The Novel Habits of Happiness (21 page)

“I just do,” said Isabel. “Don't you?”

“No, I usually think about what they're saying to me.”

They put Charlie back in his car seat. “I don't want to go home,” he said.

“We're not going home,” explained Isabel. “We're going to see a man. And then, when we've seen the man, we can go and look at the sea. Would you like that?”

He would, he said, but would like it now.

She planted a kiss on his cheek. “Soon, my darling. Soon.”

“Will we see whales?” he asked.

Isabel did not want to raise his hopes too high. “Maybe.”

She thought of what Jamie had said. She knew that she had a tendency to allow her mind to wander, but surely that was what made the world interesting: one thought led to another, one memory triggered another. How dull it would be, she thought, not to be reminded of the inter-connectedness of everything; how dull for the present not to evoke the past; for
here
not to imply
there.

Neil Starling's house was a couple of miles away, separated from its nearest neighbour by a small clump of neglected Scots pines. It looked as if it had been a farmhouse, as there was a cluster of outbuildings behind it, one of which looked like a line of animal stalls. In front of the house, on a stretch of what might once have been a lawn, a boat sat on a trailer, its name painted in red on the bow:
The Gordon.
There was an attempt at a flower garden, but this had an untended look to it; it was a working house and yard.

Neil appeared at the door as they arrived. He was a tall man, somewhere in his fifties, thought Isabel, dark-haired and with a rather prominent aquiline nose. He looked fit, with the complexion of one who lived much of his life out of doors.

He greeted them warmly, and they followed him inside, where they met his wife, Andrea. Isabel noticed that she, like Neil, was tall, and there was a similar aquiline nose.
We marry people who look like us,
she thought. She glanced at Jamie.
Was he
her?

Over tea in the kitchen, while Andrea and Jamie entertained Charlie with a jigsaw puzzle, Isabel told Neil about Harry. Peter had given him a rough idea of what their visit was about, but now he sat rapt while she filled in the details.

When she had finished speaking, Neil sat back in his chair. “What an extraordinary story,” he said.

“Yes, it is. Of course, this little boy is probably imagining everything, but he's being so specific. That's what makes me feel unwilling to dismiss it out of hand.”

He agreed. “I think we need to be open-minded.”

“Yes.”

He frowned. “Let me get this straight: You want me to identify a likely house?”

“If you can. Or at least I'd like you to say that there isn't one here, if that, as I suspect, is what you feel.”

He rose from his chair and crossed to the window. He stared at the pine trees, and then turned round. “The lighthouse is the key, I suppose. The boy claims that the house was nearby? He said that, did he?”

“Yes. He said that they lived close to the lighthouse.”

“And could see islands? A big island behind a small one?”

“Something like that.”

“And a burn? He said that the burn was close to the house?”

“Just behind it, I think.”

He turned to face the window again. From the floor behind them, Charlie gave a cry of triumph. He had found a piece of jigsaw puzzle that fitted exactly. Isabel waited.

“There are a few houses,” Neil said suddenly. “One in particular, I think. Yes, there is one that could match that description. But…” He broke off, frowning.

She wondered what the qualification would be.

“There are other lighthouses. There are other islands.”

She told him that she knew that. “But we have to start somewhere.”

“True enough, I suppose.”

He sat down at the table again. “You said that the name of the people was Campbell?”

“Yes. I know, of course, that it's a common name round here.”

“It is. There are lots of Campbells and any number of Camerons.” He paused. “The house that came to mind, by the way, has been in the same hands for a long time. It belongs to a family called McAndrew. Hugh McAndrew was a fisherman—he owned a couple of trawlers up in Mallaig and did rather well from them. He's in his eighties now, and I think he lives somewhere up near Shieldaig. The house has been lived in for quite some time by his son, Willy. He's a welder, and works over in Fort William during the week. His wife lives there with the children—they're high-school age, I think; there's a high school over at Strontian—they're there, I think. One of them is very good at something or other—you see his photograph in the
Oban Times.
Running, I seem to remember. Or rugby. Something.”

