Corduroy Mansions cm-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  But now he saw that this particular shop was not like that - it had attractive things: an imposing smoked glass table, for example, that would do very well in his sitting room, he thought, and a small bookcase that would look good in the spare bedroom, once he got Eddie out of it. And there was a rug, too, which he rather liked, and which Freddie de la Hay now sat upon in a gesture of canine approbation.

  ‘Are you looking for something in particular?’

  William turned round to see that a tall, extremely attractive young woman had appeared at his side, smiling as she spoke - and she spoke to him. Where was she from? he wondered. She was Italian, he decided. Milanese, perhaps; Milan was the design capital of the world, was it not?

  Taken by surprise, William needed a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘Belgian Shoes?’ he asked eventually. ‘I saw the sign in the window, and . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ said the assistant. ‘Belgian Shoes. The men’s shoes are over here on the table.’ She led him to a table on the other side of the room.

  ‘May I leave my dog on the rug?’ William asked. ‘He’s very well behaved. A very good dog.’

  It occurred to him that he did not know this. Was Freddie de la Hay well behaved in all circumstances? William realised that he simply did not know whether Freddie de la Hay could really be described as a good dog. That was not an appellation that should be conferred automatically; good dogs should earn it, thought William, in the same way as soldiers earned their medals. Soldiers did not get the MC for nothing - or at least British soldiers did not. Some countries gave their soldiers a medal the moment they received the slightest injury: William had heard of a medal (a foreign one) awarded to any soldier who cut himself while shaving, but he could not believe that. It simply could not be true. Surely one had to do far more than that to get a particular medal? One had to get one’s finger jammed in the door of a tank at the very least.

  ‘Your dog may certainly stay on the rug,’ said the assistant. ‘He seems to be a very fine dog.’

  Standing in front of the shoe table, William looked at the selection. He had had no idea what Belgian Shoes would look like; now he gazed upon a selection of about twenty exemplars of the footwear, ranging from black patent-leather dancing pumps to brown ostrich-skin casual loafers.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said, picking up one of the shoes. It was feather-light.

  ‘They are very comfortable,’ said the assistant, ‘because they are so light. The sole has horsehair in it.’

  She turned one of the shoes over and showed it to William. The underside of the sole was thin leather - not a conventional sole, but rather the smooth leather that one might find on an expensive pair of slippers.

  ‘They’re not really outside shoes,’ said William. ‘These soles wouldn’t last long outside.’

  He wondered whether Belgians spent an inordinate amount of time indoors; in restaurants, perhaps, enjoying their distinguished cuisine.

  ‘They are designed for wear inside the house,’ said the assistant. ‘However, you can have a thin rubber sole applied, which will protect the shoe if you take it outside. But they are not for the rain.’

  William picked up the ostrich-skin loafers and looked at the inner sole. Like the rest of the shoe it was of soft, light leather, and had imprinted on it a picture of a cobbler’s sewing needle and thread and the words ‘Belgian Shoes’.

  They then discussed his size and the assistant went off to get an appropriate pair of the ostrich-skin loafers. William realised that he had not asked the price, but it was too late now to do so. He had to have a pair of Belgian Shoes. He simply had to.

  ‘They look very good on you,’ said the assistant when William put on the shoes and stood up to admire them. ‘You must have them.’

  William nodded. There are some shoes that say to us: ‘Buy us and we shall change your life.’ That is what these shoes now said to him - quite unequivocally. And William knew that the claim was true: his life would change once he had a pair of shoes like this. He knew it.

  Of course, it all seemed so unlikely. Belgian Shoes! Nobody would associate elegant footwear with the Belgians of all people; the Italians, yes - they were destined to design and make elegant, life-changing shoes. But the Belgians? What were they best at making? Regulations?

  He turned to the assistant. ‘Why are they called Belgian Shoes?’ he asked.

  She smiled. ‘They are made in Belgium,’ she said. ‘And the Belgians are a great people for comfort. Belgians do not like to be uncomfortable.’

  William thought about this. Did anybody wish to be uncomfortable? The British certainly lived in conditions of great discomfort, with their cold, draughty homes and their admiration for a culture of cold showers. But did they actually like to be uncomfortable, or did they accept discomfort as a constant factor in British life, like bad weather and run-down trains?

  ‘So the Belgians are hedonists, are they?’ he remarked.

  He had not thought he would get an answer to this, and he did not. But what he did get was a sudden chilling of the atmosphere.

  ‘You’re not . . . you’re not Belgian?’ William stuttered.

  The assistant shook her head. ‘I am Italian,’ she said. ‘But I have nothing but admiration for the Belgians.’

  She placed the Belgian Shoes in a dark green shoe bag and passed it over to William.

  ‘These shoes will make a difference,’ she said. ‘They will bring you a great deal of happiness. It is very clear.’

