Corduroy Mansions cm-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘Four girls,’ mused James. ‘Four girls living together in Corduroy Mansions. Tell me about them. I know all about you, of course, so you can skip that bit, but what about the others?’

  ‘We all get on well enough,’ said Caroline. ‘I’m the most recent arrival. I’ve been here for six months - the others have all been here for a couple of years. Jenny found the flat. She knows the person who owns it. In fact, the owner is some sort of distant cousin of Jenny’s father. She’s a woman who lives down in Dorset. She’s let this place ever since she inherited it from a friend. Wouldn’t you like a friend to leave you a flat? Wouldn’t that be a nice surprise?’

  ‘Very,’ agreed James. ‘And also very unlikely. But who’s this Jenny person? Tell me about her.’

  Caroline slipped off her shoes and settled herself on the thread-bare chintz sofa beside James. ‘She’s a few years older than me. Twenty-seven, I think. Everybody’s older than me in this flat. I’m the baby.’

  James laughed. ‘You’re twenty-three, aren’t you? Same as me.’

  Caroline did not think of James as being twenty-three. He looked young enough, of course - he was often asked for ID in the off-licence - but he talked as if he were much older. He knew so much, that was why. He was one of those people, she thought, who just seemed to know a great deal. And he spoke so wisely, as if he had thought for hours about everything he said.

  ‘Jenny works as a PA,’ she went on, ‘for an MP. A man called Snark. Oedipus Snark.’

  James frowned. ‘I think I’ve read about him,’ he said. ‘Something in the Evening Standard. There was a picture of him and they said something like, “If you think Liberal Democrat MPs are nice, meet Oedipus Snark.” Something like that. I had to laugh. Poor Lib Dems - they really are nice. As are the others, come to think of it. I’ve got nothing against the Tories or Labour. They’re all rather sweet, don’t you think?’

  ‘Jenny hates him,’ Caroline said. ‘She’d agree with the Standard.’

  ‘Then why does she work for him?’

  Caroline had discussed the issue with Jenny and had received a curious answer. ‘Because he fascinates me,’ Jenny had said. ‘Like a snake. You know how you go to a zoo and you see these deadly snakes in their glass enclosures and the snake looks at you with his little eyes. And you think: I’m only that far away from a painful death, only that far. If it weren’t for the glass . . .’

  She told James this. He shrugged. ‘Forgive my saying this, Caroline, but isn’t that the sort of thing that some women - I’m not saying all women, but some women - do? They find themselves fascinated by dreadful men and they stay with them - as employees or wives or girlfriends or whatever. And the horrible men know that this is how they feel and so they just carry on being ghastly because they’re certain the women won’t leave them. And they don’t.’

  ‘Maybe.’ And then she added, ‘Sometimes.’ She was thinking of a girl she had known at university who had taken up with a boyfriend who talked about soccer all the time, got drunk regularly at weekends and was ill on the stairs. They had all said that she should leave him, but she had said that he was getting better and that underneath it all he was really very gentle. She had remained with him and they had eventually married; he had been drunk at his own wedding and had threatened the vicar. She shuddered at the memory.

  ‘It’s interesting that it should be like that,’ James said. ‘Men who find themselves with difficult women are far more likely just to leave, aren’t they? They put up with so much less than women do. You people are heroines, you know. Heroines.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to say that, James.’

  ‘Well, I do mean it. The more I think about women, the more I like them. Isn’t that interesting? I used to be wary of girls, you know.’ He paused. ‘You don’t mind my saying that, do you, Caroline? Present company excepted, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He leaned back in the chair. ‘I used to think that women were . . . well, rather bossy. That’s why I preferred playing with other boys rather than with girls. I didn’t like being bossed about.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  ‘Yes. But now I find that women don’t really want to push me around. I suppose I’ve got more confidence. I know what I want.’

  Caroline thought, but you don’t, do you? That’s the whole point: you don’t know what you want. ‘Did your mother push you around?’ she asked. For a moment she entertained an absurd mental image of the infant James in a pushchair, being propelled around a park by his mother and, even then, gazing at the architecture of the park buildings and commenting on the fine ironwork.

