The conditions of uncond.., p.1
The Conditions of Unconditional Love, page 1
BOOKS BY ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
In the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
Blue Shoes and Happiness
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
The Miracle at Speedy Motors
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built
The Double Comfort Safari Club
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection
The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon
The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café
The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine
Precious and Grace
The House of Unexpected Sisters
The Colors of All the Cattle
To the Land of Long Lost Friends
How to Raise an Elephant
The Joy and Light Bus Company
A Song of Comfortable Chairs
From a Far and Lovely Country
In the Isabel Dalhousie Series
The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
The Right Attitude to Rain
The Careful Use of Compliments
The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday
The Lost Art of Gratitude
The Charming Quirks of Others
The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds
The Novel Habits of Happiness
A Distant View of Everything
The Quiet Side of Passion
The Geometry of Holding Hands
The Sweet Remnants of Summer
The Conditions of Unconditional Love
In the Paul Stuart Series
My Italian Bulldozer
The Second-Worst Restaurant in France
In the Detective Varg Series
The Department of Sensitive Crimes
The Talented Mr. Varg
The Man with the Silver Saab
The Discreet Charm of the Big Bad Wolf
In the Corduroy Mansions Series
Corduroy Mansions
The Dog Who Came in from the Cold
A Conspiracy of Friends
In the Portuguese Irregular Verbs Series
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
Unusual Uses for Olive Oil
Your Inner Hedgehog
In the 44 Scotland Street Series
44 Scotland Street
Espresso Tales
Love Over Scotland
The World According to Bertie
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones
The Importance of Being Seven
Bertie Plays the Blues
Sunshine on Scotland Street
Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers
The Revolving Door of Life
The Bertie Project
A Time of Love and Tartan
The Peppermint Tea Chronicles
A Promise of Ankles
Love in the Time of Bertie
The Enigma of Garlic
The Stellar Debut of Galactica MacFee
Other Works
The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa
La’s Orchestra Saves the World
Trains and Lovers
The Forever Girl
Emma: A Modern Retelling
Chance Developments
The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse
Pianos and Flowers
Tiny Tales
In a Time of Distance and Other Poems
The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even
The Perfect Passion Company
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Alexander McCall Smith
Map copyright © 2011 by Iain McIntosh
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Little, Brown, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, a Hachette UK company, London, in 2024.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: McCall Smith, Alexander, [date] author.
Title: The conditions of unconditional love / Alexander McCall Smith.
Description: First American edition. | New York : Pantheon Books, 2024. | Series: Isabel Dalhousie series ; 15.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023053549 (print) | LCCN 2023053550 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593701720 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593701737 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PR6063.C326 C66 2024 (print) | LCC PR6063.C326 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914—dc23/eng/20231120
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023053549
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023053550
Ebook ISBN 9780593701737
www.pantheonbooks.com
Cover illustration by Bill Sanderson; (border) by All For You / Shutterstock
ep_prh_7.0_147498688_c0_r0
Contents
An Isabel Dalhousie Edinburgh Map
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
About the Author
_147498688_
This book is for Sandra McGruther.
Chapter One
“Modesty,” said Isabel Dalhousie, as she spread thick-cut Dundee marmalade over her slice of toast, “is not quite the same thing as humility.”
This was not the sort of remark that one would hear at every kitchen table, but Isabel was, after all, a philosopher, and if there are any breakfast tables at which such statements might be made over cereal and toast, then they must be tables such as these, here in the intellectual latitudes of Edinburgh, where she lived with her husband, Jamie, a bassoonist, and their two small boys, Charlie and Magnus. And Brother Fox, of course, who lurked in the garden, although he was an itinerant, a temporary resident, having business in other gardens and nearby back streets.
Small children have an effect roughly equivalent to that of a minor tornado, leaving in their wake a detritus of abandoned toys, rearranged furniture, chocolate wrapping paper and crumbs. Isabel’s kitchen table bore witness to the boys’ breakfast with a half-eaten piece of bread, the teeth-marks still clearly impressed in the layer of peanut butter; an unfinished bowl of cereal, soggy with milk; and several smears of jam, honey and something that had the appearance and texture of a mixture of the two.
