Free A Conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

angry, of course, but he had been angry about things before and she had weathered the storm. I do not need to be frightened of him, she said to herself. Rupert is a bully. I shall stand up to him.
    Thinking this was strangely liberating. She realised that she had been bullied by men twice in her life—by Oedipus and by Rupert. Now, with Hugh—a good and kind man—at her side she felt so much stronger, so much more capable of dealing with male pressure.
    The conversation with Hugh had taken place in Ardnamurchan when Barbara had gone up for a weekend. She decided that she would tell Rupert of her change of mind when she returned to London. But then, on the train down from Fort William, the thought occurred to her: If she withdrew her offer to Rupert, wasshe not simply repeating the old pattern—
doing the bidding of a man
? Hugh was her fiancé and she loved and trusted him, and yet here she was, doing what he told her to do. Was this not yet another case of female inauthenticity? And if she did as Hugh told her now, would the rest of her life—her life with him—be characterised by the same behaviour? At their wedding, might she not just as well use those now-abandoned words from the marriage service and promise to love, honour and
obey
?
    The thought was disturbing, and presented her with a real dilemma. If she rejected Hugh’s advice she would implicitly be saying that she wanted to do as
she
chose. But in so doing, she would end up acting as another man—Rupert—wanted, and that would mean that she had complied with a man’s wishes in any case.
    Barbara had plenty of feminist friends—or friends who claimed feminist credentials; perhaps she should ask one of them. The friend would give advice, no doubt, but then if Barbara took it, would that not be a case of her doing the bidding of a
woman
? And if you were a woman was there any difference—any real difference—between doing what a woman tells you to do and doing what a man tells you to do? There was a distinction, she thought, but she was not quite sure she could put her finger on it. Was it the case that there was a presumption that a man would advise you with an eye to his own interests, whereas a woman would be more likely to take your interests into account? Yes, she thought. But then she wondered: Why should we think that men are inevitably self-interested? Could men not believe in the right of women to autonomous decisions? Of course they could.
    She made up her mind: I shall tell Rupert it’s off—and I don’t care what he does. My decision. Made by me. Authentic. Autonomous. And within her a small voice added:
Disastrous
.

17. The Friendship of Dogs
    W ILLIAM RARELY USED his car, which he kept in a distant lockup bought before the prices of such places had become unaffordable. He knew that the rational thing would be to sell the garage for the absurdly inflated price it would doubtless command, but for the moment inertia reigned, along with a certain attachment to the contented Saab that the lockup contained.
    The main reason for the infrequent use of the car was the fact that he very rarely had anywhere to go. Apart from work, to which he travelled by tube, and wine tastings, to which he took a taxi, William went virtually nowhere—evidence, he thought, of the profound rut into which he had fallen. London, it appeared to him, was full of people rushing around on journeys that merely underlined the point that they were not only doing far more than he was but also having more fun in the process.
    But late that Friday afternoon he, too, was about to go somewhere. With his weekend bag packed in the back of the Saab, he settled Freddie de la Hay into the front passenger seat. Freddie was thoroughly in favour of outings of any description, and the prospect of a spin in the car was particularly appealing. His mouth open in the enthusiastic grin that marks out a dog anticipating a treat, Freddie stared steadily ahead through the windscreen, focusing on