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

“You will no doubt see where this is going,” said Sebastian.

William was not sure. “Well, Freddie’s—”

Sebastian did not let him finish. “Exactly,” he said. “So our woman said that as it happened she was just about to get a Pimlico Terrier, although she was worried about having to put him in kennels when she went off to Swansea to visit her sister, who was not very well.”

Sebastian watched William’s expression as the story unfolded. By now, he thought, it would be obvious what MI6 had in mind, and he was sure that William would pick it up.

He was right. William gasped.

“Yes,” said Sebastian. “Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

Sebastian smiled. “Well, I assumed that you had worked out what we had in mind, which is to borrow Freddie de la Hay for a while – a couple of months perhaps.”

“And?”

“And get the Russian to look after him for a few days now and then.”

“And put a transmitter on his collar?”

Sebastian inclined his head, as if to acknowledge praise. “Exactly,” he said.

William grimaced. It was very annoying when somebody said exactly all the time. When he was fourteen there had been a boy at school who had said d’accord to virtually everything anybody said to him. Eventually, William had punched him, quite hard, breaking his nose in the process, which was something he had regretted down the years, and still did. He knew that one should not punch people who annoyed one, although there was a case for it at times, a seemingly irresistible case. He wanted to punch this man, this enigmatic Sebastian Duck – if that was his real name – but he knew that he could not. Wine Merchant Punches Duck in Royal Park … that was how his son, Eddie, with his annoying habit of talking in headlines, would put it. No, he could never do it. Wine Merchant Shows Restraint in Meeting with Spy. So he simply said, “Oh well,” and Sebastian Duck, interpreting this as agreement, nodded and said, “Exactly.”

But there was no agreement – at least yet. “I’ll need time to think about it,” William said. “Can you give me a telephone number? I’ll get back to you.”

Sebastian Duck nodded, and took a small card out of his pocket with a telephone number printed on it. “Here,” he said. “Don’t pass it on, though.”

Oh really, thought William. You people are ridiculous. He grunted.

“Exactly,” said Duck. “I’m pleased you understand.”

After his meeting with Sebastian Duck, William walked all the way back to Corduroy Mansions. He wanted to give Freddie the exercise – even though only a small part of the walk would be through the park – and he wanted, too, some time to think. William had always found that walking encouraged thought. Unlike the unfortunate American president who waspish critics said found it difficult to walk and chew gum at the same time, William could walk and think very effectively. He did not chew gum, of course, and indeed chewing gum was one of his pet hates. “People look so bovine when they chew gum,” he said to Marcia once. “Like cows chewing the cud.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Marcia. “If people enjoy it, then why shouldn’t they do it?”

Marcia was fundamentally libertarian at heart. She might not have described herself as a Benthamite, but that was what she was, and she would have enthusiastically endorsed Bentham’s view that the only things that should be prohibited are those things that harm others.

“Because it’s disgusting,” said William. “As I said, it makes people look bovine.”

“But if that’s what they want to do,” said Marcia, “why shouldn’t they? If I want to look bovine, then surely I’m entitled to do so. It’s not as if I’m harming anybody by chewing gum. It’s not that—”

“But it is harmful,” William interjected. “It makes a terrible mess. That’s why Lee Kwan Yew objected to it. That and failing to flush the lavatory. That’s an offence too in Singapore.”

Marcia looked astonished. “Your own loo?”

“No,” said William. “Just public ones. And why not prohibit it? It harms people.”

Marcia shook her head. “Hardly. Offends them, maybe. Doesn’t really harm them.”

William was not going to let Marcia get away with that. “But it does harm them. Public health. Same with spitting. Spitting should be illegal because it spreads disease, and that harms other people – it harms us all.” He paused. “And anyway, I still think chewing gum is awful. It’s on a par with eating with one’s mouth open in public. It’s just … “ He tailed off; he and Marcia would never agree over some matters – rather a lot of matters, in fact – and that was one of the reasons why it was not to be … There could be no romantic attachment to somebody who might at any moment take out a stick of chewing gum and start to chew like a cow.

But their difference of opinion on that matter did not prevent him from deciding, as he walked back across the park, that he would discuss the meeting with Marcia when he saw her that evening. She had told him that she would drop in on her way back from a catering engagement for the Romanian embassy.

“They’re having a cocktail party,” she had explained. “But it’ll be over by seven – poor dears, they can only rise to two canapés per guest and one and a half glasses of wine. But I’ll throw in a few bottles free, just to give them a slightly better party. And some free sandwiches, which will be only slightly second-hand – leftovers from a lunchtime reception for a firm of solicitors. They never eat very much – they’re far too driven – and there are bound to be bags of sandwiches left over that can be diverted to the poor old Romanians.”

“Quite right,” said William. “One would not want to waste sandwiches. Particularly in these straitened times.”

Marcia nodded in agreement. “And very few sandwiches are wasted,” she said. “Did you know the Prime Minister passes on his extra sandwiches to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for use at his receptions? Did you know that? That’s why you never get any egg mayonnaise sandwiches at the Chancellor’s parties –because the egg sandwiches always go before the cucumber and the cheese ones. It always happens that way.”

William smiled at the thought. It was the cascade system – the same system that allocated older rolling stock to less prosperous railway regions. It was exactly the same, it seemed, with sandwiches.

Marcia was smiling too. “I’m not sure if I should tell you this,” she said, “but I heard the most wonderful story. It’s been going round catering circles for the last few weeks, but everybody who tells it to you asks you to keep it under your hat.”

“Then you shouldn’t tell me,” said William firmly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Marcia. “I know how discreet you are, William. You won’t pass it on.”

William said nothing; he was wondering what sensitive stories there could possibly be about sandwiches.

Marcia lowered her voice to a whisper. “There are plenty of receptions in the House of Commons, you know. Members of Parliament are always giving parties in honour of this, that and the next thing. The Commons Antarctic Treaty Group, the Joint Committee on South American Relations and so on. Every evening without fail.”

William made a gesture, the gesture of one who knows that things are going on, but knows too that he is never invited. The parties of others – or those that one doesn’t attend – are always so self-indulgent. For most of us, the knowledge that somebody, somewhere, is enjoying himself more than we are is strangely disturbing. A common human response is to disapprove, and to try to stop the enjoyment; that has been the well-established response of the prude in all ages. William was not like that, but he did feel the occasional pang at the thought that London was full of parties and yet when he contemplated his own social diary, it was virtually empty. Very occasionally he received an invitation to dinner somewhere, and there were always the occasions when Marcia dropped in. And of course there was his club – the Savile – where the conversation sparkled at the members’ table, but the members all seemed so much better informed than he was, and he felt too shy to push himself forward in conversations where he was at a disadvantage.