The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

forgiveness, which he would never do, of course. And that made her safe from this weakness; the fact that never again would she be bewitched by John Liamor, never again would she be in that particular and profound danger.
    SHE WAS ON HER WAY to forgetting the Usher Hall incident two weeks later when she was invited to a party at a gallery to mark the opening of a show. Isabel bought paintings, and this meant that a steady stream of gallery invitations came into the house. For the most part she avoided the openings, which were cramped and noisy affairs, riddled with pretension, but when she knew that there would be strong interest in the paintings on display she might go to the opening—and arrive early, in order to see the work before rival red dots appeared underneath the labels. She had learned to do this after arriving late for the opening of a Cowie retrospective and finding that the few paintings that had been for sale had been bought within the first fifteen minutes. She liked Cowie, who had painted haunting pictures of people who seemed to be cocooned in old-fashioned stillness; quiet rooms in which sad-faced schoolgirls were occupied in drawing or in embroidery; Scottish country roads and paths that seemed to lead into nothing but further silence; folds of cloth in the artist’s studio. She had two small Cowie oils and would have been happy to purchase another, but she had been too late and she had learned her lesson.
    The show which opened that evening was of work by Elizabeth Blackadder. She had toyed with the idea of buying a large watercolour, but had decided to look at the other paintings before deciding. She did not find anything else that appealed, and when she returned, a red dot had appeared below the watercolour. A young man, somewhere in his late twenties and wearing a chalk-striped suit, was standing in front of it, glass in hand. She glanced at the painting, which seemed even more desirable now that it had been sold, and then she looked at him, trying not to show her annoyance.
    “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” he said. “I always think of her as a Chinese painter. That delicacy. Those flowers.”
    “And cats too,” Isabel said, rather grumpily. “She paints cats.”
    “Yes,” said the young man. “Cats in gardens. Very comfortable. Not exactly social realism.”
    “Cats exist,” said Isabel. “For cats, her paintings must be social realism.” She looked at the painting again. “You’ve just bought it?” she asked.
    The young man nodded. “For my fiancée. As an engagement present.”
    It was said with pride—pride in the fact of the engagement rather than in the purchase—and Isabel immediately softened.
    “She’ll love it,” she said. “I was thinking of buying it myself, but I’m glad you’ve got it.”
    The young man’s expression turned to concern. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “They said that it was available. There was no indication …”
    Isabel brushed his comment aside. “Of course there wasn’t. It’s first come, first served. You beat me to it. Exhibitions are meant to be red in tooth and claw.”
    “There are others,” he said, gesturing to the wall behindthem. “I’m sure that you’ll find something as good as this. Better, perhaps.”
    Isabel smiled. “Of course I will. And anyway, my walls are so full I would have had to take something down. I don’t need another painting.”
    He laughed at her comment. Then, noticing her empty glass, he offered to refill it for her, and she accepted. Returning, he introduced himself. He was Paul Hogg, and he lived one block away in Great King Street. He had seen her at one of the gallery shows, he was sure, but Edinburgh was a village, was it not, and one always saw people one had seen somewhere or other before. Did she not think that too?
    Isabel did. Of course, that had its drawbacks, did it not? What if one wanted to lead a secret life? Would it not be difficult in Edinburgh? Would one have to go over to