Isabel was fortunate. As a working mother—she was the owner and full-time editor of a philosophical journal, the Review of Applied Ethics—she needed help in the house. This was provided by Grace, who had been housekeeper to Isabel’s father, and who had stayed on after he died and Isabel took over his house. Grace was good at her job, although she had her moments when she unexpectedly, and for obscure reasons, took umbrage. Isabel handled those situations with tact, usually by saying, “You’re absolutely right, Grace.” Most people like to hear that—and Grace was no exception, particularly when she was absolutely wrong, as was occasionally the case.
Grace was cheerful about her provenance. “I came with the house,” she said. “I might have gone elsewhere, but somehow I didn’t. So, here I am, I suppose. One of the fixtures. Part of the furniture.”
Grace liked walking the boys to school in the morning, occasionally posing as their mother when she engaged in casual conversation at the school gate. Isabel had heard about this from the mother of one of Charlie’s friends, and had initially been discomfited by the pretence. But then she had found out that Grace never actually claimed that the boys were hers, but would simply let people believe this, doing nothing to correct the misapprehension. That, she thought, was innocent enough, and, anyway, we all fantasised about something from time to time, and admitted it—if we were honest.
On that particular morning, Grace had arrived early to take the boys
It began when Jamie, scraping the last of his boiled egg from its shell, remarked, “You know I try to like people—in general—but there’s this new violinist in the band who’s just…” He hesitated, searching for the right metaphor. “Who just gets up my nose. Right up.”
Isabel looked up in surprise. Jamie was usually moderate in his opinions and rarely expressed strong antipathy towards others.
“Pronoun?” she asked.
He looked puzzled. “Pronoun?”
“I mean, is this violinist a him or a her?”
“Him,” he answered. “Very much so. Alpha male. He’s called Fionn. With an o. Plain Finn isn’t good enough for him, I imagine.”
This was not a tone that Jamie struck very often. Fionn must have made quite an impression.
“He’s Irish,” he continued. “He played in a chamber orchestra in Dublin before he did some sort of master’s programme at the Conservatoire in Glasgow. Then he got the job here in Edinburgh. That’s Fionn.”
Isabel listened to this. “I like the name Fionn,” she said mildly. “I haven’t known a Fionn before—at least not one with an o.”
Jamie looked dubious. “I’m not sure that I like the name—at least not now that I’ve met this particular Fionn. He told me that he was named after a famous figure in Irish mythology—Fionn MacCool.”
Isabel knew about that. “When I was a girl, I had a book on myths that was full of the exploits of Fionn. He crops up everywhere. In Scottish mythology too.”
Jamie smiled. “People in the orchestra refer to him as MacCool—discreetly, of course. They think it suits him. And I must say he’s pretty pleased with himself. On an ocean-going scale. He’s a terrific player—extremely talented—but…”
Isabel interrupted him. “You’re not a tiny bit envious?” she asked.
“Envious of his playing?”
Isabel nodded. “People feel envious of professional rivals. Or even of their own colleagues.”
Jamie was silent.
“We don’t always like those who can do things better than we can,” Isabel continued.
Jamie thought about this. “There’ll always be players who are better than oneself. I can name three bassoonists in Scotland alone who are more technically skilled than I am. And there are probably plenty more. But I don’t feel the slightest bit envious of any of them.”
“You’re not an envious person,” suggested Isabel. “You’re lucky.”
“It’s not that,” said Jamie. “It’s just that they’re modest about their playing. They don’t boast. That’s what counts, I think. If you’re modest about your abilities, then people don’t resent the fact that you’re better than they are.”
And it was at that point that their conversation about pride and its implications began.
“Would you call Fionn proud?” Isabel asked.
Jamie answered quickly. “Yes. Definitely.”
“He’s proud of his musicianship, then?”
