Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 05 Read Online Free PDF

lifeboat and had only one place available, she would reach out to rescue Mother Teresa rather than Idi Amin, if both nun and dictator were in the water at the same time. And Mother Teresa, had she been in the boat, would surely make a similar choice, if she were faced with a drowning Idi Amin and a vaccine-research scientist. She would regret it, no doubt, and express sympathy for the floundering dictator, but surely she would do it.
    She laid the paper down on her desk. The dilemma of the bystander at the switch was a difficult one, but there were other situations which seemed every bit as uncomfortable, even if they did not involve issues of life and death. And amongst these was the immediate question of what she should do with Dove’s paper. If she were petty, she would send it back to him with a straightforward rejection. She might even say something cutting, such as
I regret that your paper does not meet the exacting standards of the
Review.
I do hope that you find another home for it.
But that would be so cheap, so childish. No, she would have to send it out to referees, and at the end of the day she felt that she would have to publish it. If she did not, then Dove would have proved his point and would conclude that she had been swayed in her editorial decision by personal animosity towards him. She would not let that happen; Dove would be treated in exactly the same way as any other person who submitted a paper to the
Review.
He would be given equal treatment, which is exactly what he deserved.
    Sometimes, thought Isabel, it is very difficult being a philosopher. How much easier it would be to be Jamie, who did not agonise over things, or Grace, who largely accepted things, or even Charlie, who did not yet know what things were.

CHAPTER THREE

    I SABEL DID NOT SEE Jamie that evening. There was an unspoken understanding between them that he would be in charge of Charlie’s bath and they would both then share the hour or so of play that came before bedtime. Then she and Jamie would have dinner together, going over the day’s events, discussing Charlie and his doings and achievements, which were as wondrous to both of them as such things always are to parents. That evening, though, Jamie was involved in a rehearsal for a concert that he was to play in the following night at the Queen’s Hall, and that was where she was to see him next.
    On the evening of the concert, she found him in the Queen’s Hall bar, sitting at a table by himself, nursing a large glass of orange juice and paging through an opera magazine. He rose to greet her, and they exchanged a kiss on the cheek. His hand, though, touched the side of her neck gently, a gesture that she found strangely intimate. It was all so new, even if it had been going on for more than two years now; so precious—so unlikely, too, but it had happened.
    She sat down beside him. They were early—the concert was not due to start until half past seven, forty minutes away. In the background, in the green room that gave directly off the bar, they heard one of the singers warming up.
    â€œListen to this,” he said. “There’s a bit here about a performance of
Lohengrin.
Leo Slezak, the Czech tenor, was due to get onto a swan and sail off the stage. Unfortunately one of the stagehands sent the mechanical swan off before he had time to get onto it. So Slezak turned to the audience and sang, in German,
When does the next swan leave?
”
    They both burst out laughing. “I can understand the view that Wagner’s inherently ridiculous,” Isabel said. “Even when the swans run on time.”
    Jamie nodded. “But there are plenty of operas that one can’t really take seriously. I’ve always had difficulty with
Pagliacci.
Everybody seems to die onstage. I know it’s tragic, but somehow one would have thought that at least one or two of the principal singers would be left standing.”
    He slipped the magazine into