The Dog Who Came in from the Cold Read Online Free

He said that, didn’t he?”
    “I believe so,” said William. His mouth was dry, and he found himself thinking, somewhat uncomfortably, of
boeuf stroganoff
.

5. A Nice Boy
    W HILE W ILLIAM WAS ENGAGED in his curious, ultimately rather alarming conversation with Angelica, in the flat directly below his in Corduroy Mansions Caroline was making a series of telephone calls, the last of which was to her friend James.
    Caroline and James had known one another for not much more than a year, but each felt as if the other was an old friend. They had met on the first day of the course on which they were both enrolled at Sotheby’s Art Institute—a one-year Master’s course in art history designed specifically for those with their sights on a career in the fine art auction rooms or in a gallery. There were twenty-three people on the course that year, every one of them paying, or rather having paid on their behalf, the seventeen thousand pounds in fees that the course commanded. In Caroline’s case this cost was borne by her father, a reasonably well-off land agent in Cheltenham. He had grumbled about it, but had eventually come to share his wife’s view that the chances of Caroline’s meeting what she described, with no trace of irony, as
a nice boy
were substantially increased by her being involved in the world of expensive auctions. Little did he know.
    James met the fees for the course himself, dipping into a legacy left him by an aunt. The legacy was enough to pay the fees and keep him for that year and perhaps a year or two beyond. “And then it’s work,” he said. “Reality catches up with one, you know—sooner or later.”
    For Caroline, reality had taken the form of a job with Tim Something, the photographer. He had offered to take her on as his assistant at a salary that seemed extremely generous. She had acceptedthe offer, and had recently completed her first week in her new job. James, who had settled for a six-week unpaid internship in one of the auction houses, was now anxiously awaiting the firm’s decision on whether he would be allowed to stay on. The Old Masters department had a vacancy, but was reluctant to commit just yet. James suspected that the job was being kept in reserve for somebody else, and was feeling pessimistic.
    “They’ll never take me,” he had complained to Caroline. “I’m not nearly grand enough.”
    Caroline had sought to reassure him. “Nonsense,” she said. “It’s not like that any more. Nobody cares about things like that—not these days.”
    “But they do,” protested James. “If you look at the people who work there, they’re tremendously grand. They really are. They’re all called Michael de Whatsit, or the Honourable This or That, and so on. I’d be the only ordinary person.”
    “Rubbish,” said Caroline. “You’re not ordinary. You’re really unusual.”
    There was an awkward silence.
    “I mean, you’re really extraordinary,” Caroline blurted out. “Extraordinary. That’s what I mean. You’re really extraordinary.”
    James looked at her balefully. “Really? Why do you think I’m extraordinary?”
    Caroline looked up at the ceiling. This conversation had taken place in a favourite coffee bar of theirs on Long Acre, and she knew the ceiling well, having frequently stared at it when writing—or planning to write—her final essay of the course, on Alessandro Bonvicino and the Brescia school. Now she noticed how the light coming through the window reflected off the surface of the mirror on the opposite wall, throwing hazy liquid shapes on the ceiling.
    “You just are, James,” she said. “And you should be pleased. Too many people are plain ordinary. You aren’t.”
    “But why?” asked James again. “Why am I extraordinary?”
    Caroline began to look annoyed. “It’s very difficult to explain,” she said. “But since you insist, I suppose it’s because you’re bright. You’re much brighter than most people. And you’ve got good