The Lost Art of Gratitude

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 to suggest.” She thought: this is what happens when one has affairs. This is what happens.

“And I just don’t trust Jock,” Minty said.

Isabel tried to sound politely interested. “Oh?”

“He could so easily become a loose cannon,” Minty continued. “I’m terrified that he’ll phone the house.”

Isabel shrugged. “I suppose that’s always a danger.”

“And if he spoke to Gordon, then … well, he might say something.”

Isabel made a noncommittal remark. What she wanted to say was that this was a risk of having a clandestine affair—the best-known and most obvious risk.

Suddenly Minty became businesslike. “Can you go?”

“Me?”

“Yes. I don’t like to ask you, but I’m at my wits’ end. Please go and talk to him. Tell him that I just can’t do this. Offer him money.”

Isabel drew in her breath. Danegeld—the money that the Anglo-Saxons, and others, paid the Vikings to stay away. But the problem with Danegeld was that the Danes came back for more.

Minty continued. “Fifty thousand pounds. Tell him that if he drops all claims to Roderick I’ll give him fifty thousand pounds. Sixty. Go up to sixty.”

“No, I’m sorry. I really don’t think—”

Minty cut Isabel short. “Just this one thing. That’s all I ask. Just go and meet him. Keep him from doing anything stupid.”

For a moment Isabel said nothing. She had her reservations when it came to Minty Auchterlonie, but there was no doubting the anguish behind her words; the voice on the other end of the line, she thought, was that of a trapped woman. And with that assessment, Isabel realised that she could not turn Minty down. This was a cry for help, and one could not—and certainly she could not—leave such a cry unanswered.

“I’ll go,” she said. “But I don’t know what I’ll be able to do. Surely it’s better for you to try to speak to this man. Reason with him. Reach some sort of compromise.”

“I can’t,” said Minty. “I’m scared of him. I’m scared of what he’ll do.”

Isabel wanted to say that she did not think of Minty as being a type to be scared, but she could not.

“I just can’t face him,” Minty went on. “Do you think I’m a coward?”

Isabel said that she did not. “You’re in a very difficult position,” she said.

“I can’t face him,” Minty repeated. “I’m afraid of what I might do. I want to kill him. I really do.”

Isabel tried to calm her down. “You feel angry, that’s all. And a bit frightened. Understandably.”

“Angry.”

“Well, I understand,” said Isabel. “But this offer of payment—I don’t think that we should mention money just yet. I think that I should see whether I can reason with him first. I want to talk to him about what he’s been doing. This campaign against you. People can sometimes be shamed into stopping what they’re doing if you confront them. Shame is a powerful thing, you know.”

The silence at the other end of the line made Isabel wonder whether Minty really understood about shame. But of course she did; Isabel had been wrong about her. Minty was quite normal; she was not a psychopath, as Isabel had once thought her to be, and that meant that she would have a normal understanding of shame, and guilt, and all the other emotions and feelings forming the emotional backdrop to our lives.

“You go over to Skye,” said Isabel. “And I’ll go to the Botanical Gardens.”