The Lost Art of Gratitude

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 journals were shelved. There were very few people around at this level of the library, and she experienced the somewhat disconcerting feeling that can accompany being alone, or almost alone, in a large room. Here it was intensified by the long rows of books, marching off to the vanishing point. Books are not mute, she thought; they have things to whisper, and here in this open-plan library there are no walls to mute their whispers.

She made her way slowly down one of the passages between the stacks. There were so many journals, and these groaning shelves housed only those with a physical existence. Behind them, somewhere in the ether, were the electronic journals that never ended up on paper—a whole virtual world in which the exchanges of opinion were every bit as real as those that resided in print. And yet that virtual world seemed so shadowy by comparison with these squat volumes, and perilous too: Isabel had browsed a philosophical bibliography recently and come across a reference to a journal called Injustice Studies. The title had intrigued her, and all the more so because the list’s compiler had written underneath the title: “Seems to have disappeared.” She imagined the editor of Injustice Studies complaining: It’s so unfair, it really is. Our journal was really important, and then …