  For a few moments James was silent. ‘My mother?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Your mother. Was she . . . dominating?’

  There was something odd in James’s eyes as he looked at Caroline. ‘My mother,’ he said quietly, ‘was completely absent from my childhood. I never met her. Not once. Or at least not that I can remember.’

  Caroline felt a twinge of anxiety. Her question had been a prying one but she had not expected to uncover something quite as uncomfortable as this.

  ‘You needn’t talk about it if you don’t want to, James,’ she said. He looked at her again. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t.’

  19. Unknown Boys

  After their truncated conversation about mothers, Caroline and James moved into the kitchen to start baking biscuits. The maternal conversation had been brief, and indeed only covered the mother of one of them. Had the conversation developed more fully, then it might have progressed to deal with Caroline’s own mother, Frances Jarvis, about whom Caroline had a considerable amount to say. Had James merely asked, ‘What about your own mother, Caroline?’ there would have been a brief pause, as if to underline the significance of what was to follow, and then Caroline would have said, ‘My mother? Oh, James, where does one start?’

  James would have smiled. ‘It’s never a simple question, is it? You never get people saying, “Oh yes, my mother. A very normal, integrated person. Nothing to say, really.” You don’t get that, do you?’

  And Caroline would have agreed. ‘Never. But since you’ve asked about my mother, let me tell you.

  ‘Ever since I can remember - right back - my mother has had ambitions for me. Some mothers, I suppose, bring up their sons and daughters to do great things - to play the piano well, or to become tremendously good at some stupid sport, or to get the most fantastic exam results, or whatever. With my mother, all of that energy was focused on one thing - to make sure that I met the right sort of boys.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. Right from the beginning, when I was at nursery school, she spent a lot of time choosing my friends. They had to be nice. That was the word she used. They had to be nice. And if somebody wasn’t nice, then he was not allowed. That’s what she said: “Not very nice. Not allowed.”’

  James would have sighed. ‘But all parents are like that. They have very clear ideas about who their children’s friends ought to be.’

  Caroline would have conceded that point, but her mother, she felt, was in a different league from most parents. Her determination that Caroline should eventually marry a boy of whom she approved was single-minded and all-consuming. The teenage Caroline’s social programme was strictly vetted for suitability. Invitations to parties at the houses of boys who met maternal criteria were accepted with alacrity - by Frances, on behalf of Caroline - and those from dubious boys - unknown boys, as Frances called them, the sons of unknown parents - were turned down, again by Frances on behalf of her daughter.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear, we don’t know much about that boy. In fact, we know nothing about him at all. There’ll be plenty of other invitations.’

  ‘But I do know him! He’s not unknown at all. He’s really nice.’

  ‘He may well be, dear, but we don’t know that, do we? And unknown boys - well, we don’t really have to go into that, do we?’

  Caroline would have indeed preferred to be able to go into
all that. What exactly was the problem with unknown boys? What did unknown boys do, if anything, that known boys did not do? In her mind one thing at least was clear: the moment maternal authority was weakened and she was in a position to run her own life, she would seek out the company, without any delay, of the most unknown, the most obscure of boys.

  Of course the motives behind her mother’s concern were transparent. Her ambition for Caroline was simple: marriage to a suitable boy. Anything else, in her mind, was merely preparatory to that objective. Caroline, however, thought differently. She might have sprung from a background in which a woman’s ideal destiny was to marry and settle down to the task of raising children, but this was not what she wanted to do. She wanted to study the history of art. She wanted to travel. She wanted to think for herself. She wanted to move among people who stimulated her - who had something to say. The sorts of boys thrown in her path by her mother were the antithesis of all that: they were dim, rather sporty boys from boarding schools with a reputation for rugby. Not what she wanted. She wanted a boy with style, a boy with a whiff of danger about him, a witty, artistically literate boy, a boy a bit like . . . James, come to think of it.

