Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 05 by The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

serving cheese to a tall, rather angular woman, looked up when Isabel came in and smiled a greeting. Isabel smiled back; the days of open warfare in her relationship with Cat were over now, or so she hoped. Even if she seemed slightly remote from him, Cat had accepted the existence of Charlie and had forgiven Isabel for having him with Jamie, her former boyfriend. Nor did Cat resent Jamie’s presence in her aunt’s life, although Isabel was careful to avoid situations where she was together with Jamie in Cat’s presence, just to be on the safe side.
    Isabel decided that Cat would be too busy over the next little while for them to talk, and so she made her way directly to one of the spare tables and sat down. There were always interesting overseas newspapers in Cat’s delicatessen, often
Corriere della Sera,
but sometimes examples that were more recondite, for Scotland at least:
The Straits Times, The Globe and Mail, The Age,
several days old, perhaps, but nonetheless interesting for that. Today she found a copy of
The Washington Post
dated four days previously, and she began to page through it, skipping over the political news of electoral campaigns that seemed to go on and on forever. There was a review of a new opera at the Kennedy Center, together with a picture of the composer and librettist at the premiere, alongside various society figures. The society figures dressed as expected, one of the women sporting a tiara and all of the men having that air of slick grooming and benevolence that accompanies real wealth. Rich people, thought Isabel, never look anxious in photographs; they look relaxed, assured, untouchable by the worries of lesser mortals.
    â€œIsabel?”
    She looked up. Eddie, Cat’s timid assistant in the delicatessen, the damaged boy who had been taken on and nurtured, was standing before her, wiping his hands on the floury-looking apron he was wearing. More progress, thought Isabel; there had been a time when Eddie had been unwilling to don the apron on the unexpressed grounds that it was unmascu-line, or those were the grounds that Cat and Isabel had inferred. Now he felt sufficiently sure of himself to wear it, and Isabel felt pleased. Little by little, whatever trauma it was that Eddie had experienced—and she had a good idea of its nature—was receding in the face of his increased confidence.
    â€œNice apron,” she said.
    The words came out automatically, but it occurred to her just as automatically that she should not have said anything.
    Eddie hesitated. He looked down at the apron and then looked up again. He smiled.
    â€œIt’s really for lassies.”
    Isabel shook a finger at him playfully. “No, Eddie. We don’t say that sort of thing anymore. Men do women’s work, or what used to be women’s work, and vice versa. It’s the same with clothes.”
    Eddie looked at her disbelievingly. “You mean that men wear women’s clothes? Dresses?”
    Isabel shrugged. “Some do,” she began, and then laughed. “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant to say that the categories of what’s for men and what’s for women have blurred. We share so much now.”
    Eddie decided that the conversation had gone far enough. “Are you going to have coffee?” he asked. “Cat said I wasn’t to keep you waiting.”
    Isabel explained that she was expecting to be joined by somebody, but that he could bring her a coffee anyway if he did not mind coming back for a second order once her guest arrived. Eddie nodded.
    â€œAnd what are you up to these days, Eddie?” she asked.
    â€œThe usual.” He paused. “Well, the usual, and something else. I’m taking a course.”
    Isabel expressed her pleasure. She had hoped that Eddie would eventually get round to obtaining some sort of qualification. He was intelligent enough, she thought; once again it all came down to confidence. She enquired what the