The Novel Habits of Happiness (22 page)

She giggled. “Hugh the Dull? Wonderful—such an expressive epithet by comparison with all those predictable ‘So-and-so the Great.' ” More odd descriptions came to her. “Wasn't there a Charles the Fat, who was the Holy Roman Emperor at some point—not to be confused with Charles the Bald, another Carolingian?”

Jamie had heard of neither. “Hugh the Dull was a member of the Douglas family. The rest of them were rather more colourful than he was. His brother was known as the Black Douglas and the Black Douglas's son was called Archibald the Grim. Hugh, by contrast, did not cut much of a figure—hence the name. History doesn't record his deeds because apparently they were too dull.”

“I love the thought of Archibald the Grim…”

He reached out to place a hand against her cheek. “So do I.”

“And Archibald the Grim must have been so dismissive of his father's brother, his uncle. Can't you hear him saying, ‘Uncle Hugh is just so dull, so very, very dull?' ”

He moved towards her and kissed her gently on the mouth. She closed her eyes. She could hear her heart beating within her.

“You know something,” he whispered. “I'm feeling uneasy. I'm scared.”

For a while she said nothing. How could Jamie be scared—here, of all places?

She was solicitous. “My darling, you can't be. You can't.”

“Not that sort of scared,” he said. “It's just that I feel uneasy, I suppose. I don't know why, but I do.”

N
EIL HAD TELEPHONED
the McAndrews and made the arrangements.

“Willy's wife Fiona told me they'll both be in,” he said as they set off the next morning. “He was out when I phoned, but she said that he's on holiday this week. He might be going fishing, though, depending on the weather.”

“Like his father?” said Isabel. “You said that he had a trawler.”

Neil pointed through the car window towards the expanse of blue that was the sea. “Some of them still go out there from time to time. They don't do it for a living, but they have prawn creels that they keep going. The old ways cling on.”

The road they were following dipped down towards the sea. Isabel looked out at what seemed like an unruffled field of blue; towards the horizon the reflected sunlight made the surface a stretch of spilled quicksilver. A fishing boat, tiny at this distance, ploughed its way across this field, its wake a white trail behind it.
These plains are for ever where cold creatures are hunted…
It was Auden's description of the sea in his “Journey to Iceland.” These were the same plains, she thought—the place where the fish were hunted, now, even in their diminished numbers, as they had been by the people who first lived in these same small white houses along the coast.

She caught Jamie's eye, and he smiled at her, as if to reassure her. He had mentioned his feeling of foreboding last night, and she had tried to reassure him. Now, though, she was herself feeling something of the same thing. There was something strange in this quest. It was, in one sense, ridiculous, almost risible—the pursuit of an imaginative child's dream—but in another she felt as if she were touching on something dark and dangerous. Reincarnation was about rebirth, but it was also about death. The child must die before he can become somebody else.

She remembered the phrase her father had used:
best left alone.
He said that about so many things, but particularly about the private affairs of others. He did not like gossip, and if Isabel should mention the misdeeds of another, he would reply firmly, “Best left alone, I think.” Her father had been a good judge of people, but he was charitable too, and the things that were best left alone were those that could hurt others.

She could say to Neil that she had changed her mind and that she did not want to see the house after all. Best left alone. Jamie would be surprised, but he would back her up; he always did.

She opened her mouth to say something, but it was Neil who spoke. “You can just see it from here,” he said. “You see those two houses down there—the white ones? The one on the left is what I had in mind. The one on the right is of much more recent construction—it was only built three years ago.”

She felt committed now. “It's a magnificent setting.”

“Yes, in the summer,” said Neil. “I'm not so sure that I'd like to spend the winter there. It's exposed to the north-east, and if the wind comes from that direction, one knows all about it.”

He gave instructions to Jamie, who was driving. Isabel, who was seated in the back with Charlie, pointed to the house, now only a few hundred yards away. “We're going to see some people,” she said.

“Will there be toys?” asked Charlie.

“Possibly,” replied Isabel. “These people have got big children—really big. But they may still have some of their toys. We can ask.”

FIONA M
c
ANDREW
came out of the house to meet them. She was casually dressed, in blue denim jeans and a white linen top. Her shoes, green working clogs, were badly scuffed. She greeted Neil warmly, and the two of them exchanged a few words about some local issue—a matter of road repairs, Isabel noted—and then she led them into the house. Isabel felt in her pocket for the slip of paper she had brought with her. Kirsten had given it to her: a rough map of the layout of the rooms of the house, as explained to her by Harry. She could not bring it out—one could not walk into somebody's house and immediately produce a floor plan—but she remembered what it showed. There was a small hall and then the living room. That was what was here; but then many houses have entrance halls and living rooms off them. Kirsten had said that he had given a description of a fireplace made of white stone. She hardly dared look as she entered the living room, but when she saw it she gave a start. Jamie noticed. “You all right?” he whispered.

She felt curiously empty. “Yes.” She pointed to the fireplace briefly, and then turned to Fiona, who had addressed her.

“My husband isn't here,” she said. “Sorry about that. He had to go into Fort William today because there was a crisis at his work. He'll probably be there all day, although he's meant to be on holiday. They don't care, do they?”

Isabel assumed that it was the employers rather than the employees, or husbands in general, who did not care. “No,” she said, her voice shaky from the shock of what she had seen. “They don't.”

Fiona picked up her anxiety, and frowned. “Are you okay?”

Isabel shook her head. She was not.

Jamie looked concerned. “What's wrong? Are you feeling ill?”

She suddenly wanted to cry. She felt ridiculous; there was no call for tears. “I'm so sorry.”

