The Lost Art of Gratitude

Isabel bent down and looked at Charlie. The tiny features were in repose, the mouth slightly open to allow the passage of air. Such an intricate collection of cells, she thought, all miraculously put together to produce a centre of human consciousness, so fragile, so infinitely precious to those whose life was transformed by it. She straightened up. The summer sun was riding high now, gilding the hills of Fife across the Forth. A bus laboured up the hill, bound for Princes Street and the Mound, the passengers in shirtsleeves for the unaccustomed heat. For a moment, Isabel’s eyes met those of someone looking out of the window, a thin-faced woman with her hair done up in a bun. The woman began a smile, but stopped, as if conscious of somehow transgressing the conventions of isolation with which as city-dwellers we immure ourselves. The bus moved on, and Isabel felt a sudden desire to run alongside it, to wave to the woman, to acknowledge the unexpected exchange of fellow feeling between them. But she did not, because she never acted on these impulses, and because it might have puzzled or even frightened the other woman.

She turned to Jamie. “Can you remind me of the words of ‘King Fareweel’?” she asked. She knew that Jamie had an impressive knowledge of Scottish music, including the more arcane corners of the subject. “King Fareweel” was mainstream, the sort of thing sung by Scottish patriots in moments of enthusiastic inebriation, and by nostalgic Jacobites in cold sobriety.

The question took Jamie by surprise, but Isabel often said odd things; he was getting used to it.

“Now a young prince cam’ to Edinburgh toon,” he began, half singing, half speaking, “And he wasnae a wee bit German lairdie / For a far better man than ever he was / Lay oot in the heather wi’ his tartan plaidie.”

“That’s it,” said Isabel.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT MORNING Isabel’s niece, Cat, telephoned at seven. Isabel had been awake since six and had taken Charlie on an outing in the garden. He had been late in starting to walk, but now seemed eager to make up for lost time, rushing off purposefully and quite indifferent to any falls that came his way. It was an exhausting business for her, if not for Charlie himself, as he had to be watched every moment. She had a playpen, which at least could give her time to get her breath back and do things that needed to be done in the house.

“Do people approve of those things?” Jamie had asked when the pen had been delivered. “Don’t some people look on them as little prisons?”

Isabel had read about this. “Some do,” she said. “But not everyone, by any means. It all depends on how long the child is in one. If they’re in it for short periods of time they can enjoy playing by themselves.”

“But not for hours.”

“No, not for hours. And nor should children be parked in front of the television.”

“Which we don’t have,” Jamie pointed out.

“No.”

Jamie had bought something called a baby bungee, an apparatus that gripped on to the jamb of a door and allowed the child to bounce up and down on a strong elastic rope. Charlie had loved it, but on the second occasion it had been used he had bounced off one side of the jamb and then back against the other. He had been slightly bruised, even if he had not complained, but the baby bungee had been retired to a cupboard. Charlie, she had decided, was a stoic by temperament, a useful thing in this life. If this stoicism came from anywhere—rather than being an entirely random quirk of personality genes—then it must have been inherited from Jamie, who was fond of saying “It happens” when faced with any frustrating development. Stoicism and defeatism, of course, can be kissing cousins, but Isabel would never find fault in Jamie’s quite exceptional ability to accept setbacks. She had never seen him angry—not once; distressed, perhaps, but not angry, and it seemed that Charlie was the same. Of course the tantrum stage still lay ahead of him, and that would be a stringent test of any stoicism he possessed; it was no use saying “It happens” to a three-year-old brewing a stamping attack.

“Sorry to phone so early,” said Cat. “Crisis.”