The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (13 page)

“So what should society do?” asked William Blandford towards the end of his paper. “Do we not have an obligation to help people to become better? And if we shrug our shoulders over the corruption of so many minds by violent entertainment, then are we not failing in this duty? Civilisation involves moral effort—on our own behalf and on behalf of others. Without that moral effort, there can be no civilisation.” On that note he concluded.

Isabel read the comments that had been attached to the paper by the two members of the editorial committee who had read it. “A stout defence of the paternalist position,” wrote one, “but lacking, perhaps, an adequate justification of paternalism itself.”

The other comment was more succinct: “The author refers at many points to
we
. We must do this; we must do that. But who, may one ask, are
we
? The author in the plural?”

While Rome burned, thought Isabel, putting the paper to one side. While Rome burned, philosophers fiddled with concepts. The reference at the end to civilisation had caught her attention. Few philosophers spoke about it now—few
people
spoke about it—perhaps out of embarrassment. In the past, talk of civilisation had perhaps been too frequently accompanied by guns pointed at those on whom it was being imposed. But had there ever been any civilisation of note that had not been based, at least in the beginning, on force? Civilisation required organisation and cooperation—the works of Bach could never have come into existence in chaos—and without authority, which was usually ultimately based on force, would people ever be organised and cooperative?

She rose to her feet and walked over to the window. There was a garden outside, and a garden was, in a sense, a tiny corner of civilisation, or at least an allegory of it. Gardens were all about the imposition of order through force. There were weeds to be rooted out. There were paths to be made. There were shrubs to be planted, lawns to be nurtured. All of this involved hacking and pulling and forcing into shape. Lines written by Robert Burns about ploughing up the home of a field mouse came to her. It was there in her memory, deeply buried, as it was in the minds of so many Scots who had learned Burns as children.

Exactly. Force. Somebody, somewhere, has to believe in something sufficiently to force it upon others. If that belief was in justice and human flourishing, then, well and good: that produced civilisation. Or well and good—but only to an extent. Civilisations expanded by suppressing other, weaker societies. There were plenty of ruined temples and cities that, if one looked for them, reminded us of Darwinian rules in this respect. One person’s vision of the good lost out when a more confident vision of another good came along.

She sighed. She was not an historian; she was a philosopher, and that was quite difficult enough without adding to the intellectual tasks it entailed. And yet everybody had to be an historian, at least to some degree, because life was a long … What was the metaphor, she wondered: a long narrative? A long film? Yes. Human life is a long film, which can be fully understood only if one looks at what went before. It was no good looking at a single still picture, or even a few frames; one would end up scratching one’s head over that; as one did when one turned on the television—not that Isabel possessed one—and found oneself in the middle of a scene in a film that one simply could not understand. Why were the characters in that particular room, saying those particular things? Why was there an air of menace?

A movement in the garden distracted her. Clearly visible from her study window was a large clump of rhododendron bushes, the home of the fox she knew as Brother Fox. He was a shy creature, not as emboldened as some urban foxes had become, and he did not flaunt himself. This appealed to Isabel. A friend who lived in another part of Edinburgh had told her of their local fox, who was, she said, redder than other foxes and altogether more dashing.

“He walks down the street in broad daylight,” she said. “In his fine red fur. Extremely well turned out—as if he’s going down to Princes Street to do some shopping. Very pleased with himself.”

A nouveau riche fox,
Isabel had thought, but did not say it. Her friend lived in a street that was full of rather flashy houses, and it was not at all surprising that they should attract a fox like that.

Brother Fox would never approve of such conduct, she decided. He was a fox of the old school, and appreciated the importance of keeping to the shadows and the undergrowth. Foxes should
never
be too visible, she pictured him saying. We are not dogs, after all. But they were, she thought, although she would not argue that point with him, of course, because he could simply end the discussion by saying: “Whose categories, Miss Dalhousie?” That was how she imagined he would address her if he were ever given the power of speech. He would be formal, and perhaps use slightly old-fashioned, gamey expressions like “old chap” or even the wonderful, now largely retired expression, “old bean.”

A movement in the rhododendrons could be the wind—the branches of the trees were moving slightly—or it could be Brother Fox. She stared at the foliage: rich, green, waxy. It danced against the darkness of the shrub’s interior. And then a nose: tiny, black.

“Brother Fox,” she whispered.

