“I’m telling you this because you ought to know it. You’d tell a friend, wouldn’t you? You’d tell her if you knew that some man—some married man—was going to deceive her.”
Cat opened her eyes again. “You think he’s deceiving me?”
It had not occurred to Isabel that Cat might know that Dove was married. She had assumed that Cat would not get involved with a married man, but that assumption she now realised—and it was a sudden, shocking realisation—was perhaps unjustified. Cat belonged to a generation that did not feel particularly strongly about marriage, in that many of them did not bother about getting married, and so perhaps they did not regard married people as being off-limits. I have been so naïve, she thought; so naïve.
She struggled to find the words. “Well…I thought that…I thought that you might have believed that he was single. It’s difficult sometimes if…”
Cat interrupted her. “It’s just fine for you,” she said. “You come here and tell me this…You’re not content with taking Jamie from me; now you come along and…and spoil this. Why can’t you just…”
Isabel couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Took Jamie from her? She drew in her breath; there was so much to be said, as there always is in the face of an outrageous accusation. “I did not take Jamie from you. You can’t say that. You got rid of Jamie. You got rid of him. He wanted you to take him back for ages, ages, and you wouldn’t hear of it. Then you stand there and tell me that I took him from you.”
“No,” said Cat. “It wasn’t like that.”
Isabel reached out again, but Cat turned away. “Cat!”
“Just leave me. Please, just leave me.”
The door of the delicatessen opened. Isabel looked round and saw that it was Eddie. He came over to the counter and smiled at her. Then he started to address Cat, whose back was turned. “My teeth are fine,” he said. “The dentist didn’t have to do anything, except polish them. Look.”
He opened his mouth in a wide grin. Isabel made a gesture towards Cat. “I’m going,” she said. “Look after Cat, please.”
She left the delicatessen and began to walk down the street in the direction of Chamberlain Road. The brow of Church-hill rose gently in front of her, and at the end, beyond the rise, were the Pentlands, blue at this distance, with a mantle of low cloud. She had once read a poem somewhere, by an Irish poet she seemed to recall, which suggested that we could all be saved by keeping our eye on the hill at the end of the road. What he meant by being saved was not clear. We could not be saved, she thought, from anything just by looking at a hill; certainly not from the raw pain that came from divisions between people, between brother and brother, sister and sister, aunt and niece. Then it occurred to her: one might be saved from taking one’s petty concerns—and one’s petty feuds—too seriously if one looked up at the hills. That must have been it.
WALTER BUIE’S DOG , a Staffordshire terrier, mesomorphic, muscle-bound in the way of a small pugilist, growled at Isabel, baring stumpy, discoloured teeth. Such was his halitosis that even from where she stood, a good three feet from the unfriendly animal, she could smell him.
“Now then, Basil,” said Walter, reaching down to pull at the dog’s collar. “We must not be unfriendly.”
He pulled the dog away and it slunk off, with the air of a small-time thug whose plans for a fight have been defeated, but only temporarily.
“Such a nice dog,” said Isabel. “Staffordshires have such character.”
The compliment pleased Walter Buie, who beamed back at her. “How kind of you to say that. Some people find Basil a bit…a bit difficult to get to know. But he’s got a good heart, you know.”
Isabel raised an eyebrow involuntarily. “Every dog has something to offer,” she said. She was going to say something more, but could not.
“Exactly,” said Walter. “But look, do come in. I didn’t mean to keep you on the doorstep.”
They made their way into the drawing room.
“My mother,” said Walter. “I don’t believe you’ve met her.”
Isabel had not expected to find anybody else in the room and was momentarily taken aback. She recovered quickly, though, and moved over to the window where the elderly woman was standing. Walter’s mother had half turned round and extended a hand to Isabel. Taking it, Isabel felt the dry skin, the roughness. She looked at Mrs. Buie and saw the recessed eyes, the folds dotted with liver spots.
“I was going to make tea,” said the older woman. “Walter, let me do that. You stay and talk to…”
“Isabel.”
“Of course.” The eyes were fixed on Isabel, but they were still. There was little light in them. “I knew your mother, you know. We played bridge now and then.”
