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gives away a strategy in a careless phrase, he sought to repair the damage. “That is,” he said, “where both want the move to be made. Where it’s right for something to happen.”
Marcia was thinking. “So a woman can—?”
And at that point, almost on cue, Freddie de la Hay, who had been sleeping in the kitchen, chose to enter the room. The dog looked about him, and then, seeing William, bounded across the room to hurl himself onto the sofa between William and Marcia.
William greeted him with undisguised affection—and relief. Marcia, however, was cooler. Freddie had been her idea, but she had not anticipated this.
“Can Freddie not go back to the kitchen?” she asked pointedly.
“I don’t think so,” said William. “I think he wants to go out. I’ll take him. Why don’t you start cooking dinner? I’ll take Freddie outside for a few minutes. Freddie,” he said, once they were out on the landing. “Good boy!”
Freddie looked up. It was as if he understood.
50. The Dignity of Distance
WILLIAM TOOK FREDDIE downstairs, relieved that the corner into which he had inadvertently painted himself had proved to have this escape route. He liked Marcia and, if he was honest with himself, he was very slightly dependent on her—if one can be slightly dependent on anything, he thought. Dependence was surely something that was there or was not: a boat was either tied to the jetty or it was not. Would it matter to him if Marcia were to take it into her head to leave London? Would it make any real difference to his life? No, it would not. But then people are extremely resilient; most of us could lose somebody from our lives and not feel that the resulting gap could never be filled. Of course it could. Most of us know how to bounce back.
He looked down at Freddie de la Hay as they went out into the street. Dogs were an example to us all: they made the most of their current circumstances, whatever hand of cards they were dealt. Of course dogs, unlike humans, did not look back; what interested them was what lay ahead. So Freddie, he imagined, did not think back to his former career as a sniffer dog, but was instead more interested in the possibilities of Corduroy Mansions, such as they were.
“I’ll do my best by you, Freddie,” he said. “Starting with a change in diet. Would you like that? Meat?”
Freddie, aware of the fact that he was being addressed, looked up and wagged his tail. He liked William, indeed he loved him. He would have died for William, even after only two days, because that was his job, his calling as a dog. That was what dogs did.
William turned the corner. Freddie de la Hay had business with lamp posts but was quick and considerate, and did not linger. Their walk round the block completed, William found himself approaching Corduroy Mansions just as one of the young women from the flat below was returning from the shops, laden with bags of groceries.
“I’ll open the door for you,” he called out.
The young woman turned round and William saw that it was Jenny. He liked her, although he had on occasion found himself slightly intimidated by her conversation and her tendency to litter her remarks with references to the works of obscure writers. And even when she referred to somebody of whom he had heard, he felt that he had little to add.
“Don’t you think that modern transport rather diminishes the world?” she had once observed to him when they had found themselves standing at the same bus stop.
He had thought quickly. How is the world diminished by modern transport? In one sense, surely, it opens up the world, makes it available. Could that be construed as a diminution in that it shows the world not to be the grand place we fondly thought it to be? Or did she mean that it shrinks the world? That made more sense, perhaps.
He did not have time to answer because Jenny, peering down the road for the arrival of the bus, expanded upon the theme. “As you’ll probably know,” she went on, “Proust said that steamships insult the dignity of distance. I think he was right. But just imagine what he’d say about the Airbus 380.”
William laughed. “Of course. Just imagine!” And then he added, just to be on the safe side, “Proust.”
Jenny looked at him expectantly. She seemed pleased to have discovered a neighbour who could