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

course was. He had once mentioned a catering certificate that one could start by post and then go on to finish at catering college. Was it that?
    â€œHypnotism,” announced Eddie.
    Isabel stared at him. “Hypnotism?”
    â€œYes. I’ve been doing it for six weeks now. There’s one lecture a week—Thursday nights at college. You don’t get an actual certificate, but you do get a bit of paper at the end saying that you’re licensed to hypnotise people.”
    Isabel thought this unlikely. “A licence? Surely not.”
    Her disbelief took Eddie aback, and he started to become defensive. “It’s not the sort of hypnotism you see at those shows,” he said. “We don’t make people eat an onion and think that they’re eating an apple. We don’t make them see things that aren’t there.”
    â€œI’m glad to hear it,” said Isabel. “I should hate to find myself eating a raw onion at your behest, Eddie.”
    â€œIt’s about hypnotising people to help them stop smoking or…or doing other things that they don’t want to. Bad habits. Hypnotism can cure bad habits.”
    â€œI’m sure it can,” said Isabel.
    â€œAnd past lives,” Eddie went on. “You can take people back to their past lives.”
    Isabel thought: We’re in Grace’s territory now. Had Eddie been put up to this by Grace? “Are you sure?” She looked at him enquiringly and he inclined his head. He was perfectly serious.
    â€œMy friend Phil is in the class too,” said Eddie. “He allowed one of the girls—I forget her name—to regress him. I was there. I watched it. It was at Phil’s place after the class. We’d gone back there and Phil asked to be regressed.”
    Intrigued in spite of herself, Isabel asked what Phil had been in his previous life. “A coal miner,” said Eddie. “A coal miner up in Fife. Somewhere near Lochgelly.”
    That, thought Isabel, is progress. There were too many exotic previous incarnations; too many Egyptian princesses, too many figures of minor royalty, too many Napoleons, no doubt. A coal miner from Fife had the ring of authenticity about it.
    â€œAnd then,” Eddie continued, “she took Phil one life further back.”
    â€œAnd what was he then?” asked Isabel.
    â€œRobert the Bruce,” said Eddie. “I’m not making this up, Isabel. I swear. He was Robert the Bruce. Phil was. He didn’t open his eyes or anything. He just said, ‘I’m Robert the Bruce’ when we asked him who he was.”
    â€œFancy that!” said Isabel. “Phil, of all people! Robert the Bruce.”
    â€œAye,” said Eddie. “It was dead spooky, Isabel. He started talking about a battle and how he was going to defeat the English.”
    Isabel opened her mouth to say something, but the door opened and Stella Moncrieff walked in. She looked across the room, searching for Isabel, and Isabel gave her a wave.
    â€œMy friend,” Isabel said to Eddie. “Could we carry on our conversation some other time?”
    Eddie nodded. “Anytime, Isabel. And I’ll regress you, too, if you like.”
    â€œAll right,” said Isabel. “But you do realise, don’t you, that I’m likely to be Bonnie Prince Charlie? Or possibly Louis the Fourteenth?”
    Eddie looked at her with the air of one about to disabuse another of a fondly held notion. “No you won’t,” he said. “Women are women in their previous lives and men are men. You’ll just be a woman, Isabel. Same as you are now.”
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    STELLA MONCRIEFF began with an apology. “I haven’t kept you waiting too long, I hope.”
    Isabel indicated the chair on the other side of the table. “No, you haven’t. I arrived just a few minutes ago.”
    Isabel glanced at Stella as she sat down. She was one