The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith

never be theirs. And then they served their sentence, the sentence of unrequited, impossible love, which could go on for years and years, with no remission for good behaviour, none at all.
    She looked up at the white expanse of ceiling. In her mind the most worrying thing about Cat’s invitation was this: Jamie had recovered from Cat—Isabel thought of it as a recovery—but if he were to spend any time in her company his feelings for her might be reignited. It could happen. So should she conveniently forget to mention the invitation to him? Or should she go further and tell Cat that he did not want to come? For a short time the dilemma which this posed made Isabel forget her worries. If she simply did not pass on the invitation, she was merely omitting to do something; if she went further and told Cat that he did not want to come then she was actually telling a lie. As to the omission, she was not sure what duty one had to pass on information to another. If A says to B please tell C something or other, does B have any obligation to do so? It would depend, thought Isabel, on whether B had agreed to take on the duty of passing on the message. If he had not, then a liberal individualistic philosopher would probably say that he did not have to exert himself. That was liberal individualism, of course, with which Isabel did not always agree. Don’t go swimming with a liberal individualist, she told herself; he might not save you if you started to drown. No, liberal individualism was not an attractive philosophy. Except now. Now it offered a very attractive solution to her problem.
    I’ll discuss the question with Jamie, she decided. And then she thought: How can I be so stupid? Oh, Christopher Dove, if only you could hear this interior monologue. If only. And you too, Professor Lettuce, you great slug!
    She felt much better.

 
    CHAPTER SIX

    T WO DAYS AFTER THE AUCTION , Isabel was seated at her desk, halfheartedly paging through a submission for the journal— not a good one, she thought, but she always read to the end, no matter how tedious. She had not done anything about Cat’s invitation, and was still uncertain just what she would do about it; so when the telephone rang she looked at it for a few moments, uncertain whether to answer. It could be Cat, in which case she would be put in an immediate spot for having ignored the invitation.
    She picked up the receiver and gave her number. Cat always interrupted her if she did that. “I know your number,” she would say. “I’ve just dialled it.” But, rather to her relief, it was not her niece, but Guy Peploe.
    â€œI’m sorry that you didn’t get your picture,” he said. “I was crossing my fingers for you.”
    â€œThat’s what happens at auctions,” Isabel said. “And there’ll be another chance some day, no doubt.”
    Guy laughed. “True words,” he said. “In fact, there’s a chance right now, if you’re interested. Not that picture, of course, but another McInnes. Interested?”
    Isabel said that she was. But was it at auction?
    â€œNo,” said Guy. “Somebody has brought it in to the gallery and wants us to sell it on commission.”
    Isabel thought for a moment. She was interested in seeing it, but she wondered whether she would want to buy it. The picture she had missed at auction had been a special one, as far as she was concerned, because of its link with the small study that she already owned; she had no particular desire to own a McInnes just because it was a McInnes.
    â€œAll right,” she said. “I’ll take a look at it some time over the next few days”
    Guy hesitated at the other end of the line. “Sorry to press you,” he said, “but I think that you should come down more or less immediately. I’ve got somebody coming in later this afternoon to look at a number of other things who may well go for this one