The Dog Who Came in from the Cold (25 page)

Errol Greatorex shook his head. “No, I just wanted to bring in the
latest chapters. She’s been giving them to the commissioning editor at the publisher’s—passing them on personally.”

“You have them here?”

Errol Greatorex nodded, opening the briefcase he had brought with him. From this he extracted a folder and placed it on the desk in front of him. “You can read them if you like,” he said.

Rupert took the folder. “Thank you, I shall.” He began to rise to his feet to indicate that the meeting was over. Errol Greatorex took his cue, and rose to his feet as well. “Do you want to meet him right now?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The yeti,” said Errol Greatorex. “He’s in the waiting room.”

Rupert struggled to remain calm. How should one behave in the presence of full-scale, florid delusions? Should one humour the person concerned, and then try to call, what, an ambulance? The police? Should one play along with the delusions, or did that draw one into a form of engagement with the sufferer which would merely exacerbate the problem? This was all Barbara’s fault, he thought crossly. The rest of us are perfectly capable of identifying the lunatics when they send us their manuscripts. She has to go and get this man a contract of all things! Now he was a client, and one could therefore hardly slam the door in his face, or get him sectioned under the Mental Health Act. It would not be a good advertisement for the Ragg Porter Literary Agency were they to have their clients sectioned under the mental health legislation.

“Very well,” said Rupert. “I’ll see him.” He looked at his watch ostentatiously. “I’m afraid I don’t have a great deal of time, though.”

“Just a minute will do,” said Errol Greatorex. “Just to shake hands with him.”

They left the office and walked down the short corridor to the reception area and waiting room.

“What’s his name, by the way?” asked Rupert.

“His yeti name is fairly unpronounceable,” said Errol Greatorex.
“Most of the locals who get an education at the mission schools choose a saint’s name. It makes things easier. There are a lot of Jameses and Johns, that sort of thing. A smattering of John-Pauls in recent years, for obvious reasons. But he’s called Charles.”

Rupert did not know what to say, so he muttered, “Mmmn. Charles.”

They reached the reception area. Andrea smiled at them. “I gave your friend a cup of tea,” she said to Errol Greatorex. “He drank it and then said he had to go out. He asked me to tell you that he’d meet you outside Fortnum & Mason at twelve.”

Errol Greatorex appeared to take this in his stride. “He’s got some shopping to do,” he explained to Rupert. “Fortnum & Mason do a wonderful ghee. Another time.”

“Yes,” said Rupert. “Another time.”

He showed Errol Greatorex out and then returned to face Andrea. “You saw him?”

She looked blank. “Who?”

“Greatorex’s friend. The … er, man who was with him.”

She did not seem in the least perturbed. “Yes. I made him tea—as I said.”

“Describe him,” said Rupert.

She shrugged. “Tall. Very tall in fact. Wearing a sort of beige coat—Marks & Spencer’s, I’d say.”

“And?”

“And a bit hairy, I suppose. Could have done with a shave.”

“Hairy?”

“Yes. Hairy. Some men are, Rupert, believe it or not. I don’t go in for that sort of thing, not personally, but some people—”

“Yes, yes, I know all that. I wasn’t born yesterday. But what did he sound like? What sort of accent?”

Andrea thought for a moment. “Belgian, I’d say.”

