The Dog Who Came In From The Cold

Chapter 10: How Dim Can You Get?

It was not only Barbara Ragg’s remark about the subjunctive that made Rupert wonder about her; there were other things he had noticed, little things, perhaps, but which taken together indicated that something was afoot. She was engaged, of course, and he asked himself whether the mere fact of engagement could make a person dreamy and distracted. He tried to remember what he had felt like when he had become engaged himself, but found it difficult even to recall when that was, and in what circumstances, let alone how he had felt at the time.

Of course Rupert knew that Barbara’s private life was none of his business, and he would never have dreamed of prying, but if her state of mind was affecting her work, then that was a different matter altogether. And there had been signs of it. A few days previously, Barbara had written to an author and told him that not only had his manuscript been accepted for publication by a well-known publisher but that a sizeable advance had been negotiated. This must have been good news for the author in question, who had not been published before and whose work, although worthy, was on the very margins of what was commercially viable.

Her discovery two days later that she had written to the wrong author could hardly have been comfortable. The manuscript that had been offered for was by a quite different author – one who was widely published already and would barely have noticed yet another publisher’s advance.

“La Ragg,” Rupert had said to his wife that evening, “made an absolutely colossal blunder. Colossal. She told somebody that his novel had been accepted for publication when it hadn’t. She got the wrong author. Stupid cow.”

Gloria Porter smiled. “How dim can you get?”

“Not much dimmer,” said Rupert. “And you know what? The story gets better.”

“Difficult to imagine,” said his wife. “Tell all.” She liked to hear stories of Barbara Ragg’s ineptitude; she, too, had come round to resenting Barbara’s enjoyment of the flat that surely had been meant for her Rupert, and ergo for her. She had tried to get Rupert to stop going on about the issue, but eventually decided that it would be simpler to join in his campaign. So now she found a curious satisfaction in his diatribes against Barbara and indeed came up with her own contributions to the feud. Well, it was all very well having the larger drawing room, she pointed out, but how could one possibly benefit from it when one’s life was such a mess in other respects? Barbara’s affair with the odious Oedipus Snark, for instance. It was as if the Recording Angel was punishing her for her occupying a flat that was not, by rights, hers.

Rupert was enjoying himself. “I went into her office to get something or other, and there was La Ragg sitting at her desk, white as a sheet. Drained. So I said, ‘What ails thee, dear Ragg?’ or something to that effect, and she looked up and said, ‘I fear that I’ve made a small mistake.’”

“Small mistake!” expostulated Gloria. “La Ragg certainly believes in understatement.”

“Indeed,” went on Rupert. “She told me about sending the letter to the wrong author. So I said, ‘How could you do that, Barbara?’ And my question, I assure you, was an apposite one. I just didn’t see how one could possibly write to one author in the belief that he’s another.”

Gloria shook her head in disbelief. This was such fun. “Absolutely,” she said. “And her answer?”

“Answer came there none,” said Rupert. “At least to begin with. For some time she said nothing at all, and then she opened her bovine mouth and said something about the two authors having very similar names. ‘In what respect?’ enquire I. ‘Oh, they’re both Welsh,’ La Ragg responds. I ask you! Both Welsh! So Neil Kinnock is Welsh and …” He waved his hand about airily, trying to think of another name. “And that other chap’s Welsh, but would we confuse the two of them, just because they come from—”

“Wales,” said Gloria. “There are loads of Welsh people. Loads of them. I don’t see how one can confuse people on the grounds of their nationality. I just don’t.”

Rupert rolled his eyes upwards. “Well, she did. But wait – here’s the denouement. She then told me that this poor chap – the one who thought that his book had been sold – had gone out and spent the advance.”

Gloria was very pleased to hear this; the story was getting better and better, just as Rupert had promised. She enjoyed her husband’s stories of office affairs – stories in which he came out rather well, as was to be expected, but Barbara Ragg and various other members of staff were shown to have fairly major failings – again, as one might expect. “No!” she exclaimed.

Rupert nodded with satisfaction. “Apparently he went out and bought a new car. Cleaned out his bank account in the expectation that he would soon be getting the money for the book.”

“Poor man,” said Gloria. “But I suppose he’ll be able to take it back.”

Rupert beamed. “Not so fast. Apparently he had spent the entire day driving up and down Wales and clocked up an awful mileage. You can’t take a new car back if you’ve put several hundred miles on it. It’s not a new car any more. The value drops very quickly and dramatically the moment you drive out of the showroom, and even more so when you put a few miles on the thingometer.”

“Odometer,” said Gloria.

Rupert raised a finger. There was even more to come. “La Ragg then says to me, and I quote verbatim – ipse dixit – she says, ‘I do hope that the agency will refund him the difference between what he paid and what the garage gives him when he takes the car back. In fact, I hope you don’t mind – I’ve written him a letter to that effect.’”

Gloria’s eyes glinted. “Outrageous!” she said.

Rupert reassured her. “Oh, I nipped that in the bud all right,” he said. “I told her that I did mind and that if she chose to rectify this mistake it was to be from her drawings on the firm and not from anywhere else. Those who make mistakes should pay for them, I said. And not with other people’s money.”

“That taught her, no doubt,” said Gloria.

“She sulked,” said Rupert. “She’s a terrible sulker, is La Ragg. Went all moody. You know how women get from time to time.”

Gloria looked at him sternly. “Some women,” she corrected him. “Not all.”

“Of course,” said Rupert. “Of course, mon chou. That’s what I meant.”