  And now, standing with James in the kitchen as he paged through How to be a Domestic Goddess for a suitable recipe, she found herself thinking: perhaps it’s been obvious all along. Perhaps the reason why James is thinking of redefining himself is that he really wants me. Not girls in the abstract, but me.

  It was an intriguing idea. And even more intriguing was the idea of explaining the situation to her mother. Frances had views on such matters. ‘Such boys, Caroline, are fine - in their place. Which is playing the piano, like Noël Coward or somebody like that.’ That is what Frances thought.

  She glanced at James. He would probably make her breakfast in bed. He would even come shopping with her. They would go to lunch at Daylesford Organic round the corner and chat about the day’s events. There was a lot to be said for it. But what did he feel about her? It is all very well, she thought, from my perspective, but what does he feel about me?

  James had found a suitable recipe in Nigella’s book. ‘Lemon gems,’ he said. ‘Look.’

  Caroline examined the large photograph of lemon biscuits sitting on a cooling rack and nodded. ‘Just what we need,’ she agreed. ‘And we’ve got everything, including the ground almonds.’

  ‘Heaven,’ said James.

  Once again, Caroline thought that this was a bit of an exaggeration. But then it occurred to her that in saying heaven, James was referring not only to the biscuits, with what Nigella herself described as their lemoniness, but also to the heavenliness of being there, with her, about to do some baking together.

  ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ she suddenly asked.

  He looked at her with surprise. ‘Immensely. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I was just wondering. The two of us . . . baking together. It just seems . . . very right.’

  He looked away, out of the window. The London afternoon light was attenuated, soft. There would be rain, he noted.

  He reached out and touched her hand, gently, brushing against it.

  ‘Festina lente,’ he said, and smiled.

  Festina Lente, thought Caroline, would be a good name for a cookery writer. Almost as good as Delia, or even Nigella.

  20. Rare Tea

  Even if there are many negative features to my job, thought Jenny, there is at least one that is unconditionally positive. Oedipus Snark might require of her that she be loyal to his highly dubious personal cause, but at least she was more or less left to her own devices every afternoon, when the oleaginous politician went to the House of Commons or enjoyed lengthy lunches with his friend, Barbara Ragg, at the Poule au Pot restaurant. He had made it clear to Jenny when he first employed her that if there was nothing still to be done in the afternoon, then she was free to go home.

  ‘I don’t know what you get up to in your spare time, darling,’ he drawled, ‘and I don’t care too much, frankly. No offence! So if there’s nothing doing here at headquarters, please toddle along and do whatever girly stuff you fancy.’

  He smiled at her with the air of one conferring a favour, or even some sort of benediction.

  ‘You mean this is a flexi-time job?’

  ‘If you must use such terms, yes. Perk of the position. My own job, of course, is pretty much flexi-time, as you put it, although heaven knows how much I exert myself. See?’

  Jenny bit her lip. Girly stuff! She was a graduate of the London School of Economics. She was currently reading a biography of Wittgenstein. She was . . . She felt herself getting warm with resentment.

  ‘Mr Snark, I feel that I must—’

  He raised a hand to stop her. ‘Please! Oedipus. We don’t stand on formality here. Now then . . .’

  And they had progressed to the next item of business, leaving Jenny secretly fuming and determined to correct his erroneous impression of her. But she never did; as the months wore on, she realised that she would never succeed in getting him to see her as an intellectual equal, to treat her without the condescension that he seemed to show in all his dealings with women. And the reason for that, she decided, was that Oedipus Snark was profoundly solipsistic. If he paid no attention to her feelings, it was because he did not see her. For one who was constantly adding ‘See?’ to his observations, he saw remarkably little.

  That afternoon, as Caroline and James embarked on the baking of Nigella’s lemon gems, Jenny found herself just a few blocks away, standing outside Daylesford Organic, debating with herself whether to go inside and treat herself to a cup of coffee, or walk up to Hatchards bookshop on Piccadilly and consult Roger Katz about what to read. It had been her birthday several days earlier and her aunt in Norfolk had sent her a book token, as she had done every year since Jenny’s fifth birthday. The value of the book token had increased by two pounds each year, with the result that it was now sufficient to allow the purchase of several hardbacks.

