The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (25 page)

“If you could manage today,” she said, “that would suit me perfectly well.”

“Lunchtime?”

That was two hours away.

“That would be fine,” she said. “You suggest a place.”

He explained that his office was in the financial quarter just behind Lothian Road.
There was a restaurant in the Lyceum Theatre, not far away—did she know the place?
She did, and they agreed to meet there at one.

“What do you want to talk about?” asked Patrick.

Isabel thought quickly. “Your father. How he’s coping with all this.”

Patrick made a noncommittal sound. “He’s tougher than you think.”

“Well,” said Isabel. “We can talk about that too. Sometimes it’s hard for men to be
tough.”

She thought this was true: yesterday she had seen two men cry, and for every two men
in this world who wept, she suspected, there were twenty who wanted to but couldn’t.

SHE ORDERED
a plate of tagliatelle with chopped smoked salmon and a sauce that was creamy, but
not too thick. All that one needed, she felt, was a hint of cream.
A hint of cream …
It could be the title of a song, something that Jamie could sing perhaps. It would
be about how life should be kept simple, but the addition of small treats, small self-indulgences,
could make all the difference.

Patrick ordered a salad, and when it came she noticed that he separated out the various
ingredients, pushing them to different
corners of his plate. Tomatoes went in one place, lettuce leaves in another, spring
onions elsewhere. She was fascinated; she had never seen anybody do that before, and
she wondered what it said about him. Was he obsessive-compulsive—one of those people
who make sure that everything is neatly arranged; who line the cutlery up in scrupulous
parallels, who fold the towels in the bathroom into perfect squares?

He saw her watching. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve always done this.”

She looked away guiltily.

“You see,” he went on, “I worry that if I don’t, then something will go wrong.”

“That sounds like a superstition,” she said. “I take it you won’t walk under ladders?”

He smiled. “Who does?”

Isabel thought: I don’t.

“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of superstitious behaviour now and then,” she said.
“In fact …”

He looked at her expectantly, his fork poised above a slice of tomato. “Yes?”

“In fact, I’ve read somewhere that research …”

He laughed. “You aren’t going to tell me that superstitions actually
work
?”

She remembered her conversations with Jamie about childhood superstitions, about ambulances
and touching your collar and your toes. “No,” she said. “Not all of them. But some
superstitious behaviour, apparently, can have positive results. If you believe that
doing something will bring you good luck, then you may do better if you do the thing
in question.”

“Carry a rabbit’s foot?”

“Yes. Or you might wear one of those odd-looking charms that they wear in southern
Italy—those things that look like peppers. You know the ones?”

He did. “Swarthy types wear them round their necks on gold chains.”

She nodded, picturing hairy chests and open-necked shirts and the charms against the
evil eye. “If you have your lucky rabbit’s foot in your pocket when you write an exam,
then you probably feel calmer. If you feel calmer, then you do better in the exam.
Post hoc, propter hoc
.”

He speared the tomato with his fork and began to eat his salad. “Latin,” he mumbled.

Isabel apologised. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sound pretentious.
Afterwards and therefore caused by …
It doesn’t sound quite as effective in English.”

“I had a lot of Latin at school,” Patrick said. “I never want to read or hear it again.
It represents everything I hated about that school. Everything. Latin allows you to
obfuscate. It allows you to dress up a system that puts people down.”

“Does it? I thought it could have a certain beauty.”

He shrugged. “
Quot homines, tot sententiae
.”

She laughed at this.
There are as many opinions as there are people
. “You brought yourself to utter it.”

He saw the humour in the situation. “My Latin teacher liked boys.”

“Did he?”

He held her gaze. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” She was not sure what to say. Was this the issue?

“However, he behaved scrupulously correctly. He never touched us.”

“Then he was a good man,” said Isabel. “He must have resisted a lot of temptation.”

Patrick seemed to relax. “You know, I think you and I might be on the same wavelength.
People are so quick to condemn. They don’t think much of the private battles that
others have.”

