The Novel Habits of Happiness (20 page)

Isabel tucked the piece of paper into a pocket. She would show it to Jamie:
My Hittite self—see?

“So Edinburgh will mean you're going to give up the job?”

Clementine put her notebook away. “Yes.”

“With regret?”

“Of course.” She paused. “I've spent years of my life on cuneiform. Years. But…” She shrugged.

Isabel waited for her to continue; she sensed that something important was coming.

“The truth of the matter is that this move is important for Robert. If it were just me, then I'd stay in London—I'd stay in my job in the Museum. But it isn't just me.”

Isabel was silent. She liked Clementine Lettuce. She liked the way she looked; she liked the way she spoke. She felt this way although she had been predisposed to dislike her intensely; that was strange—and unexpected.

“You see,” Clementine went on, “the last few years have been very tough for Robert. And for me, I suppose, but particularly for him. He needs a fresh start, and that really means getting away from our house in London. Getting away from so many associations there.”

“I thought he was happy in London,” said Isabel. “I thought he enjoyed the Society of Philosophy. Isn't he on the Council? And his chair there; I thought he'd enjoy that.”

“Oh, professionally everything has been fine for him. It's not that, though—it's what happened to us. We lost our daughter you see, our only child—our daughter, Antonia.”

Isabel looked down at the table. “I'm so sorry…”

“Thank you.”

“Please don't feel that you have to…”

Clementine held up a hand. “No, it's important to be able to talk about it. I often say that to Robert. It causes him immense pain—I can see it in his face—but I always encourage him to talk about her.”

Isabel spoke quietly. “What age was…was Antonia?”

“She was eighteen.”

Isabel said nothing.

“She went off to look at a university—it was Durham, actually. She wanted to apply for a place there, and they had an open day. She went with some school friends, and there was a road accident. Somebody was driving a bit too fast. It doesn't matter who that was. I don't bear them any ill feeling because they couldn't have known what would happen. Robert found that harder, but he came round to my view eventually.”

“I see.”

“But his heart was broken.” She paused. “Have you ever known anybody with a broken heart?”

Isabel was not prepared for the question. Had she? She was not sure.

“It's the saddest thing there is. Something goes out inside them. It just goes out.”

“I'm sorry to hear this.”

“Thank you. But that's why Robert needed to apply for this job. Edinburgh or Oxford are the two places he says he would be prepared to move to. There's nothing coming up in Oxford, and anyway, I think that there are people there who don't like him, so he won't stand a chance. So it's going to be Edinburgh, I hope.”

The words were not intended as a reproach, but that was what they were—in Isabel's mind at least.
There are people there who don't like him.
And in Edinburgh? There were people there who did not like him either. She imagined the anti-Lettuce faction in Oxford—a group of fussy, argumentative dons, united at least in this one thing: their dislike of Lettuce; meeting in secret to discuss the latest doings of their
bête noire.
Adolf Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, similarly had a society of his enemies—he attracted fervid jealousy from people who wished
they
had invented the saxophone; this society had formal meetings in Paris, in, quite appropriately,
la rue des Serpents.
She smiled at the thought.

But the smile quickly faded. She had been without charity, and she now saw Lettuce in a different light. He was a sorrowing father, to whom the most awful thing conceivable had happened. And here was this woman giving up her career for his sake. She obviously loved him. He loved her. They had both loved their daughter. And Lettuce was presumably doing the best he could in an imperfect world. He was vain and he was pompous. But he was human, and his heart had been broken.

“I'm so very sorry,” said Isabel, and reached out to put her hand on Clementine's arm. She saw the first sign of tears in the other woman's eyes. They were quickly wiped away.

“It's very kind of you,” said Clementine. “It's very kind of you to talk to me. I don't know a soul in Edinburgh.”

“I'm sure you'll make friends here quickly,” said Isabel, and she added, without thinking, “I'll help you meet people.”

“You're very kind.”

“And Robert too.”

Clementine frowned. “Robert's not always easy,” she said. “Sometimes it's more difficult for him. He had a very unhappy childhood, you know. His father was with Shell, you see, and so his parents lived abroad much of the time. Robert went to one of those dreadful boarding schools. It was down on the South Coast. I think some very unpleasant things happened there.” She looked hard at Isabel. “So many lives were distorted by such cruelty. I know so many men who had to put up with that, so many…”

Isabel closed her eyes momentarily. Those schools, and the attitudes that allowed them, were a largely spent force now, but their shadow was a long one. Now she asked the first thing that came into her head. “And Christopher Dove? What does he think of the move?”