  William paid - one hundred and seventy pounds - and then, collecting Freddie, he left. As he made his way back to the flat, he considered how his life had changed dramatically within a couple of days. He had acquired a dog. He had begun to resist his son. And he had acquired a pair of potentially life-changing Belgian Shoes. And . . . He was about to add: ‘And I’ve embarked upon my mid-life crisis,’ but he stopped himself. It was not a crisis he had initiated, it was a rebellion - a full-blooded post-teenage rebellion. I am rebelling, he thought. I have never rebelled in my life - not once. Not as a teenager, when I was entirely compliant; nor as a young adult. Never. Now, at long last, I have started to rebel.

  It was an intensely satisfying feeling.

  42. The Morning Sun was in Her Eyes

  When asked whether she was driving back to London, Barbara Ragg hesitated before replying. She looked at the young man standing beside her: what business of his was her destination? She appreciated his materialising from nowhere and helping to pick up the shattered glass from her wing mirror, but she did not think that it gave him the right to ask where she was going. She looked at him coolly - or in a manner she hoped would give the impression of coolness - but even as she stared at him she knew that the effect of her gaze was probably quite different from what she wanted. She felt flushed, rather than composed; suddenly unsettled, rather than determined. Only a few minutes ago she had walked out of the Mermaid Inn filled with resolve and firmness - a free agent once again after deciding that no longer would she endure the humiliation of being a mere adjunct to Oedipus Snark’s life. And here, within the space of a few minutes, she found that a pair of green male eyes fixed on hers had reduced her to a state of vulnerability and indecision. How she answered this simple question, she vaguely sensed, would in some way determine the course of her life.

  That, of course, was absurd. The pattern of one’s life could not be changed by a chance encounter in the parking place of the Mermaid Inn. And yet, it could - lives, even our own, could be changed by such apparently insignificant events, and Barbara knew it. An apparently throwaway remark by one person could send another in a direction that would have profound consequences for what they did. ‘Why don’t you write poetry?’ one young schoolboy had said to another young schoolboy - the sort of thing that boys used to say to one another in more literate days, and the sort of remark that might have no effect on the world unless . . . unless the boy to whom the suggestion was made was none other than the young Wystan Auden. Perhaps a similar boy had said to an
other small boy called Horatio, ‘Why don’t you go to sea?’, and the juvenile Nelson had replied, ‘Yes, why not?’

  So, in less elevated circles, we might toss a coin as to whether or not to go to a party, decide to go, and there meet the person whom we are to marry and spend our lives with. And if that person came, say, from New Zealand, and wanted to return, then we might find ourselves spending our life in Christchurch. Not that spending one’s lifetime in Christchurch is anything less than very satisfactory - who among us would not be happy living in a city of well-behaved people, within reach of mountains, where the civic virtues ensure courtesy and comfort and where the major problems of the world are an ocean away? But had the coin fallen the other way - as coins occasionally do - then that wholly different prospect might never have opened up and one might spend the rest of one’s days in the place where one started out. Or one might pick up a newspaper abandoned in a train by a person not well trained in those same civic virtues, open it and chance to see an advertisement for a job that one would not otherwise have seen. And that same job might take one into the path of risk, and that very risk may materialise and end one’s life prematurely. Again the act of picking up the paper has consequences unglimpsed at the time, but profound nonetheless.

  Barbara knew this, and knew that how she answered would have consequences for her. It would be safest to say, ‘No, I’m not going to London,’ but that would mean that she would never know why he had asked, and it would, in addition, be a lie, and she was a truthful person. Oedipus lied; he lied all the time, she thought, but somehow lies suited him. He was a natural liar - he had a gift for meretricious speech that would be the envy of any snake-oil salesman or politician in a tight corner, a facility based on the fact that he actually believed his lies. It was a great gift, as it had immense transformative powers: if everything that one said was true, then what power one had over the world. Bad weather could be changed at a stroke to good; a downturn of fortune could simply by misdescription become something quite different. But Barbara could do none of that, not even mislead a stranger as to her destination.

  So she said, ‘Yes, I am going to London, as it happens.’

  The young man holding the shards of glass looked over his shoulder. ‘One sec,’ he said. ‘I need to go and put these in the bin.’

  He turned round and walked over to a small rubbish bin beside the hotel’s back door. She watched him. The morning sun was in her eyes and she used a hand to shade them. She watched the young man, and did not see Oedipus at the window of the hotel dining room, looking down at her. He was watching her.

  The young man dropped the glass in the bin and came back to join her. She saw his face now, for those few seconds that are crucial - so psychologists say - for the forming of an opinion one way or the other about another person.

  He dusted his hands on the side of his jeans. ‘I was wondering . . .’ he began.

  ‘Do you need a lift up there?’

  She had not intended to say this; it just came out.

  He smiled. ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind. I was going to catch a train, but I’d have to walk down to the station and get a ticket . . .’ He shrugged, and smiled in a self-consciously helpless way. ‘And I’d far rather travel in a car like yours than in a train.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘That’s great.’

  She glanced into the open-top car. ‘Have you got a suitcase? There’s not all that much room, but I can shift my things a bit.’

