The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

Edinburgh. I was born in Scotland, you see, and I’m very keen to find out something about my childhood. I’m afraid I’m on something of a quest, even if that sounds a bit ominous …”
    “It’s doesn’t sound ominous at all,” said Isabel. “It sounds intriguing—which is quite different. So, please go ahead. I’m listening.”

CHAPTER FOUR

    T HAT EVENING Isabel and Jamie went to a concert in the Queen’s Hall. It was Jamie who had suggested it.
    “We hardly ever go to listen to music together,” he said. “When we go it’s because I’m playing and you’re in the audience. It’s not the same as going together, is it?”
    She realised that what he said was true. She tried not to miss any of his performances in Edinburgh, but she had relatively few memories of sitting next to him and listening to others.
    “No. It isn’t. In fact, have we been to anything this year—together, that is?”
    He looked at her quizzically. Isabel spent a lot of time thinking about other things; perhaps that was why she forgot events that he remembered quite vividly.
    “Yes, we have.”
    She could not remember. “Oh, well. What was it?”
    “That concert in aid of Breast Cancer Research. When they did the Tallis. And Byrd too. They had that counter-tenor. Remember? The one from the Academy in Glasgow?”
    It came back to her; it had been four months ago, in February. There had been a snowfall and the streets had been filled with slush. She had got her feet wet as they crossed the street in front of the concert venue, and she had spent the first half of the concert in discomfort. And then the singers had sung “Sumer Is Icumen In” and she had forgotten about her cold feet. And “Sumer” had been followed by …
    She turned to Jamie. “They sang something I liked. You found the words for me afterwards. It was that counter-tenor.”
    Jamie had a prodigious memory for music and for the words of songs. “ ‘Thus saith my Cloris bright.’ Was that it?”
    “Yes it was.”
    “You liked it, didn’t you?”
    She asked who could possibly not like it, and he nodded, reciting:
    Thus saith my Cloris bright
    When we of love sit down and talk together
    Beware of Love deere
    Love is a walking sprite …
    She muttered the words, “ ‘When we of love sit down and talk together.’ ” She paused. “Is Love really a walking sprite?”
    Jamie was not sure exactly what a sprite was. “A spirit?”
    No, it was not quite that. A sprite could be a spirit, Isabel said, but it meant something else in this context. A sprite was elusive, a will-o’-the-wisp, something you grasped at, only to find that it had slipped through your fingers. Love was exactly that.
    “So we can never really hold on to it?” Jamie asked.
    She did not want to say that one could not. That, she felt, was defeatist, but love did not last: at least, not in its intoxicating, overwhelming form. You could not love like that for ever—could you?
    She became aware that Jamie was watching her.
    “There are so many different sorts of love,” she said. “And being in love has a lot of meanings. Affection. Tenderness. Infatuation. Obsession. It’s as if love were a disease with a whole range of symptoms.”
    He was still watching her and she looked away. “This concert tonight, what is it?”
    He told her the programme, which was contemporary. “A piece by Kevin Volans. Another made popular by the Kronos Quartet. A cello concerto by Sally Beamish. All interesting.”
    Grace had stayed to look after Charlie, settling herself in front of the television with a disc of a long-running adaptation of Jane Austen and a large packet of pistachio nuts.
    “Heaven,” she had said. “No need to hurry back.”
    They took a taxi to the Queen’s Hall and had a drink in the bar before the concert began. Isabel felt a curious sense of joy at being with Jamie, unencumbered by responsibilities, with just music to listen to and nothing else. She thought,
I’m very