The Lost Art of Gratitude_ An Isabel Dalhousie Novel - Alexander McCall Smith [75]
It had not been an argument, merely a discussion about why things are done, or not done, the way they are—or are not.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHE LEFT THE OFFICES of McGregor, Fraser & Co. and walked the short distance into Charlotte Square itself. It was a little after noon, and she felt at a loose end. Grace had been left in charge of Charlie until two, and was taking him out to lunch with one of her spiritualist friends, Annie, a woman whom Isabel had not met but of whom she had heard a great deal. Annie, who came from the Isle of Mull, was said to have a particular gift of second sight. “A lot of people from the islands are like that,” said Grace. “They see things we don’t see. Annie often knows what the weather is going to be like. It’s uncanny.”
Isabel had been about to suggest that Annie might perhaps watch the weather report, but checked herself. She had discovered that there was no point in engaging with Grace on these issues, as her housekeeper usually interpreted even mild disagreement as a direct challenge to her entire Weltanschauung. Not that Grace felt undermined by such exchanges. “You’ll find out,” Isabel had once heard her mutter. “You’ll find out once you cross over.”
Isabel had thought about this. She was open-minded enough to recognise that the self—or the soul, if one wished—might have an extra-corporeal existence that might just survive the demise of the mass of brain tissue that appeared to sustain it; the rigid exclusion of that possibility could be seen as much as a statement of faith as its rigid assertion. That is what she believed, and it allowed her to concede that Grace could be right. It also allowed her to find room for spirituality in its attempt to give form to a feeling that there was something beyond what we could see and touch.
“I’ve never asked you this,” Jamie had once said, as they sat together one summer evening on the lawn. “Do you believe in …” He looked at her and spread his hands to create a space.
And that space, she thought, might be God. “In God? Is that what you’re asking?” She assumed so, although he could very easily have been about to ask, “Do you believe in Scottish independence?” or “Do you believe in pouring the milk in first when you make a cup of tea?” Both important questions, but not ones that would necessarily lead to much.
He picked a tiny blade of grass and idly began to strip it down; how complex—and perfect—the construction of even this little piece of vegetation. “Yes. I suppose that’s what I want to know.”
“And you?” she asked.
“You first. I asked you.” Children dared one another in this way: you jump first, no you, no you go, then I will.
She lay back on the grass. The night was warm as was the lawn itself, warm, breathing out into the darkening air. The earth breathes, she thought.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Not in the white-bearded sense. But I sense something that is beyond me. I’m not sure I would give it the name God. But one could, if one wanted to.”
He listened carefully, and she realised, turning her head slightly so that she could see him, that for him this was one of the most intimate conversations they had ever had. To talk about sex was nothing to talking about God; the body stripped bare was never as bare as the soul so stripped. “And what about you?” she asked gently.
“I don’t think about it very much. It’s not really the sort of thing that I think much about.”
The answer pleased her. She would not have wanted him to reveal a certainty concealed up to this point. And there was something unattractive about a belief that excluded all doubt.
“But you’re not an out-and-out atheist? You don’t deride people who do believe in God?”
Again his answer pleased her. “No, not at all. People need some idea … some idea of where they are.”
“Exactly.”
He had been lying down too, and now he propped himself up on an elbow and faced her. “And there’s Mozart.”
She encouraged him to explain.
“Mozart,