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

It seemed to William that Angelica was getting into her stride. What he was hearing was so unexpected, so out of the ordinary, that he sat meekly and listened. “And here’s another thing,” she went on. “The census. You may have noticed that there is pressure to ask people to disclose their sexual orientation in the census questionnaire. Yes, people would be asked whether they are gay or straight or whatever. What a cheek! What people are is their own business and nothing to do with the state or social researchers or anybody else really. Nothing. Sex is a private matter and adults should be allowed to do what they like without having the government breathing down their necks. And the same goes for religious beliefs. People are entitled to their private conscience, if that is what they wish.”

William shook his head. He resented people asking him what party he would vote for, and he knew that there were people for whom that question would be only the beginning. It surprised him, though, that this was coming from Angelica. Surely the whole point of having spies – if that was what she was – was to obtain information about other people. Did a spy who believed in privacy make sense? Were there libertarian spies?

“This country used to be free,” he said. “We used to be able to speak and think as we like. We used to be entitled to a private life.”

Angelica nodded. “I’m inclined to agree with you. I went into this job, you know, because I felt that I would be helping to protect freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom from arbitrary arrest and intimidation, freedom to walk about the place without being obliged to give an account of yourself to some officious gendarme. I really believed that.”

“And now?”

She looked William in the eye. “I still believe that. I still think that the work we do is meant to protect our society from people who would impose their will on us. From ideologues who use violence to intimidate others. Who would impose tyranny of one sort or another on us. I still believe that …” She faltered. “Except, I think that while we’re trying to protect freedom, there are plenty of people who are busy destroying it. And they’re not doing it with threats or bombs, they’re doing it through regulations and legislation and a hundred little restrictions on freedom of thought and speech. Each of these may be small, but their cumulative effect is a massive erosion of freedom. Death by a thousand cuts. They’re hooked on getting as much control over us as they can. They’re thoroughly illiberal. They really are.”

William listened. He agreed with her; what she said seemed very reasonable. And yet she had made this absurd, almost paranoid suggestion that they could not talk openly in his flat.

“I can assure you that there’s nobody listening in to what is said in this place,” he said. “Corduroy Mansions isn’t bugged.”

“That may be so,” said Angelica. “But the point is this: we have to have strict rules about when we can talk with our contacts. We like to control the time and place. It’s a procedural issue.”

“So when do you want to see me?”

Angelica took a piece of paper out of her handbag. “The details are here,” she said, handing it to him.

William glanced at the paper. “Written in invisible ink?” he asked. “Do I have to iron it to get the ink to appear? That’s what we did when we were in the scouts. We wrote in lemon juice, if I remember correctly, and an iron would bring out the writing.”

Angelica laughed. “No, this is perfectly legible. But I’d appreciate it if you’d make a mental note of what is written there, and then burn it.”

William let out a hoot of laughter. “You’re not serious, Angelica!”

Angelica nodded. “Deadly serious,” she said. “And tell me, since you mentioned the scouts, when you were in the movement did you make a promise? Did you promise to do your duty?”

William remembered standing in a circle and raising his arm in the scout salute. He remembered the words of the scout promise, dredged up now from the deep recesses of memory; it was so long ago, and the world was so different then. It was before sorrow and failure and the sense of things getting thinner.

“I suppose I did,” he said. “I wonder if modern scouts promise to do their duty?”

“I have no idea,” said Angelica. “But do remember what you promised. A promise is a promise, isn’t it?”

William stared at his visitor in silence. He wondered if this was the way they recruited people these days, and if so, whether anybody responded to such tactics. Nobody believed in anything any more, as far as he could make out, and promises appeared to mean nothing. And if that was the case, then why was he so readily agreeing to meet these people?

The reason came to him suddenly. He loved his country. He loved it because it might be a bit frayed round the edges but still it was filled with good-natured, tolerant people; with eccentrics and enthusiasts; with people who really did drink warm beer and ride bicycles (well, some of them did, although the cyclists now were mounted on racing bikes and drank high-energy drinks from aluminium flasks, rather than warm beer – but they were still loveable).

So he agreed to do what they wanted him to do and to meet them where they said they wanted him to meet them.

“Remember to bring your dog,” said Angelica. “Don’t forget to bring Freddie de la Hay.”

William nodded his agreement. But then the thought struck him forcibly: how did they know Freddie’s name? He had not mentioned it to Angelica, and yet she knew. Was it the business of these people to find out everything – even the name of one’s dog?

Marcia looked at William in frank disbelief. “What?” she asked. “Could you tell me again what you’ve just told me?”

Marcia, who was William’s old friend, former flatmate – for a very brief time – and general confidante, had called in at Corduroy Mansions the same day he had received the visit from Angelica. Marcia was a caterer, and she owned a small company that specialised in cooking for events. In the days when boardroom lunches were more common she had concentrated on those, but now, with companies being encouraged to be slender in every sense, she had been obliged to diversify. Catering for weddings and funerals was now the staple of her business but she had also developed a profitable line in providing canapés for diplomatic cocktail parties and political receptions.

That day she had been prepared a small finger-lunch for the Icelandic ambassador in honour of a visiting Icelandic poet, Sigurlin Valdis Antonsdóttir. The ambassador’s assistant had asked for several varieties of northern fish to feature on the menu, to mark the fact that the guest of honour was the author of Cold Waves, a highly regarded saga of migrating cod, which had won Iceland’s premier literary prize and had recently been translated into Finnish. Marcia had risen to the challenge and had served herring rolls, cod roe, and a great deal of smoked salmon. Some of it had been left uneaten and was not wanted by the embassy, so Marcia dropped round to deliver it to William. He always welcomed the surplus snacks that Marcia brought him, and indeed had once remarked that he could live almost entirely off the scraps from her table. This pleased Marcia. She had been brought up by her very domesticated mother to believe that of all the satisfactions open to women, feeding men was ultimately the most profound. She knew that this was, quite simply, wrong, but the beliefs instilled in childhood and youth are hard to dislodge, and Marcia had eventually stopped fighting the convictions that lay deep within her.

“I know I’m pathetic,” she once said to a friend. “I know that I should be all independent and self-sufficient and so on, but that’s just not me. I want to feed men. I just love putting large plates of food in front of them. I love it.” She paused. “Does that mean there’s something wrong with me?”