Free The Charming Quirks of Others by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

it!
It was difficult for Isabel not to feel a certain pleasure at having guessed so accurately the origins of Cat’s new boyfriend. We like predictability, she thought, and we are always satisfied when people behave as we think they will. It makes us feel … well, powerful; the world is not as complex a place as some might think—at least it is not complex for
us
. Shestopped herself. Nemesis stalked those who became pleased with themselves, and it was wrong, anyway, to indulge in self-congratulation. The line between having an adequate view of oneself and smugness was a thin one, and those who walked too close to it usually fell over the edge. So she simply said, “Kelso?” And Cat, equally simply, answered, “Yes, Kelso.”
    “And what does he do?” This was a more difficult question, and she realised that Cat might resent it. After the rise and (not only metaphorical) fall of Bruno—who had been a tightrope walker—the issue of the occupation of Cat’s boyfriends had become potentially awkward. She would not want Cat to think that she was going to draw any conclusions as to suitability based on what they did.
    The answer surprised her. “He’s a teacher,” said Cat.
    “Oh. Where?”
    Cat hesitated. “He’s always taught in boys’ schools. It’s Firth College.” She named a school with a particularly good reputation and a headmaster whom Isabel had met on several occasions and liked.
    Isabel nodded. She knew the school, which was only a mile or two away, on the brow of a hill that looked down across the city towards the Firth of Forth and the hills of Fife beyond. Her father’s cousin had been there, as had his two sons, and she had dutifully been to see them in the school’s production of
The Pirates of Penzance
, put on with the help of girls imported from St. George’s School for Girls.
    “You remember Cousin Fraser’s two boys?” she said. “They were there. They enjoyed it. A very good school. Nice staff.”
    “Gordon likes working there,” said Cat. “The boys are all sons of prosperous farmers and so on, I’m afraid. They play a lotof rugby. There are no discipline problems.” There was a slight note of sarcasm in her voice.
    Isabel considered this. There was nothing wrong with playing rugby. There was nothing wrong with being the son of a prosperous farmer. There was nothing wrong with being the son of
anybody
, she felt. And yet Cat had made it sound like an apology. So was she apologising for Gordon being middle class; for working in a conventional institution with conventional values? “I don’t see anything wrong with that,” she said.
    “Maybe,” said Cat. “It’s just that this city is so bourgeois. It really is. Everybody’s so respectable.”
    Again Isabel thought: What was wrong with being respectable? And what, she wondered, was the opposite of respectability? It became important to answer that if Cat was suggesting that one should not be respectable. Bohemian? Dissolute? Unconventional? The problem with that was that if everybody was unconventional, then they became conventional. So wild, bohemian, laid-back places, filled with free spirits, would have conventions of their own, which would soon make conventionalists of their inhabitants.
    She began to feel irritated. “But, Cat, you yourself are bourgeois,” she said. “Sorry to have to say this, but it’s the truth. You’re ineluctably bourgeois. You own a business. You employ Eddie. You don’t even have a mortgage on your flat. Doesn’t that make you bourgeois?”
    There was a silence at the other end of the line, and Isabel quickly continued, “Of course, I mustn’t throw the first stone. I’m bourgeois myself, I suppose—and frankly I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’m very fortunate in this life, I know that, I know that … and I try to help …” She trailed off. Oneshould
never
boast about what one gave away—and Isabel gave a lot. Yet Cat’s assumption of superiority had irked