  He had only a small bag, which he went into the hotel to retrieve. While he did that, Barbara moved the car to the side of the parking place and took stock of her situation. One should not give lifts to a stranger; that was now an elementary precaution, which anybody would be considered very unwise to ignore. The days of hitchhikers standing by the roadside seemed to be well and truly over, such was the distrust that prevailed. Everybody was a potential assailant; nobody spoke to one another for fear of being misinterpreted; nobody comforted another, put an arm around a shoulder - to do so would be to invite accusation. And yet here I am, thought Barbara, picking up a man whose name I don’t even know, allowing him to get into the car, and driving off to London. Anything could happen.

  She reached for the key in the ignition. The simplest thing to do, the safest thing, would be to start the engine and drive out while he was fetching his bag. She turned the key and the engine sprang to life.

  43. Terence’s Battery has a Near-death Experience

  ‘I can’t start it,’ said Terence Moongrove, coming back into the kitchen where his sister, Berthea Snark, was reading a newspaper.

  Terence’s Morris Traveller had been towed back to the house the previous evening by the proprietor of a local garage, who, knowing the car well, had encountered it on the roadside and returned it to its home while Terence and Berthea were having dinner. He had refused payment, an act of kindness that had deeply impressed Berthea.

  ‘That sort of thing would never happen in London,’ she said. ‘Nobody would be that kind.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure that people in London are as kind as anywhere else,’ said Terence. ‘They just don’t have the time to show it.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Berthea. ‘Too many people. It changes one’s attitude to others. Simple social psychology. Put a whole lot of rats in a cage and they fight. Put one or two in and they get along reasonably well.’

  Terence looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure about that? I mean, about people? I can understand about rats - nasty, long-tailed creatures. And those teeth! Have you seen their teeth, Berthy? They’ve got long, slightly curved teeth, like that. Jolly sharp, I imagine.’ He paused. ‘But people? Do they really fight just because there’s a lot of them in the same space? Look at the Japanese. Their cities are jolly full of people. Have you seen the pictures of their train stations? They have these men who wear white gloves and push people into the carriages so that the doors can close. What a horrible job, Berthy - I wouldn’t do it for a hundred pounds. I really wouldn’t.

  ‘Yet the Japanese don’t fight with one another,’ Terence went on. ‘They behave terribly well. Japanese cities are not like our cities at night - with all that shouting and heaven knows what. And—’

  ‘That’s alcohol,’ Berthea interjected. ‘And the Japanese have manners. They’re very particular about how to behave and that means that everybody gets on very well with one another even in a confined space. Manners, Terence. Something we’re losing sight of. We laugh at people who bow to one another but the bow is an act of respect, and respect leads to considerate behaviour. We could learn a lot from the Japanese. In particular, we could learn how to live harmoniously in crowded spaces. We could learn about territory.’

  Terence thought about this. ‘We must rise above the territorial,’ he said. ‘Obviously our territory is finite, and we will find ourselves contesting it. But if we project ourselves onto another, altogether higher plane, then physical territory will matter much less.’

  Berthea pursed her lips. ‘Not everyone,’ she said, ‘can exist on a higher plane. I, for example—’

  ‘But you could!’ interrupted Terence. ‘You really could, Berthy! You need to try, that’s all.’

  Berthea sighed. ‘What you describe as a higher plane, Terence, is probably just a slightly altered mental state. A dissociative state, I’d say. Anybody can experience that.’

  Terence looked out of the window. ‘You can’t say that. You’re just reducing it to a matter of brain chemistry. It’s more than that.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Berthea. ‘I am not a reductionist in that way. If I were, I can assure you that I would not be a psychoanalyst. All I’m pointing out to you is that there are dissociative states of mind that can be mistaken for something else. A state of religious ecstasy might involve dissociation. Or even the state of mind that one is in when one is driving and suddenly realises that one has covered quite some distance and not really been aware of it.’

  She realised that the motoring example might be a s
ensitive one. Did Terence drive, she wondered, while he was on a higher plane? Or did he come down from the higher plane before he started to drive, and then return to it later on? Either way, she was not sure whether she would be at all confident making any car journey with him other than the relatively direct one from the railway station to his house. That took them along quiet residential roads, where nobody would be held up by the Morris Traveller’s customary speed of twenty miles per hour or Terence’s habit of driving in the middle of the road.

  Now, seated in Terence’s kitchen on Saturday morning, with the newspaper in front of her and a cup of coffee at her side, Berthea listened while Terence described his efforts to start the Morris Traveller.

  ‘Mr Marchbanks told me that he had put some petrol in,’ he said. ‘He had a can of petrol in his truck and he realised that I might have run out, so he put it in. But it still won’t start.’

  Berthea frowned. ‘Does it make any noise at all?’

  ‘No,’ said Terence. ‘It’s as quiet as anything. Nothing happens. Nothing at all. It’s as if it’s in one of your dissociative states.’