  We show that the covering dimension, $\dim E$, of the closure $E$ of the
interval $]-1,1[$ in the spectrum of $H^\infty$ equals one. Using Su\'arez's
result that $\dim M(H^\infty)=2$, we then compute the Bass and topological
stable ranks of the algebra $C(M(H^\infty))_{\rm\scriptscriptstyle sym}$ of
real-symmetric continuous functions on $M(H^\infty)$.
