The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (2 page)

She took a deep breath. There were times when life’s problems were convincingly outweighed by its possibilities, and this, she felt, was one. Here she was, in her forties, with a child at a time when many might have felt it was too late for children; blessed, too, with a fiancé whom she would shortly marry; solvent—though she was discreet about that, and generous beyond measure; working for herself—the list of good things, on any view, was a long one. She stopped herself: the making of such an inventory could attract the attention of a Nemesis always sensitive to hubristic thoughts, whose concern it had always been to cut down to size those who got above themselves. But I am not proud of any of this, Isabel said to herself; I am grateful, and that is something quite different. Nemesis, she hoped, had no axe to grind with those who were simply thankful for good fortune; her objection was to those who thought that they
deserved
what they had and boasted about it.

She had no real reason to go to Bruntsfield: the store cupboard at home was copiously stocked with everything they needed for the coming week; she had nothing to put in the post, or nothing that could not wait until tomorrow; and she did not need to go to a cash machine. But she was in the mood for a walk and for a cup of coffee in Cat’s delicatessen. Cat, her niece, had run her food business for several years now and had recently expanded into a small adjoining shop that she had been able to buy at a tempting price. Isabel had offered to lend her the money to make the purchase, but Cat had declined.

“Don’t think I’m being ungrateful,” she said. “But I really want to do this by myself.”

Isabel had explained that there would be no strings attached to the loan and that it would be interest-free; in fact, how about an outright gift? Cat, though, had been adamant.

“It’s pride, I suppose,” said Cat. “I want to prove that I can do this on my own. I hope you don’t mind.”

Isabel did not mind at all. Her relationship with her niece was far from simple, and she did not wish to imperil the delicate understanding that they had recently reached. The awkwardness between them had two causes.

First, Isabel was Cat’s aunt—even if only fifteen years separated them. Cat’s father, Isabel’s brother, had distanced himself from the family and had little contact with his own daughter; not for reasons of antipathy, but from a curious, almost absent-minded indifference. Isabel had always felt that Cat blamed her for this; that insofar as she wanted to punish her father, but could not, Isabel would have to do as the focus of her anger.

The second reason for awkwardness was even more understandable. Jamie had been Cat’s boyfriend and had eventually been rejected by her. But then Isabel had taken up with him. She had not planned this turn of events; she had merely continued what had started as a friendship and this had blossomed, very much to her surprise—and delight, it must be said—into something more. Isabel understood why Cat should have been taken aback by this, but had not anticipated that she would be quite so resentful. She had not
stolen
Jamie, and there was, she felt, something of the dog in the manger about Cat’s attitude. She might not have wanted Jamie, but did that mean that nobody else could have him? The answer, from Cat’s point of view, was probably yes.

The situation had been made worse by Cat’s abysmal taste in men. Jamie had been the exception in a rather too long line of flawed boyfriends, ranging from Toby, with his crushed-strawberry cords and his irritating manner, to Bruno, a boastful tightrope-walker who had been revealed to be a wearer of elevator shoes. There was a great deal wrong with Bruno, but the elevator shoes had seemed to point to the presence of something deeply untrustworthy. Isabel had wrestled with herself over this: she was quite prepared to accept that elevator shoes need not say anything negative about the wearer—there were, presumably, entirely meritorious people who resorted to them to gain a few extra inches—and so one could not condemn such shoes out of hand. But there would also be those whose elevator shoes were symptomatic of a chip on the shoulder, an aggressive personality—and Bruno, she felt, was one such.

Bruno had effectively dismissed himself as a boyfriend when he publicly upbraided Cat for causing him to fall off his tightrope—not exactly a high wire, as it had been only three or four feet off the ground at the time. But that was enough to end the relationship, much to Isabel’s carefully concealed relief. He had then been followed by a teacher, who had seemed suitable enough, but who had, perhaps for that very reason, also been dismissed.

Now there was nobody—as far as Isabel knew—and that, she hoped, was how it might be, for a while at least. She did not think of Cat as promiscuous, but at what point, Isabel wondered, might eyebrows be raised as to the frequency of boyfriends? Was a new one each year too many? If one carried on in that way from the age of twenty, by the time one was forty-five one would have had twenty-five boyfriends, which surely was rather too many.

