The Careful Use of Compliments

E

THERE WERE two difficult tasks now. One was to speak to Cat—not an easy thing to do in her niece’s current mood, but rendered doubly difficult by the Dove problem—and the other was to visit Walter Buie. She had spent the previous evening in a state of anxious anticipation, trying to concentrate on reading, then work, then a television adaptation of a novel she liked, but had failed in all three, as her mind kept returning to the difficult encounters that would take place the next morning. She had telephoned Jamie, who had been working late in rehearsal and had been unable to be present for Charlie’s bath time. She had decided that she would tell him about Dove and Cat and seek his advice, but then had changed her mind. And then she decided that she could not broach the subject of her impend-ing meeting with Walter Buie, but again had changed her mind. Jamie would tell her to avoid further involvement with that matter now that she had passed on her misgivings to Guy Peploe. She had found no comfort there, and had been reduced to saying to Charlie, as she picked him up to change him, “What am I to do, Charlie? What do you think?”

But Charlie had simply gurgled in a noncommittal fashion, 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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which provided at least some reassurance. It would be many years yet, she thought, before Charlie started to disagree with her.

Cat was first on the list, because it was potentially the most painful encounter, and it would be best, she thought, to get it over and done with. In spite of Cat’s recent jauntiness, Isabel felt that their underlying relationship seemed so bad now that any further deterioration was unlikely. They still spoke to one another, but Isabel could never gauge in advance what Cat’s mood would be. Sometimes it was as if nothing had happened, but for the most part there was a simmering unforgiveness. If she had thought that this would last forever, Isabel would have felt despondent; but she knew that Cat would come out of this, as she had done before. There would eventually be a reconciliation following a gesture of some sort from her niece. Last time, it had been a basket of provisions from the delicatessen, left on the doorstep as a peace offering, and largely consumed by Brother Fox, who had found it before Isabel had. She thought that for him it must have been akin to the cargo awaited by the members of a Pacific island cargo cult, unasked for, delivered by an unseen hand.

Charlie remained behind with Grace—one did not take babies into a war zone—and Isabel walked, sunk in thought, along Merchiston Crescent to the delicatessen in Bruntsfield Place. Cat was behind the counter when she entered; there was no sign of Eddie or of any customers.

She received a reasonably warm welcome—the Dove effect, Isabel thought—and Cat offered to make her a cup of coffee. “Eddie’s gone to the dentist,” she said. “I asked him when he had last been and he said two years ago. I made the appointment myself.”

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

“You shouldn’t have to,” said Isabel. “One’s own teeth are enough to look after. One should not have to worry about the teeth of others.”

Cat smiled. “But we do, don’t we? I can imagine that you worry about others’ teeth. It’s exactly the sort of thing you worry about.”

“ ‘The loss of one tooth diminishes me,’ ” mused Isabel.

“ ‘For I am involved in mankind.’ ”

“John Donne,” said Cat, looking triumphant. “You think that I don’t know anything. But I do know about John Donne.”

“Well done. But I have never thought of you as one who knows nothing about Donne.”

“Good.”

They looked at one another for a moment and Isabel saw in Cat’s eyes a yearning that they should return to their previous, easy ways with each other; when jokes like this, absurd, silly, could be made without thinking. For there was love there—of course there was—and it was a canker of resentment that had obscured it, a canker that could so easily be put out of the way, altogether excised. But now she had to risk provoking it again, by deliberately rubbing in salt, and she had no alternative, she thought. She had to warn Cat about Dove. She had warned her before about a man; now she had to do it again.

She looked down at the counter. There was a fragment of cheese that had been caught at the edge, a tiny bit of blue cheese, a miniature colony of organisms detached from its polis. She reached forward and wiped it away. “Christopher Dove,” she said.

Cat smiled at her. “Christopher. Yes.”

Isabel was not sure what to make of that. But now she had to say it. She could not put it off. “You know he’s married?”

Cat stood quite still, her eyes fixed on Isabel, who looked away; she could not bear this. Oh Cat, she thought. Oh Cat.

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“Married?” Cat’s voice was small, and Isabel’s heart went out to her.

“Yes. There’s a Mrs. Dove, I’m afraid.”

Cat closed her eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

Isabel reached out across the counter. She wanted to take Cat’s hand; if her voice could not show how she felt, her touch would. But Cat withdrew her arm.

“I’m telling you this because you ought to know it. You’d tell a friend, wouldn’t you? You’d tell her if you knew that some man—some married man—was going to deceive her.”

Cat opened her eyes again. “You think he’s deceiving me?”

It had not occurred to Isabel that Cat might know that Dove was married. She had assumed that Cat would not get involved with a married man, but that assumption she now realised—