Isabel caught her breath. Her mother; her sainted American mother.
“She was such an attractive woman,” said Mrs. Buie. “And amusing.”
Isabel thought: Yes, she was. So many people said that—that she made people laugh.
“And your poor father,” Mrs. Buie added.
Isabel said nothing. She wondered what would follow. Did Mrs. Buie know about her mother’s affair—the affair that Isabel herself had found out about only when her cousin had revealed it to her, on being pressed to do so by Isabel herself? Perhaps she did, but it seemed strange that she would mention it on a first meeting, unless, of course, she had become disinhibited. Age brought that sometimes, with the result that all sorts of tactless things might be said.
But Mrs. Buie had nothing more to add and made her way out of the room to make the tea.
Walter Buie gestured to a sofa near the window.
“The painting?” he said as they sat down. “You said you had some information for me.”
Isabel looked past him to a picture on the wall above his head. It was, she thought, a McTaggart. He caught her eye.
“McTaggart,” he said. “My mother’s.” He gestured around the room. “These are all hers. She’s the one with the collection.”
“But you bought the McInnes?”
He nodded. “I did.”
She decided that she should wait no longer. “I don’t think it’s a McInnes,” she said.
She watched him very closely. At first it seemed that he had not heard her, or had mistaken what she had said. He had been smiling when their conversation had started, and he was still smiling. But then it was as if a shadow had passed over his face. The face has a hundred muscles, she thought; even more. It has such a subtle surface—like that of water, sensitive to changes of light, to the movement of wind—and as indicative, every bit as indicative, of the weather.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“You don’t know that it’s a forgery?” She felt her heart beating within her; she was accusing him now, and she was suddenly aware that it was the wrong thing to do. But the accusation had slipped out.
“Are you suggesting—” He broke off. He was looking down at the carpet, unable to meet her eyes. But it was not guilt, she decided; it was pain.
“Please,” she said, impulsively reaching out to lay a hand upon his sleeve. “Please. That came out all wrong. I’m not suggesting that you tried to sell me a forgery.”
He seemed to be puzzling something out. Now he looked up at her. “I suppose you thought that because I wanted to sell it quickly.”
“I was surprised,” she said. “But I thought that there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation.” That was a lie, she knew. I am lying as a result of having made an unfair assumption. And I lied, too, when I paid a compliment to that unpleasant dog of his. But I have to lie. And what would life be like if we paid one another no compliments?
Isabel thought now that he was debating with himself whether to say something. When he spoke, it was with hesitation, and his voice was lowered. “I have to sell it,” he said. “Or, rather, had to. If what you say is true, then…”
“You need the money?” It seemed unlikely to her. This was an expensive house and the furniture, the pain
tings, the rugs on the floor—none of these suggested financial need.
He stared at her. He had the look of one who has said enough and is reluctant to say more. But there was more.
“I need to raise slightly more than one hundred thousand pounds,” he said. “I didn’t need to when I bought the painting. Then I did.”
Isabel waited, and he continued. “It’s my own fault,” he said quietly. “I gave a personal guarantee for a friend who was involved in a management buyout of the company he worked for. It all seemed very solid when I agreed to back him, but an accountant somewhere along the line had deliberately misrepresented the liabilities. My friend goes under if I don’t come up with the money. He loses his house—everything. And I’m godfather to his son.”
She was silent. It was utterly convincing, and it was while she was thinking of how unjust she had been in her assumptions that she heard Mrs. Buie behind her. She was standing in the doorway, holding a tray. She took a step forward and put the tray down on a side table. She looked at Isabel.
“That painting is not a forgery,” she said.
“Mother…”
Mrs. Buie raised a hand. Her eyes flashed angrily at her son, who was silenced in the face of her disapproval. “Do you imagine that we would attempt to sell a forgery? Is that what you think, Miss Dalhousie?”
