The Right Attitude to Rain id-3 Read online

  A F T E R D I N N E R they returned to the drawing room. Somebody had put more wood on the fire—the housekeeper, perhaps—

  and the flames were high, throwing dancing light on the dark Belouchi rug in front of the hearth. Coffee cups, small bone-T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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  china cans, were set out on a tray, with bitter chocolate mints to one side.

  There was brief, inconsequential conversation, and then Isabel and Jamie went to the piano.

  “Something Scottish,” said Tom. “Please. Something Scottish.”

  Isabel nodded in his direction, then turned to Jamie as she sat on the piano stool. “Sing for your supper?”

  “No alternative,” muttered Jamie. But he was incapable of being churlish, and he smiled encouragingly as she opened the book of Scottish songs and put it on the piano.

  Isabel pointed at the music and Jamie nodded. “Very suitable,” he said.

  “ ‘The Bonnie Earl of Moray,’ ” Isabel announced. “This is not exactly a cheerful song—sorry about that—but it’s rather haunting, in its way. In fact, it’s a lament, and a lot of Scottish music is about how things have gone wrong, about what might have been if things had turned out a bit better.”

  Mimi laughed at this. “Isn’t that the same as country and western?” she asked. “All those songs about unfaithful women and faithful dogs.”

  “Perhaps,” said Isabel. She played a few chords and turned to Jamie, who nodded. He stood by the piano, ready to sing.

  When they reached the end of the song, and the last notes of the piano accompaniment, Mimi clasped her hands together, as if to clap, but did not, because everybody else was silent.

  Angie was staring at Jamie, and Tom, who had been watching Isabel’s hands on the keyboard, was now looking at Angie. Joe had his hands folded on his lap and was looking at the ceiling, at one of the plaster cornucopias.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel broke the silence. “The bonnie earl of Moray was murdered, alas,” she said. “The earl of Huntly slayed him, and then laid him on the green, as the words have it.”

  “It’s very sad,” muttered Angie. “Very sad . . . very sad for his family.”

  Jamie caught Isabel’s eye. He was daring her to laugh, but she looked down at the keys of the piano, and depressed one, a B-flat, gently, not enough for it to sound.

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “He was a much-loved man, I believe.

  And there’s a line there, you know, which is very intriguing. He was a braw gallant, and he played at the glove. Apparently that means that he played real tennis—not lawn tennis, but real tennis. That’s the game with those strange racquets and the ball that you hit off the roof. At first they played it by hitting the ball with their hands. Then they started to use a glove. Racquets came much later. There’s still a real tennis court at Falkland Palace.”

  “We went there,” said Tom, “didn’t we, Angie? Over on the way to St. Andrews. Falkland Palace. There was an orchard—

  remember?—and that peculiar tennis court was there. That’s where James V died, just after Mary, Queen of Scots, was born.

  Remember? He just turned his face to the wall and died because he thought that everything was lost. They told us about it—that woman who showed us around.”

  Angie frowned. She looked confused. “Which woman?”

  Jamie came to her rescue. “I’d like to sing another song,” he said. “This is by Robert Burns, and is one which you all will know. ‘My love is like a red, red rose.’ ”

  While Isabel paged through the book, Tom said, “That’s a beautiful song. Really beautiful.” He was sitting next to Angie on the sofa near the fire and now, as Isabel played the first bars T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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  of the introduction, he took Angie’s hand in his. Isabel, half watching, half attending to the printed music, thought it was possible that Tom knew exactly what Angie had in mind when she accepted his offer of marriage, but had decided that she might grow to love him because love can come if you believe in it and behave as if it exists. That was the case, too, with free will; with, perhaps, faith of any sort; and love was a sort of faith, was it not?

  But then she glanced at Angie, and she changed her mind again. She would prefer him not to be around, she thought. That is when she would love him. She would love him much more then.

  C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N

  E

  SHE AWOKE in the small hours of the morning, barely three, and heard him breathing beside her, that quiet, vulnerable sound, so human. Her pillow had slipped off the side of the bed and her head was against a ruffled undersheet. She was turned away from him; away, too, from the window through which the dim light of a sky that was never truly dark in the summer made its way through the gaps in the curtains. She was immediately wide awake, her mind clear, but she closed her eyes and drew the sheet up. It was warm; there was no need of blankets in that still air.

  She went over what had happened. After the music the evening had come to an end. Mimi had been tired and said that she and Joe would go upstairs; Angie had looked at her watch and said that she, too, wanted to go to bed. Jamie had said, “I’m going to have a walk outside. Isabel? What about you?”

  It was not an invitation that included Tom, and Isabel felt embarrassed, but then she thought that Tom would imagine he had been spoken for by Angie, who had declared that she was heading for bed. She said goodnight to Angie and saw that the T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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  other woman was looking at Jamie, and then at her, and was smiling. For a moment she wondered whether she knew what Isabel felt for him. Mimi had divined it; perhaps it was glaringly obvious.

