The Careful Use of Compliments Read Online Free PDF Page B

Grace occasionally announced that something would be done because “that’s what the house needs.” Isabel thought this a curious expression, which made her home sound rather like a casino or an old-fashioned merchant bank—in both of which one might hear the staff talking about the house. But for all its peculiarity, the arrangement worked very well and indeed was welcomed by Isabel as a means of putting the relationship between herself and Grace on a more equal, and therefore easier, footing. Isabel did not like the idea of being an employer, with all that this entailed in terms of authority and power. If Grace regarded herself as being employed by some vague metaphysical body known as the house, then that at least enabled Isabel to treat her as a mixture of friend and colleague, which is precisely how she viewed her anyway.
    Of course the circumstances in which the two women found themselves were different, and no amount of linguistic sleight of hand could conceal that. Isabel had enjoyed every advantage in education and upbringing; there had been money, travel, and, ultimately, freedom from the constraints of an office job or its equivalents. Grace, by contrast, had come from a home in which there had been no spare money, little free time, and, in the background, the knowledge that unemployment might at any time remove whatever small measure of prosperity people might have attained.
    Grace went into the kitchen, put the tote bag down on a chair, and made her way into the morning room.
    â€œI’m here,” Isabel called out. “In the study.”
    Grace entered the room and beamed at Charlie. “He’s looking very bright and breezy,” she said, coming up to tickle Charlie under the chin. Charlie grinned and waved his arms in the air.
    â€œI think he wants to go to you,” said Isabel.
    Grace took Charlie in her arms. “Of course he does,” she said.
    It was not the words themselves, Isabel realised—it was more the inflection. Did Grace mean that it was no surprise that Charlie should want to go to her rather than stay with his mother? That was how it sounded, even if Grace had not meant it that way.
    â€œHe actually quite likes me too,” said Isabel softly.
    Grace looked at her in astonishment. “But of course he does,” she said. “You’re his mother. All boys like their mothers.”
    â€œNo,” said Isabel. “I don’t think they do. Some mothers suffocate their sons, emotionally. They don’t mean to, but it happens.” She looked out of the window. She had seen it in her family, in a cousin whose ambitious mother had nagged him until he had cut himself free and had as little as possible to do with her. He had been civil, of course, but everybody had seen it—the stiff posture, the formal politeness, the looking away when she spoke to him. But had he loved her, in spite of this? She remembered him at his mother’s funeral when he had wept, quietly but voluminously, and Isabel, sitting in the row behind him, had put her hand on his shoulder and whispered to him in comfort. We leave it too late, she had thought; we always do, and then these salutary lessons are learned at the graveside.
    â€œMothers always mean well,” said Grace. “As long as they don’t try to choose their son’s wife. That’s a mistake.”
    Charlie looked up at Grace and smiled. I have enough, thought Isabel; I have so much that surely I can share him.
    Grace turned towards Isabel. Her face, Isabel noticed, seemed transformed by the close presence of the baby, her look at that moment one of near pride. “Do you want to work this morning?” she said, looking in the direction of Isabel’s overcrowded desk. “There’s not much to do in the house. I could look after Charlie.”
    Isabel felt a wrench. Part of her wanted to answer that she would decide for herself, in good time, whether she wanted to work or