The Dog Who Came in from the Cold Read Online Free Page A

aesthetic judgement—most people have appalling taste, as you well know. And you’re funny. You make me laugh.”
    James continued to look reproachful. “But what if I just want to be ordinary? What if I want to be … to be like other blokes?”
    Caroline watched him carefully. They were on difficult ground now, and she was determined not to say anything tactless. James was not like other blokes—she knew that—but it was not a subject she wished to explore. She was convinced that he was interested in women and simply had not fully reconciled himself to it.
    “You’re sensitive,” she said. “It’s a great advantage to be sensitive. Most men are … well, they’re just insensitive. But you aren’t. You
feel
things, James.”
    James thought about this. “But what if I don’t want to feel things?”
    Caroline shook her head. “That’s not an option,” she said. “You can’t decide to be insensitive. You can’t
unknow
things.”
    “What do you mean
unknow
?”
    Caroline thought it perfectly obvious. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Once you have knowledge—whatever knowledge it may be—you can’t go back to a state of innocent ignorance. It’s like any attempt to return to childhood—we can’t.”
    “Pity,” said James.
    “Maybe. But the point is this: you are a very sensitive, sympathetic man. That makes you extraordinary. And there’s nothing you can do to change the fact of your sensitivity—it’s who you are, James.”
    That conversation had left James feeling vaguely dissatisfied. What Caroline had said about him was complimentary, indeed flattering, but he was not sure that he
wanted
to be a sensitive, sympathetic man. He wanted to be able to identify with the ordinary menhe saw every day travelling on the tube or chatting to one another outside the pub—men who seemed to enjoy an easy camaraderie, who appeared not in the least troubled by what other people thought about them. He wanted to stop thinking about other people’s feelings. He wanted to stop being so vulnerable to hurt.
    But he would not be able to do it without Caroline’s help, and he had decided that the only way of securing it was to formalise the relationship between them. He would ask her to be his girlfriend—that was what he would do. He would simply ask her.
    When James raised the topic, Caroline was ill-prepared for it, but quickly concealed her surprise.
    She reached out and took his hand. “Is that what you really want, James? Are you sure?”
    He was sure. Lowering his voice, he said, “Yes, I’m sure. I want us to be lovers.” “Lovers”—it was such a luscious, dangerous word, and he could hardly believe that he had used it.
    Caroline looked at him. “Have you got a sore throat?” she asked.
    James shook his head. “Oh, Caroline,” he said, his voice returning to its normal pitch. “I really do love you, you know. You’re everything to me.”
    Caroline looked at him in disbelief. She was
not
everything to him, she knew that. What about art? What about the paintings of Nicolas Poussin? What about a whole lot of other things? And yet it was only a figure of speech, of course, and she knew that too.

6. All Those Germs
    T HE ISSUE FOR C AROLINE was not just a simple choice between Man A and Man B, a choice with which some women might very much have liked to be faced; her choice went beyond that to embrace a third possibility, namely:
neither
.
    “I just don’t know what to do,” she confided in her mother when she returned to Cheltenham for a weekend with her parents. “There are these two men, you see, and I really don’t know which one to choose. But maybe I shouldn’t choose either.”
    Caroline’s mother had always felt rather irritated by her daughter’s indecision in these matters. Her philosophy was uncomplicated: find a man, satisfy yourself as to his suitability, and solvency of course, and then, if everything was in order, proceed with all dispatch to tie him