‘I have a lamb’s kidney for you, dog,’ I said, and he got to his feet, shaking slightly. When he was a pup I had kept treading on him; whether it was his fault or mine I could never determine. He had squealed ‘Pen and ink, pen and ink’, and Syl’s fiancée would leap to console him—‘Who’s a poor little baby then?’ All in all I was more glad than regretful when that engagement ended. Syl grew very white and quiet, and I know he telephoned her in the night to ask her to come back to him. She never did, not once, and I used to wonder why. Then after a few weeks he fell in love again. He never had any trouble finding girls.

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.