The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

there in the background, and we get on with loving other people, people from our present rather than our past. Don’t you think that?”
    She reached for his hand and pressed it. Blessedness: she could not believe her state of blessedness; this young man, with all his beauty and gentleness, in her arms, hers. “Of course I believe that,” she said.
    â€œSo do we go, or not?”
    â€œI think we should go. Cat and I are family. I don’t want her cut out of my life with you.”
    He kissed her on the brow, then on the lips. “All right.”
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    THE MAIL THE NEXT DAY brought two manuscripts that Isabel knew were coming and which she had been looking forward to receiving, and she read these in preference to the items immediately below them in the pile, some of which looked like bills. The manuscripts were as interesting as she had hoped, and she started to write grateful letters to their authors. Both were solicited contributions to a special issue on the philosophy of taxation, a subject that proved to be considerably more thought-provoking than Isabel had imagined. Why should the wealthy pay more tax than the poor? They did, or at least they did in most systems, but on what grounds was this defensible? Should taxation be used as a tool to redistribute wealth? She thought it should, and many others thought so as well, but it was not so clear that taxation was the most appropriate way to achieve that. Should governments perhaps be honest and say that they intended simply to confiscate assets over a certain level? She gave some thought to that, wondering how she would feel if the government started to take her capital away, beginning right now, appropriating her funds, turning them into military equipment and welfare payments and new roads, as governments tended to do. I don’t have a very strong right to have what I have, she thought. All of it comes to me simply because a member of my family had it, and then died. What sort of moral right did that give? Not a very convincing one, she felt. But so much of life turned out that way—things were gained and then handed on; not just physical things but tastes, qualities, insights. Would Mozart have written what he did had it not been for Leopold Mozart, who had placed his tiny son on the piano stool? Presumably not; the genius, the particular capacities of the brain might have been there but could well have remained locked away, had there been no musical father to bring them out. And Mr. Getty, a rich man—and a very generous one too—had received his oil fields from Mr. Getty before him; he might never have found oil by himself. She smiled at the thought; of course he might not have looked for oil—it does not occur to everybody to go looking for oil.
    Her train of thought was interrupted by a noise from within the house. Grace was not there that morning—she had a dental appointment and Isabel had told her not to bother coming in. That was more than just concern for Grace’s welfare on Isabel’s part; Grace was undergoing root canal treatment on a tooth, and Isabel knew from experience how miserable this made her feel. Grace did not like dental anaesthetics, and preferred to endure the pain rather than to experience the lingering numbness that went with the local anaesthetic, a bizarre preference, in Isabel’s view, but one which was firmly held. Isabel thought that this might be understandable, just, when it came to minor treatment, but root canal treatment, with its deliberate engagement with the nerve, could be an exquisite agony. She had found out that Grace loved to give a blow-by-blow account of her visits to the dentist and she did not feel in the mood to listen to a long story about root canals punctuated by the sort of grumpiness that Grace could, on occasion, muster. By tomorrow the memory of the pain might be less vivid, and Grace’s mood might be restored.
    So Isabel was now in sole charge of