A Conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith

the stained rear wall of the garage as if it were a vista of the utmost promise for dogs and humans alike.
    “Right,” said William, as he closed the door and strapped himself into his seatbelt. “Here we go for a weekend in the country. Suffolk to be precise. You know Suffolk, Freddie?”
    Freddie gave a small growl of encouragement that William interpreted as a yes.
    “Aldeburgh, Freddie,” William continued. “Or close by. Know that part?”
    Again, Freddie gave a receptive response.
    “And I’m pleased to say that Geoffrey and Maggie have invited you too,” William continued as he turned the key in the ignition. It was always an anxious moment when the underused battery decided whether or not it had the willpower to bring the engine to life. This time it had, and William heaved a sigh of relief.
    They drove out through the sprawling outskirts of London, a landscape that at the same time expressed and refuted the premise of its creation: a dream of
rus in urbe
realised in a bit of half-choked greenery, a tiny patch of ground, low walls and fences around boxlike houses. William found himself depressed by these surroundings and felt grateful that, for all the crowding and expense of town, he was not part of this suburban world. And yet he knew that most residents of these suburbs would never wish to exchange their life for his; would hate to give up their gardens, their tiny driveways and their patch of sky for a life in a flat with shared staircases and neighbours on either side, below and above, hearing one’s breathing, taking a bath, boiling a kettle, living.
    “
A chacun son goût
, don’t you think?” he remarked to Freddie.
    Freddie looked at his master and gave a weak canine grin. He was one for whom suburbia would be infinitely preferable to a city existence. One’s own territory, no matter how small; an en suite lamppost virtually at the front gate; a doorstep on which one might sit in the sun; a postman who provocatively came up to one’s very door, whose ankles cried out to be nipped if only one had the chance; these were the things that counted for a dog.
    William looked fondly at Freddie de la Hay. He had not had the dog for more than a couple of years, but he had become so accustomed to his company that it was difficult to remember how life had been before Freddie. He had mentioned this to Marcia—whosefeelings for Freddie were not without ambiguity, she believing that the dog prevented William’s feeling
really
lonely. That, in Marcia’s view, was both good and bad: good because Freddie de la Hay made William happy, and bad because the lonelier William was, the more he would relish her company. She was a realist, of course, and knew that at present there was little chance of their friendship becoming anything more that just that, a friendship, but if William were to become desperate with loneliness … And it
could
work, she felt, it really could …
    William found that the bond between him and Freddie de la Hay raised a wider question of the relationship between man and dog. Freddie had never been asked whether he wanted to devote himself to William; he just did so. That was what made canine friendship so remarkable: a dog gave its friendship—and its devotion—without any thought as to whether the person to whom these were given deserved them. In that respect the dog acted without calculation as to what it might receive in return. How different, then, from human friendship, which in many cases is dished out sparingly and only with a great deal of forethought as to what might be got from it. That was why the beautiful and the rich had so many friends, and so easily acquired, whereas the less blessed in looks and the poor had to work much harder to win the friendship of others.
    Dogs did not care what their owners looked like. The most unprepossessing of people might have the most elegant of dogs looking up at them as if they possessed the beauty of Greek gods. The most wretched, the