The Dog Who Came In From The Cold cm-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Caroline nodded.

  “I went and bought a cheap flight back to Perth. I didn’t even tell my folks that I was coming back – I just got on the plane, and when I reached Perth I jumped in a taxi at the airport. Coming into Perth is fabulous, you know. Suddenly there are the hills – we’ve got these low hills just outside the city, you know – and there they were with all their trees, and there were the houses, with their large yards and gardens. And the smell of it. The eucalyptus. The dryness, which has a smell, you know. The taxi driver in his blue shorts. And I started to cry, there in the taxi, and he was really sympathetic, in the way that these guys sometimes can be. Like a father. And I said that he shouldn’t worry, that I was just pleased to be home, which of course was exactly how I felt.

  “And then I went in and surprised my mother in the kitchen. She gave a shriek – a really loud shriek, a scream even. She was making scones – she makes these really good cheese scones for my old man – and her hands were sticky with the mixture. She screamed and ran to put her arms around me, flour and all that stuff, and it was all over my shoulders.

  “And then my dad came in to find out what the fuss was. He was wearing shorts and a singlet. That’s what he wears when it’s hot – it was the hot season then. He looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Strewth!’ That’s all he said. He just smiled. I tell you, Caroline, it was all I could do to stop myself bawling my eyes out.

  “Because, you see, that’s what home’s all about, isn’t it? Scones and singlets and everything the same as it always was. And if you get a dose of that – of all that familiar stuff that you thought you never wanted to see again – then it sorts everything out, it really does.”

  Jo had more to say. “I went over the road. We have these neighbours who are really good friends, you see, and they were all in the house. They have a daughter who’s my age and she was at uni in Perth. She was there with a friend of hers I knew a bit, and we sat and talked about people we all knew and hadn’t seen for a while. And I asked them what was going on in Perth and they said nothing. So I laughed. Because that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want anything to have changed.”

  She paused now, and looked enquiringly at Caroline. “Can you go home for the weekend?”

  Caroline said that she could. Cheltenham was a couple of hours in the train. Then, on impulse, she said, “Come with me, Jo. Why don’t you come home with me?”

  Jo did not reply immediately. But then she accepted. She had nothing planned, she said – or nothing she could not cancel.

  “There’s nothing to do there,” warned Caroline.

  “That’s why you’re going,” said Jo. “Remember?”

  “And I’m not sure what you’ll make of my folks.”

  “Or what they’ll make of me?”

  Caroline looked out of the window. “They’re not too bad,” she said. “In their way.” Her father would not wear a singlet. And her mother bought her scones.

  Jo looked at Caroline with concern. “Feeling better?” she asked.

  Caroline nodded. “Yes. And thanks for … for helping. Thanks a lot.”

  “It’s what flatmates are for,” said Jo. “That, and making dinner for their flatmate when she’s feeling a bit low. Like now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, why not? I’m going to open a bottle of wine and pour us a glass. Then I’ll make dinner.”

  Caroline smiled appreciatively. “Thanks. What’ll you make?”

  “Risotto, I think,” said Jo.

  Chapter 60: Outside Fortnum & Mason

  Rupert Porter walked back down the corridor in the Ragg Porter Literary Agency in a state of mild astonishment. He was normally not one to allow another to have the last word, but he had found himself completely at a loss when Andrea, the agency’s receptionist, had casually referred to her conversation with the person – if it was really a person – who had been sitting in the waiting room. It was a thoroughly ridiculous situation, and as he returned to his office, he went over in his mind each absurd development.

  At the heart of it all was Errol Greatorex, Barbara Ragg’s American author, who claimed – and it was an utterly risible claim – to be writing the biography of the yeti, the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. But Greatorex was no random crank; he had a significant body of publications behind him, including two travel books that had won awards in Canada and the United States, and had been published in London too, by a reputable publisher. He had also written for popular geographical magazines and the Melbourne Age, all of which amounted to a perfectly respectable set of credentials.

  Greatorex’s career suggested that he must have developed a healthy degree of intellectual caution. How, then, Rupert wondered, could somebody like him swallow the claim of some fakir that he was a yeti, of all things? Surely the whole point about yetis was that they were an intermediate primate – not quite homo sapiens, even if given to walking erect and leaving intriguing footprints in the snow. That was the legend, but, like all legends, it could hardly stand up to the investigative standards of our times. There were no mysteries left, none at all; not in an age of satellite photography, when the remotest corners of the globe were laid bare by unsleeping, all-seeing cameras. The Loch Ness monster, the yeti, Lord Lucan – all of these would have been seen if they really existed.