  The onset of rain decided the matter. Jenny looked up at the sky; heavy purple clouds had built up in the east and the first drops of rain were splattering on the canvas awning of Daylesford. Inside, all was light, warmth and tempting aromas.

  Just inside the doorway as she went in, an elegant dark-haired woman was dispensing small cups of tea to arriving customers. Jenny took the proffered cup and sipped.

  ‘Jasmine,’ said the woman. ‘Can you smell it?’

  Jenny nodded, glancing at the open silver packet of tea on the table. The Rare Tea Company.

  ‘White tea,’ said the woman, ‘scented with jasmine. And this is oolong. Would you care to try it? I’m Henrietta, by the way.’

  Jenny sipped at the second cup. ‘Very delicate,’ she said.

  ‘Proper tea,’ said Henrietta. ‘When one thinks of what goes into the tea bags most people make do with . . .’

  Jenny agreed, and was about to say so when she noticed that a man had entered the café and was standing beside her. He reached out for the cup of oolong being offered him and it was then that she recognised him.

  ‘Mr Wickramsinghe.’

  The cup at his lips, he turned to face her. ‘Oh, Miss . . . Miss . . .’

  ‘Jenny. From upstairs at Corduroy Mansions.’

  He lowered his cup. ‘Of course, please forgive me. Basil Wickramsinghe.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’ve seen you, of course, and we did meet in William’s flat when he held that meeting about the hall carpet. Do you remember?’

  Basil Wickramsinghe nodded. ‘That carpet. That most regrettable carpet. It’s still there - as are we.’

  Jenny laughed. Something she had read last year in the biography of Wittgenstein came back to her. Wittgenstein, it seemed, had cleaned his floors by sprinkling tea leaves over them and then sweeping them up.

  ‘Wittgenstein,’ she said, ‘used damp tea leaves to clean carpets. Apparently tea soaks up the dirt.’

  Henrietta looked disapprovingly at Jenny. ‘One would hardl
y use these rare teas for that.’

  Basil Wickramsinghe nodded his agreement, and purchased a packet of white tea from Henrietta. He threw a shy glance at Jenny. ‘Are you walking back to Corduroy Mansions?’ he asked.

  She explained that she had been planning to have a cup of coffee. ‘The rain,’ she said, looking out of the window over her shoulder.

  ‘But I have an umbrella,’ said Basil Wickramsinghe. ‘Perhaps you would care to walk under my umbrella with me, and then join me for a cup of white tea in the flat.’

  Jenny hesitated. She knew nothing about Mr Wickramsinghe and one had to be careful in London. But one could not go through life being suspicious of one’s neighbours, and William had spoken of him with affection. She agreed; Hatchards could wait, and there was something appealing about this quiet man with his rather formal manner.

  They said goodbye to Henrietta and made their way out into the street. The rain had set in now, it appeared, and puddles were forming on the edge of the road, their surfaces speckled with circles created by the raindrops. They made their way quickly down the road, sheltering under Basil Wickramsinghe’s generous umbrella. A wind had blown up to accompany the rain, and the branches of the trees in the small square were bending, the canopy of the umbrella straining at its moorings. By the time they reached the front door of Corduroy Mansions, both had wet ankles and Jenny felt a trickle of cold water running down her neck.

  ‘Most inclement,’ said Basil Wickramsinghe, shaking the water off his umbrella. He had a pedantic, rather old-fashioned way of speaking, as if he were following a script. Jenny had encountered this before in actors, and wondered whether acting was her neighbour’s profession. Had she seen him on the stage perhaps?

  ‘You aren’t an actor, are you, Mr Wickramsinghe?’ she asked as he fumbled with the key to his door.

  He shook his head. ‘No more so than anybody else,’ he replied.

  21. In Mr Wickramsinghe’s Kitchen