Corduroy Mansions cm-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Or is there? A distinguished legal philosopher, making a point about the difference between the unintentional and intentional causing of harm, once said that even a dog could tell whether a kick from its owner was intended or unintended. If this is the case, then surely it suggests that there is in the canine mind some notion of desert, which has some connection with fairness.

  The debate continued over several issues of a learned journal until the editor drew a line beneath it, with a masterly summing up of the unresolved issues raised by the case. Freddie de la Hay was, of course, quite unaware of his celebrity. Philosophers were, to him, the same as all humans: luminous higher beings, dispensers of favours and makers of rules, guardians of the cupboard in which he knew his own dog biscuits were stored. When he lost his job at Heathrow, it meant a shrinking of his universe, from one of suitcases and noise to one of a house in Highgate with a master who seemed bent on making him do things that he had no wish to do. But he did them, for he was an obedient dog - he had been taught to comply at the airport - and he wanted only to please. So when he was instructed to treat cats with respect by the distinguished columnist, he did as he was bade.

  Now, on the pavement outside Corduroy Mansions, he looked up at his new master and awaited his instructions. And when he spotted a movement on the other side of the road, he took no notice. That it was a cat was neither here nor there. He would not try to chase it, nor even growl. That was in the past, somewhere in the scheme of things of the old Freddie de la Hay. He would not growl. He would not.

  27. On the Train

  At the same moment that William stood outside Corduroy Mansions with Freddie de la Hay at his side, Berthea Snark, psychoanalyst and near-neighbour of Corduroy Mansions, was arriving at Cheltenham station on the 3.15 from Paddington. It had not been a peaceful journey, thanks to a person opposite her who was engaged in a lengthy telephone call, oblivious of the fact that she was imposing her conversation on others. Berthea had struggled in vain to shut out the banalities this conversation inflicted upon her - the one-sided discussion of social events and the affairs of others. She had glared at the noisy passenger but had been greeted with a cool stare in response. Eventually she had moved seats, to what she hoped would be the quieter end of the carriage, only to find herself faced with a man whose false teeth were loose, and who sucked air through puckered lips, occasionally opening his mouth to allow the top set of teeth to fall forward before being pushed back into position with his tongue.

  She closed her eyes. The carriage was full on this popular Friday afternoon train and she would not find another seat. By shutting out the sight of the man opposite, she was at least spared his unfortunate dentures. But that meant that she could not read, and closing one’s eyes was unquestionably a form of denial, something she was committed to criticising in others. No, one could not go through life with one’s eyes closed, tempting though such a solution might be.

  She thought of a paper she might write for one of the journals, a paper she would call ‘The Eyes-closed Society’. It would be about the way in which bad behaviour in others was increasingly forcing people to pretend that parts of reality did not exist. It was an interesting theme, and she could develop it by exploring its social and political ramifications. As we became more burdened with distressing information - global warming, growing material need, the inevitability of a major flu epidemic and so on - the temptation simply to turn away became greater and greater. And so we denied the uncomfortable, the distressing - like those people who denied global warming. And so . . . She stopped. The observation was hardly original. People had always denied unpalatable truths. T. S. Eliot had written something about that, had he not? ‘Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.’ To say something original, she must come up with a prescription. Such books - and her article had now become a book - had to have some neat conclusion, some observation or insight that made people say Ah! when they read it. That man who wrote The Tipping Point knew all about it. People said Ah! when they read about tipping points. And presumably he, too, had experienced a tipping point when his tipping point book reached its tipping point.

  But Berthea could not conceive of what she would say about denial, beyond pointing out that it happened. She could emphasise that one should not deny, but everybody knew that anyway. Could she say, then, that denial was a good thing? That would be original at least. And then, when challenged in interviews - she would be invited onto all the best chat shows - she could simply deny that she said it in the first place, thereby making a very vivid point about denial.

  The daydream ended, and so, eventually, did the journey. The man with the ill-fitting teeth had dozed off and remained asleep until shortly before Cheltenham. Berthea looked out of the window at the passing countryside. London seemed so far away, almost a different country from this world of fields and narrow lanes and slower lives. She thought: what if I packed everything up and came to live out here, perhaps sharing with Terence? She was on her way to spend the weekend with her brother, Terence Moongrove, who had more than once suggested that she would care to share his house in Cheltenham. It was easily large enough for two, he said, and she could even have a separate entrance if she wished. She had declined his offer, although it distressed her to do so. Terence was lonely - he was one of the loneliest men she knew - and it would have meant so much to him to have her living with him.

  But she could not. She was a psychoanalyst, and she imagined that it would take time to build up a practice in a place like Cheltenham. She knew that there was an Institute of Psychotherapy in the West Country - she had met some of its members at conferences - but was there enough neurosis to keep them all going? Human unhappiness, of course, was universal, but somehow she imagined that it did not occur with quite the same intensity in the little villages that the train was flashing past. What was there to be anxious about out here? Why feel inadequate or troubled when nobody was paying much attention to you because the hay had to be got in or the cows milked, or whatever it was that people did in such places? If they did any of that any more, she reflected; or were they all plugged into the web, running hedge funds from the ends of these little lanes?