  She and Jamie had gone out together. It was half past ten and there was still enough light to see the details of the trees that clung to the side of the hills. And they could see, too, the sheep still grazing beside the dry-stane dyke that intersected the field at the bottom of the slope. There was a path that ran off the driveway beside the rhododendrons, which they had followed, Jamie leading, gravel underfoot, and twigs, too, pine nee-dles, cones.

  She had shivered, not because it was cold—it was not, and she did not feel the need of a coat—but because she was with Jamie and she felt that she would have to speak to him now, before they went any further. He could hardly have forgotten about their room; had he thought about what might happen?

  “Jamie.”

  He was a few paces ahead of her on the path. Somewhere, not far away, there was a small burn descending from the hill above; there was the sound of water.

  He turned round and smiled at her. “What an odd evening,”

  he said.

  She looked up at him. It was not all that odd; different, perhaps, from evenings they had spent together in Edinburgh, but not odd.

  “Don’t you think that we should talk?” she said. Her voice had a catch in it, out of nervousness, and she thought: I sound petulant. A philosopher in the countryside, where talking was not always necessary.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h He looked surprised. “We’ve been talking all night, haven’t we?” He paused, and his smile now was conspiratorial, as if he was about to confess a suppressed thought. “Or, should I say, Angie was. Did you hear her at your end of the table? That woman can talk. I hardly had to say anything.”

  No, thought Isabel, not that. “I didn’t mean that. I meant that we should talk about what seems to be happening between us.”

  He was standing very close to a branch of a pine tree that had grown across the path, almost obstructing it. Somebody else had snapped off part of it and the pieces lay at the side of the path. He suddenly reached up and broke off a twig. It was something for his hands to do, something to mask the awkwardness of the moment.

  He hesitated for a while before replying. “I’m not sure that anything’s happening between us,” he
said eventually. “Or nothing that wasn’t happening before.”

  He seemed to be searching her face for a clue, and, watching him, Isabel felt a momentary impatience. He was not a sixteen-year-old boy. He was twenty-something. He had had affairs. He knew.

  “Look,” she said. “Do you mind if I put it simply? Do you want to sleep with me? Do you?”

  His eyes were downcast, looking at the path, at the litter of pine cones. Her words were hanging in the air, with the sharp scent of the pine cones and the sound of the burn somewhere near. I’ve shocked him, she thought; and she was secretly appalled.

  He shrugged. “I . . .”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “No. I want to.”

  “Yes?”

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  “Yes. I said yes. Yes.”

  They went back.

  S H E T H O U G H T: How beautiful he is lying there. I have never seen anything as beautiful, never, than this young man, with his smooth skin and there, just visible, the shape of his ribs. I can place my hand there, against his chest, and feel the human heart beating.

  He opened his eyes.

  “You’re awake too.” She moved her hand upwards to rest against the side of his face. You are mine entirely, she thought; now, at this moment, you are mine entirely, but you will not be for long, Jamie, because I do not possess you. Oh my darling, darling Jamie, I wish I could possess you, but now, more than ever, I do not.

  “Oh,” he said. That was all: “Oh.” And then, turning his head so that he looked into her eyes, he said, “I’m very sorry, Isabel.”

  “Sorry?” She touched his cheek again. “Why say that? You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”

  “I rather . . . rather rushed things. Maybe you didn’t want . . .”

  She was surprised, and drew in her breath. Rushed?

  He lifted his head and rested it against his hand, elbow-propped. “Have I upset you?” he asked.

  “Of course not. Of course you haven’t upset me, Jamie.

  Dear Jamie. No. Not at all.”

  “Then . . .”

  She could not help but feast upon the sight of him: such perfection, clean—like a boy—with no spare flesh.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Then she whispered, “Of course you didn’t. Don’t be so silly.

  I was hoping . . . Yes, I was, I suppose. I hoped that this might happen.”

  She watched him as he thought about this.

  “I’m very fond of you,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  He lay back again and looked up at the ceiling. “I’ll never forget this. This.”

  “And neither shall I. Never. Not a kiss nor look be lost. ”

  “That poem?”

  She nodded. “That most gravely beautiful of poems. I told you about it before.” She would remember, too, with each memory folded and put away, like much-loved clothing in a drawer.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

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  TOM DID NOT SURPRISE ISABEL. She had not imagined that he would be one to sit inside and read, and he was not. Eti-quette required that guests should not be forced to participate in activities that might not be to their taste. The possibility of a walk after breakfast was raised, “but people might want to do something completely different,” Tom said quickly; what that was would be left to them. What, Isabel wondered, was completely different from a walk; only an activity that involved immobility would be completely different, and could immobility be an activity? It was a state, surely. She caught Jamie’s eye over the breakfast table; he was sitting opposite her. The breakfast table, she reflected, was the test: regret, shame, the desire to forget—such were the emotions which might emerge in circumstances like these, but they hadn’t. Things had changed between her and Jamie—of course they had—but there were none of those feelings as they sat at breakfast, only a warm fondness, something close to euphoria, or that is what Isabel felt.

