I went to the kitchen and got the kidney from the larder. ‘Soon, dog,’ I said, ‘soon, soon’, as I sliced it up into small bits for his old teeth and his old gums.

He found it difficult to chew and his breath smelled, but I felt I was in no position to criticize. I was, as they say, no oil-painting myself. I had never liked him as much as a dog should be liked, and now it was too late. I had never quite been able to dissociate him from his origins and the fleeing fiancée. Even now he reminded me of loss. That he had arrived at the time of Jack’s death did not worry me. I had never liked Jack as much as a husband should be liked.

Considering this, I bent down and patted the dog as he snuffled the bits of kidney. My back ached as I straightened up, and he snarled briefly at me.

‘You’re an ungrateful little swine, dog,’ I told him, ‘and the world is too cold a place for you to bite the hand that feeds you.’

I had had a sheep-dog once who had leapt across the moors, his hair sleeked by the facing wind. I had gone home with him to golden fires, and sometimes I thought that all I retained of warmth and joy—and it was now little enough—had been stored up in those days and seldom since replenished. My memories of youth were of movement and life, of cold wind, bracken-and-gorse-scented, fire and a warmth of summer more significant in the North, more notable than it could be in a gentler climate. The clear air had seemed to clarify everything—sentiments and sensation.

I went back to the sitting-room and the dog followed. Syl had had the end part of the house converted for me, so that when he married I should be out of the way of the bride. I had suggested that there was nothing to prevent him from buying his own house but he had not seemed to listen. I was not blind to Syl’s faults. He could be spontaneously and ridiculously generous, but he was also mean. I could hardly blame him for this trait, since it was from me that he got his Yorkshire blood and Yorkshiremen are known the world over as careful.