Isabel felt the power of the older woman’s disapproval. Her reply was conciliatory. “No. I’m sorry—I didn’t suggest that. But it’s quite possible, isn’t it, that one might in good faith sell something which is not genuine? I could imagine that happening to me. I might sell something which I thought…”
Mrs. Buie shook her head vigorously. “With all due respect, Miss Dalhousie, that would happen only when one didn’t know much about the artist. I’ve known Andrew McInnes for a long time. I’m very familiar with his work. There’s probably nobody else who’s as familiar with it.”
“Knew him,” said Walter Buie. “Knew him, Mother.”
This intervention was ignored. “And I assure you that the painting that Walter bought is absolutely genuine. It is the work of Andrew McInnes. There’s just no question about it.” She paused. “And there’s another thing. That particular painting of Walter’s is really very good. It’s far better than anything that he painted ten years ago. Far better.”
“It’s unsigned,” said Isabel. “And it’s unvarnished.”
“That’s because he didn’t have the time,” said Mrs. Buie. “There’s nothing more to it than that.”
There was a silence. Isabel frowned. She was intrigued by something that Mrs. Buie had said. What did she mean when she expressed the view that the painting was better than anything painted ten years previously? She decided to press the point. “So you know when it was painted?” she asked.
The question took Mrs. Buie by surprise, and for a moment she seemed flustered. “I’m not sure…”
“But you said that he didn’t have time to varnish it,” pressed Isabel. “Forgive my asking, but how do you know?”
Then it dawned on her. It was so obvious. Andrew McInnes was not dead. I’ve known Andrew McInnes for a long time. People like Mrs. Buie, with her precise speech, did not mix up their tenses.
“He’s alive, isn’t he?” Isabel spoke so softly that she barely heard her own voice, but Mrs. Buie heard it, as did Walter; he gave a start and spun round to stare at his mother.
“No,” said Mrs. Buie. “Andrew died. He was drowned off Jura.”
Isabel watched her as she spoke, and saw the lie. It was evident, exposed; a person of Mrs. Buie’s nature, she thought, finds it hard to lie, impossible even.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Buie,” she said quietly. “I know that it’s rude of me, but you did seem to imply that you knew when the picture was painted. And then you said that you know Andrew McInnes, not knew. Forgive me for thinking that he is alive, and that you are finding it really rather difficult to continue to claim that he isn’t.”
Mrs. Buie looked away. When she spoke, her voice was distant. “Yes. You’re right.”
Walter glanced at Isabel. “Mother is perhaps not well,” he muttered.
Mrs. Buie turned to look first at Walter and then at Isabel. There was irritation in her voice. “I’m perfectly well,” she said. “And yes, Andrew is alive. You believe that you know a great deal, Miss Dalhousie, but I’m sorry to say that from my perspective you don’t really know very much at all. If you had bothered to go to the library and read the papers, you would have seen the reports. And you would have read that the body of Andrew McInnes was never recovered. It was assumed that he had been devoured by that whirlpool, but he was not. He made it to the shore after his boat capsized and it was then that it occurred to him that he had the ideal opportunity to make a fresh start—as somebody else. And who can blame him?”
There was silence. “Well?” prompted Mrs. Buie. “Can you blame him?”
“No,” said Isabel. “I can understand.”
Mrs. Buie appeared pleased. “Well, that’s something,” she said. She turned back to face her son. “That painting, Walter, which you so foolishly bought, was sent down to Lyon & Turnbull by me. Yes, by me.”
“You should have told me. You should have told me about that…and about Andrew.”
Her answer was snappy. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell you something that I had given my word not to reveal. Nobody was to know that Andrew survived.”
Walter was shaking his head in disbelief. “And you let me offer the painting to somebody else—to Miss Dalhousie here—although you knew full well that it was not what I thought it was. You let me carry on.”
“It is exactly what you said it was,” said Mrs. Buie. “You were deceiving nobody. And if you had told me that you were going to buy it, instead of going off by yourself, then you wouldn’t have found yourself in this mess in the first place. Why did you suddenly get it into your head to buy a McInnes? Why didn’t you discuss it with me? I would have told you then. I would have put you off.”
