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By Root 589 0

had made this perfectly clear to him – and to Cyril – on a number of occasions, and she would never agree to having the dog live with them. But this practical obstacle did not stand too much in the way of fantasy, and in his mind’s eye he saw the pair of them standing before the altar at St John’s in Princes Street, he in his kilt, Domenica in an elegant cream-coloured outfit, while beside him, neatly groomed, Cyril watched proceedings with interest. They could modify the vows, perhaps: do you, Domenica, take this man, and his dog . . . No, it was impossible. And Angus could hardly fire Cyril after all those years of devotion that the dog had shown him. No, it could never be.

Domenica looked at her watch. Angus always arrived half an hour early at her parties, something which she encouraged, as it gave them time to discuss the guests before they came. She often consulted Angus on the proposed guest list and was prepared to strike people off if he raised a sufficiently weighty objection.

‘Oh, we can’t have her,’ Angus once said, pointing to a name on Domenica’s list for an earlier dinner party. ‘She talks about nothing but herself. All the time. Have you noticed it? Yak, yak, yak. Moi, moi, moi.’

‘True,’ said Domenica, drawing a line through the name. ‘Mind you, that is the most perennially fascinating subject, don’t you find? Ourselves.’

Angus thought about this. He did not talk about himself, and so he could not agree, but when he thought of others he could see the truth of Domenica’s observation. Most people were delighted to talk about themselves and their doings, asked or unasked.

‘And we can’t have him,’ he said, pointing at another name. ‘Because if we have him, then we can’t have her. And if one had to choose, I would have thought that she was the one we really wanted.’

Domenica scrutinised the list. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Was it true, do you think? Do you think that he really did that?’

‘Apparently he did,’ said Angus, shaking his head over the foibles of humanity. Edinburgh was a city that took note of these things. Indeed, he had heard that there was a book somewhere in Heriot Row in which these things were all written down, so that they could be remembered. The book, he had been told, was in the hands of a carefully chosen committee (although anybody was entitled to nominate an incident for inclusion), and went back as far as 1956. It had once been proposed that the record should be expunged ten years after an event, but this suggestion had been turned down on the grounds that many of the older scandals still gave a great deal of enjoyment to people and it would be wrong to deprive them of that.

The guest list that evening had been fully approved by Angus, and he was looking forward to the good conversation that he knew would take place. As he sat there, watching Domenica carry out a few last-minute preparations, Angus thought about the painting he had begun a few days before and which now dominated his studio. It was an extremely large canvas, ten feet by six, and he was at present sketching in the outlines of his planned great work on kindness: a seated woman, beneficent, portrayed in the style of Celtic illuminations, comforts a crouching boy, a figure of modern Scotland.

‘I’m working on an important picture,’ he said to Domenica. ‘On the theme of kindness.’

Domenica, who had been peering into a pot on the top of the stove, looked over her shoulder at Angus. ‘A very good subject for a picture,’ she said. ‘I approve. Do you have a title for it yet?’

Angus shook his head. He thought of it simply as Kindness, but he knew that this sounded a bit weak, a bit too self-explanatory.

‘In that case,’ said Domenica, ‘I suggest that you call it Let the More Loving One.’

Angus frowned. ‘Let the More Loving One?’

Domenica turned away from the stove. ‘It’s a line from Auden,’ she said. ‘“If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me.”’

They were both silent for a moment. Behind Domenica, the pot on the stove simmered quietly; there was a square of light on the ceiling, reflected