The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (4 page)

“So you’re like most of us today,” said Isabel. “I have misgivings about people not having a spiritual life. It’s so … so shallow. I sometimes think that life without a spiritual dimension must be like being made of cardboard—and as deep and satisfying.” She paused. “I feel that there is something there—some force, or truth, perhaps—to put it at its most general. I sense it, and I suppose I’d even go so far as to say that I yearn for it. I want it to be. Maybe that’s God. But I find it difficult to accept any statement as to his identity. And as for claims to be the sole interpreter of that force—the sort of claim made by religions that tell you that they have the sole answer—well, what can one say about such arrogance …”

“Yet you say that we need religious belief?”

Isabel did not answer immediately. The problem for her was the divisiveness of religion, its magical thinking, its frequent sheer nastiness. Yet all of that existed side by side with exactly that spirituality that she felt we could not do without; that feeling of awe, of immanence, which she knew was very real, and which enriched and sustained our lives so vitally.

“Yes, we need it,” Isabel eventually replied. “Because otherwise we live in a world in which there is no real answer to evil.”

Jane looked at her quizzically. “Not even a socio-biological one? An evolutionary basis to morality?”

“No. And the point is that we don’t want to live in such a world. We would be unhappy if we thought there was no final justice. And so we have to tell ourselves that it exists.”

Jane sensed a flaw. “Even if we think it doesn’t?”

Isabel hesitated. “The fact that we want something to be the case—that we need it to be so—may be reason enough for saying that it actually does exist.”

“Surely not … Surely it’s more honest to say that arbitrary biological drives compel us to create morality.”

Isabel did not think so. Evil had to be combated, and we had to be motivated to engage in the battle. If we did not have a compelling intellectual reason to fight against evil, then it would have free play.

Jane made a gesture of acceptance with her hands. “And so we need a theological perspective to cope with evil? A belief in God is just a tune we whistle to keep our spirits up in the face of something nasty?”

“No,” said Isabel. “It’s not that simple.”

Russell, the proprietor, was at their table, ready to take their orders. “And have you decided?”

Isabel smiled. “About the nature of reality? Or about lunch?”

They placed their order, and the subject of religion was tacitly set aside. It was a debate, Isabel thought, that had taken centuries and would require centuries more.

Jane had an afterthought. “Talking of identity,” she said. “A culture requires territory, doesn’t it? Or most do. And lots of territory and lots of people make for influential cultures. Imagine if Sweden were massive—”

“It is quite big,” suggested Isabel. “Look at a map.”

“Population-wise.”

“Rather small,” conceded Isabel.

“Yes. But imagine that Sweden were the dominant power in the world today. Imagine what a difference it would make. All those wonderful, highly civilised ideas of social democracy and concern for others would have a great army behind them.”

A Swedish world. The Swedish century
. Isabel had to admit that it sounded attractive, but there was a flaw in the argument, which she pointed out to Jane.

“Of course, if Sweden were massive, and powerful too, then it wouldn’t be Sweden. It would behave in exactly the same way as any massive and powerful country behaves.”

Jane nodded. “Yes, I suspect you’re right. And I suppose that at the end of the day things are the way they are and we have to accept them.”

She paused, trying to recall something, then looked directly at Isabel. Her eyes, thought Isabel, have that curious quality of
depth
; eyes that drew you in. Unusual, intelligent eyes; a bit like Jamie’s, perhaps.

Jane looked away. She had brought to mind what she wanted to remember. “When I was a young girl there was a poem that I loved—something from A. A. Milne.” She closed her eyes—the memory of poetry sometimes comes easier if eyes are closed—and recited:

“That is undoubtedly true,” said Isabel; and she thought of A. A. Milne and the Hundred Acre Wood and felt, for a moment, rather sad.

“MADE FROM BUFFALO MILK,”
said Isabel, as they began their Caprese salad.

Jane sliced off a fragment of the soft white mozzarella. “The real thing.” She speared the cheese with her fork and popped it into her mouth. “It was kind of you to get in touch. I haven’t really got to know many members of the philosophy department at the university yet. I know a few, of course, but I’ve been put in the Institute—the Humanities place—and it’s a bit tucked away. Good for work, of course.”

“I remember how I felt in Georgetown,” said Isabel. “I was there as a research fellow and it took me months to get to know anybody.”

“Well, I appreciate it,” said Jane.

