The Novel Habits of Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

there plotting my downfall, but…but I’m wary of them, I suppose. Dove is a slippery piece of work and Lettuce is a great pompous whale. I suppose if I were to continue the marine metaphor, Dove is a shark and Lettuce is a whale, or perhaps a sea lettuce—there is such a thing, you know—it’s a sort of seaweed.” She trailed off. “Why…”
    “They’re in the common room,” said Edward quietly. “They’re here.”
    Isabel opened her mouth to say something, but realised that she did not know what to say.
    “Yes,” said Edward. “So I thought I should warn you. It wouldn’t do, I think, to go into a room and discover that it was full of one’s enemies.”
    Isabel struggled with herself. They were not
real
enemies; she liked neither of them, but that did not mean that they were people she would avoid at all cost. “I’ll be able to cope,” she said. “I appreciate the warning, but I don’t mind meeting them again.”
    Edward still looked concerned. “Are you sure?”
    She stood up. “Yes, perfectly sure. Let’s take our coffee into the common room.”
    “If you wish…”
    “I think we should.”
We
should; but it was not a matter in which she should involve Edward—the presence of Dove and Lettuce were not an issue for him. “Or should I say
I
should. I mean…” She stumbled on the words; this was getting complicated. “That’s to say, I can’t exactly avoid them, and why should I, after all?”
    Edward spoke sympathetically. “Well then,” he said. “Let’s go.”
    As they left the room, she asked him, in a lowered voice, why Dove and Lettuce were there. “Are they on visiting fellowships?” She assumed that this would be the case, as visiting fellowships were the core of the Institute’s work; they were its
raison d’être.
    Edward shrugged. “I have no idea. Perhaps they are. Or perhaps they know somebody here and have just dropped in. It’s a sociable place.” He thought for a moment. “I didn’t see their names on this term’s programme. So I think we can assume that this is just a casual visit.”
    Isabel felt relieved. “I know I shouldn’t be uncharitable, but I couldn’t bear the thought of their being here…here in Edinburgh for any length of time. I know that’s childish. I know. But that’s the way I feel.”
    They had reached the end of the corridor and their conversation had to end. From the open door of the common room, they heard voices. Somebody said something and there was laughter. Elsewhere in the building a telephone rang.
    She took a deep breath. She had no reason to be afraid of either Dove or Lettuce, and she would not allow them to intimidate her. But in her heart she found herself back at school, at the age of fourteen, when there had been a bully a few years her senior who had made her dread going into the refectory at lunchtime because this girl would take a seat near a prospective victim and stare at her. It was done quite subtly; on most occasions nothing was said, the bully relying on the power of the contemptuous glance, the look of amused appraisal.
Look at her hair,
might be the implicit message picked up by others and sniggered over; or
her skin
! There was nothing on which one could put one’s finger, but the behaviour was unambiguous. Others laughed, grateful, perhaps, that they were not the target; a few girls tried to resist it, but the bully seemed to have the psychological advantage and triumphed. And then she was knocked off her bicycle by a speeding motorist and was obliged to spend four months in a wheelchair. Suddenly her spell was broken, and she became an object of pity. Somebody wrote on the wall of the toilets:
Serves her right.
No name was given, but they all knew who was being referred to. Isabel thought for a moment that what had happened somehow affirmed that there was some justice somewhere—some force that restored the balance. But then she decided that this was not so; we want there to be such a thing, she told