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

The woman who brought Freddie to this flat had not given William her name, which was Tilly Curtain, nor had she told him that she was a Senior Field Officer (Grade 2) in MI6, slightly – but only slightly – junior to Sebastian Duck, who was a Senior Field Officer (Grade 1) in the same branch of the service. Tilly had been at university, in her case the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where she spent three years studying for a joint degree in philosophy and French. She was the daughter of a male nurse from Nottingham, George Curtain, and his wife, Patricia, a dental hygienist. She had one brother, Tom, who was slightly older than her – she was now thirty-eight – and worked for a firm of civil engineers in Singapore.

George had spent a large part of his career in a psychiatric hospital, where he had been highly regarded for his exceptional skills at calming distressed patients. He had subsequently transferred to a community psychiatric team, where again he was much appreciated, to the extent of being nominated for and awarded an MBE. George had not tried to influence his daughter in her choice of career, but she had acquired from him a sense of public service that was eventually to lead her into the arms of MI6. Her first choice had been dental hygiene, her mother’s calling, although once again there had been no deliberate parental influence in that direction. That is not to say that nothing was said in the home about her mother’s profession – it was.

“I sometimes think of myself as bit of a missionary,” her mother used to say. “A missionary for good dental hygiene. Floss. Proper brushing. If only people knew.”

Tilly knew. She flossed after every meal – every meal – and supported this with the use of a well-maintained electric toothbrush. The effects were evident; her teeth, in fact, were one of the most attractive features in an already appealing face, and although William was not aware of noticing her teeth during their brief meeting, subconsciously he had been taken by the brightness of her smile.

Tilly was similarly unaware of the power of her smile. It was the smile that had ensured that she was given every job she applied for during her gap year, that had secured her election (unopposed) to the students’ representative council at university, and that had in due course resulted in her sweeping through every stage of selection for MI6.

“Tilly has such a wonderful smile,” George often observed to Patricia.

“Regular flossing,” Patricia would reply. “It always shows.”

“It’s going to get her far in life,” George continued. “You know how people say that somebody’s face is their fortune. In Tilly’s case, it’s her smile.”

Patricia agreed. “So many people don’t bother to smile. But they should try it. Add a smile to a request. Result: get what you want. Add a smile to a greeting. Result: a happier encounter.”

It was a particular mannerism of speech, one George did not notice because he had lived with it for so long: Patricia often used the word “result”, followed by a consequence. To her patients she said, “Regular flossing. Result: no gum disease.” And to her husband, whom she sometimes had to urge to take more exercise, she said, “A brisk walk each day. Result: cardiac health.”

As so many of us do, Tilly had fallen into her career. During her university days she would never have seen herself as in the type for security work, about which she knew nothing and in which she then had not the slightest interest. She had enjoyed her philosophy courses at Norwich. Less so the French part of her curriculum, largely because of an unpleasant experience in Montpellier, where she had been inconsiderately treated by a French student with whom she had become emotionally involved. His cavalier attitude to her feelings for him – which he dismissed as vachement ennuyeux – had led her to take against France in general, a ridiculous attitude, but very human and understandable. For that is what people do, even though they should not. If we meet one Eskimo whom we do not like, then of course we are going to take against the Arctic in general.

Philosophy was different. She had no particular enthusiasm for the aridities of some parts of the discipline, but she found herself responding warmly to the more engaged and accessible works of those philosophers who had something to say about the world in which ordinary, morally sensitive people lived. In particular, she read Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good with a curious sense of discovering afresh something that she had always known. Of course this was how one should approach the business of being human; of course it was.

But philosophy is a tiny trade, and, in spite of a good performance in her final examinations, her student career had not been stellar, and any opportunities to take philosophy further were effectively confined to those who were indeed stellar. So when a recruiter for MI6, a member of the academic staff, said that he knew of a job that might interest her, she had agreed to be interviewed.

This, then, was the person who took Freddie de la Hay into her flat in Notting Hill and introduced him to the place where he would be sleeping that night. After which she led him into the kitchen and gave him three large dog biscuits from a newly purchased box of Happy Dog Treats.

Freddie glanced down at the biscuits and then up at Tilly. Why was he here? What was going on? Where was God (William)? Why was the world so large, so strange, so filled with curious scents? (The sort of question that must have been posed by Iris Murdoch’s dog.) There were cats somewhere about, somewhere not far off – he could smell them. Did they have something to do with this devastating alteration that had befallen him?

With the sense that dogs have that enables them to distinguish between friend and foe – a sense that picks up atmosphere – Freddie knew from the beginning that Tilly was not hostile. Not having to worry about her as a threat meant that he could explore the flat in a leisurely way, pausing here and there to investigate enticing smells. There was something intriguing in the kitchen, for example, which he wanted to look into, and there were these troubling traces of cat – possibly safely historic – that would need to be interrogated more closely. There was also the question of food; Freddie, like any dog, was perpetually hungry, and the three dog biscuits that Tilly had obligingly placed before him would need to be eaten. He put his head down and took one of the snacks in his mouth. It had a delicious meaty odour, and was of just the right consistency. He made short work of it, and turned to wolf down the second, and then the third. Now there were only crumbs, and he licked those up off the floor. After that, it was time to explore.

It took Freddie no more than ten minutes to go into every room, sniff around and satisfy himself that all was in order. Then he returned to the kitchen to await further instructions. It had been a demanding day, and he felt agreeably sleepy. Heading to the comfortable mat at one end of the kitchen, he settled himself down and closed his eyes. Sleep followed quickly, a warm, comfortable sleep filled with the dreams that dogs have: of chasing and being chased, of running across wide spaces, of following new and irresistible scents. And, as in all dog dreams, at one’s side at all times is one’s human, one’s god, the giver of meaning, the reason.

When he awoke it was because someone had entered the room, a man, whom Freddie had not heard come in, but who now stood beside the woman who appeared to be in charge; both of them stood there looking down on him. He opened first one eye and then the other before cautiously rising to his feet. Sleep, and its attendant dreams, had been pleasant, but now he had to be attentive.