W
ILLIAM’S SENSE
that all was not well in his life, an incipient, nagging doubt, had now become a full-blown conviction. There were many reasons for this, but one of them—possibly the most important one—was simple loneliness. Just as Freddie de la Hay was missing him, so too was he experiencing that sense of incompleteness one feels when a familiar presence is suddenly no longer there. Such feelings can be profound and long-lived, as when we lose a close friend or a member of the family—at that level, we are in the presence of true grief—or they may be less substantial, more transient, as when a shop or coffee bar we have grown to like closes down, or a favourite office colleague is transferred. These may seem little things, but they constitute the anchor points of our lives and are often more important than we imagine. If we lose enough of these small things, we risk finding ourselves adrift, as William now felt himself to be.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
 … In the middle of the path through life I found myself in a dark wood. This was one of the scraps of William’s education that had remained with him, and now, as it came to mind, he remembered the classroom in which the line had been explained to him by his English teacher, a chain-smoker with a nicotine-stained moustache and a wheezy voice. The middle of the path in Dante’s days, the teacher had pointed out, was thirty-five—an impossibly distant age when you are sixteen, as William then was. Sixteen was not even quite the middle of the path to thirty-five, and now here he was, at forty-nine, or thereabouts, and thirty-five seemed distant from a quite different perspective. Life seeped away ever more quickly the further along Dante’s path one went, he decided, just as water drained more quickly the emptier the bathtub became. When the
plug was first pulled it all seemed so slow and then, towards the end, it rushed away in a tiny, feverish whirlpool.

These thoughts came to William as he closed up his wine shop for the night. It had not been a particularly busy day, and he had been able to use much of the morning to catch up on paperwork, which had kept his mind off his situation. But as the day progressed, he had increasingly dwelled on what he thought of as his
plight
. No dog, no wife nor girlfriend, no social life worthy of the name, and, to top it all, no letters after his name.

The letters he particularly wanted were MW. This stood for Master of Wine, a qualification awarded only after a gruelling examination that took four days, during which the candidate was subjected to searching theoretical and practical tests. William had sat the examination a few years ago and failed, a galling experience, heightened in its intensity by the sight of a whole cohort of younger people succeeding, some of whom were only
nel mezzo del cammin
, or not even that far. What did they know that he did not? How was it that they could write about wine with such authority when he, who had spent a lifetime in the business, had so manifestly failed to impress the examiners?

Of course he had nobody to blame but himself, and he recognised that. When he received his grade D he had felt humiliated, but he knew that a grade D was exactly what he deserved, particularly in the written part of the examination, where he had lost his self-control and made wild guesses at the provenance of the wines they were required to identify and write about. He had sat there with ten glasses set out in front of him, and panicked when he tasted the first. He thought that the wine was Portuguese, and was on the point of setting out the arguments to support this view when it had occurred to him that it might be Argentinian. From then on, his progress through the examination had gone downhill. Instead of using the small spittoon that each candidate had on his desk, William had drained the first glass dry. The second sample, a Côtes du
Rhône, he found no difficulty in identifying. Encouraged by this success, he again swallowed the entire glass, and by the time he reached the sixth sample he was drunk. It was shameful and extremely unprofessional. The examiners had been tactful, quietly suggesting that he have a break. “I’m very sorry, Mr. French,” the chief invigilator had said, “but you’re disturbing the other candidates. It doesn’t really help, you know, if one of the examinees is humming away.”

William had been unaware of the fact that he was humming “I Am Sailing” under his breath. He stopped, but then, a few minutes later, was afflicted by a loud and persistent attack of hiccups, during which he spilled his two remaining samples, splashing the woman seated at the neighbouring table. This had resulted in his being asked to leave the examination room.

It had been a shameful performance and he smarted at the memory. But it was past now, and he had begun to wonder whether he should not sit the examination again. He knew as much as he ever had—possibly even more—and it would mean so much to be able to put MW after his name. Why not?

He took the decision there and then, as he closed up that evening. He would sort his life out: he would get Freddie de la Hay back; he would register for the next round of Master of Wine examinations; and he would get in touch with that woman he had met in the park.

Sebastian Duck had given him his card, which William had kept in his wallet. He extracted it now and dialled the mobile phone number given on it.

Sebastian Duck answered. “Duck speaking.”

William had thought he might have to remind him who he was, but apparently that was not needed. “Mr. French,” Sebastian continued. “I take it all is well.”

“That’s what I’d like to find out,” said William.

Sebastian Duck understood. Freddie de la Hay, he explained, was now “in the field”; William would be very welcome, if he liked, to telephone Tilly Curtain and get a firsthand report.

