Free The Novel Habits of Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

conversation that entailed. This was not the elevated conversation that people might imagine academics engaged in, but rather ordinary exchanges about who had said what, the events of the previous weekend and how expensive the car repair—and everything else—was. That sort of conversation was the natural cement of any group, something that could be called gossip, but was not quite that. We needed it, she thought, because we were lonely without such exchanges. She had no colleagues on the
Review
other than the members of the editorial board, whom she rarely saw, or the printer, who for most of the time was just a voice at the other end of a telephone line. She had met him, though, on at least one occasion; his works were in Fife, and he had invited her to go up to Dunfermline to watch the printing of an edition of the
Review.
The printing works had been noisy, and the smell of ink hung in the air, an acrid but not entirely unpleasant miasma. He had been proud of his print-shop, showing her a large German machine that struck her as being the printing equivalent of a combine harvester: text went in at one end and a bound copy of the book or magazine came out at the other. She noticed this pride as they watched the machine churning out copies of the
Review
—it was the same expression that she had seen on Jamie’s face when he had brought home his new bassoon. It was a very particular look, she decided: the look of a man who has a new toy—a look that combined wonderment with the simple satisfaction of possession.
    “It’s so different from the presses I trained on,” the printer said above the clatter of the machinery.
    “You used type?”
    “Not the actual type you’re thinking about—not the metal stuff.” For a moment he looked wistful; printing was no longer the craft it once had been. “No, but we did have flexible plates that we put on drums. There was a physical side to it that’s almost gone now.” His voice lowered, and she barely heard what he had to say next. “Like the customers too.”
    She looked at him.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Not all of them. But so many are having all of this done abroad now. China. We’re going to lose all of our skills soon, I fear. We won’t be able to print because we won’t have any trained printers.”
    “Outsourcing?”
    He nodded. “That’s what they call it. But it has very bad effects: people are losing the ability to make the things they’ve always made.”
    This reminded her of something. She had read recently that there were virtually no engravers under forty in the country—they simply did not exist. And stone carvers? And watchmakers? And people who could actually repair a car engine rather than just replace the parts?
    She sought to reassure him. “I’m not proposing to take my business anywhere else.” She touched him lightly on the forearm—an oddly intimate gesture in the noisy workplace.
    His expression showed his relief. “I like printing your
Review.
”
    “Oh…Do you read it?” The question slipped out without her thinking about it.
    He looked down at the ground. “Yes, of course. Well…perhaps not all of it, I’m afraid. I don’t actually read…”
    She was embarrassed.
I have put this nice man in a position where he felt he had to claim to read something that he doesn’t read.
She reminded herself of what a friend had said about the potential tactlessness of asking others if they had read something: people do not like to confess that they have never read
War and Peace.
“Do films count?” an anxious friend had once asked her. “Can I say I’ve read something if I’ve seen the film?”
    She glanced at the printer. “It’s not everybody’s cup of tea,” she said quickly.
    This gave him his opportunity. “On which subject,” he said, “we have tea waiting for us up in the office.”
    Now she glanced at the piles of books and papers on her desk.
There are no chains,
she thought,
except those we create for ourselves.
That,