So what was a respectable number of boyfriends over a lifetime? Five? Isabel herself had had … For a moment she stopped in her tracks, halfway along Merchiston Crescent, and thought. There had been the rugby player, but he did not count as they had spoken only two or three times and he never knew that she had fallen for him. The first real boyfriend had come a little bit later, just before she left school; a shy boy with that—for her—fatal combination of dark hair and blue eyes, who had kissed her in the darkness of the Dominion Cinema one Saturday afternoon, and had written her the most extraordinary love letter that she still kept, tucked away with her birth certificate. Then there had been John Liamor, her former husband, who had been disastrous, who had broken her heart again and again, and of whom it was still uncomfortable to think, even if she had come to terms with what had happened. Then Jamie. And that was all. Was that typical, she wondered, or might it be considered thin rations?

The important thing, she told herself, was to try to see it from Cat’s point of view—and she could certainly do that. Like all of us, she thought, Cat was searching for the company of one who would make her happy. Some of us did not have to look long for that person, some of us found him or her with little difficulty; others had longer to look, and had less luck. They deserved our sympathy rather than our disapproval.

Passersby, of whom there were one or two, paid no attention to the sight of a rather handsome-looking woman suddenly stopping and appearing to be lost in thought. Had they done so, they might have concluded that Isabel was trying to remember what she had failed to put on her shopping list; they would not have guessed that she was thinking about the problem of boyfriends. And these passersby, anyway, were students, making their way to lectures at Napier University nearby. And there was never any doubt as to what students—at least the male ones, as these happened to be—thought about on their way to lectures. Sex.

She continued her walk, and five minutes later was standing in front of the delicatessen. Looking inside, through the large display window, she saw that Cat was pointing out something to a customer, while Eddie, her young assistant, was standing behind the counter. He caught Isabel’s eye and waved enthusiastically, beckoning her in, in the manner of one who had important news to convey. Eddie was normally shy, but not now; now he had something to tell her.

E
DDIE SAID TO HER,
“You sit down, Isabel. I’ll make you a cappuccino. And I’ve got something to tell you.”

“I sensed that,” said Isabel. “Good news, obviously.”

She smiled at Eddie encouragingly, pleased that he was so manifestly happy. There had been little happiness in his life, she suspected, not that she knew too much about him. She knew that he was in his early twenties; that he lived with his parents, who had moved a few months ago to a new flat in Sighthill; that his father had something to do with the railways; and that something traumatic, something dark and unspoken, had happened to Eddie when he was seventeen or eighteen. Cat knew what that was, but Isabel had never asked her and did not want to know—not from indifference, but out of respect for Eddie. If he wanted her to know, he would have told her, and he had not.

Eddie was making progress. There had been one or two girlfriends, and this had helped his confidence, and over the last year or so he had shown greater readiness to accept responsibility. Cat could now leave him in charge of the shop for an entire day, even if he was still unable to look after it for much longer than that. Of course, he knew what to do and did it competently, but if he felt that he was on his own he panicked. This had something to do with what had happened—Isabel was sure of that—and only the passage of time would help with that.

Eddie ushered her across to one of the tables at which coffee was served. “We haven’t got that Italian newspaper you like,” he said. “But here’s the
Scotsman
.”

“I’ve already done the
Scotsman
,” said Isabel. “And I don’t really need anything to read. You go and make my coffee. Then give me this news of yours.”

Eddie left her, and Isabel glanced at Cat, who was still with her customer. Her niece noticed and nodded. Something in Cat’s expression indicated to Isabel that this customer was taking a long time to make up her mind over which tea to buy.

Eddie produced the cappuccino with a flourish. He had recently taken to signing the frothy milk-top with a thistle, a trick he had learned from an Irish barman who served Guinness with the outline of a four-leaved clover traced on the foam. He sat down and smiled broadly at Isabel.

“Guess,” he challenged. “Go ahead and guess.”

She made a show of thinking. “Let me see. You’ve won the Spanish lottery.
El Gordo—
the fat one. A million euros, tax-free.”

“Nope.”

“All right. You went in for a screen test and they’ve just phoned to say could you come back, and bring your agent?”

Eddie shook his head. “No, I’d never be an actor. I don’t like having my photograph taken.”

She made a gesture of defeat. “I’m not going to get it, am I? You tell me, Eddie.”

The young man leaned forward in his chair. “All right. Listen to this, Isabel. You know I’ve got this uncle?”

She did not.

“Well, I have. He’s called Donald and he’s my mother’s older brother. He used to have a wife, who was my aunt, and then she went off with this guy from Glasgow. It was her fault—my dad said that. So Uncle Donald was left by himself.”

Isabel nodded. “Yes. These things are … well, they’re not very pleasant.”

