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neither spoke. Isabel stirred her roux, which was coming together well now; Jamie fiddled with The Scotsman, folding and unfolding a corner, the obituary page. “He had a profound knowledge of aviation,” he read. “And his sense of the dramatic was legendary. Once, while speaking at a dinner, he announced that he proposed to buy an airline that…” There were such colourful lives in obituaries that the lives of the living seemed so much tamer, as did their names. Who would announce the intention of buying an airline? Presumably somebody did. People—individuals—owned airlines, just as they owned ships and tall buildings and vast tracts of land; or nothing at all, as Gandhi had done at his death. As a boy, Jamie had been given a book about Gandhi by an idealistic aunt, who had shown him the picture of Gandhi’s possessions at his death: a pair of spectacles, a white dhoti, a modest pair of sandals…But when you leave this world you don’t even take that, Jamie, she had said; remember that. And he had stared at the picture, and stared at it, and had wanted, for some reason, to cry, because he felt sorry for Gandhi, who had owned only those few things and was now dead.
    â€œWhy don’t you sue them?” he asked.
    Isabel was about to sample a small quantity of roux. She paused, the spoon halfway to her mouth. “Sue them for what? For unfair dismissal?”
    â€œYes,” said Jamie. “Make them pay for getting rid of you. Make them pay for it.”
    â€œIt’s not all that simple,” said Isabel. “And I’m not even sure whether I’m a proper employee. It’s very much a part-time job.”
    Jamie was not convinced. “You could try at least.”
    Isabel shook her head. “It would be demeaning. And I don’t like the thought of litigation. I just don’t.”
    â€œGo on, Isabel,” he said. “Do it. Don’t just let yourself be walked over. Do it. Stick up for yourself.”
    â€œI couldn’t.”
    Jamie shrugged. “Well, think about it. Please just think about it.”
    â€œAll right,” she said. “I will.”
    And she did, later that night, with Jamie beside her in her darkened room, she thought about it; and watched him, his arm across the pillow, so beautiful, she felt. If she did what he suggested, she could engage the most expensive, eloquent advocates to act for her, the cream of the Scottish bar. She could pay to have a spectacular day in court, in which her expensive lawyers would run rings around an inadequately represented Review. But she put the thought out of her mind because it was not her intention that she should ever, not even once, misuse the financial power which she had acquired through the laws of inheritance. If she had been wealthy through her own efforts it might be different; but she was not, and she would not depart from the code she had set for herself. It was hard, very hard sometimes; like the rule that a mountaineer makes that he should climb a certain distance each day, although the air is so thin and it is hard, so hard, to make the muscles do what one wants them to do.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE

    D O YOU KNOW , I’ve never been to one of these before? My first time. I feel a bit like a schoolboy going into a bar.”
    Jamie, seated beside Isabel, looked about the saleroom. A large number of people had turned up, thanks in part to the publicity attached to the sale of a private collection of Scots Colourists. This collection had been put together by a businessman who had done well with a small oil company and who had attracted attention by his colourful—and tactless—remarks. The oil wells were on the shores of the Caspian, in one of those republics that people are not quite sure about—where it is and who runs it—and had suddenly dried up. There had been mutterings about geological reports and their manipulation at the other end, and the