The Lost Art of Gratitude_ An Isabel Dalhousie Novel - Alexander McCall Smith [33]
Isabel left the room, a smile lingering on her lips. Will there be dugs? Will there be dogs? That might be the dread question that every fox thinks when contemplating his end—if foxes are aware of mortality. Will there be dugs, or will it be easy?
LEAVING THE HOUSE shortly after ten, Isabel set off across the Meadows for George Square and the University Library. It was one of her favourite walks, as it afforded a good view of the skyline of the Old Town, a serrated line of chimney pots and spires that followed the ridge stretching down from the Castle to Holyrood. Behind that line was the Fife sky, across which scudded clouds blown in from the North Sea: wisps of grey, banks of darkening purple, splashes of white. Edinburgh could experience within a few minutes all four seasons, and the skies characteristic of each.
The University Library occupied the south side of a square that had been largely destroyed by the architectural vandalism of the sixties. One side of the square survived though, and this was bounded by a cobbled street running south to north. The buildings on this side, a perfect row of Georgian houses three storeys high, were now occupied by university offices and chaplaincies, by small academic departments and the University Press. Here too was a chapel for students of Orthodox faith, a basement transformed by icons and the chanting of priests; here, Isabel remembered, was the office of the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, a language that had words for this little bit of a small island, this land of rain and clouds and shafts of poetry.
Everywhere in this city, everywhere Isabel went, there were memories. As an eighteen-year-old she had come to a poetry reading on this side of the square, in the School of Scottish Studies; it was given by a Gaelic poet, who read in both his own language and English. Isabel had been unable to understand his Gaelic, but had followed it on a crib sheet thoughtfully provided by the organisers; it had sounded like the wind and waves breaking on the shore; the words of a language that suited its landscape. And then, in English, he had read a poem about the death of his mother, whose breath, he said, had run out, like the tide draining out of a sea loch; now he ached, he confessed, for the star that had been extinguished. To be the mother of a poet, she thought, must be a fine thing.
She went into the library, which, as a former member of the philosophy department—although a low-paid and junior one—she was still entitled to use. It was unusually quiet, as the undergraduate students were away for the summer, leaving the library to those studying for higher degrees, the pursuers of masters’ degrees and doctorates. She saw one of the librarians whom she knew slightly, a young man from the Isle of Skye who always looked vaguely apologetic, as if the service that they were offering was somehow unsatisfactory. She imagined his saying, We don’t have that book, I’m so sorry, but there are other books, you know, and we might have those … But that was not what he said as he scurried past Isabel on some errand. Instead he said, “Dr. Henderson has gone. Did you know that? He was such a nice man.” Isabel, who had no idea who Dr. Henderson was, expressed regret. What a shame. And it was, she said to herself; if this librarian considered him a nice man, then that was what he probably was. And he would be regretted, as nice men were when they left. But gone where?
“Where?” she asked.
The librarian frowned. “Where?”
“Where has he gone?”
The librarian looked askance at her; surely she knew. “He died. He was run over.”
Isabel gasped. “I’m so sorry.”
The librarian gave her a slightly reproving look and excused himself to continue his errand. That misunderstanding was not my fault, Isabel told herself. One does not say of a person who has been run over that he has gone. Gone before, perhaps, if one is both religious and euphemistic—not to say distinctly old-fashioned—but one did not simply say gone.
She made her way up to what she called the philosophy floor, where the philosophical