“The dodos club. And it would meet in places like this.”

The woman’s eyes had widened, and then she had burst out laughing. “The dodos club! That’s so clever.”

It was not very clever, thought Isabel, but for a moment there had been a sense of contact across cultures, of kindred spirits reaching out to one another. And that happened from time to time, when she met somebody who could look at the T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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world in the same way and see the joke. But not now, in this conversation with Grace about Brother Fox and the mess that he had made of the small rose bed.

“We’ll have to watch that fox when Charlie’s around,” said Grace.

Isabel frowned. Was Grace suggesting that Brother Fox would harm Charlie in some way? Did foxes do such things?

It was as if Grace had heard the unspoken question. “They carry off lambs,” she said darkly.

The thought that anything should eat Charlie appalled Isabel; even the thought that a dangerous world should lie ahead of him, filled with creatures that might wish to harm him, was in itself bad enough, but eat . . .

“Brother Fox would not harm him,” she said. “Foxes don’t bite unless you corner them. And nor for that matter do wolves.”

Although at the back of her mind there was a vague memory of reading of a fox that did bite a child, in London. But that must have been a very stressed urban fox; Brother Fox was not like that.

If Grace had been prepared to accept this defence of foxes, she was not prepared to do so with wolves. “Wolves do,” she said simply. “Wolves are very dangerous. I have a sister in Canada.”

Isabel raised an eyebrow. The fact that one had a relative in Canada did not, she felt, automatically entitle one to pronounce on the subject of wolves, even if it gave one authority in some other areas.

“Wolves,” said Isabel, “have never been recorded as attacking man. They keep well away.” She felt tempted to add that she had been in Canada herself and had never seen a wolf, which was true and would therefore add empirical strength to the claim that wolves avoided people, but the full truth might require her to add that she had only been in Toronto, which somewhat diminished the force of the observation.

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

“Well, all I’m saying,” said Grace, picking up Charlie, “is that we would be better off without that fox. Particularly with Charlie. That’s all I’m saying.”

The matter had been dropped, and Isabel had gone off to her study to deal with the mail. The fact that she had thought that she was soon to stop being the editor of the Review meant that she had let things slip, and the unopened correspondence had mounted up. Now she would have to think again in terms of future issues, have to deal with the unsolicited submissions, and would have to think, too, of the appointment of a new editorial board. She already had her list and was adding to it: Jim Childress in Charlottesville would be a great catch, and Julian Baggini, too, who already edited The Philosophers’ Magazine but who might be persuaded to join. They would all be her friends, which would make the task of consulting the board so much more pleasant—no Lettuce or Dove. Of Lettuce and Dove I am freed, she said to herself, savouring the words, which sounded so like a line—and title—of a sixteenth- century English madrigal in the Italian style. It could be sung, perhaps, by the Tallis Scholars: Of Lettuce and Dove I am freed

And of their schemings no more shall be heard For they are gone with the morning dew Yea, Lettuce and Dove are both departed . . .

There was a letter from Dove.

Dear Miss Dalhousie,

I have heard from Professor Lettuce that you have persuaded the owners of the Review to sell it to you. I have heard, too, that you will be appointing a new editorial board and that it is unlikely to include current members. I am, of course, sorry that you are seeing fit to T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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dispose of the services of those who have given so much time to the Review over the years and who have always had its best interests at heart. I suppose that this is the prerogative of those who have the economic power to acquire assets which should, in a better-ordered world, be owned and operated for the common weal. However, I must say that I am surprised that a moral philosopher, which you claim to be (although I note that you have no academic position in that field), should act in a way which is more befitting of the petulant proprietor of a chain of newspapers. But that, I regretfully conclude, is how business is conducted today. I wish you, nonetheless, a successful further tenure of the editorial chair to which you have, it seems, become stuck.

Yours sincerely, Christopher Dove

She read the letter, and then reread it. It was, she had to admit, a small masterpiece of venom. To anybody who was unaware of the background, and who therefore did not know that the letter was from the pen of an arch- schemer, it might even have seemed poignant. But to Isabel, who knew what lay behind it, it was pure cant. Cant for Our Times, she thought.

She laid the letter to one side and picked up the envelope.

Dove, she remembered, was famously keen on recycling and reused envelopes, sticking new address labels on them and seal-ing the flap with adhesive tape. Sure enough, this envelope had been used before and had a small label with her name and address stuck on the front. Idly she held the envelope up to the light and saw the writing underneath. The envelope in its first incarnation had been addressed to Dove at his home address.

“Professor and Mrs. C. Dove” read the original.

C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

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