The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

of oppression.
    Isabel did not fit easily into this circle, and people remarked on the unlikely nature of the developing liaison. John Liamor’s detractors, in particular—and he was not popular in his college, nor in the philosophy department—found the relationship a strange one. These people resented Liamor’s intellectual condescension, and its trappings; he read French philosophy and peppered his remarks with references to Foucault. And, for one or two of them at least, those who
really
disliked him, there was something else: Liamor wasn’t English. “Our Irish friend and
his
Scottish friend,” one of the detractors remarked. “What an interesting, interesting couple. She’s thoughtful; she’s reasonable; she’s civil; he’s a jumped-up Brendan Behan. One expects him to break into song at any moment. You know the sort.
I could have cried with pride at the way he died,
and so on. Lots of anger about what we were meant to have done to them back years ago. That sort of thing.”
    At times she herself found it surprising that she was so attracted to him. It was almost as if there was nowhere else to go; that they were two people thrown together on a journey, who found themselves sharing the same railway compartment andbecoming resigned to each other’s company. Others found a more prosaic explanation. “Sex,” observed one of Isabel’s friends. “It brings all sorts of people together, doesn’t it? Simple. They don’t have to like each other.”
    “THE PYRENEES,” said Isabel suddenly.
    Both Toby and Cat stared at her.
    “Yes,” Isabel continued airily. “The Pyrenees. Do you know that I have never been to the Pyrenees? Not once.”
    “I have,” said Toby.
    “I haven’t,” said Cat. “But I would like to go.”
    “We could go together,” Isabel pressed on, adding, “and Toby, too, of course, if you wanted to come, Toby. We could all go climbing. Toby would lead the way and we would all be roped to him. We’d be so safe.”
    Cat laughed. “He’d slip, and then we’d all fall to our deaths …” She stopped herself suddenly. The remark had come out without her thinking of it, and now she glanced at Isabel apologetically. The whole point of the evening was to take her aunt’s mind off what had happened in the Usher Hall.
    “The Andes,” Isabel said brightly. “Now, I have been to the Andes. And they’re just magnificent. But I could hardly breathe, you know, they are so high.”
    “I went to the Andes once,” Toby chipped in. “At university. Our climbing club went. One of the guys slipped and fell. Five hundred feet, if not more.”
    There was a silence. Toby looked into his glass, remembering. Cat studied the ceiling.
    * * *
    AFTER HER GUESTS had gone, leaving earlier than anticipated, Isabel stood in the middle of the kitchen and stared at the plates stacked above the dishwasher. The evening had not been a conspicuous success. The conversation had picked up slightly over the dinner table, but Toby had gone on at great length about wine—his father was a successful wine importer and Toby worked in the family firm. Isabel saw the way he sniffed at the wine she had poured him, thinking that she might not notice—but she did. There was nothing wrong with it, surely; an Australian cabernet sauvignon, not a cheap one; but then wine people were suspicious of New World wines. Whatever they said to the contrary, there was an ineradicable snobbery in the wine world, with the French in the lead, and she imagined that Toby thought she knew no better than to serve a supermarket red. In fact, she knew more than most about wine, and there was nothing wrong with what she had served.
    “Australian,” he had said simply. “South Australian.”
    “Rather nice,” said Cat.
    Toby ignored her. “Quite a bit of fruit.”
    Isabel looked at him politely. “Of course, you’ll be used to better.”
    “Good heavens,” said Toby. “You make me sound like a snob. This is perfectly … perfectly