He stopped, and made a gesture of helplessness with his hands. “Not much use, I'm afraid.”

“Any other houses?”

He thought for a moment. “Not down there. The lighthouse is quite isolated, you see. That's why I thought of that place. Otherwise it would be pretty much needle-in-a-haystack stuff.”

Isabel struggled with her disappointment. She had been prepared for this, but somehow she had hoped that it might have turned out differently. “Do you think I could see the place?”

“I see no reason why not. Would you want to meet them?”

“I wasn't thinking of that. I was mainly interested in the house. But I see no harm.” But then she thought again. “No, I don't think I should meet them. There's no point. They're not the people. And the whole thing is absurd, anyway.”

He was impassive. “So you just want to go and look at the house from the outside?”

“That would be enough. Yes.”

He smiled. “People are hospitable round here,” he said. “And I think you should meet them, you know.”

She gave a shrug. “If you think it's a good idea.”

He did. “Look, why don't I come with you? I can phone Willy McAndrew's wife and ask her to show us round. I'm sure she'll be happy to give us a cup of tea.”

Isabel hesitated. “If you…”

“I don't mind at all,” he said. “I have all the time in the world now.”

“You're fortunate,” she said.

He nodded. “But lots of people have all the time in the world, and yet don't know it. They fill their time—that's the problem; they clutter their lives. Then they discover they have none. But they once did, even if they did not know it.”

“Yes,” said Isabel, and in the car, on the way back to the hotel, she said to Jamie: “He's right about time.”

Jamie was not so certain. “A bit. He's a bit right.”

Isabel wondered aloud: “Can you be a bit right about something?”

A voice from the back of the car came up with an answer. “No.”

Grinning, Isabel turned round to look at Charlie in his car seat. “No,” he repeated.

“So you can't be right and wrong at the same time, Charlie?” she asked.

Charlie looked at her solemnly, and then shook his head. “Yes,” he said.

Jamie laughed. “Are you a little philosopher now, Charlie?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Ice cream,” said Charlie. “Please may I have some ice cream. I want ice cream.”

“Don't we all?” asked Jamie. “That's a bit of philosophy right there. We all want ice cream in this life. That's what we want. And that tells us an awful lot about human nature and the way we feel—which is what philosophy is all about, I would have thought.”

“Vanilla, please!” shouted Charlie from the back.

“And that,” Jamie continued, “is where aesthetics comes into it. Taste. Preference.” He slowed the car down to avoid a small family of sheep that had wandered off the verge. “Don't you think it would be a good thing if there were a book called
Philosophy for Babies
?”

“But of course,” said Isabel. “Of course. I'd buy a copy. Everybody with a baby would.”

“It would have very simple stories for parents to read to their baby. Minimal text, of course:
Kindness is nice. Don't throw toys at other babies.
That sort of thing.”

Isabel warmed to the theme. “Actually, it would have to be
Don't throw toys out of your pram.
That's the big issue with babies.”

“Would they understand?”

“They understand more than we imagine,” said Isabel.

“Look! Sheep!” shouted Charlie from the back of the car.

Jamie encouraged him. “Yes, lots of sheep.”

“Ham,” said Charlie.

“No, pigs give us ham,” said Jamie. “Sheep give us mutton.”

“Involuntarily,” muttered Isabel.

“Let's maintain a few illusions,” whispered Jamie in response. “Along with Santa, and the Tooth Fairy, of course.”

Isabel smiled. “What do you think the Tooth Fairy looks like?” she asked.

“I think of him as…”

“Him?” she interrupted. “I thought the Tooth Fairy was female. I've always thought of her wearing a tutu, sprinkling fairy dust and so on.”

Jamie shook his head. “Oh, I pictured him as a him. I just did. He's a rather theatrical type, I thought.”

Isabel smiled. “You shouldn't say things like that.”