Isabel plucked an olive from the small tub at the side of her plate. Olives made her think of Charlie, who was being looked after by Grace while she came out to lunch. Grace never gave him olives, which she did not consider nursery food, and when Charlie shouted “Olive, olive!” she pretended not to hear. Grace had a tendency, Isabel noticed, of not hearing that which she did not wish to hear. It was a very useful talent.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said and immediately apologised. “Sorry, that’s a rather intimidating thing to say to anybody, rather like saying to a teenager, ‘What are your plans?’, when we all know they have none.”

“I don’t mind in the least. In Australia people sometimes say, ‘What’s your story?’ It’s an invitation to go on about whatever one wants to go on about.”

Isabel liked Australian directness. “So you can tell them your back-story, as the novelists call it, or just tell them what’s been happening that day?”

“Exactly.”

Isabel thought about this. It was the back-story that was often the more interesting.

“So if I were to ask you about your childhood, say …”

Jane put down her fork. Watching her, Isabel saw a shadow pass over the other woman’s face, and she thought: I shouldn’t have asked. There was some awful sadness, she felt; some disappointment, some loss. I shouldn’t have asked.

“I’m sorry,” she blustered. “That was rather rude of me. I wasn’t thinking. You can’t ask people about their childhood, just like that.”

Jane shook her head. “It wasn’t rude at all. After all, childhood is one of the most interesting things to happen to people in their lives—probably
the
most interesting. Not that children know it …”

“Let’s just leave it—”

“No. I’d like to talk to you about it. Do you mind?”

“Not in the slightest. But are you sure you want to?”

Jane smiled. “Listen to us. That’s another thing I like about Edinburgh. It’s so polite. How does anybody ever get through a door? Everybody would be waiting for others to go through first.”

“But that happens,” exclaimed Isabel. “There are people who have almost perished—yes,
perished
—waiting for others to go through doors. Do you know that there was an afternoon tea dance in Edinburgh not all that long ago when a fire broke out. Everybody was so polite it was half an hour before anybody went through the door of the fire exit. Half an hour!
You first; no, please you go first; no, after you … 
The fire brigade turned up and they eventually got in—only after the firemen had said a lot of
You go in first with the hose, Bill
,
please go ahead
.
No, after you, Jim … 
and so on.”

Jane looked at her in astonishment.

“Oh, I’m not serious,” said Isabel. She had been covering her embarrassment, as she often did: she would ask an intrusive question and then, flustered, go off on one of her odd tangents.

Jane smiled. “I like conversations that drift. But childhood … well, the point is that’s really the reason why I’m in Edinburgh. I was born in Scotland, you see, and I’m very keen to find out something about my childhood. I’m afraid I’m on something of a quest, even if that sounds a bit ominous …”

“It’s doesn’t sound ominous at all,” said Isabel. “It sounds intriguing—which is quite different. So, please go ahead. I’m listening.”

T
HAT EVENING
Isabel and Jamie went to a concert in the Queen’s Hall. It was Jamie who had suggested it.

“We hardly ever go to listen to music together,” he said. “When we go it’s because I’m playing and you’re in the audience. It’s not the same as going together, is it?”

She realised that what he said was true. She tried not to miss any of his performances in Edinburgh, but she had relatively few memories of sitting next to him and listening to others.

“No. It isn’t. In fact, have we been to anything this year—together, that is?”

He looked at her quizzically. Isabel spent a lot of time thinking about other things; perhaps that was why she forgot events that he remembered quite vividly.

“Yes, we have.”

She could not remember. “Oh, well. What was it?”

“That concert in aid of Breast Cancer Research. When they did the Tallis. And Byrd too. They had that counter-tenor. Remember? The one from the Academy in Glasgow?”

It came back to her; it had been four months ago, in February. There had been a snowfall and the streets had been filled with slush. She had got her feet wet as they crossed the street in front of the concert venue, and she had spent the first half of the concert in discomfort. And then the singers had sung “Sumer Is Icumen In” and she had forgotten about her cold feet. And “Sumer” had been followed by …

She turned to Jamie. “They sang something I liked. You found the words for me afterwards. It was that counter-tenor.”

Jamie had a prodigious memory for music and for the words of songs. “ ‘Thus saith my Cloris bright.’ Was that it?”

“Yes it was.”

“You liked it, didn’t you?”

She asked who could possibly not like it, and he nodded, reciting:

She muttered the words, “ ‘When we of love sit down and talk together.’ ” She paused. “Is Love really a walking sprite?”

Jamie was not sure exactly what a sprite was. “A spirit?”

No, it was not quite that. A sprite could be a spirit, Isabel said, but it meant something else in this context. A sprite was elusive, a will-o’-the-wisp, something you grasped at, only to find that it had slipped through your fingers. Love was exactly that.

