A Conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

most materially deprived, might have a dog—admittedly a thin dog—that remained loyal in the face of pinching poverty. How dogs showed us up, thought William; they took what fate allocated to them and made the most of it.
    “So, Freddie,” said William. “I’m the straw you’ve drawn in that lottery. Thanks for being so good about it.”
    Freddie de la Hay was aware that William had addressed a remarkto him but in his ears it was just a noise, even if a noise in which one recognisable element—his name—had occurred. People, Freddie had observed, made these noises constantly. They were like fridges that gurgled and hummed away during the day, a background noise that dogs found reassuring. Only when these noises stopped and there was silence did a dog have to look out. That was ominous—when the gurgling stopped and disapproval set in. But that was not happening now, thank heavens, and he could turn his attentions to the smells that were wafting in from the outside. The car was now on the very outskirts of London and the countryside was making its olfactory presence felt. Freddie de la Hay shivered in anticipation as he sniffed at the rush of air from his inadequately closed window; old cars like William’s were good for dogs, as they let the outside in. And this outside air was a form of aerial palimpsest for Freddie, with layer upon layer of intriguing smells, and traces of smells: rabbit, cut grass, pheasant, rabbit, horse manure, blackberry, green wellington boots, rabbit …

18. Old Friends
    T HE HOUSE TO which William and Freddie de la Hay had been invited belonged to William’s old friend Geoffrey Chiswick and his wife, Maggie. Geoffrey and William had known one another since boyhood, when they had been together in an alternative to the scouts, the Woodcraft Folk. William had been encouraged to join the movement by his father, who had belonged when he had been evacuated during the Blitz; his father had sought to impart to his son his own enthusiasm for camping but William had never taken to it. He had, in fact, met Geoffrey on a Woodcraft camp in Sussex,both aged ten, and both homesick and afraid of being attacked by the cattle occupying the neighbouring field.
    “Is it best to play dead if you’re attacked by a bull?” William had asked.
    They were in their shared tent at night, grimly aware of the scant protection that the thin canvas offered them from anything, including stampeding cattle.
    “No,” said Geoffrey. “That’s bears. If a bear comes at you then you have to lie down and play dead, you jolly well have to, even if the bear begins to bite you. They go away if you play dead.”
    “Bears …,” said William.
    “But there aren’t any,” said Geoffrey, trying to sound convinced. “Bears are extinct.”
    Geoffrey had been slightly more confident than William, promising to protect him from the hidden dangers of camping in a large English field with forty other children, and this had been the tenor of their relationship ever since: it was implicit that Geoffrey would
look out
for William. Their friendship had survived—as they had—the camping expedition, and at the age of seventeen they had gone together to a pop music festival in the Netherlands, where Geoffrey had been arrested for no apparent reason and William robbed of his wallet and passport. The help they gave each other on that occasion had further cemented the relationship, and in due course Geoffrey had acted as best man at William’s wedding, with William returning the compliment four months later. When, after twenty years of marriage, William lost his wife, it was Geoffrey and Maggie who insisted on spending the first raw days of widowerhood with him, taking him up to their house in Suffolk after the funeral, walking with him on the stony beach and putting their arms about him when he cried, which he did, voluminously and despairingly.
    Their careers could hardly have been more different. While William did the one