The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday by Smith Alexander McCall

Author:Smith, Alexander McCall [Smith, Alexander McCall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Fiction, Philosophy, Scotland, Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780307377760
Goodreads: 7094649
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2008-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

JAMIE WAS PLAYING that evening at the Festival Theatre. Scottish Opera was doing Don Pasquale, and although Isabel had seen the production when they had first performed it in Glasgow, she had been invited to the opera, and a reception beforehand, by Turcan Connel, the firm of lawyers who represented her in such legal business as she had. It was one of their partners, Simon Mackintosh, who had purchased the Review of Applied Ethics for her the previous year, and he said that this transaction entitled her to at least some corporate hospitality.

Champagne was served in one of the suites alongside the grand circle. Isabel looked about her: she knew a number of the guests, but for some reason she did not feel much like socialising, so she busied herself looking at the framed theatrical memorabilia on the wall. There was the programme for a concert by Harry Lauder, the Scottish vaudeville artist of the 1920s, with a picture of the famous bekilted figure with one of the twisted walking sticks that became his trademark. He had opened the show with “Will Ye Stop Your Tickling, Jock” and had ended it with “Keep Right on to the End of the Road.” Isabel smiled; her father had loved Harry Lauder and had sung his songs to Isabel and her brother when they were children. “Keep Right on to the End of the Road” moved her still, mawkish though the words were in cold print. “Every road through life is a long, long road, / Filled with joys and sorrows too.” Trite? Yes, it was, but then the truth was often trite, but nonetheless true for that. And had Harry Lauder not sung that on the very day that he had heard of the death of his only son in the trenches of France? And he had insisted on going onstage to sing it when his heart must have been broken within him. People did that then. They were brave.

Or were they too brave, Isabel thought; too brave, with the result that they were imposed upon in the name of vainglorious patriotism, chauvinism, easily led to the slaughter? Should one be brave about the loss of one’s only son, or should one break down and weep for the waste, the pointlessness of the loss; rail against the whole monstrous system that sent young men off in droves to climb up those ladders and stumble through the mud into veils of machine-gun fire? Why should anyone be brave about that?

She remembered the Latin teacher at school translating “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”—it is a sweet and decorous thing to die for one’s country. “Horace, girls,” she said. “That’s from Horace’s Odes. Horace was a poet who wrote about the pleasures of living in the country.”

“Who died for his country?” asked one of the girls.

And the teacher had said, “No. He was talking about other people.” And left it at that.

She turned away from the Lauder programme and raised her champagne glass to her lips.

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