Jamie nodded.
Isabel smiled. “Would you expect him to say that he wasn’t proud of it?”
Jamie looked puzzled. “Of course not.”
“So, there’s nothing wrong with being proud?”
Jamie frowned. “There are different sorts of pride: Is that what you’re getting at?”
“Yes,” replied Isabel. “There’s defensible pride…”
“Which is?”
She thought for a moment before replying, “Satisfaction in a job well done, for instance—a sense of achievement. Nobody objects to that. You’re allowed to feel it—in fact, others may encourage you to do just that. And then there’s hubristic pride, where you make too much of your achievements. This is where show-offs and the smug fall down, perhaps people like Fionn—not that I can pass judgement on him, never having met him.”
Jamie said that this was the sort of pride that he found so objectionable. “Proud people are arrogant. They have a false idea of their own worth. They look down on others. It’s not hard to spot them.”
“Pride,” Isabel said, “has always been ranked well above the other vices—gluttony, lust, and so on—probably because it was seen as a challenge to the divine order of things.”
“Hubris?”
“Yes, hubris amounts to saying that you are above the gods in some way. And Nemesis is always on the look-out for that sort of uppitiness. Her radar is sensitive to that.”
“Better to be modest,” said Jamie.
“Distinctly better,” agreed Isabel. “I know there’s a lot of debate…”
“In philosophical circles?” interjected Jamie.
“Yes, in philosophical circles—after all, we have to talk about something. There’s debate about whether modesty is a virtue. If you ask me, it is, although not everyone agrees. Hume was a bit iffy about it. He talked about the monkish virtues—things that he really did not like at all, like celibacy, fasting, penance, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude. There were a few others.”
“Not an attractive list,” said Jamie.
“Humility is the interesting one there,” said Isabel. “You can be too modest, I think. And then humility may become an issue.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. It was June, a few days from the longest day, and there was warmth in the morning sun. Its buttery light fell slanting on the tabletop and the walls of the kitchen, across Jamie’s shoulder, onto his forearm; sunlight like this, Isabel, thought, somehow slowed down time—or gave the impression of doing so. She and Jamie could sit there at the table for the entire morning, talking about pride and modesty, about orchestral politics, about all the small things that made up everyday life. And there was nothing wrong in sitting about and talking—so many people were afraid of inaction because they were addicted to doing things. And she, she decided, was one of them. She felt guilty if she passed a day without achieving at least something: That came from her protestant work-ethic genes, bequeathed her by cautious ancestors on both sides—the forebears of her sainted American mother, as she called her, and of her Scottish father were all believers in the virtues of hard work and prudence. Had they come from a Mediterranean culture of olive trees and siestas it might have been different, and she might have taken a more relaxed view of life.
Then Jamie said, “Some of the players would like to get rid of Fionn. It’s an open secret.”
Isabel was interested. “How can they get rid of him? That’s for management, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” said Jamie. “But there’s a lot of ill feeling. And one or two of them have good cause, I think.”
Isabel pointed out that people muttered all sorts of things, and meant very few of them. What did he mean by good cause?
Jamie sighed. “Fionn thinks he’s God’s gift to women. Handsome Irishman. Pretty good musician. Good singing voice too. They like him—a lot.”
“And?” Isabel encouraged.
“There’s a flautist called Andrew. He had a girlfriend called Dawn. They’d been together for three years or so, but when Dawn saw Fionn, she couldn’t contain herself. She flirted with him at some party and he was only too willing to go off with her—for a few months, at least. After that, he moved on to some other woman. Dawn was left homeless—she had been living with Andrew, but that ended when she went off with Fionn.”
Isabel rolled her eyes. Life was precarious enough—even for people of cautious habits. Those who allowed their heads to be turned by appealing Irishmen were at even greater risk of disaster. Sex was a dark, anarchic force in some respects, and was often at odds with reason and good sense. But she understood, as anybody who had ever fallen in love must understand. These things just happened to you—you did not choose to be struck by lightning.