William’s heart leaped. It was exactly what he had hoped for. He noted down the number that Sebastian gave him, engaged in a few pleasantries about the weather, and then rang off. Next he made the call to Tilly Curtain, who answered almost immediately. He explained who he was and there was a silence. Had something happened to Freddie? But then her voice came down the line, warm and encouraging: “I’d hoped that you might phone.”

William closed his eyes in sheer ecstasy. “Look, I know it’s absolutely no notice at all, but would you by any chance be free for dinner tonight?” he asked.

Again there was a silence. And then, once again, came the words to boost any heart—even that of a middle-aged wine dealer, a failed Master of Wine, and a failed everything else—“What a lovely idea! Yes, of course.”

W
ILLIAM CHOSE
R
ACINE
in the Brompton Road because he knew Henry Harris, the proprietor, and was sure that Henry would always find him a table, no matter how short the notice. And indeed a table was available at eight, and the staff said they looked forward to seeing him.

Now that he had invited Tilly, William found himself trying to remember what she looked like. It was almost like going on a blind date, he thought, something that previously he would never have dreamed of doing but he now found rather exciting. She was certainly attractive, he was sure of that, even if he had seen her only
once, and for a very brief period. He had a memory of light brown hair, cut fairly short, pageboy-style perhaps, and he remembered, too, an appealing smile. Or was her hair more blond than brown, and was it maybe longer than he remembered? She was in her late thirties, he thought, or perhaps early forties. He could not be certain of that either, and even thinking about her age made him feel anxious. If she was in her early forties, then that would be fine, as he was in his very late forties, or had been last year, before his fiftieth birthday. If there were eight or even ten years between them, it would not matter; in fact, it would be ideal, at least from his point of view, and probably even from hers. William had always believed that women liked men to be a little bit older than they were, even if there were some women these days who went in for younger men. He was not so sure about that; he knew there was no reason at all why women should not have younger partners, given that men often did—how many men in their fifties did he know who had girlfriends in their early thirties? Legions—practically
everyone
. Yet the thought that women might choose to do the same thing, to seek out younger men, secretly unsettled him. If more and more women chose younger men, then how many women would be left over for the likes of him?

More unsettling than this speculation about age was the realisation that he had no idea whether Tilly Curtain was single. He had not noticed a ring, but then he had not looked for one. Of course, if she were married she would never have accepted his invitation to dinner; she would have said something like “Should I bring my husband?,” which would have had the merit of directness and unambiguousness. Or she could simply have made an excuse about having other arrangements. It was possible that she was encumbered in some way by a boyfriend but was looking for a way out. That notion was equally unsettling; William did not wish to become involved in anything messy.

He put these ideas out of his mind and set about preparing for the evening. Going to his wardrobe, he surveyed the jackets hanging within. He had neglected his clothes for a long time and it showed, but at least there was a navy-blue blazer in reasonably good condition, and there was a timelessness about blazers. He took it out and tried it on; the cut was good, and he had not put on weight since he last wore it. It would do, he thought. Trousers were more difficult. Two pairs of the charcoal-black trousers he favoured were out of commission, one because of a broken zip and another because of bad fraying at the ends. Jeans? He remembered that there was some of Eddie’s clothing still in the flat. He and Eddie were the same size, more or less, and when he lived with him his son had regularly borrowed William’s clothing—admittedly, though, and insultingly, for fancy-dress and retro parties.

He went to the cupboard where he had stored Eddie’s remaining possessions. There was, as he had remembered, a pair of jeans, and he took these out and unfolded them. They were distressed, but no more so than new jeans were these days, and they appeared to fit. William examined himself in the mirror; the jeans took off ten years, he thought, possibly more, and they were perfect with the blazer. This was the very essence of
casual smart
, he thought—that vague concept that allowed you to wear anything as long as you looked as if you had at least made some effort. He could hold up his head in any company in an outfit like this.