“You must sit down,” said Fiona. “I'll get a glass of water. It's this heat, maybe. I felt a bit odd yesterday—we're not used to it.”

Isabel shook her head. “Thanks, but it's nothing like that. It's just that I'm feeling a bit shocked.” She paused, trying to pull herself together. “Did Neil tell you what this is all about?”

Fiona turned to Neil. “You said something about a boy who stayed here some time ago. That was it, wasn't it?”

Isabel took it upon herself to answer. “It was. But it's a rather more complicated story. I'd like to tell you myself, if I may.”

Jamie offered to take Charlie outside. “He's going on about ducks,” he explained to Fiona. “He said that he saw some ducks.”

She laughed. “They'd like a visit, I think. They're round the back. You'll see a black bin we use for their feed. You can let him give them something, if you like.”

There was a pot of still warm tea on a tray near the hearth, and Fiona poured a cup for Isabel. Then she sat down and listened, along with Neil, to Isabel's explanation. Halfway through, a door opened and a teenage boy came in. He was introduced as Matthew.

“You're the runner, aren't you?” said Neil.

“High jump,” corrected Matthew.

“He's going to compete for Scotland next month,” said Fiona, proudly.

“Mum! We don't know yet whether I'm going to be picked. We don't.”

“You will be,” she said. “It's as good as done.”

Isabel was struck by Matthew's ginger hair. She noticed his skin, which was so pale as to be almost translucent; it was a colouring that one often found in the north-western part of Scotland—Viking colouring.

“I have to go,” said Matthew. “Jimmy's coming to pick me up.”

He left, giving Isabel and Neil an open, friendly smile.

“He's a great lad,” said Neil as the door closed behind the boy.

Fiona thanked him, then urged Isabel on. “But I've got to hear the end of this story. Please carry on.”

Isabel finished, and there was a silence. She had ended the story with a reference to the fireplace, which had brought forward an exclamation of astonishment from Fiona. “But we put that in,” she said. “Two months ago. There was one of those gas heaters there before—but we got fed up with changing the cylinders. We decided to go for wood—there's any amount of that round here.”

Neil raised an eyebrow. “Two months ago? Well, that settles that.”

Isabel felt almost relieved. “I suppose so,” she said.

“Maybe he saw a photograph,” said Neil. “Has this house been in any published photographs?”

Fiona thought for a moment. Then she smiled. “Yes,” she said. “It was in the
Scotsman.
In the magazine section. Very recently, as a matter of fact. There was an article on living near the Argyll coast, and they had a photograph—two photographs, in fact—of our house. I kept it.”

Isabel felt a sudden rush of relief. This was the answer. There was always a rational explanation to these things. The hovering UFO was simply an unusually dense cloud; the yeti was a moving shadow on the snow; the near-death experience was simply the dreaming of the oxygen-starved brain; she wished she could conclude otherwise, but she could not: there were no inexplicable phenomena; there was nothing that could not be measured or understood scientifically.

“Photos of what? This room?”

Fiona rose to her feet. “I'll show you,” she said. “It's in the cupboard.”

She left the room, and Neil gave a nervous laugh. “Funny, isn't it? Not reincarnation at all.”

“I must admit I'm relieved,” said Isabel. “I like a simple, realistic explanation. I like science and rationality to be vindicated.”

They sat in silence until Fiona returned; Neil, she had noticed, was not one to speak when he had nothing to say.

Fiona handed Isabel a protective plastic envelope containing a folded magazine. Isabel took the magazine out and examined the cover:
The Remote Life,
it proclaimed,
Five cottages on the edge.
She turned the pages to the article itself. There were the two photographs that Fiona had mentioned: one was of the view from the bedroom window, the other was of the living room. The fireplace was shown:
Snug, in spite of the gales,
ran the caption. And at the beginning of the article was the name of the journalist who had written it: George Campbell.

It took Isabel a moment or two to make the connection, but when she did she gave an involuntary cry of discovery. “Campbell,” she said. “The journalist's name was Campbell.”

Fiona shrugged. “He came to speak to us. He came with his photographer. They were from Glasgow, I think—or somewhere near there. Airdrie, Motherwell—I get them all mixed up.”

“Campbell!” repeated Isabel, and this time the others saw what she was driving at.

“I see,” said Neil quietly.

Isabel knew that Harry was a good reader, certainly confident enough to read the sentence under one of the photographs:
From the window the view is of the Ardnamurchan Lighthouse in the distance and beyond that the islands of Muck, Eigg and Rum.
“He must have seen this lying around somewhere,” she went on. “Heaven knows where, but he would have seen this and filed it away somewhere in his memory. Later it must have come out as an impression of something he had himself done. That happens, I've been told.” It happened to her: she remembered lines of Auden at odd moments, unprompted; she was unaware that the memories were there, but they had been laid down, to surface uninvited when something triggered them. And sometimes—not very often, but occasionally—she would think that the line was hers, and that she had said it, had been the author of an aphorism or an insight.

Neil asked whether it was likely that a six-year-old would read the papers, but she felt that it was quite possible that he had just picked up that page somewhere and had somehow taken it in. “That's not too fanciful,” she said. “It could easily happen. Children drink things in—especially boys. They love facts and figures. They read all sorts of things: the backs of cornflake packets, instruction leaflets, the most unlikely books.” She remembered something. “When I was seven I actually read some Bertrand Russell. I picked him up and struggled through ten pages or so. I was very proud of myself.”

“But you're a philosopher, aren't you?” said Neil, smiling. Yet he accepted her point, even though he had been half hoping for a different outcome; as had Fiona, who seemed disappointed.

“It's a pity,” she said. “I rather like the idea of coming back. It's quite a story, isn't it? That wee boy—it would have been nice to have thought that he had been here before.”