The Charming Quirks of Others by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

then back at Cat. She’s reverted to type, she thought. Bruno, with his elevator shoes, was an exception: Gordon was tall, with the easy confidence of the good-looking. She resisted the temptation to look at his legs—Cat had views on men’s legs, she was sure of it. In fact, Cat herself in an unguarded moment had said something about how importantlegs were. She liked legs to be strong; Toby, the skier, several boyfriends ago, had well-muscled legs, Isabel seemed to remember. Stop it, she told herself. Don’t think this way. Stop it.
    She invited them into the house, feeling as she did so a stab of guilt over the advantage she enjoyed. This was their first meeting, and yet she knew Gordon’s age from the documents in the study, and the university where he had done his first degree: Aberdeen. President of the Students’ Union. Scottish Universities’ rugby team (captain, tour of South America). In respect of all of this he looked the part; but there was something else—something that she had noticed immediately. Presence.
    Jamie was in the kitchen, and she took them there. I feel like a spy, she thought. I feel like one of those people who does the positive vetting of applicants for posts in the secret services; who know everything about the people they meet because they have pored through their records beforehand; absorbed the intimate secrets of a life, stripping away the armour that privacy affords, rendering the other naked.
    “We’ve left the eggs out for your supper,” said Isabel. “Jamie and I were thinking of going out for a bite to eat after this talk we’re going to. Would that be all right?”
    Cat glanced at Gordon, as if for confirmation. “Fine,” she said. “Take as long as you like.”
    Isabel wondered what they would do. Babysitters usually watched television, or that is what householders assumed. But when they came in pairs … She recalled reading somewhere about a babysitter who was found taking a bath when the parents returned. Why not? Student flats, in which many babysitters lived, had uncomfortable baths and not enough hot water. Visiting a house with a good supply of hot water and clean towelsmight be just too much of a temptation. And yet there was an element of trust involved: one did not imagine that a person left in one’s house would open drawers, for example, or read one’s correspondence, or even run a bath. That was what the story of Goldilocks and the three bears was all about: breach of trust.
    She would have to look at this for the
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. What were the limits of trust in everyday life? What liberties could we legitimately take when we were entrusted with the property of others? Could you read a book you were looking after for somebody? Yes, she thought, you could. Drink from their bottle of water? No. Germs dictated that. Take fruit from a bowl? No. A nut from a dish of nuts? Yes. Sit in their chairs? Of course: chairs are public, and one only needs to seek permission to sit in another’s chair if the owner of the room is present; once you were by yourself, any chair was fair game. Except the chairs of really important people—one should not sit on a throne when left unattended in a monarch’s throne room; that really was going too far. And yet who would miss such an opportunity? There could surely be little doubt but that visitors to Her Majesty sat down on the nearest throne when Her Majesty went out to fetch something. And, indeed, polite American presidents actually engineered excuses to leave the Oval Office for a few moments so that their guests could run round and sit in the President’s chair for a few seconds. The only occasion when this had led to embarrassment was when President de Gaulle had visited the White House and had momentarily dropped off to sleep while seated in the President’s chair.
    Isabel smiled. Cat glanced at her suspiciously.
    “Parapsychology,” said Gordon. “Cat tells me that you’re going to a lecture on