The Lost Art of Gratitude

Isabel listened, solemnly, then burst out laughing, to be joined by Jamie. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and he kissed her back, not lightly, but with passion.

She said, “Oh,” and he said, “Isabel Dalhousie, please marry me.”

CHAPTER SIX

THAT SHE SAID YES, and then yes, again, changed everything, but also changed nothing. There was no change in her world the next morning when she got out of bed to attend to Charlie; she was still Isabel Dalhousie, mother, with a child to look after and a house and philosophical review to run. She was still responsible for her somewhat unruly garden, with its attendant fox and rhododendron bushes; she was still the owner of a green Swedish car; she was still the aunt of the rather unpredictable and sometimes moody Cat; she remained a patron of Scottish Opera—to whom she reminded herself to send a cheque; all of that was the same. But now she was Jamie’s fiancée it seemed to her that her future—that bit of ourselves in which to a greater or lesser degree we live our lives—had changed utterly. Now the future was no longer a vague, uncharted territory; following Jamie’s proposal on the piano stool after the singing of his new song, “Olives All Gone,” it had acquired a shape.

Of course he had proposed once before. It was a year or so earlier, when they had come out of Lyon & Turnbull’s auction rooms and made their way to the Portrait Gallery restaurant. He had told her that he wanted to marry her; she had been reluctant and had put him off, not because she had any doubts about him, or his seriousness, but because she was concerned—overly concerned, perhaps—about his freedom. That was when she was more sensitive than she now was about the difference in their ages. But now she barely thought about it. So what? people had said. And the liberating effect of those two, sometimes immensely dangerous words, had eventually been felt. So what if Jamie was a bit younger than she was; so what?

She had regretted her refusal and had hoped that he would mention marriage again, but he had not. Subsequently she considered broaching the subject herself, and on one or two occasions had come close to doing so, only to be inhibited by a vague sense of embarrassment. The problem was this: a woman did not ask a man to marry her, at least conventionally. There was no reason for it, of course, other than social custom, and Isabel knew that this was changing. People said that plenty of women were proposing to men—a third of all women, she had read—but prepared as she was to accept this figure, she could not think of anybody she actually knew who had proposed to their husbands. That did not mean that they had not done so, of course; there are some things that a large number of people do but few will admit to.

Entertaining subversive thoughts, for example, in a society in the grip of a political hegemony is not something that people will readily admit to, such is the power of intellectual intimidation; and yet people do have such thoughts. And when it comes to something that reflects on a person’s desirability or popularity, then the tendency to reticence may be particularly marked. Not everyone would care to admit to finding a spouse through an advertisement—or to be the subject of an advertisement; where is the romance in finding somebody through a lonely hearts column, cheek by jowl with Cars For Sale and Miscellaneous Bargains? Therein lay an admission of personal failure: the glamorous, the attractive, the sought-after, they had no need to advertise, whereas the inadequate and the unwanted did.

This thought crossed her mind—only to be quickly dismissed. It was not like that at all: there were plenty of perfectly eligible people who resorted to the services of an introduction agency or who advertised, and the results were often very successful. And there were plenty of women—there must be—who even if they proposed to a man might just as easily have received proposals themselves. No, the male monopoly of proposals, such as it was, was untenable and should be abandoned. And yet, and yet … the fact of the matter was that she had lacked the courage to propose to Jamie.

It did not matter. She could now say my fiancé, and they could exchange rings. She wanted to give him one too and had already seen one she liked in a jeweller’s window in Bruntsfield. It was a discreet band made of rose-coloured gold; a lovely thing which it had never occurred to her she would eventually purchase. And when it came to a ring for her, when Jamie had mentioned it she had suggested something modest; she did not want him to spend too much. Of course, now that they were engaged the whole issue of the disparity in their respective means could disappear. Her possessions would be his by virtue of the marriage, and vice versa, of course; Jamie was about to become well-off.