“He was really cut up over it for a long time. But he’s better now and he’s got a girlfriend—you should see her, Isabel—she’s amazing. Much better than his wife. So there’s Uncle Donald and he gets a letter one morning from a firm of lawyers in Dundee and they say that his cousin, who never married, has died and left him her house in Montrose. And her car. The car’s useless—Uncle Donald went to look at it and said that the gearbox was shot: it was the way she used to change gear, like stirring porridge, he said. But the house is quite nice. He doesn’t need it because he’s got his own place in Dalkeith, and he doesn’t even have a mortgage.”

“So he’s going to sell it?”

Eddie beamed with pleasure. “Yes. And he wants to treat me to a trip. He’s always said that he wanted to go to the United States and Canada. He’s never been, you see, but now he can afford to take a couple of months off and go all the way from Miami up to Alaska, with a bit of Canada in between. The Rockies and Vancouver. Him and me, in a car he’s going to rent. His girlfriend can’t get that much time off, but she’ll come for the first three weeks.”

Isabel thought of driving across the Midwest and the experience of its sheer vastness. It would be like being at sea, she imagined.

“That’s wonderful, Eddie,” she said. “All that way …”

“Yes,” he said. “Places like Nebraska. Imagine going there. And the Grand Canyon. And Las Vegas.”

Isabel thought. “Las Vegas …”

“Yes,” said Eddie. “And Cat’s said that it’s fine. I’ve got a friend, you see, who can do my job here for me. He’s worked in a deli before. Cat has spoken to him and says that it’s all right.”

Eddie finished and sat back in his chair, waiting for Isabel’s reaction to his news. She leaned across the table and patted him lightly on the forearm. She did not mean the gesture to look condescending, but she realised it did. He did not notice.

She spoke warmly. “That’s marvellous, Eddie,” she said. “I think that’s just wonderful.”

She did not, but that was not the point. It was wonderful for him, as it would be for any young man who had never been anywhere, other than a trip to London once and five precious, heady days in Spain as a teenager.

He smiled at her. “America!”

She nodded. “Yes. You know that I’m half American?”

He expressed surprise, and she explained to him about her sainted American mother.

“She was a saint? Really?”

Eddie could take things literally—maybe a slight hint of Asperger’s, she wondered—but no, he was too sensitive in other ways for that diagnosis.

“Of course not. Not in the real sense. I call her that because, well, because I thought she was a very good woman. She was kind, you see.”

“Like you,” said Eddie.

The compliment was not contrived; it came naturally, and Isabel felt its effect, like a shaft of warming sun.

“That’s nice of you, Eddie. But I don’t think I’m particularly kind—or not any kinder than anybody else.”

He said she was, and then Cat finished with her customer and returned to the counter to ring up the sale.

Eddie sighed. “I’m almost too excited to work, but I have to, I suppose. Sinclair starts the day after tomorrow. I’m taking a week off before we go. We’re flying from Glasgow.”

“Sinclair?”

“My friend. You’ll like him, Isabel …” His voice trailed off, and Isabel realised that she would not like Sinclair.

“I’m sure I will.”

She thought: we have just expressed to each other the exact opposite of what we truly feel. And yet, in doing so, we have made our meaning perfectly clear. Isabel glanced at Cat, who was looking in her direction. If I don’t like Sinclair, she thought, then I can be absolutely sure that Cat will.

On impulse, Isabel whispered to Eddie as he rose to leave the table, “This Sinclair … It’s a silly question, but tell me: is he good-looking?”

Eddie seemed bemused. “Well …”

Isabel saw that Eddie was unwilling to discuss Cat’s love life and she could understand that.

Eddie grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. He’s been a model in his spare time, you know. I saw a picture of him in an ad once—an ad for jeans. I think he’d like to do it full time.”

Isabel said nothing; Cat was coming over to the table as Eddie returned to work. The information that Eddie had just imparted was not at all welcome. Cat did not
need
a young man who posed as a model for jeans; not in the slightest.

“Jeans,” she muttered under her breath.

Arriving at the table, Cat looked puzzled. “Jeans?”

“Just thinking,” said Isabel.

Cat sat down. “Eddie’s told you his news? He’s as high as a kite about it.”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “He’s pretty excited. And who wouldn’t be?”

“Not me,” said Cat. “That uncle of his—I met him, you know. He came in here once, and …”

Isabel waited for Cat to finish. Her niece could be uncharitable.

