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violence it was violence of a harmless sort—that of the innate passion which in Gus was always searching for a suitable object.
    The picture he showed me was of a young beardless man, seated in darkness, at a table laid with food. Framing him, on either side, their backs half turned to us, were two seated companions. You could see from their posture that the central figure had just revealed something remarkable. The big-boned man to the left of him was caught, dramatically, in the act ofrising to his feet, and his astonished elbow was poking through the torn sleeve of his green jerkin. His raw-nosed companion, to the right, had flung his spread arms wide, so that the large left hand seemed to shoot dangerously out of the frame and almost to poke me in the eye.
    ‘Who are they?’ I asked, though it was clear who the man at the centre of the table was. As I say, I wasn’t too keen on religion, or its art.
    Gus stood looking at the painting as if too preoccupied to have heard me so I read the inscription aloud. ‘ The Supper at Emmaus. ’
    ‘What d’you think?’ asked Gus, as if he’d produced a gold coin from my nose or a pair of doves from my ears. ‘Marvellous, isn’t it? Beats having to listen to the babble of those baboons.’
    At the time, I didn’t marvel. But it would have been rude to say so, especially at a first meeting. But also something of Gus’s passion rubbed off on me. I didn’t like the painting—I didn’t understand it—but what I did like was Gus’s liking for it. His passion bred passion: that he could so openly avow his own love for it made me love him. And now this painting, which I had encountered so many years earlier, gave me my first glimmer of insight into Elizabeth Cruikshank. Beneath that pallid exterior there must be passion too, however carefully concealed. But all I said was, ‘A dear friend of mine, Dr Galen, loves Caravaggio’s work. He’s an analyst, too. A very original one. It’s he who says there’s no cure for being alive.’
    ‘That’s what you said last time.’
    So she had taken it in. ‘Yes. Gus’s words. I’m afraid I’m not original. He feels that people aren’t ill so much as lacking ameaning to live. He thinks our job is to help them to find it.’
    ‘That might be rather a tall order.’ There was the ghost of a smile in her voice.
    ‘Yes. And possibly arrogant, you may be thinking?’
    ‘No, I wasn’t thinking that.’
    She lapsed back into silence and I dropped into a reverie.
    Some patients, however little they say, keep your attention tied to them so that the silence is an effort. I’ve learned that this is anger. Angry people press on you, hold you down to keep you with them. But it was easy to drift off with Elizabeth Cruikshank. She didn’t mug you with her presence; she let you go as lightly as a dandelion seed.
    I was contemplating this when she spoke again. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to bother with people like us?’
    For a second I supposed she was referring to the two of us. Then, with a sense of slight shock, I recovered myself and recognised her allusion was to me as doctor and herself as patient.
    ‘What are people like “us” like?’
    She gave one of her little dismissive shrugs. ‘People like me, then.’
    ‘And what would you say you were like?’
    The ginger tom was back balancing on the fence outside. It had an air of entitlement which in a human would be psychopathic. Perhaps that was why I so disliked it. It took for granted something I could never take.
    ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, listlessly. ‘Not very interesting.’
    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t know that anyone is uninteresting once you get to know them.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yes, I believe so.’
    ‘You have to say that.’
    ‘I don’t, in fact. And I don’t, knowingly anyway, lie to my patients.’ Deliberately, I introduced a note of coolness into my voice.
    ‘I’m sure you don’t.’
    ‘There are as many misconceptions about