isn't that what people say?”

“Except it isn't true,” offered Isabel. “Lots of people get governments they really don't deserve. Look at the Kurds.”

“I don't want to talk about the Government,” said Cat. She was staring at her glass. “Who invented Bellinis?”

“That's more to the point,” muttered Jamie.

Mick knew the answer. “They were invented in a bar in Venice,” he said. “Harry's Bar.”

Isabel said, “Famous, wasn't it? Hemingway?” She realised, though, that Hemingway might mean nothing to them, although Jamie was well read and would know.

But Mick nodded. “Actually, I've been there.” He looked almost apologetic.

Jamie was watching him. “And what's it like?”

“It's a bar, even if it's the most famous one in the world—probably. And yes, Hemingway went there a lot, as did just about everybody else. Truman Capote, Noel Coward and so on. There's a story that on one particular day in the thirties there were four kings or queens all having lunch at Harry's at the same time. King Alfonso of Spain, the King of Greece and a couple of others.”

They were just people,
thought Isabel.
Nothing more than that. People.

“Drinking Bellinis?” asked Jamie.

“Maybe. The owner thought that their pink colour reminded him of a passage in a Bellini painting.”

Isabel watched Mick intently as he gave this explanation, then, when he had finished and her gaze met his, she looked away sharply. There were two things that struck her forcibly: the first of these was that he knew who invented Bellinis: that was not something that could be described as being in common knowledge—not by any means. The second thing was that he had referred to a
passage
in a painting. Who, other than those with a knowledge of art history and criticism, talked about
passages
?

There was a lull in the conversation. There was a limit to what could be said about Bellinis, and Isabel thought they had probably reached it. She took a further sip of her wine. It was sweet on the tongue; too sweet for her, and the addition of peaches would have made it intolerable. Jamie had a sweet tooth, but she did not. The prosecco made her tongue feel furry; she would have preferred something drier.

“Where do you live, Mick?” she asked. “Around here?”

He shook his head. “The other side of town.”

“Ah.” She waited.

“The New Town,” he added.

The New Town was the part of the city built after the spine of buildings running down from the Castle had become overcrowded and too insanitary, even by the standards of the eighteenth century. The term
new
was relative: it was new in Georgian times.

Cat provided further details. “He lives in Drummond Place.”

“That's a particularly nice part of town,” said Isabel. “Those gardens…” She might have added that it was expensive, which it was, but everywhere was expensive these days.

“It was my father's house,” said Mick. “He died three years ago and I got the house. Or flat, rather. It's not the whole house—there are two flats. Mine and one up at the top.”

“Mick has the basement, the ground floor, and the first floor,” explained Cat. “It's one of those roomy New Town flats.”

“You're very fortunate,” said Isabel.

“Didn't that painter live somewhere there?” Jamie asked. “McTaggart?”

“Yes,” said Mick. “He did. On our side of the square. And there was an order of nuns. They had three houses, including ours.”

Isabel had heard of that. The nuns had left forty or fifty years ago and had moved to the south side of the city. She tried to remember the name of their order…

“The Sisters of the Community of the Holy Souls,” said Mick. “I came across some papers they'd left behind. I found some invitations they'd typed out for a leaving party.
Reverend Mother would like to invite you, along with other neighbours, to a party to mark our departure for Salisbury Place. RSVP.
”

Jamie grinned. “Some party,” he said.

“You don't know,” snapped Isabel; nuns could hold parties if they wished.

He looked at her, hurt, and she regretted what she had said. “Sorry. It's just that I think that nuns probably like parties in the same way as the rest of us.”

He was chastened too. “Yes, you're right.”

Isabel reached for one of Jamie's buttered triangles of brown bread, placing a small piece of salmon on top of it. “I hear you're a dishwasher engineer,” she said as she prepared the bread.

Mick looked at her in puzzlement. “What?”

Cat frowned. “Dishwashers?” And then, she smiled. “Oh, that. Mick fixed my dishwasher.”

“Well, not really,” said Mick. “There was something stuck in the drain at the back. I just pushed that through, and then it went. Well, there was that seal as well, I suppose.”

Isabel swallowed her brown bread. It was Eddie. Eddie had got things wrong. “I thought you did it professionally,” she said.

Mick laughed. “No, I wish I could.”

“So what do you do?” Isabel asked.

Cat intervened. “Mick keeps pretty busy,” she said.

Isabel saw that she was closing down the conversation and judged that she should not persist. She looked at her watch. “Do you think that dinner's ready now?” she asked.

Jamie picked up the empty prosecco bottle and rose to his feet. “Yes,” he said. “Let's go inside.”

SHE LAY NEXT TO JAMIE.
They were covered only by a sheet, as the night seemed to have become warmer and there was no need for anything more. The light had just been switched off and her eyes were not yet accustomed to the dark; slowly, though, the shapes in the room sorted themselves out, emerged from the gloom: the large wardrobe they shared; the ornate chest of drawers that had belonged to her mother's family in Mobile and had been brought across the Atlantic, losing several carved wooden adornments in the process; the chair on which Jamie draped his clothes rather than put them in the washing basket. And Jamie himself came into focus, a shape beside her, a head on a pillow, with eyes open as he had not yet gone off to sleep.

She talked to him quietly, in not much more than a whisper. There was no need for quiet, other than an odd, unrequested respect for the night. “A mystery,” she said. “We're none the wiser really.”

“Mick?”

“Yes.”

Jamie turned to face her. She reached out and touched his cheek, gently, and then withdrew it. She did that sometimes because she felt that she wanted to see that he was real. He did not seem to mind.

“He seems all right,” said Jamie. “I quite liked him, but you never know with her, do you? None of them seem to last.”

“No, they don't. But did you see her eyes? Did you see the way she looked at him?”

He was non-committal. “I suppose I could tell she's a bit smitten.”

“Much more than that,” said Isabel. “She took him up to see Charlie. I went with them. You were in the kitchen.”

“And?”