He was surprised. “Like what?” And then it dawned on him. “No, I didn't mean it that way. I really didn't.” He shook his head again, apologetically now. “I never thought of the Tooth Fairy as being gay. I really didn't.”

“He might be,” said Isabel.

Jamie conceded that. He grinned. “Of course he might. I don't think it's an issue, that's all.” He paused. “More to the point: Why does he collect all those children's teeth?”

“When I was a little girl, I was told that he built castles out of them.”

“Bizarre,” said Jamie. “Perhaps he's just one of those people who can't resist filling their houses up with stuff—all sorts of stuff. Hoarding.” The idea appealed to him. “That's it. He's a hoarder.”

Isabel considered that for a moment. They were approaching the hotel, and the afternoon sun had painted its rooftop, its white harling, its chimneystacks, with red. “I've got news for you,” she whispered to Jamie, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that Charlie could not hear, but resorting, nonetheless, to their language of confidentiality, useful as long as Charlie never learned French.
“La fée des dents—or le fé des dents—n'existe pas.”

Jamie pretended hurt.
“Il n'existe pas? Vraiment?”

“Vraiment.”

LATER THAT NIGHT
as they lay in bed in the hotel, the curtains opened to admit the light that was still there at eleven, though faint, Jamie turned to Isabel and said drowsily, “You told me earlier—when we were coming back here—you told me that the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist…And I said
really?
or
vraiment?
And you replied with a nod of your head. So what else doesn't exist? Little green apples? Purity of heart?”

He was unclothed, as was she; the night was warm, and not even the top sheet, kicked down to the end of the bed, was needed. She reached out to lay a hand on his hip; his skin was smooth, and she thought,
You have no blemish, of any sort.
And you're pure of heart; of course you are—I could never love anybody who was rotten in his heart, as some are; who hate others or wish them ill; who are jealous and mean; who are unkind. Yet people—plenty of people—love people like that; in spite of all the evidence of their flaws, they love them. They love those whom they really should not love; are drawn to these objects of their affection, perhaps, like those unfortunate insects attracted to insect traps or the mantis that believes in a future with a female mantis and then discovers that he is the next meal.

“Purity of heart
does
exist,” said Isabel, her voice low, though there was nobody for them to disturb; Charlie was in the room next door, reached by a connecting but now closed door, and the two other rooms off the corridor were unoccupied. But it did not seem right to talk at all loudly in this semi-darkness, in this air that smelled of the sea and the gorse in the fields; air that had come here from far away, from the Outer Hebrides, from the Atlantic, from Canada itself.

She continued, “Mind you, I'm trying to think of anybody I know who's pure of heart.”

“There are people without guile,” said Jamie. “They do exist, I think. But I'm not sure if being without guile is the same thing as purity of heart.” He stopped, and she wondered for a moment whether he was drifting off to sleep; sometimes their conversations in bed ended that way—a dialogue slowly became a monologue, and then silence reigned. But he had more to say. “They could be a bit dull, couldn't they?”

He turned, and his back was to her. She took her hand away, to let him move, and then she placed it gently against the small of his back; it was an act of possession, she thought, this touching. He rolled over again, now lying on his back; his head turned slightly towards her. She saw that his eyes were open.

“You think the pure of heart are dull?” She did not want to reach that conclusion, but she realised he had a point. He was thinking of the same person as she was thinking of, she suspected, a completely worthy acquaintance who thought the best of everybody she encountered and never had a bad word to say about anything. Yet Chesterton had said, she remembered, that tolerance went with having no convictions. Was that true, or just a bit true? “Maybe. Yes, maybe you're right. They can end up having nothing to say, I suppose.”

“Or just plain boring,” said Jamie. He smiled. “I'm reading something at the moment…”

“That makes you smile?”

“Yes,” Jamie continued. “It's that history of late-medieval Scotland that Hector MacQueen wrote. He gave me a copy when we played that game of cricket over at Broomhall, at Lord Elgin's. There's something in it about a fourteenth-century character called Hugh the Dull.”