The Dog Who Came in From the Cold

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “It used to be called kindness,” said William. He agreed with what the vet said; there was so much suffering in the world – a great sea of it – and it washed around the feet of animals as much as it did around humans. We should not add to it.

  The vet withdrew the needle and patted Freddie on the head. “Exactly. Everyone should be kind to animals. I can’t disagree on that score. There you are, Freddie. That’s you.”

  As William walked back to Corduroy Mansions with Freddie de la Hay after the visit to the vet, he reflected on their conversation. He did not see why he should not call himself Freddie’s owner, and would continue to use the term, whatever Eddie had to say on the subject. Eddie was not one to preach on this issue anyway; he had been prepared to involve Freddie in a dogfight of all things, and he had no experience of keeping an animal. And William was not so sure that those who described themselves as the companions of dogs were necessarily kinder towards their animals than those who described themselves as a dog’s master.

  A dog’s master … What about cats? Of course nobody could tell a cat what to do, and so the term master was inappropriate. Cats have staff, as the saying went. Perhaps cats kept us, and it was they who should be described as the masters.

  At home, over a cup of tea with Marcia, who had dropped in on her way back from an engagement serving sandwiches to the British Egyptian Board of Commerce, William raised the question of cats and ownership.

  “Ha!” said Marcia. “Have you been reading about that advice thingy?”

  “What advice thingy?”

  “I think they call it the Code of Practice for Cat Owners. The government brought it out recently.”

  “Our government?” asked William incredulously.

  “Yes, believe it or not. They said that all cat owners should follow the Code’s advice. It talks about providing your cat with intellectual stimulation and so on.”

  At first William found it hard to believe, but Marcia didn’t appear to be making the story up. “I laughed and laughed,” she said. “I actually read it because my aunt has cats and she was very worried about whether she was going to be prosecuted for something or other. So I agreed to read it.”

  “And you reassured your aunt?”

  “Yes,” said Marcia. “But I kept something from her. She’s ancient and rather vulnerable. So I didn’t tell her this. It says at the beginning, ‘It is your responsibility to read the complete code of practice to fully understand your cat’s welfare.’ Those are the exact words. So if you’re a cat owner and you haven’t read the Code, the government considers you to be in breach of your duty.”

  William was silent. He was utterly appalled. This was not Stalin’s Russia, this was England. And there was another thing. “To fully understand your cat’s welfare …” Not only were the people behind this Code breathtakingly interventionist and condescending, bossy indeed … they also split their infinitives.

  Chapter 37: Philosophy for Dogs

  The darkness into which Freddie de la Hay found himself cast when taken from William in St James’s Park proved to be metaphorical rather than real. Led away by the pretty woman with whom William had enjoyed a brief conversation, the Pimlico Terrier was bundled into a car that had been prowling along the edge of the park. Thereafter they took a drive to Notting Hill, to a small flat off Kensington Park Road. This flat was by no means dark; large windows in all four of its rooms admitted both morning and afternoon light, and on each of the window-ledges there stood a well-tended box of brightly coloured flowers – pansies, trailing aubretia, rare summer-flowering crocuses. The walls were painted a uniform white and the exposed timber floors stained a natural pine shade, and the overall effect was one of a pleasant lightness and airiness.

  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?

  Chapter 38: Sebastian Duck Collars Freddie de la Hay

  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.

  “We meet again, old chap,” said Sebastian Duck. “Everything all right? You seem happy enough.”

  “He’s a bright-looking dog, isn’t he?” remarked Tilly. “I gather that these Pimlico Terriers are meant to be very intelligent.”

  “And friendly too. How are you feeling, Freddie, old bean?” Sebastian Duck reached down and let Freddie de la Hay sniff at the back of his hand. “Remember me?”

  Tilly smiled at the term “old bean”. In most circles it was considered archaic, belonging to a Wodehousian world that had long disappeared, but this was not true of MI6, where it was still used extensively (a fact not widely known). It was almost a shibboleth, a password that identified one member of the service to another.

  Sebastian Duck now withdrew his hand from Freddie’s exploratory lick. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a collar. This collar was thicker and wider than the average dog collar and was punctuated at regular intervals by silver studs.