Clementine did not answer immediately. She glanced out of the window and seemed to be studying something. Isabel looked out too. The gardens were busy; a woman with a group of children—six or seven—walked past, and Isabel thought:
They can't all be hers—not these days.
Then Clementine turned her head. “At times it's difficult to read Christopher. Do you know him well?”

At first, Isabel was unsure how to answer. She knew Dove's faults well enough, she believed, but she could not say that she knew him well. “Professionally. We've had some dealings. I edit a journal, you know, and he…”

“Oh, I know you do,” interjected Clementine. “Robert's spoken about that. He says you're very good at it.”

Isabel tried to hide her surprise. “That's good of him. I do my best. It's a bit of a burden at times.”

Clementine returned to Christopher. “Robert's close to Christopher, but sometimes, well, frankly, I don't quite get what he sees in him. Friendships between men can be rather opaque, I find. Men are not particularly given to thinking about their friendships. They just take them for granted. So-and-so is my friend—that's all there is to it. That sort of thing.”

“I know what you mean,” said Isabel.

“Still,” mused Clementine, “I think that it will be good to have Robert here in Edinburgh and Christopher down in London. I think it will be good for Robert to get out of Christopher's orbit, so to speak. Sometimes I think that Christopher manipulates Robert—or tries to.”

Isabel caught her breath. “So Christopher wouldn't think of coming here too?” She paused, watching the effect of her words. “If something suitable came up, of course.”

The suggestion seemed to appal Clementine. “Oh, I hope not.” She stopped to reflect. “Of course, I shouldn't be selfish about that. Robert is not very good with friends—he doesn't keep up any friendships. I rather think that Christopher is his only real friend, you know.”

Isabel gazed up at the ceiling.
How bleak to have Christopher Dove as your only friend.
Lettuce, she thought, is not what I thought he was. I have been unkind. I have been wrong. He may be insufferably pompous, but within him there's the damaged, frightened little boy trapped in an institution of bullies and oppression, wanting only the love of his mother, who was far away, in some place where Shell people went, a voice on the telephone in occasional, snatched conversations—that same frightened, uncertain little boy who was there within so many men. She thought of a politician she knew who had a reputation for bombast and bullying. That little boy was within him. Or the greedy tycoon who had tried to put a rival out of business through sheer canon power; that same boy's voice could be heard there too. No, it's Dove who's the one to watch; he's the Svengali, he's the Rasputin.

F
ROM THE GREEN SWEDISH CAR
they looked out over a loch to their left, a long, narrow stretch of water overshadowed by the hills that rose sharply on either side. Jamie was at the wheel; they shared the driving, hour and hour about, neither of them liking to drive for long periods. In the back, strapped into his detachable car seat, Charlie had dozed off, still clasping his toy stuffed fox.

“This Seagull guy,” said Jamie. “Who exactly is he again?”

“Starling,” corrected Isabel. “He's called Neil Starling, and he's a friend of Peter Stevenson's. Peter was in touch with him.”

Jamie guided the car carefully round a tight bend. The road was following the edge of the loch closely, and the sharply rising hillside on the other side left little room for manoeuvre. “Yes, you told me that,” he said. “But what about him? What do you know about him?”

Isabel explained that she knew very little beyond what Peter had told her. When she had contacted him, after Peter's phone call, he had sounded warm and friendly, and had said that he would be delighted to see her. “I'm going nowhere,” he assured her. “Any day will suit me.”

They had made the arrangement, and Isabel had telephoned the small hotel he said would be a convenient place for them to stay. They were equally welcoming. Charlie would be no problem: “We have high chairs, and our carpets, I assure you, can put up with anything,” said the woman who took the booking. “Three-year-olds hold no dread for us.”

Jamie slowed down for another awkward bend. “Do you really think we'll find anything out?” he asked. “I mean, honestly?”

She looked out over the passing loch. “No, I don't think we will. But if we can tell Kirsten that we've tried, then I'll feel much better.”