“So we can never really hold on to it?” Jamie asked.

She did not want to say that one could not. That, she felt, was defeatist, but love did not last: at least, not in its intoxicating, overwhelming form. You could not love like that for ever—could you?

She became aware that Jamie was watching her.

“There are so many different sorts of love,” she said. “And being in love has a lot of meanings. Affection. Tenderness. Infatuation. Obsession. It’s as if love were a disease with a whole range of symptoms.”

He was still watching her and she looked away. “This concert tonight, what is it?”

He told her the programme, which was contemporary. “A piece by Kevin Volans. Another made popular by the Kronos Quartet. A cello concerto by Sally Beamish. All interesting.”

Grace had stayed to look after Charlie, settling herself in front of the television with a disc of a long-running adaptation of Jane Austen and a large packet of pistachio nuts.

“Heaven,” she had said. “No need to hurry back.”

They took a taxi to the Queen’s Hall and had a drink in the bar before the concert began. Isabel felt a curious sense of joy at being with Jamie, unencumbered by responsibilities, with just music to listen to and nothing else. She thought,
I’m very happy
,
and this is all that I want in life. Just this.
The realisation surprised her—even shocked her. She never would have imagined that she might have such a simple ambition. She had always wanted to make her mark in philosophy, to contribute to the wider world in some way. She never imagined that she would want only to be with a man, to live a day-to-day life with him. She knew that for many people this was their greatest ambition: to have a partner and a child, to live the domestic life, but she had never thought it would be enough for her. Yet it was.

They went through for the beginning of the concert, finding their seats in the third row, behind a man and woman whom Isabel had seen at concerts before but whose names she had never known. The other couple half turned and smiled at them, and then the man whispered to Isabel, “Richard says this is going to be excellent.”

Isabel had no idea who Richard was. “Good,” she whispered back. “How is he?”

The man shook his head slightly. “He’s doing his best, poor man. It can’t be easy, though.”

“No,” said Isabel. “It can’t.”

The woman now turned to her. Lowering her voice, she said, “It’s not his fault. Categorically not.”

The musicians entered, and the puzzling conversation came to an end. Jamie glanced at Isabel and mouthed a word of reproach:
Bad!
She lowered her eyes to the programme; she had not been mischievous; she had been polite.

The concert began. She looked up at the ceiling and let the music flow over her. She was thinking of what Jane had said to her at lunch that day. Her story had not been all that exceptional—there must be numerous people in her position—but it had been told in a way that had engaged Isabel from the start. Now, as she listened to the tones of the cello, she imagined the sadness that such a story entailed. Our tenancy of this world is brief: we come from nothing and go into nothing. In that brief moment that is our life, how disappointing it must be not to know who you are.

In the interval, she said to Jamie, “I don’t want to go back into the bar. Can’t we sit here together?”

He looked at her with concern. “That’s fine. Are you feeling all right?”

She reassured him that she was fine, but wanted just to be with him.

Jamie commented on what they had heard. “That cellist, Peter Gregson, plays wonderfully. He was at the Edinburgh Academy, you know, when I was teaching there. We knew that he would do great things. I love his playing.”

“We don’t always expect people we know to do anything great, do we? Fame is something that happens to somebody else.”

He slipped his hand into hers. “You’ll do great things, Isabel. Charlie, too.”

She returned the pressure of his hand. His skin was so smooth, so flawless—and he had given that to his son too. “Of course Charlie will. I’ve never doubted it. The only question is what field will he excel in—which Nobel Prize he’ll win.”

Jamie knew. “Medicine or peace,” he said. “The two best things you can do. Heal people. Stop them fighting.”

Isabel wanted to tell him about her day. “You know Cat arranged for me to have lunch with somebody she met? An Australian philosopher.”

Jamie nodded. “You mentioned it. How did it go?”

“She told me her story.”

Jamie gazed at her expectantly. “Oh yes? Anything interesting?”

“Well, yes. Very. It was—”

Jamie took hold of Isabel’s wrist. “Hold on. Is this leading to—”

“I can’t ignore her.”

He sighed. “Isabel—” He broke off. “All right. Carry on. You can’t help yourself, can you? So you may as well carry on.”

She looked injured, and he apologised. “I’m sorry. I know that you do this out of a sense of duty. And I suppose that I’m secretly rather proud of you and everything you do. I wouldn’t want you to be selfish. It’s just that …”

“This is nothing risky. It really isn’t.”

Jamie was about to say more, but the musicians were returning to the platform. “Tell me later,” he whispered.

