Alexander McCall Smith - The Dog Who Came In From The Cold

Basil Wickramsinghe, accountant and High Anglican, moved to his window and discreetly peered out. By craning his neck and standing far enough back he could just see who was calling upon him. There were some callers he did not like to receive and whose ringing would be ignored – local politicians soliciting votes being head of that list, just above so-called market researchers. Or his distant cousin, Anthony, an ear, nose and throat surgeon, with whom he had very little in common and who invariably outstayed his welcome. Today, however, he was expecting visitors – quite a number of them – and he could see that this was the advance guard in the shape of Gillian Winterspoon, who was coming early to help him with the sandwiches.

Gillian Winterspoon was the sort of woman who in the language of marriage banns would be called “a spinster of this parish”. She had met Basil during an advanced professional training weekend at the Great Danes Hotel near Maidstone; a weekend during which they had both wrestled with the intricacies of the latest taxation regulations affecting non-residents. It was exotic stuff as far as they both were concerned; neither had any involvement with the heady world of non-resident taxation – or non-taxation, as Basil so wittily called it during the tea break after the first session – but both needed the credit that attendance on the course brought and which the Institute of Chartered Accountants quite rightly required of its members lest any of them become cobwebby.

“I’d call all this the non-taxation of non-residents,” quipped Basil, “leading to non-revenue.”

Gillian Winterspoon, who had found herself standing next to him at the tea break, nervously scanning the assembled accountants to see if any of them might conceivably talk to her, had seized upon this remark with delight.

“That’s terribly funny,” she said. “You’re right. No taxation with non-representation. Perhaps we should all throw our tea into the Medway.”

Basil smiled at her. He appreciated both the compliment to his humour and the reference to the Boston Tea Party. He introduced himself, and she reciprocated. Each was relieved to find a friend in this room of others who appeared to know one another so well.

At the end of the weekend they were sitting next to one another at every session. Gillian was delighted to have found a man who appeared to enjoy her company – not a reaction she had encountered in many men, alas – and for his part, Basil found her mild manner undemanding. He was nervous of women and did not have a great deal of confidence in that sphere, especially when he found himself with high-powered woman accountants power-dressed in brisk business suits. Gillian gave rise to none of these anxieties.

They had found, too, an important common interest. Both attended a High Anglican church – in Basil’s case a local church in Pimlico, fortunately extremely high in its liturgical attitudes; in hers, one near her home on the fringes of Maida Vale. So it was no surprise that at the end of the conference on the taxation (non-taxation) of non-residents, Basil invited Gillian to attend a future meeting of the James I and VI Society (incorporating the Charles I Appreciation League). And it was equally unsurprising that Gillian accepted this invitation with alacrity and pleasure.

Within a few months Gillian had been elected to the committee of the Society, in the role of secretary, while Basil was chairman. This rapid rise to office suited her very well as it gave her a pretext for frequently contacting Basil, ostensibly in connection with the society’s business, but in reality because she was deeply in love with him and could think only of him. In her thoughts she addressed him as The Blessed Basil, an ecclesiastical status to which he was not, strictly speaking, entitled, but which she felt fully justified in conferring upon him. For he was blessed, she thought; he was kind, considerate, courteous and handsome. It was true that blessedness, and indeed saintliness, had nothing to do with looks, but she felt that somehow they helped. There were very plain saints, of course, but somehow they seemed less – how should she put it – less spiritually exciting than handsome saints.

St Sebastian was a case in point. He was always depicted as a young man of great physical beauty, clad only in a conveniently placed loincloth. He was extremely spiritual, thought Gillian; much more so than dear St Francis, who was somewhat homely – exactly the sort of saint whom a grateful animal might lick in appreciation.

Gillian had been incensed when a cousin of hers, a rather cynical woman who enjoyed making iconoclastic remarks, had suggested that many of the pictures of St Sebastian’s martyrdom were thinly disguised exercises in homoerotic art.

“I’m sure he didn’t wear quite as seductive a loincloth in real life,” this cousin had said. “Saints rarely did, you know.”

Gillian had bristled in her indignation. How did this woman know about saints’ underpants? It was ridiculous. “The point of the loincloth,” she observed, “was to show the arrows with which poor St Sebastian was pierced. That’s the whole point of the pictures. They remind us of his suffering in a very vivid way. If he were wearing clothes we wouldn’t see the arrows piercing his flesh.”

The cousin smirked. “But what evidence do we have that he was so … so lithely muscular? In real life, that is?”

“I’m not going to discuss this with you any further,” said Gillian.

Later, she had mentioned the disagreement to Basil, who had listened intently to her, and then sighed. “People don’t understand,” he said. “And of those who do not understand, there are some who do not understand because they will not understand.”

Gillian agreed with this wholeheartedly. “But at least we understand,” she said. “That is understood, I think.”

“Of course it is,” said Basil.

Oh, if only you understood what I feel, Blessed Basil, Gillian thought. But she suspected that he did not; or, rather, would not. In that respect he was like those people who he said did not understand because they did not want to understand.

That is my burden, she thought. And it’s the burden of so many women. Men simply will not see. And we have to wait in the wings for them to make up their mind, to decide whether they like us enough to confer the benefit of commitment upon us. Why do we put up with it? Why don’t we spell out to them that we’re fed up with waiting, that we’re not going to tolerate their detachment any more, that it’s going to be us, women, who are going to decide in future.

She sighed. That was not the way the world was – or certainly not for people like her.

James arrived at Corduroy Mansions earlier than he had anticipated. He had allowed himself more time than he needed to travel from his flat in Clerkenwell and had fifteen minutes in hand by the time he found himself outside Corduroy Mansions. Dee answered when he pressed the doorbell and buzzed him into the entrance. He noticed that something was going on in the ground-floor flat – a party, by the sound of it – but he did not linger and bounded up the stairs to Caroline’s flat. He was pleased that Dee was in; James liked her and had not seen her for a few weeks. Dee gave him news of the latest health food products, and occasional free samples too. Last time he saw her, she had given him a one-month course of a brain–power-enhancing supplement, ginkgo biloba, and he had taken it conscientiously until the bottle was empty, without any noticeable result. “Of course, you don’t really need this,” she had said to him. “There are lots of people I know who could do with a course of ginkgo. You’re really not one. Here’s some garlic as well.”