  Yet many people were gullible, and when you combined this inherent gullibility with a wish to believe in things beyond the ordinary you ended up with a whole raft of myth. Errol Greatorex was either a charlatan, cynically prepared to exploit his credulous readers, or he was himself the victim of an even greater charlatan – this Himalayan type pretending to be the yeti. And it might not be all that difficult; one had only to be tall – yetis had always been thought to be on the tall side – and markedly hirsute. There were plenty of hairy people around, and one might expect that some of them were tall. So if a tall, hairy person, although homo sapiens, were to come up with a story of being taken from a remote valley and put in some mission school, there to be educated by … by Jesuits, perhaps, who had always claimed, “Give us the boy until the age of seven and we will give you the man”, might one not say the same thing of a yeti? “Give us the yeti until the age of seven …” Rupert frowned. He was not sure whether the Jesuits ever actually said that. Perhaps it was one of those chance remarks, dropped as an aside, that were seized upon and magnified out of all proportion. Had Margaret Thatcher ever really said, “There’s no such thing as society”? That statement had gone on to haunt her, although what she had in fact said – and Rupert had this on good authority, although very few people knew it – was, “There’s no such thing as hockey”. It was a curious remark to make, and she certainly should not have made it, but it was not the same as saying that there was no such thing as society. Had people heard her correctly and understood that she was talking about hockey, they might have been forewarned that she would go on to say a number of other very peculiar things.

  He reached his office, and stopped. Thinking on these matters had made him momentarily forget about what Andrea had said to Errol Greatorex in the reception. She had said that the tall hairy person had gone off to do some shopping and would meet him in front of Fortnum & Mason at twelve. He looked at his watch. It was now ten o’clock, which meant that in two hours anybody who just happened to be walking along that particular section of Piccadilly would actually see this person who claimed to be the yeti. Even if there were other people waiting outside the shop – and there were many, he imagined, who met friends at midday outside Fortnum & Mason – it would not require a great deal of skill to identify a yeti, or a soi-disant yeti, among them.

  Rupert smirked. If he went there himself, he could see this impostor. He could then tackle la Ragg when she came back from her jaunt to Scotland and reveal to her that he had investigated her so-called literary scoop and discovered it to be a squalid fraud – like so many much-vaunted publishing sensations.

  Shortly before twelve, he left the office. As he walked past Andrea’
s desk, he stopped, on impulse, and told her where he was going.

  “I’m just off to Fortnum & Mason,” he said. “I might bump into that … person who was here with Errol Greatorex.”

  Andrea nodded. “All right.”

  “If anything happens to me, Andrea,” he said quietly, “you will remember what I said, won’t you? Fortnum & Mason. Greatorex.”

  Andrea nodded again. Why was he making such a fuss? What did he imagine could possibly happen to him at Fortnum & Mason? He’s very peculiar, she thought. I won’t be surprised if they cart him off one of these days – not in the least surprised.

  Chapter 61: In Fortnum & Mason

  It did not take half an hour to walk from the Ragg Porter offices to Fortnum & Mason. In normal conditions, when the throngs of visitors milling about Piccadilly Circus were not too thick, it would take barely ten minutes to make the journey; when the streets were crowded, one might need a little longer. It depended, too, on how quickly one walked –Rupert was a quick walker, especially now, when he was keenly impatient to see whether there really would be a yeti outside the famous store. And understandably so: who would not find their pace quickening with the knowledge that there lay before them the chance of seeing that most elusive of creatures, the Abominable Snowman?

  Of course Rupert knew full well – and reminded himself as he made his way – that whatever he was going to see outside Fortnum & Mason, it was not going to be a yeti. If a mysterious tall figure did indeed turn up, then that was all he would be – a mysterious tall figure. And if Rupert had the chance to see him at close quarters, and he intended to ensure exactly that, he was certain that his suspicions would be confirmed. Fraudsters and tricksters were usually rather banal types, he told himself, and this tall figure would probably be revealed as coming from Croydon, or Tooting, or somewhere like that. He would definitely not be Himalayan.

  At a quarter to twelve, Rupert found himself opposite Fortnum & Mason. Ahead of him, hanging from the façade of the Royal Academy, were great banners, fluttering in the breeze, advertising the current show. Rupert was a member of the Friends of the Royal Academy and made a point of going to all the exhibitions. He had not seen this one and for a moment, forgetting his mission, he wondered whether he should wander in and see The Later Bonnard. But then he reminded himself why he was there, and looked back over the road to the stately grocery shop with its copper-green windows and elaborate chiming clock. His eye moved upwards to the warrant-holder’s display of royal arms between the third and fourth floors. He could not make out any legend below the device: perhaps they provided fruitcake to the palace, or chocolate, or even something prosaic like butter. It would be something like that, he thought –something needed for the thousands of sandwiches that the palace served each year at the garden parties. Rupert had read that the official figure for sandwiches fed to guests each year was eighty thousand, with the same number of slices of cake being served. It was profoundly inspiring: eighty thousand sandwiches – what other country, he wondered, came even near that?