THEY LAY IN BED TOGETHER,
covered only by a sheet, as it was June and the evening was warm. It was dark, but not completely so; a chink in the curtains allowed moonlight in, an attenuated silver glow like the light cast by an old and failing projector.

There were shadows: the towering bulk of the wardrobe that had belonged to Isabel’s parents, with its twenty drawers and its capacious hanging spaces; the dresser, with its half-length mirror on mahogany spindles, that in the darkness looked like some unlikely legged creature, the mirror its staring face; the chair on which Jamie carelessly threw his clothes; the lumpy chaise-longue at the end of the bed that had been described at auction as having belonged to the late Duke of Argyll—
removed from his castle
, claimed the saleroom note—as if the late duke had said petulantly,
I want that thing out; I want it removed from my castle.
And who could blame him; it was a most uncomfortable piece of furniture, but Isabel, who felt sorry for things abandoned, both animate and inanimate, had decided to give it a home, as a place on which to put clothes, or packets, or books—anything really. It had attracted the sympathy of Charlie, too, who loved to jump off the end of the bed and on to the chaise, before rolling off the edge to the carpeted floor. He would do that time and time again, proud of the endlessly fascinating game he had invented.

Jamie had his hands tucked under his head as Isabel spoke. She lay on her side, facing him, their knees just touching.

“So her mother was a student in Edinburgh. When was that?”

“Forty years ago. Jane told me she celebrated her fortieth birthday in Melbourne just before she came over here.”

“And?”

The mother, Isabel explained, studied French. She was called Clara Scott and was the daughter of a doctor and his wife who lived just outside St. Andrews. She was their only child. She went off to university and while she was there—in her second year—had an affair and became pregnant. They were Catholic, and so understandably the pregnancy went ahead and she gave birth to Jane. Apparently they sent her to some place run by nuns in Glasgow for her to have the baby. They sent her away.

“That’s what they did then,” said Jamie. “It was worse in Ireland, where they bundled them off to special homes. Some of those girls stayed there for the rest of their lives.”

“Shameful things happened in Scotland, too,” said Isabel. “Let’s not get superior. Just because we had a Reformation—”

“And Ireland? What about what’s going on now?”

Isabel thought: Yes, that is exactly what has happened in Ireland. A twenty-first-century reformation, only almost five centuries late. It had happened so quickly and so drastically, with the exposure of clerical arrogance and downright cruelty. But nothing had been put in its place: no spiritual renewal—just puzzlement and distress, an emptiness, the void that goes with believing in nothing other than the material.

And the humiliation of those who meant well, perhaps, was never edifying; all those officials of the old Soviet Union who had done their jobs conscientiously for a lifetime, who had believed that they were doing the right thing, only to discover that—together with the loss of their pension—everything they believed in was suddenly meaningless and actively despised; all those members of Irish teaching orders who had devoted their lives to others, only to find that they were public pariahs because of the abuses of a minority, embarrassed now to wear the cloth of their office.

Was all social change like that: indifferent to individual innocence? Public judgment was rarely finely nuanced; there was no inquiry into the subtleties of a person’s position. There had no doubt been good men among the German forces that goose-stepped across Western Europe; good men were probably among those who pulled triggers, men who had been conscripted and who had no real choice. Yet a uniform makes complicit all those who don it, voluntarily or otherwise. It could not be otherwise because, Isabel realised, life, and its moral assessments, were crude affairs. She might not want it to be so, but that was how it was.

Yet she would never accept things as they were. That was what made her do what she did—practise philosophy—and what made her, and everybody else who thought about the world and its unkindnesses, do battle for understanding, for sympathy, for love; in small ways, perhaps, but ways that cumulatively made a difference.

“She had the baby,” Isabel went on. “It was a girl, who was given up for adoption through a Catholic agency. That baby was Jane.”

Jamie was silent for a moment. “Go on.”

“Do you know a book called
Empty Cradles
?” she asked. “I’ve got a copy somewhere. I read it a few years ago.”

“No.”

“It’s by a social worker who lived in Nottingham. She had quite a few people coming from Australia to try to trace their families. As children they had been sent abroad by something called the child migration movement. They came from working-class homes and were thought to have better prospects abroad—or were children who had been in care—and the parents were persuaded to give them up, or they were simply taken away. Lots of people were uprooted and grew up in Australia in the belief that they were orphans. But they weren’t. They had been lied to.”

“Imagine,” muttered Jamie. “Imagine if somebody came and sent Charlie off to Australia. Told him we didn’t exist, or whatever. Imagine.”

“No. I can’t imagine that.”