  “I’m going to go up the hill,” said Tom, looking out the window at the cloudless sky. “It’s about two hours there and back.”

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

  “And there are great views up at the top,” said Angie. “You look out and you can see all the way down to . . .” She trailed off.

  “You might be able to see the Eildons in the distance,” said Jamie, adding, “maybe.”

  “You can,” said Tom. “Walter Scott country. And Edinburgh too—a sort of smudge in the distance.”

  “Edinburgh is not a smudge,” said Isabel.

  Tom smiled, and bowed his head. “Of course not. How rude of me.”

  Angie looked at her watch. “I’ll walk tomorrow,” she said. “I want to go into Peebles.”

  Tom looked at her. Isabel noticed that he did not seem disappointed, but then a walk was a small thing.

  “Isabel?” Tom said. “Are you coming for a walk? Jamie?”

  Jamie looked across the table at Isabel. He was answering Tom, but looking at her. “Do you mind if I don’t?” He gave no reason.

  “Why not come to Peebles with me?” said Angie quickly. “I need somebody to help me carry heavy things. That is, if you don’t mind . . .”

  Jamie smiled. “I don’t. Not at all.”

  Tom turned sharply. It seemed that he was going to say something to Angie, but he apparently thought better of it.

  Isabel wondered whether he was feeling annoyed about Angie’s shopping sprees; heavy purchases sounded ominous and expensive. Another racehorse? Or a large bronze bust from an antique shop? She imagined Jamie staggering under the weight of a bust of Sir Walter Scott, trailing behind Angie through the streets of Peebles. But then she wondered if it was not resentment of Angie’s shopping, but jealousy of her time and company. She T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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  had declined to go on a walk with him and had invited Jamie to go to town with her instead, rather quickly, Isabel thought. Any man who saw his fiancée taking such obvious delight in the company of an attractive young man must feel something, she decided; unless, of course, that man was so secure in the loyalty of the fiancée that it would not occur to him that there might be anything but innocent pleasure for her in the company of the younger man.

  Joe and Mimi had their own plans. Joe, with unfailing instinct, had located an antiquarian book dealer who lived nearby and had arranged for them to visit him and have lunch at the Peebles Hydro, a vast Edwardian hotel overlooking the mouth of the Tweed Valley. The walk, then, would be done only by Isabel and Tom.

  “It’s not compulsory,” said Tom. “You really don’t have to traipse up there with me if you’d prefer to stay down here.”

  “I want to,” she said. And she did. Angie might be unre-warding company, but Tom was not; Isabel found him intriguing. And not the least of the interest was this: Why had he become involved with Angie? Not that she could imagine that being a subject of conversation, but light might be shed on his character during the walk, and Isabel had a distinct sense that Tom wanted to talk to her. There was something in the way in which he looked at her which suggested that there were things waiting to be said. And what, she wondered, would these be?

  Nothing, she decided. You’re imagining things—again.

  Jamie agreed to meet Angie in the hall in fifteen minutes and went upstairs. Isabel went too, a little later, and found Jamie struggling with the zip of a light windcheater.

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  A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h hill. “Make sure that you have something to put on up there. You know how things can change on the hills. One moment it’s summer, then it’s semi-arctic. Our delightful Scottish climate.”

  She moved forward and took over the struggle with the zip, which she eased past its obstruction. Her hand remained against the front of the garment, gentle against h
is chest. She looked up and into his eyes. There was light in them, and she wanted only to embrace him. She did not want him to go away; she wanted him to stay. She did not want to be anywhere but with him, because now, at last, she felt a happiness so complete that it was a mystery in its own right. Simple love, she thought, not a mystery, but the vision of Eros.

  He leaned forward.

  “My beautiful one,” she whispered.

  “Isabel.”

  “My beautiful one,” she said. “Be careful of the rain.”

  “You too.”

  “ N OT E V E RY BODY U N D E R S TA N D S,” remarked Tom during a pause halfway up the hill. “Not everybody understands why I should feel as I do about this country. I have a brother who has no interest—none at all—in Scotland. Even when I show him the papers that spell it out—how our people came from here, their names, the places they lived. He shrugs and says, ‘A long time ago—we’re Americans now.’ How can anybody be so indifferent to the past?”

  “It depends on the past,” said Isabel. “Some people find the past just too painful. What if you come from a past that is full of unhappiness and indignity? A place in Russia or Poland where T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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  there have been pogroms and oppression? Would you want to be reminded of that? I’m not sure I would.”

  Tom used the end of his stick to prise an encrustation of mud off his boots. “Maybe. But don’t you think that it’s breaking faith with the people who had to put up with all that—to ignore, to forget about them now? And anyway, there’s nothing like that in being from here. Our Scottish ancestors weren’t miserable.”

  Isabel looked at him with incredulity. Texans, she thought, were at least realistic; did Tom not know what it was actually like? Having read as much as he seemed to have done about Scottish history, he surely could not believe that. She watched him scrape the rest of the mud off his boots and then wipe the stick clean on a clump of heather beside the path.