  He looked at his watch. He could hardly loiter on the pavement for fifteen minutes; apart from anything else, he wanted to be inconspicuous so as to get a good look at the stranger. Yetis were notoriously shy creatures, and if one were to appear in front of Fortnum & Mason and see somebody loitering on the pavement opposite, he would be bound to take fright. But then this was not a yeti, Rupert reminded himself. Even so, he did not want to be spotted by Errol Greatorex, who he knew was due to arrive there at midday, and accordingly he decided to cross the road and enter the shop. He could easily spend fifteen minutes looking at the displays of olive oil or some such; there was a lot to see in Fortnum & Mason. Then, when the time was ripe, he would sidle towards the front door to see whether Greatorex’s mysterious companion had arrived.

  Although the shop would be busy at lunchtime, when people from nearby offices took the opportunity to buy something in their lunch hour, it was still a little early for lunchtime crowds when Rupert went in, and there was no more than a handful of people walking along the aisles of the spacious food hall. He did not have a sweet tooth, and so the shelves of chocolates and sugared almonds held no charms for him. He was drawn instead to a display of china bowls of Patum Peperium; that was much more to his taste. These bowls, with their lids decorated with Victorian hunting scenes, were considerably larger than the normal white plastic containers of the famous anchovy paste. Rupert picked one up to admire it and found that it was surprisingly heavy. He replaced it carefully, but as he did so his sleeve caught a neighbouring bowl and sent it crashing to the floor. The heavy china container shattered with an astonishingly loud report – rather like that of a gun being fired. Rupert gasped as he saw what he had inadvertently done.

  In a very short time – not more than ten seconds – an assistant in a formal black suit appeared to investigate. The assistant glanced at the mess on the floor, and at Rupert.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  Rupert nodded. ‘I’m terribly sorry …” He gestured to the shattered bowl; large pieces of broken china stuck out of the exposed brown lump of anchovy paste.

  The assistant seemed uninterested in the apology. “The important point is that you are all right, sir. That’s what matters.” He bent down and began to pick pieces of china out of the paste.

  “Please let me help,” said Rupert, crouching down to join him. As he did so, he noticed a movement at the end of the aisle, behind the assistant. A tall man wearing a light olive-green overcoat had walked round the end of the line of shelves and was looking in his direction. Then, as quickly as he had arrived, he vanished.

  Rupert stood up. The man he had seen was very tall, and although he had been unable to make out his face, he had had a distinct impression of facial hairiness.

  The assistant straightened up too. “We’ll clear this up in no time,” he said. ‘It’s very easily done.” He paused. He had noticed that Rupert was staring down the next aisle, and appeared agitated.

  “Have you seen something, sir?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rupert. “I have to go.”

  He stepped forward, unfortunately into the Patum Peperium. It was soft underfoot, and it flowed out to cover the sole of his right shoe, creeping fishily up the sides.

  “Do be careful, sir!”

  Rupert looked down in dismay. His shoe was covered in thick anchovy paste.

  The assistant looked concerned. “Can I get you a cloth to clean up, sir?”

  Rupert shook his head. “No,” he said, craning his neck to get a better view of the tall figure disappearing out of the front door of the shop. “I shall be fine.”

  “Your shoe is very … messy, sir. I really think …”

  Rupert brushed the assistant aside, and strode off, leaving anchovy-paste footprints behind him.

  “Really, sir, if you wouldn’t mind …”

  He did not hear the objection. It was the yeti – he was sure of it. The yeti had been in Fortnum & Mason and was now leaving. Rupert pushed his way past the other shoppers. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I really must go. Excuse me.”

  He would have to follow the yeti. He was not going to let him get away.

  Chapter 62: À la recherche d’un yeti perdu

  The yeti walked at an unnaturally fast pace. It was only to be expected, thought Rupert, as he struggled to keep up with his quarry; years of loping across the snow plains of the Himalayas presumably gave him an advantage over others when it came to the firmer, less challenging pavements of Piccadilly. But Rupert was determined that he would not let him out of his sight, and did not care if people stared at him as he broke into a run. Plenty of people ran in London; they ran for buses, they ran to keep out of squalls of rain, they ran for reasons known only to themselves. London, he thought, was used to everything, even to the sight of a suavely dressed man – Rupert had always been a natty dresser – pursuing a tall, lolloping figure out of the stately premises of Fortnum & Mason and into the crowds.


  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.