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

Fortnum & Mason . A thought suddenly occurred to Rupert as he pushed his way out of the front door of the shop – Ratty Mason. When they were at school together he had never asked Ratty Mason what his father did, but now he remembered a chance remark that the other boy had made. “My old man’s got a shop. Quite a big one actually.” He had said this when they were sitting together in Rupert’s study eating toast made on the battered toaster that he kept, against the regulations, in a cupboard. And the toast, he now remembered, was spread with … Patum Peperium ! The memory came unbidden, and was, like many such memories, richly evocative. Proust’s hero’s memory of Sunday mornings at Combray, when his aunt Léonie used to give him little pieces of madeleine cake dipped in her tea, had later been evoked by the taste of such a cake; for Rupert, perhaps the trigger was also a food, in this case Patum Peperium . He and Ratty Mason had eaten toast and anchovy paste; now here he was, all these years later, outside Fortnum & Mason, with anchovy paste on his shoe. It was all very powerful. And could the shop that Ratty Mason had referred to have been the centuries-old Fortnum & Mason? Was Ratty Mason’s father a member of the same Mason family?

It was a complex line of thought. Such thoughts, though, are readily entertained by the human mind, so great is its capacity to wander off at a tangent. Now, as Rupert looked about him on the Piccadilly pavement to locate the vanishing figure of the yeti, he remembered something else that Ratty Mason had said. This time the remark had no association with Patum Peperium as they had not been eating toast but doing a compulsory cross-country run – he (Rupert), Billy Fairweather, Snark, Ratty Mason and Chris Walker-Volvo. The memory seemed so fresh: he could see them, all five of them, slowing down from their running pace as they went out of sight of the gym master, with the sun coming up over trees that were touched with soft rime – it was a clear day in winter – and their breath hanging in small clouds in the cold morning air. Five friends – as they then were – five boys on the cusp of sixteen, whose lives would turn out very differently, but who then thought that they would somehow be together for ever. And Billy Fairweather had made a chance observation about his father belonging to a club of some sort, and then Ratty had said, “My dad’s a mason.” Rupert had bent down to pick up a stick that was lying on the ground in front of him and had broken off a bit of this stick and thrown it across the field. “Useless throw,” said Billy Fairweather, and Rupert turned to Ratty and said, “Of course he’s a mason, Mason.” Something had happened at that moment – something that distracted their attention – and they had started to run again, because they had to finish the course within a certain time or the gym master, a peppery figure who had been a fitness instructor in the Irish Guards, would make them do the run all over again.

Rupert spotted the yeti. The shambling figure had moved speedily in the direction of Piccadilly Circus and then, so quickly that had Rupert not been sharp-eyed he might not have noticed, he went through the front door of Hatchards book shop. The sight cheered Rupert: Hatchards, where he was a regular customer, was home ground. Rupert knew the staff there, as he would often accompany one of his authors to do a lunchtime signing. This meant that not only was he familiar with the layout of the shop – which would give him an advantage over the yeti, who presumably did not know the place – but also he knew that there was only one way out, for the customers at least. If he waited by the front door, just inside the shop, then the yeti would not be able to leave without walking past him. And that would be the moment when he would see his face for the first time, and would even be able to accost him and find out whether he really was a yeti – which he certainly would not be – or whether he was an impostor – which he certainly would be. That would put la Ragg’s gas at a peep! “Your so-called yeti,” he would say. “I met him, you know. In Hatchards, no less. Himalayan section, of course, looking at the mountaineering books.” Ha! That would be funny. And la Ragg, who blushed easily, would look furtive, and Rupert would go on to say, “You really need to be more careful, Barbara. Representing this autobiography stands to make us look very foolish indeed.”

And Barbara Ragg would be chastened, which is how Rupert liked her to feel. It was all very well getting possession of that flat which had been intended for him, but where was the satisfaction in having a comfortable – although ill-gotten flat – when you were such a rotten failure at work, a soft touch for every crank and charlatan with a dubious manuscript about a yeti, of all things? Where was the satisfaction in that? Nowhere, though Rupert. Nowhere.

He went into Hatchards. Roger Katz, the legendary bibliophile, was standing just inside the door. He had just finished talking to a customer, and he smiled when he recognised Rupert. “Ah, Rupert,” he said. “I’ve got just the book for you.”

Rupert looked over Roger’s shoulder into the shop beyond. Where had the yeti gone?

“Did you see anybody?” Rupert blurted out. “A very tall chap. This tall.” He raised a hand to well above head height.

Roger nodded. “Yes, I did, actually. He went upstairs, I think. Strange-looking fellow.”

“I have to find him,” said Rupert. “Will you come with me?”

Roger shrugged. “Yes, of course. One can usually locate a person quite easily.” He paused, and gave Rupert an enquiring look. “Who is he? A friend?”

“It’s complicated,” said Rupert. “More complicated than you can imagine.”

Had Hugh’s mother had a brood of other children, her relationship with Hugh might have been an easier one. But he was an only child and an only son, and for a mother in such a position it is not always easy to accept that another woman will eventually enter her son’s life and, if all goes according to plan – the plan being that of the other woman – take him away. This common conflict, so understandable and so poignant, is played out time and time again, and almost always with the same painful result: mother loses. It is so, of course, if mother is overt in her attempt to put off the almost inevitable; if she is covert, then she stands a chance, admittedly a remote one, of introducing into her son’s mind a germ of doubt that the woman he has chosen might not be the right one for him. That takes skill, and boundless patience, but is a course fraught with dangers for the relationship between mother and future daughter-in-law, let alone for that between mother and son.

Stephanie, of course, adored Hugh – what mother could not? Her adoration was founded on precisely those qualities that Barbara had discerned in him and that had drawn her to him – his gentleness, his kindness, his masculine vulnerability. Stephanie knew that she should let go of him, should welcome other women into his life, but she found it almost impossible to do. If only she could like his girlfriends; but how, she wondered, do you like people whom you quite simply do not like?

She had been dreading this meeting with Barbara; on a number of earlier occasions Hugh had brought girlfriends home to whom she had found herself taking an almost immediate dislike – a dislike that she had great difficulty in concealing. This had been picked up on by her husband, as for all his apparent equanimity and farmerly appearance Sorley had an astute sense of atmosphere. “You judge these poor girls too quickly,” he had said of one of them, a sound engineer from Glasgow. “How can you tell? You really must give her a chance.”