He took his eyes off the road for a few seconds. He glanced at her in fondness. “I'm glad that you're the way you are. I don't think I'd like to be married to a selfish person.”

She blushed. She did not think of herself as at all exceptional. “I'm every bit as selfish as the next person,” she muttered.

“No, you're much more altruistic than…than anybody I know.”

“Thank you, but that's not really true.”

“No, it is. You're just…really kind, I suppose.” He thought for a moment. “Anyway, you know how I've said in the past that you should be much more careful about getting involved in other people's problems?”

She did not need to be reminded; he had begun to say it in the early stages of their relationship—when they were still just friends—and he had continued. “I've heard you say that.”

“Well, I've changed my mind a bit. I still think you shouldn't jump in too quickly, but now I think that if that's what you do, well, it's what you do.”

She reached out and touched him gently on the forearm. She wanted to kiss him, to thank him for this little speech, but the winding road discouraged it. “I'll give you a kiss later on,” she said.

He smiled. “A lingering one?”

“As lingering as you wish.”

There was a noise from the back seat. And then a small voice: “Hills.”

Isabel turned round to look at Charlie. “Yes, hills, my darling. Hills. The Highlands.”

Jamie looked up at the driving mirror to see Charlie.

“Daddy driving,” said Charlie.

“Yes,” said Isabel. “Daddy is driving now. Mummy will drive a bit later on.”

There was silence. Then the small voice said, “No. Daddy drive.”

Isabel made a face. “Oh dear. Where's that come from?”

Jamie grinned. “Nothing to do with me,” he said. And then, over his shoulder to Charlie: “Mummy drives very well, Charlie. Mummies are good drivers.”

“No,” insisted Charlie. “Daddy drive.”

Isabel caught Jamie's eye. “It starts very young,” she whispered. “Do you think he's picked this up from somebody at nursery?”

“Possibly. I think it's probably best not to make too big a thing of it or he'll use it. Best to ignore.”

Isabel agreed. “Look at the sheep,” she exclaimed in an attempt to distract. “So happy in their fields.”

“We'll eat them later,” said Charlie, without malice. “For dinner.”

It was, thought Isabel, an entirely understandable observation on the world. People did eat sheep—they could not hide such things from him—and with the honesty of childhood he remarked on the fact; whereas we, she thought, don't care to mention it too directly.
The blind eye develops as one gets older,
she said to herself.

“We eat vegetables too, Charlie,” said Jamie.

“Poor vegetables,” said Charlie.

“They don't mind,” said Jamie.

“Mr. Potato doesn't want to be eaten,” protested Charlie.

Isabel suppressed a laugh. Charlie had a book about Mr. Potato, a grumpy, potatoesque figure who had constant problems with the other vegetables around him; and yet was, in his own earthy way, something of a hero. Of course Mr. Potato would mind being boiled or mashed; of course he would.

“Nobody will eat Mr. Potato, darling,” she reassured him. “He's quite safe.”

THE ROAD THEY FOLLOWED
climbed up into the first large hills of the Highlands proper. Once through the pass at Glen Ogle, it crossed a wide sweep of country to Rannoch, a high, desolate moor dotted with small lochs, like silver patches, breaking up a landscape of heather and peat bog. Now the hills became mountains—high and brooding, bare of trees, scarred with lines of tumbling scree and white waterfall. Jamie pointed out Buchaille Etive Mhor, a sentinel mountain that guarded the mouth of Glen Etive. “I climbed that,” he said. “I went up with my father's cousin, one winter. She was a member of the Scottish Ladies' Mountaineering Club. I didn't realise how dangerous it was until I came down again and looked up to see where we had been. Then I knew.”

And if you had fallen…
Isabel looked up at the forbidding face of the mountain. A veil of mist concealed the summit, even on this otherwise clear day; the distant brow of rock, almost sheer, glistened from the water that drained off the mountain in rivulets. Now she thought of it differently; it was not simply Buchaille Etive Mhor, it was the mountain that Jamie had climbed with his father's cousin. Everywhere that Jamie went was, in her mind, touched by his presence, as is often the case with lovers. The places our lovers have been to are no longer ordinary—the association, she felt, conferred on them a particular status, as a benediction does upon a holy place. We are fond of places because we are fond of people.