She gazed at him. The nose had been followed by a head and now the forequarters. He stopped, as if deciding whether he had forgotten something. And then another, unexpected movement, and a small bundle of fur teetered out unsteadily. A cub.

She drew in her breath. Brother Fox had a son.

The telephone rang, taking her away from the window. She picked up the receiver, still thinking of the cub. He was so beautiful, so perfect, just like one of Charlie’s stuffed toys.

“Isabel?” It was Gareth Howlett. “A moment?”

She answered vaguely. How old would Brother Fox’s cub be? He looked as if he was only a few weeks old.

“I’m calling about those shares,” said Gareth. “West of Scotland Turbines.”

“Of course. Yes. You bought them, I take it?”

“Fortunately,” said Gareth. “You must have some pretty good sources of financial intelligence, Isabel. They’ve appreciated by forty-two per cent in the space of a few days. Extraordinary.”

She smiled. Pretty good sources of financial intelligence? The best, in fact. Direct from the other side, as Grace would put it.

Gareth explained that he thought that it might be best to sell them and take the profit. “I’m not sure that they will necessarily keep their current value,” he said. “Let’s err on the side of caution.”

Isabel was still thinking of foxes. Where was Brother Fox’s mate? Had they split up, perhaps? Incompatibility? Would she leave him with the children? Some women did that. It was rare, of course, but it happened. Did foxes divorce? Absurd idea. In the animal world you chose a mate and you stuck to him or her, at least for the season. It was not conversation that you were interested in, after all.

“Of course you’ll have a capital gains tax bill,” said Gareth. “But you’ll end up with a pretty tidy profit.”

Isabel thanked him, and the conversation came to an end. She had already decided what that money would be used for: relieving financially stressed libraries of the cost of their subscription to the
Review of Applied Ethics
for a couple of years. It would be free for them. She would write to them about it.

She returned to the window. Brother Fox had vanished, as had his son.

W
HEN ISABEL PHONED JANE,
the phone was switched through to the secretary, who said that she thought that Dr. Cooper was in St. Andrews for the day and would be back very late in the afternoon. Isabel left a message, and it was not until that evening that Jane returned the call.

“I’ve had the most gorgeous day,” she said. “A meeting of the Scots Philosophical Club that lasted only two hours. Then I went for a walk and to a seafood restaurant and … I’m sorry, you’ve probably been at your desk all day.”

“I’ve barely sat at it,” said Isabel. “Distractions.”

Jane sounded apologetic. “Not my … enquiry, I hope.”

“No. Not today. But I do have some news on that.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line. Isabel sensed the anticipation; telephones, she felt, could transmit more than mere words.

“I think I may know who you’re looking for,” she said. She could have said
I’ve found your father
, but she thought that would sound excessively melodramatic.

Jane said nothing.

“Are you there, Jane?”

“Yes. Sorry. This is a bit surprising, that’s all.”

“I can understand,” said Isabel. “Anyway, there was a young man called Rory Cameron who was your mother’s boyfriend at the relevant time. I found out by—”

Jane cut her short. “Is he alive?”

“I think so,” said Isabel.

“Oh my God—” She broke off, and Isabel heard what she thought was a sob.

“I know this must be rather emotionally overwhelming for you. Do you want me to come round to see you? I could, you know.”

Jane thanked her. No. She would cope; she was fine; she needed a minute or two. Now she asked Isabel what the next step would be. “May we go and see him?”

“That’s up to you,” said Isabel. She had offered to help, and now she was running things. It had happened before; it always happened. “You decide what you want. All that I’d be inclined to say is that it might be better for me to go and see him first. I could break the news and see what his attitude is.” She paused. “He may not want to see you, you know.”

She knew that was not an easy thing for anybody to hear, in whatever circumstances. Of course people would want to see
me;
how could they not? That was what most people thought, although there were those who were realistic to the point of self-effacement; those who said too quickly, “You won’t remember me, of course.”

Jane seemed unconcerned. “I know that,” she said quickly. “We don’t know whether he’s even aware of my existence.”

Isabel doubted that. “He may not know who you are, but surely he knows that there was a baby. Surely …”

But as she said this she saw what Jane meant. In those days—and today—people could deny pregnancy. She had met somebody who had gone through a concealed pregnancy and then, to the astonishment of all, had excused herself one day, gone into the bathroom and given birth. This woman had been pointed out to Isabel at a wedding reception: she sat demurely at the edge of the room with a toddler at her feet.