Cat lowered her voice. “Seriously dull. Terminally boring. And … well, there’s no way round it: he’s got these most dreadful teeth—all crooked, and half of them look rotten. I couldn’t be in a car for five thousand miles, or whatever it is, with teeth like that sitting next to me. The Americans are going to freak out—you know what they’re like about teeth. They’ll probably cart him off to an emergency dentist the moment he opens his mouth. Or they won’t let his teeth into the country. They might say, ‘Look, you can come in, but teeth like that stay out.’ ”

Isabel did not want to smile, but could not help herself. “He’ll be all right. I don’t think Eddie notices teeth.”

Cat shrugged. There was not much more to be said about the uncle, and her conversation now went off in another direction. “I gave your telephone number to somebody,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh?”

Cat went on to explain, “There’s a woman who’s been dropping in here for coffee over the last week or so. She’s staying in a flat in Forbes Road. She’s one of you.”

“Of me?”

“A philosopher. I got speaking to her and she told me she’s over here on sabbatical. Four months, or six months, or whatever it is. She’s working on something or other—she told me what it was, but I forget. She’s Australian. She’s called Jane—I don’t know her other name. She told me, but it went in one ear and out the other.” Cat paused. “I thought that she seemed a bit lonely and so I asked her whether she’d like to meet you, since you were a philosopher. She said she’s heard of you—she reads that journal of yours.”

“One of the two thousand four hundred and eighty-seven,” said Isabel. That, she explained, was the number of readers that each issue of the
Review of Applied Ethics
was calculated to have.

Cat listened to the explanation. “That’s tiny. You could probably invite all the readers to tea.”

“Very funny,” said Isabel. “And, actually, it’s not a bad figure at all—at least as far as academic journals go.”

She did not have to say this to Cat; she did not have to justify herself, but she continued, as one who is made fun of will make fun of another to distract attention, “I have a friend who edits a journal that has a circulation of fifty-eight. And he wrote a book—on the nature of existence—that sold thirty-two copies.”

Immediately she felt ashamed and disloyal. I should defend him against people like Cat. And if books on existence did not exist, then …

Cat glanced out of the window. “Do you ever wonder whether what you do is worthwhile? I’m not saying it isn’t—I’m just asking.”

Isabel gave an answer that Cat had not expected. “All the time,” she said. “Don’t you?”

Cat frowned. “Me? Ask myself whether what I do is worthwhile?”

“That’s the question,” said Isabel.

“Of course not.”

“Well, maybe you should,” said Isabel. “Maybe everybody should—even you.”

“I sell cheese and Italian sausages,” Cat retorted. “I don’t have time to think. Most people don’t. They do what they have to do because they need to eat.”

So life was reduced to cheese and sausages, thought Isabel; that was what really counted. Such reductionism was hardly attractive, but Isabel felt that Cat was probably right about people not having the time or energy for philosophy. Self-doubt was a luxury, as, perhaps, was the examined life. And yet the examined life, as the adage had it, was the only life worth living.

She looked at Cat. Ontology, self-doubt, cheese, sausages—it would be best to leave these for the time being.

“This Australian woman,” she said. “She’ll get in touch, will she? I could ask her round. It can’t be much fun being in a strange place by yourself.”

“She said she’ll phone you,” said Cat. “And now, I’d better go.”

Isabel nodded. “You’ll miss having Eddie to help you. But I gather you’ve got somebody lined up. I was hearing about Sinclair … You’ve met him?”

Isabel tried to make the question sound innocent, but it was not, and Cat’s manner revealed that she knew this. Her reply was guarded. “Yes. Once. He’ll do.”

Isabel held Cat’s gaze. Something had passed between them; an unspoken mutual understanding that came from having known one another for so long. There’s something there, thought Isabel. And then she said to herself:
Here we go—again.

BY THE TIME
she got back to the house, having been interrupted on the way back by bumping into a garrulous neighbour, the morning was already almost over. For Isabel, the watershed was always eleven-thirty; that was the point at which if nothing was achieved, then nothing would be, the point at which one had to think about lunch, now just an hour away.

Since Charlie had started going to his playgroup, the mornings had become even shorter, as he had to be fetched shortly after noon, and it took ten minutes to get him back and another ten minutes to get him changed out of his morning clothes; by this time, he would be covered in finger paint, crumbs, pieces of a curious modelling substance much approved of by the playgroup authorities, grains of sand from the sandpit and, very occasionally, what looked like specks of blood. Boys, it seemed to Isabel, were magnets for dirt and detritus, and the only solution, if one were wanted, was frequent changes of clothing. Or one could throw up one’s hands and allow them to get dirtier through the day and then hose them down—metaphorically, of course—in the early evening.