“But I do think of that sort of thing,” said Isabel quickly. “I think of it all the
time.”

He looked at her intensely. “Really?”

“Yes.” She paused. “Since this conversation is becoming quite frank, I might as well
tell you that I do have an inkling of some of your own battles.”

There was nothing in his expression to warn her off, and so she continued. “I don’t
like to intrude, but I suspect that you have considerable difficulty in being who
you are—in the sense of where you come from—and who you are in the sense of what you
think.”

He smiled. “Maybe.”

“Yes. You come from a certain sector of society—a privileged one, if I may describe
it as such—and yet you don’t identify with all that. In fact, you identify with the
opposite. So you reject inherited wealth, but at the same time you know you’ve benefited
from it. And your father …”

She saw him stiffen slightly, but the moment quickly passed.

“Your father is everything you don’t want to be. And yet you’re fond of him.” She
hesitated, but only a second or two. “You want him to love you, but you think he doesn’t.”

She stopped. Patrick was looking down at the tablecloth; his salad was barely touched.
He spoke suddenly. “Pop doesn’t like me. That’s the problem.”

She reached out across the table and touched his arm gently. “I don’t think that can
be true.”

“It is. He doesn’t like me because I’m gay. Did you know that? He can’t bring himself
to accept it.”

“Perhaps he needs time.”

“He’s had a long time. Since I was sixteen and told him.”

“He may need longer.”

“He hasn’t got longer.”

She wondered what he meant.

“His heart,” he said, pointing to his chest. “He has a condition. He may be all right,
but he could drop dead any moment.” He paused. “Put it this way: he wouldn’t get life
insurance.”

“I see.”

She wanted time to think of the implications of this. If Duncan was unlikely to survive
very long, then the issue of the fate of the painting became rather more pressing.
So, if somebody wanted to stop the Poussin going to the nation, then he might think
it necessary to act sooner rather than later. Her pasta was beginning to get cold.
“I should tackle my lunch,” she said, twisting a couple of strands of tagliatelle
round her fork.

“Of course.” He was watching her. He seemed on the point of saying something, faltered,
and then spoke. “Why do you suspect me?”

The tagliatelle, made slippery by the sauce, unwound and fell off Isabel’s fork. She
thought: Sensitive conversations and difficult-to-manage food do not go together.

He was staring at her now with a look that seemed to combine challenge and reproach.
“I don’t know why you think that,” she muttered. I’m being disingenuous, she realised;
I know why he should think this. This self-reproach shamed her, and, after a brief
hesitation, she continued: “Yes, I did think that. I considered the possibility, that
is … And now, I’m not sure …” She trailed off.

She found herself thinking about his political position. If that were as it seemed
to be, then he would have no interest in preventing the Poussin from going to the
nation—in fact, that was exactly what he would want. Unless that same political position
could prompt him to relieve an insurance company of whatever sum might be payable
as a reward … The doubt resurfaced.

“Well, I can tell you something,” he said. “It’s not very nice being suspected of
stealing from your own father.”

“No,” she said. “It can’t be. And look, I’m sorry: all I said was that I had considered
the possibility. That’s all. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

He sat back in his chair. “My life’s a bit of a mess,” he said. “I accept that.”

She asked him why.

“Emotionally,” he said. “I’ve had bad luck with a relationship. I love somebody, you
see, who can’t love me back. It can’t work.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Thank you. I’ve loved him for a long time. Fourteen years, in fact, which is almost
half my life. Since I was fourteen.”

She was silent.

“I’ve tried to do something about it. I’ve tried to forget. But I keep thinking of
him, and all I want is to be with him. That’s all. That’s it.”

She felt a pang of sympathy. She had loved John Liamor, and for a few years after
that had come to an end she had felt the same way. But she had recovered, as most
people in that position do after a while. Time does its work; a scab builds up over
the emotional wound and protects it. Only if you scratch does it bleed again. Was
he scratching at it? she wondered.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

“Mind? Mind about what?”

