The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

interested to hear that he had played the curtal. He knew what he was talking
     about.”
    “And?”
    “Well, I don’t know.”
    “Gay?” asked Isabel.
    “Maybe,” said Jamie. “Did you think so?”
    “Yes,” she said. “He was very disappointed when we mentioned Grace and getting back
     for the babysitter. Did you notice it?”
    Jamie had not. “That second piece,” he said. “We sounded much better at rehearsal.”
    “It was because he hadn’t realised that you and I were together. That was why.”
    Jamie was silent. Isabel’s deduction embarrassed him. “You mean … Well, how can you
     tell? And anyway, what does it matter?”
    “Oh, it doesn’t matter at all. But I think there’s an issue between him and his father.
     It may have nothing to do with that, or it may. I can’t tell.”
    “Gaydar can be misleading, you know,” said Jamie. “It needs to be calibrated.”
    “Like sympathy,” said Isabel. “And all our emotions and feelings. Shame. Anger. Love.
     Pain. Calibration is required if we are to use them sensitively.”
    “How do you calibrate pain?” asked Jamie.
    “By cutting out the background pain of the world,” answered Isabel. “By cutting all
     that out, not registering it, and responding only to those painful things that we
     can do something about. Because otherwise …”
    Jamie had seen a taxi approaching; the thin band of yellow light above the vehicle’s
     windscreen weaving its way towards them. He stepped out into the road and raised an
     arm.
    “Because otherwise what?”
    “Because otherwise we couldn’t get on with our day-to-day lives. The pain of the world
     would burden us too much.”
    “True,” said Jamie.

CHAPTER SIX

 
    T HERE WAS an unspoken understanding between Isabel and her niece Cat that when Cat went away
     on holiday or was otherwise unable to get in to the delicatessen, then Isabel would
     take over, even with very little notice. It would have been more sensible for Eddie
     to do this, but Eddie, for all his willingness to embark on a long tour of North America
     with his uncle—and uncle’s girlfriend—and to follow this with a spell working at a
     ski resort in Alberta, still lacked the confidence to be left in sole charge of the
     delicatessen. Isabel wondered whether this might be changed by his having reached
     the milestone of his twenty-first birthday and having met his new girlfriend Diane—or
     the Huntress, as she had unfortunately become lodged in Isabel’s mind, though not
     a reference to any man-hunting on her part (Eddie was not the most obvious prey for
     a dedicated man-hunter), but to the occupation of the Greek goddess of that name.
     Eddie was still unwilling to accept full responsibility and had shown signs of alarm
     when Cat telephoned the following Monday morning to inform him that she had come down
     with a norovirus and would be off work for at least three days,possibly more. Cat had reassured him that Isabel would help out and that he would
     not be left to manage by himself; she had then phoned Isabel and broken the news to
     her.
    “I hate asking you,” she said. “But I really can’t go in. I don’t want to go into
     details—”
    “Then don’t,” said Isabel quickly.
    “But I’m bringing up the most amazing amount of fluid,” Cat persisted. “I have no
     idea where it’s all coming from. And the diarrhoea, I’m not exaggerating, I promise
     you—”
    “I’ll be there,” Isabel interjected. “How many days?”
    When Cat warned her that it could be the whole week, Isabel’s heart sank. There were
     spells in her life—often as long as a month—when the affairs of the
Review of Applied Ethics
could safely be put to one side, or benignly neglected as Isabel put it, but this
     was not one of them. The proofs of the next issue had arrived, and an entire article
     was being withdrawn on the grounds that the author had placed it elsewhere without
     telling Isabel. He had been keen, she