The Geometry of Holding Hands by Alexander McCall Smith

Author:Alexander McCall Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

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SHE WAITED until just before dinner to tell Jamie about the meeting with Hamish and Gordon, and the bombshell news about the Porsche. They had both been occupied with putting the boys to bed, and now, with the floor above in silence, they were able to catch up with one another in the kitchen. It was Jamie’s turn to cook and he had proposed a cheese soufflé with an elaborate Lebanese salad. “Your man, Ottolenghi,” said Jamie, arranging the salad ingredients in a line along the kitchen table. “He’s not simple. Look at what he wants here: rose water, preserved lemon, marinated olives.”

Isabel poured them both a glass of Chablis.

“I think I’d like to move to France,” she said. “Or New Zealand, maybe. Anywhere where they make nice white wine like this. A small house at the edge of a village—if it’s France. If it’s New Zealand, a cottage on Golden Bay, maybe, or Marlborough Sound. Somewhere we could watch whales from the veranda.”

Jamie busied himself with a jar of olives. “Houses in New Zealand are very small,” he said. “They have low ceilings and not very big rooms.”

“Does that matter?”

“Maybe; maybe not. I feel uncomfortable in a room with a low ceiling, though. I feel it’s pressing down on me.”

Isabel asked why he thought New Zealand houses were so small. Jamie thought for a moment. “They’re modest people. They don’t make a fuss.”

“Quiet?”

At nineteen, Jamie had spent part of a gap year in New Zealand, teaching music at a boys’ school in Auckland. He hesitated before answering. “For the most part, yes. They don’t go in for shouting. They like small-scale things.” He smiled as he remembered. “I was meant to teach music, you know, but they tried to get me to teach rugby instead. They were far more interested in rugby than in music. They said that since I came from Scotland, I must know how to play rugby.”

“And?”

“And I was very obliging at that age. I said, ‘Sure, I’ll teach rugby—if that’s what you want me to do.’ So, they put me in charge of one of their teams for really young players. These boys were about eight—at the most. I did my best, but the problem was that I didn’t really know the rules and so I made them up.”

Isabel raised an eyebrow. “Made them up? Invented them?”

Jamie nodded. “It would have been fine if they hadn’t arranged a game against another of these boys’ schools. I was to be the referee.”

Isabel laughed. “I’m not sure if I want to hear the end of this story.”

“Neither do I,” said Jamie. “But here goes, anyway. I started to run the game according to the rules I’d invented, but there were a whole lot of parents from the other school who had come along to watch. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Their sons complained, and one or two fights broke out amongst the boys. That was the end of my career as a rugby teacher.

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