  Of course, Cheltenham was slightly different. It was a place where people went to the races or retired to or came to make and sell pottery. And not all of these people would be free of the neuroses they had brought with them from somewhere else. So perhaps she might not be completely without something to do after all.

  But no, she could not share with poor Terence. And if she sold up in London and bought her own house here, then Terence would simply be in and out of her door every day. And he had a habit of just sitting there, going on and on about Nepal or his collection of amulets or whatever it was that he was enthusing over at the time. Sacred dance, she remembered, was his current interest. He had got hold of a book by a Bulgarian mystic called Peter Deunov, who had developed a system of dance called paneurhythmy. He had gone to Bulgaria, she believed, and danced on a mountain there; she had received a postcard which simply said ‘Love in the morning’, and, beneath that, ‘Terence’.

  She smiled as she alighted from the train. Dear Terence. For all his faults, he was her brother, and he meant well, even if it was sometimes rather difficult to work out exactly what it was that he meant.

  28. Beings of Light

  Terence Moongrove, searcher after truth - and self - had parked his Morris 1000 Traveller in the spot where he always collected his sister, Berthea Snark, when she came down to Cheltenham to visit him. She knew where to look, and spotted him immediately and waved to him as he sat in the car, his large round spectacles catching the light. Her wave was the signal for him to sound the horn of the ancient vehicle.

  ‘I’ve had a very difficult trip down,’ she said as she eased herself into the passenger seat of the half-timbered car. ‘The woman opposite me insisted on conducting a conversation on her mobile phone in a very loud voice, as per usual.’

  ‘Very tiresome,’
said Terence, reaching forward to turn the key in the ignition. ‘Such people really are the end, aren’t they?’

  ‘And then I changed seats and found myself opposite a man who sucked air through his false teeth,’ Berthea went on. ‘He did that until blessedly he fell asleep.’

  ‘Terribly tiresome,’ said Terence. ‘Still, here you are, and you can put your old feet up and nobody is going to talk on a mobile or suck air through his teeth. I promise.’

  Berthea reached out and touched her brother appreciatively on the arm. ‘Thank you, dear. You are an oasis, you know. A real oasis.’

  He may have been an oasis, but she was not entirely sure whether she approved of the reference to her old feet. Chronologically, her feet might have been slightly older than his, she being a few years his senior. But even if her feet were in their early sixties, they were, she felt, in rather good shape for their age. The problem with Terence, she thought, was that he had not aged along with everybody else. He imagined that life was yet to happen, whereas in fact it had already largely happened for him.

  These thoughts were nothing new to Berthea. And that, she reflected, was the central stumbling block in her relationship with her brother. They were exactly where they had always been - as siblings often tended to be in their relations with one another. She saw it so often in her professional life - people came to her with the emotional baggage of family relationships and, on analysis, this was found to be baggage they had been bearing all their lives. They thought the same things about their brothers or sisters that they had thought when they were ten, twelve, eighteen, twenty-six, forty - and so on. Nothing changed.

  The Morris moved off, its tiny engine labouring as Terence moved through the gears.

  ‘I’ve made a leek pie for tonight,’ he said. ‘And we can have a glass of my latest batch of elderflower wine. Very tasty.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Berthea.

  ‘And then tomorrow morning you might care to join me for my paneurhythmy,’ he continued. ‘Forty-five minutes. That’s all.’

  Berthea looked steadily ahead. ‘Your sacred dancing? This Bulgarian stuff?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Terence. ‘I have looked up what time dawn may be expected tomorrow, and we must be ready to align the meridians and chakras. The Beings of Light will be in attendance.’

  Berthea looked out of the window. She was not sure who the Beings of Light were. Were they residents of Cheltenham or were they, as Terence himself might put it, resident on some other plane not immediately visible to us?

  ‘I shall do my best,’ she said. ‘Although you will have to explain things to me, Terence. My rather literal mind, I’m afraid, precludes my full participation.’

  Terence smiled benignly. ‘Peter Deunov met many who felt the same way,’ he said. ‘They inevitably stayed to dance. Many of them danced until they could dance no more, and were absorbed by Spirit.’

  They drove on in silence as Berthea digested this information. I must not let this distress me, she told herself. The fact that my brother thinks about the world very differently from me is no reflection on my own Weltanschauung. It simply is not. But that, of course, is a difficult thing to accept, and I must remain calm.

  They turned off the main road and onto a smaller road that meandered gently downhill, and it was here that the engine of the old Morris, which had been running quietly enough until then, gave a loud cough, expressed in the form of a backfire, and then became silent. Slowly the car came to a halt at the side of the road.

  For a short time, Terence sat glumly behind the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. Then he turned to his sister.

  ‘The car has stopped,’ he said. ‘I’m terribly sorry about this. It really has stopped.’

  Berthea looked at her brother. ‘So it appears.’

