Alexander Mccall Smith - The Forgotten Affairs of Youth

I SABEL DALHOUSIE, a philosopher, lowered her copy of the Scotsman newspaper and smiled. On the other side of the breakfast table, buttering a slice of bread for their young son, Charlie, who was now two and a half, and hungry, was her lover and fianc, Jamie. She loved them both so much, so much. They were her worlda tousle-headed little boy and a bassoonist; more important to her than anything elsemore than the complete works of Kant and Aristotle, more than the city she lived in, more than Scotland itself.

Something amusing? Jamie asked.

There was normally little to laugh at in the papers. Political scandals, economic disaster, suffering in all its familiar formsthese were the daily staple of a disaster-prone, uneasy planet. Add to that the seeming inability of the Scottish rugby team to defend itself against the predations of a group of hefty New Zealanders on a summer tour, and the newspapers offering for that day was bleak.

Isabel had read out to Jamie the opening paragraph of the rugby report, in which the Scottish sides performance had been described in less than glowing terms. Jamie, however, had listened with only half an ear; he liked tennis and golf, and found that games involving a ball any larger than those used in these two games held little attraction for him. For her part, although she did not follow sport at all closely, Isabel enjoyed reading about rugby, a game that struck her as being one of the few remaining tribal rituals on offer to males in modern societies. An anthropologist might have a field-day in pursuing this interpretation; might note with some interest the famous rugby haka of the New Zealanders, as their players lined up and challenged the other team with thumbed noses and intimidating grunts; might listen to the Scottish supporters singing Flower of Scotland, with its fourteenth-century military references (fourteenth century!); might remark upon the wailing bagpipes at the beginning of the game and the painted faces and

And there was another, more personal reason for her interest: as a schoolgirl she had been in love, at a safe distance, with a boy who had seemed impossibly handsome, even when covered in mud and in a heaving scrummage. Some men were like that, she mused: they were much improved by mud.

But it was not the rugby news that made her laugh; it was a small item in the papers political diary.

Very amusing, she said to Jamie. Theres a story here about a Glasgow politician who held a surgery. You know those consultation sessions they holdthey call them surgeries; constituents can drop in and tackle them about local problems.

Jamie nodded. I went to see my local Member of Parliament once. He was actually very helpful.

Yes. Thats what an MPs surgery is for. But this one apparently had a constituent coming in to complain about a sore nose. Can you believe it? A sore nose.

Jamie smiled. Well, I suppose if you call it a surgery

Yes, said Isabel. But surely people understand that its a politician theyre seeingnot a doctor. She paused. Or are there people who really think that their Member of Parliament should be able to do something about their aches and pains?

She thought there were; once the state in its benignity embraced us, then the routes by which it dispensed its succour could easily be confused.

She picked up the newspaper. People are pretty strange, arent they? They can be so well, I suppose theres no other word for it but misinformed.

Yes, said Jamie. They can. I was reading somewhere or other about a woman who wrote to an advice column asking whether a baby adopted from Korea would speak Korean when he grew up, even if raised elsewhere.

Shes not alone, said Isabel. Natural language. Scottish kings have believed in thatJames IV, I think, even conducted an experiment. He had a couple of children taken off to Inchkeith Island and looked after by a nurse who was dumb. He wanted to find out what language children would speak naturally if they werent exposed to Englishor, rather, to Scots. He thought it would be Hebrew.

And it turned out to be Korean?

Isabel smiled. It was nothing, I imagine. Just sounds. Or, as Walter Scott suggested, they might have sounded like birds. There are lots of birds on Inchkeith Island.

Jamie wondered whether the children might have invented a language.

Not from scratch, said Isabel. Or only a rudimentary one.

Jamie passed a piece of buttered bread to Charlie, who seized it, examining it intently before putting it into his mouth.

Rudimentary? So theyd have no grammarjust nouns for the various objects? Not that theyd need many. The sea. Birds eggs. Food. Fish.

Yes, said Isabel. And a word for Scotland too, perhaps. Theyd look across the firth and see the mainland, and they might give it a name.

He shook his head. I find that story rather sad, he said.

Isabel put the newspaper down on the table. She thought about the children on the island, imagining them huddled together in the winter, with no words to describe their misery. A familiar question occurred to her: if you had no language, then what form did your thoughts takeif you thought at all? Of course you thoughtshe had never had any difficulty with accepting thatbut how limited would your thoughts be in the absence of any words to express them?

She looked at Charlie and smiled. He returned the smile. He had no words for what had just passed between them, she told herself; they had engaged with one another, and affection and amusement, tinged with a note of conspiracy, had been in the mind of each. These were feelings, though; not articulated intentions or thoughts as such. Or had Charlie thought, Shes smiling at me, even if he as yet had no word for smile? It was, she decided, rather like looking at an unfamiliar stretch of landscape; one might not know its name but one could still be said to know