Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 06 by The Lost Art of Gratitude Page B

of the approach of the other. But that is how ideas spread, she supposed, and sooner or later if you put your proposition to total strangers you would come across one who was ready for plucking by the first person of conviction who crossed his path.
    Isabel remembered the circumstances of a well-known essayist’s conversion to communism. He had gone to a party and drunk too much. He had woken up in the company of a woman he did not really like. And when he went to the window to look out on to the street, he saw that the weather was freezing; subsequently he found out that the engine of the car he had borrowed from a friend had frozen and was ruined—he had forgotten to put in antifreeze. In such circumstances communism offered a fresh start—a cleaning of the old slate—and he converted.
    She became aware that Eddie was looking at her resentfully. “All right,” she said. “It’s your own business.”
    “It is.”
    Isabel felt momentary annoyance. All she had done was to offer help, and yet he was treating her as if she had proposed some sweeping infringement of his autonomy. “As a matter of interest, Eddie,” she said, “if you saw me coming in with a scratch on my face, would you ask me what happened? Would you want to help?”
    He continued to stare at her.
    “Well?” pressed Isabel.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”
    Isabel felt that she had proved her point. “So you understand, then, why I offered. You’d do the same for me.” She paused. “How did it happen, Eddie?”
    Eddie turned away. “A branch. I was down near the canal and I walked past this bush—you know, one of those fruit ones, blackberries—and it scratched me. The council should cut those things.”
    “Oh well,” said Isabel. “A scratch from a thorn shouldn’t be too dangerous. But you should watch it. If it starts to throb, then that means that it’s infected and you should go to the doctor.”
    Eddie seemed relieved that the interrogation was over. He went behind the counter and placed the cheese-cutting boards in position. Then, while he filled the large espresso machine with water from a jug and ran a cloth over the steam nozzle, Isabel went through to Cat’s office to retrieve the cash float from the lock-up cupboard. She noticed the disinfectant on the shelf—the label showed a picture of a boy having his knee attended to by a concerned mother—
for minor day-to-day cuts and bruises.
They were innocent, those day-to-day cuts and bruises; Eddie had been scratched, and although she had initially believed his explanation of how the scratch came about, suddenly she began to doubt him. It was the same with those black eyes that people claimed were the result of walking into a door; usually they were the result of domestic violence, or of a brawl somewhere. Somebody had scratched Eddie—a girlfriend? Isabel wondered. Probably—Eddie had had that rather sinister-looking girl and although she was no longer with him, he might well have replaced her with somebody similar.
    She went to the counter and put the float in the till. It was now nine o’clock, the delicatessen’s official opening time, and she nodded to Eddie to take the door off the latch. It was not unusual for customers to appear within minutes of their opening—these were people who called in for a cup of coffeeon their way to work, and would spend a few minutes reading the papers at one of the small tables at the far end of the delicatessen.
    It proved to be a busy morning. Shortly after eleven Cat telephoned to say that the gas board engineers had not come yet and that she was sure now that they would not arrive until much later that afternoon.
    “What if we have an explosion?” she complained. “What then?”
    “We must just hope that you don’t explode,” said Isabel. “That is all we can do.”
    “It’s no laughing matter,” snapped Cat.
    Isabel apologised. It had not been a joke; she had meant that she did not want the flat to explode.