  There was another silence. From the engine there came a slight ticking sound, and Berthea briefly thought that this might be a sign of life, but it was merely the sound of cooling metal. Above them, sitting on the branch of a tree, a large blackbird looked down and uttered a few notes of song.

  ‘That’s so beautiful,’ said Terence, looking up. ‘Birdsong is so pure.’

  ‘It is,’ said Berthea. ‘Very pure.’

  Terence drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘I should perhaps get out and take a look at the engine,’ he said.

  Berthea took a deep breath. ‘Is there much point?’

  But Terence had already opened his door and walked round to stand in front of the bonnet. Berthea joined him.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Terence, gazing at the bull nose of the vehicle. ‘It’s extraordinary how an engine can be humming along in a spirit of perfect contentment one moment and then the next it is silent. As if the energy fields have all suddenly dissipated. Cars, you see, have chakras, just as people do.’

  Berthea spoke quietly. ‘How about calling the AA?’

  Terence shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’ve called them rather a lot, you see. They know my car. They are quite pure beings, but I don’t know if I should bother them again.’

  ‘When did you call them last?’ asked Berthea.

  Terence hesitated. ‘Not all that long ago, I’m afraid.’ He sighed. ‘Well, to be precise, I called them on the way to the station. We had a little episode just a little bit further down the road. Not far from here, in fact.’

  ‘Not far from here?’ repeated Berthea.

  Terence nodded.

  ‘Do you think,’ Berthea began, ‘that it may be something to do with the energy fields round here? Perhaps we’re on a ley line.’

  Terence looked at her with sudden interest. ‘Do you really think so? They said something about petrol, you know, but I wonder . . .’

  29. Berthea’s Project

  By the time her brother’s leek pie was ready, Berthea had largely recovered from the irritation she had felt during the longish walk from the collapsed Morris 1000 Traveller to Terence’s Queen Anne house just outside the bounds of the town. He had helped her with her luggage - a small overnight case - but she had been obliged to carry her own briefcase, which was stuffed with papers and books for weekend perusal. Terence’s library, although extensive, was full of books that she found vague and unsatisfactory, gaseous indeed - there would be no intellectual meat for her there.

  ‘And what are you going to do about your car?’ Berthea asked as they began their walk. ‘Are you proposing to get a new one?’

  Terence, who was oblivious of irony, replied, ‘Oh no, certainly not. That car is not all that old. Thirty-nine years, or thereabouts, I think. There’s still a lot of energy left in it. It’s amazing. It’s as if the energy fields of the men who made it are lodged in its soul.’

  ‘I assume that it will start again when you put some petrol in,’ observed Berthea.

  Terence nodded. ‘Quite possibly. Indeed, I might go so far as to say that’s probable.’

  ‘Because cars do require petrol,’ Berthea continued. ‘They need it for . . . for their energy fields.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Terence, simply. ‘That’s largely true.’

  ‘No, Terence,’ hissed Berthea. ‘It’s not just largely true, it’s absolutely and completely true. It’s a truth which is verifiable in the physical world. It is the actual case.’

  Terence looked at her in surprise. ‘No need to get shirty,’ he said. ‘It’ll only take us half an hour or so to walk to the house, and I am carrying your bag for you.’ He paused. ‘Do you remember A Town Like Alice? We saw it when we were small and we went to stay at Uncle Ted’s. He took us to the cinema and that’s what we saw.’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Well, I remember it very well. They had a long march after the Japanese captured them. Remember? All those British ladies had to march along the roads and jungle paths. It was frightfully hard work and the Japanese guards kept shouting at them if they slowed down. It must have been jolly hot, too.’

  Berthea frowned. ‘And what has that got to do .
. . ?’

  ‘What I’m suggesting,’ said Terence, ‘is that you treat this in the same spirit. Those ladies didn’t complain all that much - they just got on with it. Imagine that you’re in Malaysia and I’m a Japanese soldier and—’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Berthea grimly. ‘It might be better, you know, to walk in silence.’

  ‘Oh, surely not,’ said Terence. ‘You should know that, as a psychologist.’

  ‘Psychoanalyst.’

  ‘Of course. You should know that there are little mood-changing tricks you can use if you want to make an unpleasant experience more bearable. You could try whistling. Remember that popular song, the one about whenever you feel afraid, whistling a happy tune? And then there’s Maria. Remember? Remember how she sang to the children when they all came and jumped on her bed, about her favourite things?’

  Berthea bit her lip. ‘I really don’t think that we need to do any of that, Terence. As you yourself observed, the walk should not take long. Perhaps we should just walk it in silence. That, I suspect, is what any Beings of Light in the immediate vicinity would really appreciate.’

  Terence had looked at her dubiously but said nothing and they completed the walk in silence. Once at the house, Berthea took a long bath; Terence’s bathroom was well stocked with bath crystals of various types, and she luxuriated for almost half an hour in a deep tub of lavender-scented water. After that she felt in a better humour, and joined her brother in the kitchen where he was preparing a plate of snacks to precede the leek pie.