The Dog Who Came in from the Cold (30 page)

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 also 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, 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.

T
HE 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.

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.”

H
AD
H
UGH’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 it 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.”

“But she has a piercing in her nose,” Stephanie said. “You must have noticed. And her tongue too. Did you see the stud right in the middle of it?”

Sorley shrugged. “The world’s changing,” he said. “Aesthetic standards change. What’s unattractive to us may be just the thing for Hugh and his generation—we have to remind ourselves of that, you know.”

“But her tongue,” Stephanie persisted. “What’s the point? And presumably it traps particles of food.” Or could trap her son, she thought—with horror. What if they were kissing and the stud got caught between a gap in Hugh’s teeth? What then?