“That woman,” Isabel’s companion had whispered, “went into the bathroom one day and
had a baby
. That very child at her feet. Not a soul knew. Not her doctor. Not her parents. Presumably not the child’s father. Can you believe it?”

It was the sort of story which people loved, which brightened their lives, in fact. That somebody should do something like that in defiance of the framework of a benevolent state, with its nurses and health visitors and information leaflets: it spoke of rebellion, of self-determination on a heroic scale. Or of shame, which itself was becoming rarer and rarer.

Nobody felt very much ashamed of anything any more, Isabel thought. You could do what you liked and then speak about it at great length on a confessional television show and nobody would bat an eyelid. And while that revealed a healthier attitude when it came to dealing with things that were better unconcealed, or with things that should not involve shame at all, it also meant that one of the main reasons for social restraint had been removed. Isabel recalled reading an article on homicide by a psychologist who argued, somewhat obviously, that shame and feelings of guilt were the main reason why people were hesitant to murder one another: a self-evident point, but one that perhaps we might need to remind ourselves of. The hesitation could so easily be removed and then anything might be done, and was.

And then she thought: How does the sense of shame get dismantled? One way suggested itself immediately:
Get children used to killing
. Yes. And how?
Let them play games about killing. Let them do it on their computers!

“Isabel?”

“Yes, I’m still here. I was just thinking, you’re right: Clara … I suppose I should call her your mother … Your mother may well not have told Rory. She may just have gone off and had the baby.” She hesitated. “Perhaps she didn’t want Rory to be involved because she didn’t want to continue to be involved with him. Perhaps it was all an accident. She might not have loved him. It might just have happened and then been regretted.”

It was not the silence at the other end of the line that stopped Isabel; it was her own realisation that what she was talking about here were the facts of another person’s coming into existence. We all like to imagine that we do so in the most romantic of circumstances, to the accompaniment of music, by candlelight. But for most of us it may well not be like that at all—not that we like to dwell on it. Freud was right in suggesting that what he called the primal scene was disturbing; of course it was. Our parents could surely not have done that sort of thing.

And here she was suggesting to Jane that she was an accident. She had more or less spelled it out: a student party in a shabby flat, with two people having had too much to drink, perhaps, and ended up fumbling about in a cluttered bedroom, and hey presto, a new life is conceived. And then self-reproach and horror and embarrassment, and the new life is concealed and shunted away to Australia with a new set of parents.

“I’m very sorry,” she muttered.

Jane seemed surprised. “About what?”

“About suggesting that … that your conception was accidental.”

“But I’m sure it was. How many of us are planned? Some, maybe, but many aren’t.”

“You’re very matter-of-fact,” said Isabel.

Jane laughed. “I’m Australian. We don’t go in for hypocrisy about these things.”

“Clearly not.” Isabel paused. “But here in Scotland we do, do we?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. But people here are a bit more … subtle, perhaps. It comes from having to be careful not to tread on too many toes. You people say an awful lot without actually saying it, if you know what I mean. That’s a talent, maybe, rather than a fault.”

Isabel brought the conversation back to its original purpose. “So shall I try to see him?”

“Yes,” said Jane. “Exactly. If you don’t mind.”

Isabel assured her that she did not. “And I’m not being subtle,” she said. “I’m really not. I’ve become interested in this. I want a happy ending, you know.”

“Don’t we all?” said Jane.

“Yes. But it doesn’t always happen that way.”

“That depends on how you write the story,” said Jane.

MIST HUNG OVER
the fields of East Lothian, the rich farming land that lay between Edinburgh and the North Sea coast. There was a local name for this, for the rolling banks of white that came in off the sea, drifting across the low ground, filling valleys, lapping at the feet of hills; this was the
haar
, a word that Isabel had always found onomatopoeic. If the
haar
made a sound, which it did not, it would be “haar,” a soft breathing out, an exhalation of slightly moist air from the depths of the lungs.