The road descended, dropping down towards the coast at Ballachulish. Charlie had been becoming restless, but the sight of boats bobbing on their moorings improved his mood. And then, when they took the small car ferry that crossed Loch Linnhe, his excitement seemed to know no bounds, and he gave sporadic, heartfelt squeals of delight.

Their hotel was a good hour's drive further along the Ardnamurchan peninsula, at the edge of a small village of whitewashed stone cottages. These cottages were dotted about, seemingly at random, without circumscribing gardens and fences. Sheep grazed at random, free to roam—on the verges of the single-track road, on the lower slopes of the hill behind the village, around the back doors of the houses.

“Before the land grab,” remarked Isabel.

Jamie was concentrating on finding the hotel. “What?”

“The land grab. This was what life was like before the land was taken away from people. There were no fences. There were no walls. Just freedom.”

He thought he saw the hotel. “Over there. That must be it.”

She glanced at the larger building at the far end of the village. It would have been the Manse, she thought—the house once occupied by the Church of Scotland minister—and it had now become a hotel. “Yes, that must be it. Everything has been taken away—over the years.”

“I'm not with you.”

“Everything,” she said. “The Gaelic culture suppressed. The language. The songs. The way of life.”

“But things change everywhere. The Industrial Revolution…You can't uninvent technology.”

That was not her point. “The problem was that people got in the way. You couldn't have a society of small farmers who lived according to a culture of sharing. That didn't fit.”

“Well…”

She continued, “So the people had to go, didn't they? Off to Canada and America.” She pointed ahead. “I think that's the turning up there.”

“Where they were a bit better off, weren't they? Not that I'm justifying the clearances, but how many people in Canada, for instance, can look back with relief that their people made it over there? Or made it to America?”

He slowed down; a red post office van was approaching them on the road ahead; sheep were scattering.

It was not a conversation that was going to get anywhere. Jamie was concentrating on the driving, and she was dwelling on the past.

He turned the car into a short driveway lined with flowering gorse bushes. The scent of the gorse was powerful, and combined with something else—an iodine smell of seaweed. “I love this,” he said. “I love this sort of place.”

“Yes.”

“Let's come and live here,” he said. “Let's leave Edinburgh and live somewhere like this. We'd be away from everything. No traffic. No noise. Nothing. Just these hills and the sea over there and the sheep all about us.”

Isabel laughed. “What would we do?”

They had reached the hotel and Jamie turned off the engine. There was quiet. In spite of his earlier excitement Charlie had dropped off to sleep again, lulled by the movement and the warm air.

“Does one have to do anything? What do the people who live here do? We could do that.” He paused, and she wondered whether he was serious. “I could give music lessons. And you could run the
Review
from here. The internet has liberated everyone from having to be in a particular place. Cyberspace is a big country. You can do just about anything anywhere.”

“Have they got the right cables out here?”

He pointed to a wooden telephone post and the wires leading to the side of the building. “That's all you need,” he said.

She smiled at him “We could think about it.”

“I know I'm being unrealistic.”

She said that she thought he was being romantic.

“That's much the same thing,” he replied.

THEY HAD ARRIVED
at three in the afternoon, the journey from Edinburgh having taken them almost five hours. Neil Starling had told them that he would be at home some time after four. “Just turn up at my place,” he said. “We're very casual over here. If we're not in, just make yourselves comfortable in the kitchen. We don't lock our doors.”

The owner of the hotel gave them directions. She knew Neil, she said—everybody did. And she confirmed what Peter had said: “He knows an awful lot, that man—an awful lot about…well, everything, I suppose.”

A line of poetry came to Isabel.
That one small head could carry all he knew…
It was Oliver Goldsmith's village schoolmaster. Another line came back to her:
Amazed the gazing rustics rang'd around…
That was what amazed them—the fact that one head could contain so much. But heads did. There was Professor Hawking, whose head, she imagined, contained the sum total of what we knew about physics; and Mozart, whose brain contained that extraordinary, seemingly limitless body of music.

“What were you thinking about?” Jamie asked, as they went out into the hotel car park. “Back there, when she was talking about Neil Starling?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I can always tell. You get this odd expression, as if you're there, but not quite there.”

She shrugged. “I was thinking of a poem by Oliver Goldsmith.”

Jamie shook his head in disbelief. “How can you think about that when somebody's talking to you about something completely different?”