  “These studs act as aerials,” he said, showing it to Tilly. “The transmitter is here, in the middle. See? It’s very cunningly concealed. And this part, here, this slightly thicker section, is the battery. It should last about ten days. Then you have to recharge the dog … or rather the battery.”

  Tilly examined the collar. Taking it in her hands, she felt the weight of it. Poor Freddie de la Hay – he would certainly notice it. “He’s not a very big dog,” she said. “It’s going to be heavy for him.”

  “The least of his worries,” said Sebastian Duck.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Sebastian Duck looked down at Freddie, who was gazing up at him. “Trusting little chap, isn’t he?” He patted Freddie on the head. “What do I mean? Well, you remember what happened to Rover Williams? Remember?”

  Tilly shook her head. “Before my time, I think.”

  Sebastian Duck explained. “He was one of the dogs sent down the tunnels in Berlin. We had a listening tunnel that went under the Russian sector. Rover Williams was sent in to plant a transmitter. He had been trained to detach the goods by biting at his collar.”

  “And?”

  “They got him.”

  Tilly sighed. There were times when she wondered whether the service was quite right for her. Conflict. Risk. Duplicity. And, on top of it all, danger.

  “Yes,” he continued. “They got him. And then they turned him.”

  Tilly showed her surprise. “He worked for them?”

  “Yes. We spotted him in the East once or twice thereafter. They used him as a listening post. You know the sort of thing – nobody suspects a dog, and so they would leave him lying around in a café or a bar. People talked, and it went straight through his transmitter. Very clever.”

  Tilly closed her eyes for a moment and imagined the scene: a deserted street, one of those streets of the old East Berlin, with rain-slicked pavements and windows that were never more than half-lit. A drab state-run café on the corner, the smell of Trabi exhaust hanging in the air, a general atmosphere of fear and distrust. And there was Rover Williams lying patiently on the café floor, an unwitting pawn in the absurd human game of espionage.

  “I suppose that dogs can’t distinguish,” she mused. “They can have no concept of disloyalty.”

  Sebastian disagreed. “No, dogs are very loyal. It’s just that their loyalty is to the leader of whatever pack they find themselves in. So Rover Williams would have thought he was doing his duty to his new masters. He was being loyal.”

  Tilly mulled this over. She had difficulty with the concept of duty here. Did dogs actually think in those terms? Did a dog say to itself: I have to do this or that? Of course not. Dogs did not think in sentences. Then how did they think?

  But there was no time for further discussion on the theme of loyalty. Sebastian Duck had taken the transmitter from her and was now removing Freddie de la Hay’s old collar before replacing it with the new one. Freddie sat quite still as this took place. He was not sure what to think, but he was aware of a rather heavy weight being added to his neck. Something was happening to him, and he was not certain that he liked it.

  Sebastian fastened the collar and straightened up. “Right,” he said. “Now let’s go over what happens next. You wait a day or two. Let them see you with Freddie de la Hay. In particular let Podgornin – he’s the chubby one –get to know Freddie. Watch for when he goes out to buy cigarettes – he’s a sixty-a-day man, according to his file. Follow him and then let him meet Freddie. We know that he’s very keen on these dogs. Then, next Tuesday, go and tell Podgornin that you’ve been called away. Sick relative. Can’t take Freddie because she’s allergic to dog hair. Could he possibly look after him?” He paused. “Then we’re in.”

  Tilly nodded. “It seems clear enough.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation, “But what if they find out about his collar?”

&nb
sp; Sebastian Duck made a gesture of helplessness. “He’s a volunteer,” he said.

  It struck Tilly as a callous remark, and she frowned and looked away. Freddie de la Hay was not a volunteer; no dog was. Every single one of them was a conscript, just as most of us were, ultimately, in many aspects of our lives. We were conscripts, she thought, in battles that very few of us actually chose. We worked and worked, often in jobs that we did not really like; we paid taxes, and yet more taxes; we shouldered the burdens of awkward relatives whom we did not choose, who were just there, issued to us at birth; we lived in places because that was simply where we found ourselves. Conscripts.

  Freddie de la Hay looked up, first at Tilly and then at Sebastian Duck. More biscuits, he thought.

  Chapter 39: James Offers Risotto