The Lost Art of Gratitude_ An Isabel Dalhousie Novel - Alexander McCall Smith [46]
Guy’s voice came down the line: “Are you still there, Isabel?”
“Yes. I was just thinking.”
“About Toqué?”
She looked up at the ceiling. “And other things.”
The conversation wound to a close. Guy would make further enquiries. In the meantime, Isabel should not raise her hopes too much, as there were always disappointments in the art world—so many pictures were not what their owners wanted them to be, and this might be no exception. “I think it’s likely to be exactly what it says in the catalogue. Dupra’s circle, not Toqué. But I’ll have a closer look, just in case.”
She wondered how important one had to be before one was given a circle. She had no circle, she thought: just Jamie and Charlie and Grace … and Brother Fox, of course. Or she was in his circle: Circle of Brother Fox, Scottish, early twenty-first century.
“I am naturally cautious,” Isabel said, before Guy hung up. But even as she said this, she wondered whether it was true. And if it was, was it something to be pleased about, or something to regret? Was natural caution found in people who did something with their lives, or was it a quality of those whose lives ran narrowly and correctly to the grave? The question depressed her. She did not want to be naturally cautious, she decided; she wanted to throw caution to the winds and … and what?
Grace appeared at the door of her study, a duster in hand. This was unusual: Grace did not like dusting, and only rarely did so. “We’re almost out of dishwasher detergent,” she said. “I’m worried that we’ll run out. Could you get some more?”
Isabel looked up. “Let’s just risk it,” she said. If one was going to throw caution to the winds, one had to start somewhere.
Grace looked at her in astonishment. “Risk it?”
Isabel shrugged. “I thought that perhaps …” She did not finish her sentence. “No, what I meant was, yes, I’ll get some more. One would not want to risk anything.”
“Of course,” said Grace. She gave Isabel a curious sideways look and left the room. That, thought Isabel, is the trouble: I live a life in which caution simply cannot be thrown to the winds; the winds in Edinburgh would throw it right back in one’s face. It was just that sort of place, and that is what its winds were like.
THE SECOND TELEPHONE CALL, the less welcome one, came an hour or so after Guy Peploe’s. This was from Minty Auchterlonie, or rather from her assistant, who asked, in rather cold tones, whether Isabel was available to take a call from her employer. Isabel said that she was, and there followed a brief pause before Minty came on the line. There were voices in the background during this pause, and she heard a man saying, “Due diligence? Have they done it yet?” The expression intrigued her—due diligence sounded rather like natural caution; perhaps it was the same thing. And she imagined one could not throw due diligence to the winds either.
Minty sounded anxious. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “But I really needed to speak to you. Can we talk freely?”
Isabel said they could. What listening ears did Minty imagine? Unsympathetic, hostile people, crowded about Isabel’s desk eager to hear something compromising, some scandalous morsel?
“Good,” said Minty. “I’m afraid that I’ve had another call from Jock, Roderick’s father. He wants me to bring Roderick to see him tomorrow. He insists. He says that he wants me to come to the Botanical Gardens.”
“Why? Why there?”
“God knows. He likes to see him in places where he can play with him, I think.”
Isabel waited for her to continue.
“And I can’t,” said Minty. “We’re going over to Skye for a few days. We’re taking some American clients of Gordon’s to Kinloch Lodge. It’s important. What would I say to Gordon? That I can’t go? That I have to meet my … my former lover?”
“Awkward,” said Isabel.
“More than awkward. Distinctly more than.”
Isabel cleared her throat. “I don’t really know what