Isabel thought she knew the answer to this. Walter Buie was trying to lead his own life, which was difficult, she imagined, with Mrs. Buie still being in the house. She felt a momentary surge of sympathy for him; he did not seem a weak man, but he was still a boy as far as his mother was concerned. The pictures on the wall were his mother’s, bought by her; perhaps he wanted something of his own.
That was Walter; his mother, though, was a different matter. Mrs. Buie was such an unlikely conspirator, and Isabel wondered how she had been drawn into this elaborate deception. “Why did Andrew McInnes get in touch with you?” she asked. “If he wanted to disappear totally—which he must have—then why…”
Mrs. Buie cut her short. “As you know, I was his…well, I suppose you might call me his patron. I bought his paintings before he disappeared, and I have been supporting Andrew for the last eight years or so, not in a big way, but supporting him nonetheless. He needs some money for an orthopaedic operation which he is having to wait a rather long time for on the national health service. He is in pain and can get it done privately more or less when he wants it. So I arranged for a couple of paintings to be sold.”
She glared at Isabel. “I had not imagined that somebody might make things difficult for us by concluding that the paintings were forgeries. They are not that.”
Walter Buie was staring at his mother, his lower lip quivering. “You could have told me,” he said reproachfully. “You could have told me that he was alive. You said nothing. Yet you saw the painting.”
Her voice was sharp when she replied. “As I’ve said, I have always respected Andrew’s desire for privacy. And your trouble, Walter, is that you are rash. If you hadn’t backed Freddy like that, you wouldn’t be in this mess. John told you not to do it. Remember? He spelled out the danger.”
“Freddy was my friend. Is my friend.”
“Friendship and business are not always compatible,” she snapped back at him. Then, reaching up to finger a string of pearls around her neck, she
turned to Isabel. “Is it too much to ask you to respect Andrew’s wishes? If you spread this and he is outed, as they say these days, then I can tell you one thing: I am quite sure that he will do something foolish.”
“Disappearing in the first place was rather foolish, I would have thought,” said Isabel.
“Don’t joke about it, Miss Dalhousie,” said Mrs. Buie. “Suicide is not a joke.”
WHEN ISABEL RETURNED from the Buie house, she saw the light on the hall telephone blinking at her, signalling that a message had been left. There were two.
“May I come round for supper tonight?” asked Jamie. “I’ve got some fish that I could bring. Two pieces of halibut. They’re quite small, but they’ll taste really nice. I’ll cook them.”
And then, in the next message, before which a recorded voice said it would take twenty-two seconds to deliver, Cat said: “Look, I’m sorry. I really am. I make a mess of everything and you’re always so nice about it. But that’s what you’re like. You’re kind and understanding and all the rest, and I’m just stupid. Will you forgive me? Again? One more time?”
Isabel smiled at this. She had expected it, of course, but had not known exactly when, and how, it would come. She put down the handset and walked into the morning room, her head light with relief. It was late morning now and the sun was shining in through the skylight overhead, making a square of strong, buttery light on the faded red of the Turkish carpet, or Turkey carpet, as her father had called it. It was warm.
She went over in her mind what she had heard that morning; there would be a great deal to tell Jamie that evening, over their two pieces, small pieces, of halibut. So Andrew McInnes was alive; well, his body had never been found—she had been told that—and so she should have thought of the possibility that he was still alive. But she had not, however obvious it appeared with the judgement of hindsight. But then she thought: I have only Mrs. Buie’s word for that, and I barely know her. It could be that…She stopped and looked up through the skylight, into the empty blue. It was perfectly possible that Mrs. Buie and Walter had made up the whole story in order to conceal their being party to forgery or to the attempted sale of a painting they had decided was forged. It would be a neat solution for them. Walter might have suspected that Isabel had stumbled across the real reason for his try at a hasty sale. He might then have discussed it with his mother, who might have helped him concoct the story of the failed management buyout and his friend’s desperate need for money. It was all too pat, all too neat. And she had swallowed it—even accepting Mrs. Buie’s melodramatic warning of a suicide attempt by McInnes. That was a crude threat: the notion that somebody might take his life if we proceed with some course of action is a guaranteed way of stopping things in their tracks. And I fell for it, thought Isabel. I fell for it so very easily.