Now, at ten o’clock in the morning, the
haar
was still in evidence, although it was quickly being burned off by the sun to reveal the countryside beneath: the orderly fields, dark green in their summer clothing but with earlier crops here and there already golden. She drove past a large field of hay that had been cut a day or two previously, the circular bales dotted about where the harvester had disgorged them. She saw a tractor halfway up a slope, driven by a man who was waving to another man on the ground; she passed a field full of pigs with their curious, domed pig arks like the tepees of some tribe of plainsmen. She thought: All
this
happens to support all
that
—that being the life of the cities, all those people who were ignorant or indifferent to the life of the countryside and to their agricultural roots. Music and art and philosophy are ultimately based on the premise that this man on his tractor, and these pigs, and the swarms of bees that fertilise the crops, will all continue to do what they do. And every philosopher, no matter how brilliant his or her insights, needs a portion of this field—how much? Half an acre?—to support him if he is to survive.

She followed the back road that led through the village of Longniddry and then along the railway line towards Haddington. Years ago while this had been rich agricultural land up above, it had been mining country down below. Thick seams of coal ran directly beneath these fields and out under the North Sea. The mining had stopped, but had left its mark on the land and on the people too, who, some of them, had hard work stamped on them like a badge.

It had not been difficult to find Rory Cameron. Isabel had phoned a friend who lived in Gullane, a village on the coast that was surrounded by golf courses. Did she know anybody called Rory Cameron who had been—

“He was the secretary of one of the golf clubs,” her friend interjected. “Years ago. That Rory Cameron? He was married to an Irishwoman, I think.”

Isabel held her breath. She had not expected it to be quite as easy as this. “He’s still alive?” she asked.

Her friend had laughed. “Why should he be dead?”

“Because we all die,” said Isabel. “Didn’t you know that?”

“I had my suspicions,” said her friend. “No, that Rory Cameron is alive and kicking. I saw him a week or two ago in the village. I don’t really know him very well—but you know what this place is like: everybody is
aware
of everybody else even if they don’t actually know them. I’ve met him once or twice at drinks parties.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what’s he like?”

There was a moment of hesitation. “More or less what you’d expect. A bit unusual maybe.”

Isabel waited for her friend to explain. When she did not, Isabel asked in what way.

“There’s an air of unhappiness about him. Not what one would expect in the secretary of an East Lothian golf club. They’re usually … well, you can imagine what they’re like. Brisk and sociable. And he was also an army officer. You expect army officers to be rather brisk, don’t you? You don’t think of them as being tormented by doubts.”

Isabel could not help but imagine an army officer plagued by doubts.
Quick march, or maybe not. Left-flanking attack, or maybe right. Move forward, but perhaps not quite now.

Isabel made a remark about avoiding stereotypes. “The army recognises that there can be all sorts of officers. And the British Army, surely, has had some very unusual soldiers in the past, hasn’t it? Look at Lawrence of Arabia. Or Montgomery. He was a much more complex character than people think.”

She mulled this over as she neared Gullane. Rory Cameron had been polite on the telephone. She had explained that she wanted to talk to him about somebody he had known at university. She did not mention Clara’s name, even when he had asked.

“Do you mind if we don’t go into the details over the phone?” she said. “I’d much prefer to talk to you about it in person.”

He had seemed more bemused than suspicious. “I don’t see why you can’t say who it is,” he said. “It’s hardly state secrets we’ll be discussing.” He paused. “What’s it to do with, then? You should at least be able to tell me that.”

“Somebody has asked me to find out more about a parent,” she said. “Somebody from back then.”

He had remained good-humoured. “I’m sorry; do I know you?”

“We have a mutual friend.”

She gave the name of her friend, and he said, “Ah, yes,” before going on to say, “All right, I could see you if you wish, as long as you make it relatively early in the morning. Ten-thirty tomorrow? I’m playing golf in the afternoon and I can’t change that.”

THE CAMERON HOUSE,
which Isabel found with some difficulty after a few wrong turnings, was at the end of an old farm road, rutted and potholed from years of neglect. The fields on either side, shielded by unruly hedgerows, were still in use, with one being occupied by cattle clustered about a gate, watching her balefully as she negotiated a particularly muddy patch of the track. The cattle were expecting their feed, and one or two of them poked their heads through the bars of the gate.

“I’m sorry, I have nothing for you,” she muttered, and then thought,
It’s come to this at last: I’m talking to cows.

The house itself was organised in the typical way of the more prosperous Scots farmyard, with a rambling barn, or steading, behind it, a block of storerooms and a walled vegetable garden. The steading had been worked on and had a set of freshly painted doors; at several points along the roof, an uneven structure covered with warm red pantiles, modern skylights had been added. Ranged against the steading wall were four large kennels, each with a tiny roof tiled to match.