“Mind about my speaking of this.”

She was quick to reassure him. “Of course not.”

He closed his eyes briefly, as if to deal with some pain within him. “I was sent to
boarding school. That’s what they did—still do—that class. It was thought to be the
only education worth having.”

“I know,” said Isabel. “It’s hard to believe that now.”

“I went to a place up north. It takes girls too now, but in those days it was just
boys. It was, I suppose, quite good academically, but it had this big thing about
rugby too. We all had to play. I hated it.”

“It’s not for everyone,” said Isabel. “We had to play lacrosse, which is equally not
for everyone.”

He smiled. “Those places …”

“… are behind us,” said Isabel. She had been happy enough at school, and she felt
vaguely disloyal now to be suggesting otherwise. “I wasn’t really unhappy,” she corrected.
“I suppose I resented the restrictions on freedom, but what teenager doesn’t?”

Patrick was silent for a moment. Then he continued. “I don’t know why I should be
telling you this. I don’t normally talk about it.”

She encouraged him. “If you don’t normally talk about it, then perhaps it’s something
that wants to be talked about.”

He looked away. “Yes. This person I fell in love with. He knew. I never told him—never
dared—but he knew. And he was very kind. He didn’t tell me to get lost or anything,
he just gave me his friendship. That was all. He couldn’t reciprocate what I felt,
but he said to me that I was his best friend. He said that
when we were fourteen, and I thought about it and thought about it. Not a day went
past, not a day, but that I remembered what he said.”

He paused. “Do you mind if I go on?”

She shook her head.

“You see, I don’t know if other people get this. People don’t necessarily empathise.
I feel that you do, though. You seem the type to understand, if I may say so. I suppose
that’s why Alex persuaded my father that you would be the person to help him.”

The remark might have passed unnoticed. Isabel’s thoughts had begun to drift; she
had been thinking about the other boy, trying to envisage him. She saw two boys on
a cross-country run, against a backdrop of the Scottish hills, their hair soaked by
the rain, shins streaked with mud; and she saw, for some odd reason, a deer that was
watching them from the edge of a forest. The deer had a look of frightened interest,
the look that would precede its bounding off into the covering darkness of the trees;
and one of the boys had a heart that ached, and the other was looking up at the sky,
at the veils of gentle rain, like thin muslin curtains across the landscape, and …

She gave a start. “Sorry. You said …” She collected her thoughts. The deer had bounded
off, the boys were gone. “You said that your sister persuaded your father that he
should speak to me. Did you say that?”

He was surprised by her interest. “Yes.”

“How did you know that?”

He shrugged. “Martha told me. I saw her a couple of days ago. Or rather, she saw me
and came and buttonholed me about the Cockburn Association—she’s a big supporter and
she knows that I approve of them.”

“Martha told you,” Isabel half muttered.

“Yes. She said that Alex was very keen to get you involved. She was the one who pushed
for it once she mentioned your name.”

“Who mentioned my name?” asked Isabel.

Patrick looked at his watch. “Martha did,” he said. “But look, I have to get back
to work. We’ve got a meeting. Some company’s coming to make a presentation to us.”

“Wanting money?”

He nodded, and signalled to the waitress for the bill. “Everyone wants money.”

Everyone wants money
, thought Isabel. Yes.

She suddenly felt emboldened to ask him, “Why do you work with money if you have such
a low opinion of the financial world?”

He was clearly surprised by her question, but not offended; he smiled before he answered,
“I needed a job. Simple.”

“Not because you wanted a job that paid well?”

He shook his head. “I live pretty simply. And the job involves investment in products
that make people better. Should that be a problem?” He looked at her, as if working
something out. “My sister said something, didn’t she?”

Isabel had carefully avoided passing on Alex’s comment, but Patrick had divined what
lay behind her question. He did not wait for her to confirm or deny it. “She accuses
me of being venal, but you know something: when people accuse others of something,
it’s because they see themselves as being guilty of that precise thing. Yes?”