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

philosophical background, was as fair-minded a man as one could meet, and, what was more, he had a reputation for working quickly, as he had done now. For she saw lying there, having slid down from the desk on which the fax machine was placed, his faxed report—a neatly typed page of paper subscribed at the bottom with his signature:
Iain.
    She reached down to pick it up. Her hand, she noticed, was shaking. She perched on the arm of one of her library chairs; the seat itself was stacked with papers, the chair having long since ceased to be anything but part of her filing system. There were three paragraphs; two lengthy ones and a final, short one. She skimmed through the first two and then came to the third. It could not have been clearer.
    â€œI much regret,” wrote Iain, “that I find no original insights in this paper. The arguments advanced by previous participants in the discussion are repeated, but not developed. And that part of the paper which purports to be a further refinement of the original conditions of the bystander’s plight do not add anything. Try as I might, I cannot think of any respect in which this paper helps a problem which already has a certain hoariness to it. Paper and ink are finite. I cannot recommend they be squandered on this article.”
    She put down the report and closed her eyes briefly, as if to order her thoughts. Then she left her study and went back into the kitchen. The pasta was simmering on the stove, misting up the windows, but there was no sign of Jamie. Then she heard the piano, and smiled. They sometimes sang together, or he sang for her; now she heard him.
    He stopped as she came into the morning room. He laid his hands gently on the keyboard, at rest, and smiled at her. She wanted to run to him, to hug him to her, this young man who had come to her so unexpectedly, who brought music, a child, beauty—all these things into her life. But she contained herself, and asked, “What was that again? It was so haunting.” It was.
    â€œ ‘The Parting Glass,’ ” he said. “It’s one of those songs that has a complicated history. There are Irish versions and Scottish versions. Burns joined in and did a version too.”
    â€œOf course. I’ve heard it before. Could I hear it again?”
    â€œHere,” he said. “Take this glass of wine. And hold it. That’s how you should listen to it. Take a sip.”
    She took the glass of white wine from him. It was still chilled, with tiny drops on the outside. She moved it in her hand, feeling the cool of it, the wetness.
    Jamie said, “This song makes me feel sad.”
    She watched him.
    He began to sing, and the words, which he enunciated so carefully, and the slow movement of the melody, touched at her heart:

    Oh, all the comrades that ere I had
    Are sorry for my going away
    And all the sweethearts that ere I had
    Would wish me one more day to stay
    But since it falls unto my lot
    That I should rise and you should not
    I’ll gently rise and I’ll softly call
    Good night and joy be with you all.

    He finished and gently closed the lid of the piano.
    She did not move. “Why did you sing that?” she asked.
    Jamie looked up. “Sometimes I just feel that way,” he said. “I feel sad when I’m happy. It’s strange, isn’t it?”
    She thought of the words:
But since it falls unto my lot / That I should rise and you should not
—words of leave-taking, every bit as moving as those used by Burns in “Auld Lang Syne,” and with perhaps an even greater poignancy to them. Why, she wondered, did we need loss and parting to remind us of how much friendship, and indeed love, meant to us? Yet we did.

CHAPTER SIX

    S HE DID NOT tell Jamie that she was going to see Marcus Moncrieff the next morning. It was true that he had accepted her involvement, but she suspected that his acceptance was a reluctant one and that he would not really