This was true generosity of spirit, concealed behind a sometimes slightly brusque exterior.

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. Page 160.

She slept, but only fitfully, with the result that she was still sound asleep when Grace arrived the next morning. If she was not downstairs, Grace inevitably came up to check on her, bearing a reviving cup of tea. She woke up to Grace’s knock.

“A bad night?” Grace asked solicitously as she placed the cup of tea on Isabel’s bedside table.

Isabel sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes. “I don’t think I went to sleep until two,” she said.

“Worries?” asked Grace, looking down at her.

“Yes,” said Isabel. “Worries and doubts. This and that.”

“I know the feeling,” said Grace. “It happens to me too. I start worrying about the world. I wonder where it’s all going to end.”

“Not with a bang but a whimper,” said Isabel vaguely. “That’s what T. S. Eliot said, and everybody always quotes him on it. But it’s really a very silly thing to say, and I’m sure that he regretted it.”

“Silly man,” said Grace. “Your friend Mr. Auden would never have said that, would he?”

“Certainly not,” said Isabel, twisting round in bed to reach for the teacup. “Although he did say some silly things when he was young.” She took a sip of tea, which always seemed to have an immediate effect on her clarity of mind. “And then he said some silly things when he was old. In between, though, he was usually very acute.”

“Cute?”

“Acute.” Isabel started to get out of bed, feeling with her toes for the slippers on the bedside rug. “If he wrote something which was wrong, which was meretricious, he would go back to it and change it, if he could. Some of his poems he denounced altogether. ‘September 1st, 1939’ was an example.”

She drew the curtains. It was a bright spring day, with the first signs of heat in the sun. “He said that poem was dishonest, although I think it’s got some wonderful lines. Then, in Letters from Iceland, he wrote something which had absolutely no meaning, but which sounded magnificent. And the ports have names for the sea. It’s a marvellous line, isn’t it? But it doesn’t mean anything, does it, Grace?”

“No,” said Grace. “I don’t see how ports can have names for the sea. I don’t see it.”

Isabel rubbed her eyes again. “Grace, I want to have a simple day. Do you think that you can help me?”

“Of course.”

“Could you answer the phone? Tell anybody that I’m working, which I intend to be. Tell them that I’ll be able to phone them back tomorrow.”

“Everybody?”

“Except Cat. And Jamie. I’ll speak to them, although I hope that they don’t phone today. Everybody else will have to wait.”

Grace approved. She liked to be in control of the house, and being asked to turn people away was a most welcome instruction.

“It’s about time you did this,” she said. “You’re at everybody’s beck and call. It’s ridiculous. You deserve a bit of time to yourself.”

Isabel smiled. Grace was her greatest ally. Whatever disagreements they might have, in the final analysis she knew that Grace had her interests firmly at heart. This was loyalty of a sort which was rare in an age of self-indulgence. It was an old-fashioned virtue of the type which her philosophical colleagues extolled but could never themselves match. And Grace, in spite of her tendency to disapprove of certain people, had many other virtues. She believed in a God who would ultimately do justice to those to whom injustice had been done; she believed in work, and the importance of never being late or missing a day through “so-called illness,” and she believed in never ignoring a request for help from anybody, no matter their condition, no matter the fault that lay behind their plight. This was true generosity of spirit, concealed behind a sometimes slightly brusque exterior.

“You’re wonderful, Grace,” Isabel said. “Where would any of us be without you?”