Alexander McCall Smith - The Dog Who Came In From The Cold

But as she settled herself into her first-class seat – a luxury justified, she felt, by the ability it gave her to work during the journey – Berthea was thinking not so much of her brother Terence but of her son, Oedipus Snark, a well-known Liberal Democrat MP and boulevardier¬, as one newspaper had sarcastically described him. Berthea cut out all newspaper references to Oedipus, including this one, which appeared in a particularly waspish diary column. She did this not as most fond mothers did, pasting the cuttings into bulging scrapbooks; she preserved these items as material for her project and, possibly, as evidence.

Berthea’s project was the writing of an unauthorised biography of her son. This was admittedly an unusual activity for a mother, but, as the commissioning publisher had acknowledged, a mother was surely better placed than most to write a warts-and-all biography of a son.

“Not that many do,” mused the publisher. “Loyalty, I suppose …”

If Berthea felt reproached by this mention of loyalty, she had not shown it. She felt no compunction in writing her son’s biography because, after a great deal of soul-searching, she had decided that he simply had to be stopped. Now, normally one would not have to say of a Liberal Democrat MP that he or she had to be stopped. It was simply unnecessary, as few Liberal Democratic MPs, alas, needed to be stopped. This was not their fault – such MPs were usually principled, hard-working and effective; the problem was that the party to which they belonged – admirable though it might be – regrettably seemed unlikely to be in a position to form a government. So the stopping of a Lib Dem MP seemed to be uncalled for, whereas the MPs of other parties could be really dangerous in that they could well find themselves with hands on the levers of power. Some of them – the most egregiously selfish or unscrupulous – had to be stopped for the public good, lest they find themselves in power.

Oedipus Snark, his mother believed, was only in the Liberal Democratic Party because the other two main parties had rejected him. Not many people knew this, of course, but she, being his mother, had seen the correspondence he had carelessly left lying about in the days when he still occupied a room in her mews house behind Corduroy Mansions. There were letters from party secretaries, politely phrased but clear in their message that he was not what they were looking for as prospective candidates. The Liberal Democratic Party, however, in its profound decency, had allowed him through and then, as a result of the vagaries of the selection process, he had found himself selected as a candidate for a London constituency. And that could have been as far as he got, had it not been for the fact that both the main party candidates for that particular constituency had simultaneously been involved in serious scandals. They went down, and Oedipus Snark, then only thirty-one and one of the youngest parliamentary candidates, went up.

Berthea Snark might have left it at that, but there was still a danger that Oedipus might find himself near power, this by his own admission. “Mother,” he had said, “I know you think that I won’t get anywhere politically, but may I let you into a little secret? They want me to cross the floor, to join up with them. And you know what mother? I’m going to do it when the time is ripe, and in return … Guess what? A cabinet post! Not a junior minister – a real, six-cylinder, eighty-four-horsepower ministerial post! What do you think of that, mother?”

Berthea said nothing. But what she thought was this: But what if people knew about you? What then? And then, as a delicious – but guilty – afterthought, she muttered to herself, Creep!

When Berthea’s train drew into Cheltenham station, Terence Moongrove was waiting to meet her. He had arrived at the station half an hour earlier, allowing, as usual, a generous amount of time to park the car. This had taken him less time than anticipated, however, because he found the Porsche much more manoeuvrable than the Morris Traveller. It was not just the steering that seemed different; it was the response of other drivers, who generally seemed to get out of the way when they saw Terence in the high-powered German sports car.

“It’s a very funny thing, Mr Marchbanks,” he said to his long-suffering garagiste. “When I drive this new car you got me, I find I get looks from other drivers. Admiring looks, I think. Do you think that Monty Bismarck got the same thing when he drove this car?”

Mr Marchbanks raised an eyebrow. “Looks? Well, I don’t know – you’d have to ask Monty about that, I suspect. But I do know that some people judge others by their cars.”

Terence found this very strange. “What a peculiar thing to do,” he said. “What really counts is the spirit, Mr Marchbanks. Or a person’s aura. That’s the really important thing to look out for.” He paused, weighing up an idea that had come to him. “Do you think that cars have auras, Mr Marchbanks?”

Mr Marchbanks was used to strange questions from Terence Moongrove. He sighed. “Could be. Mind you, I’m not sure what an aura is. Cars certainly have emissions. Is an aura anything to do with that?”

Terence thought for a moment. “The concepts are not altogether unrelated. An aura is a sort of emission – an emission of light. And I suppose that inanimate objects can have waves associated with them. Water has a memory, after all.”

Mr Marchbanks stared at Terence. “Water has a memory, you say?”

Terence was now on firm ground; he knew about these things. “Yes, it does! Jolly surprising, but it does. They’ve done amazing experiments, Mr Marchbanks. There’s a professor called Beneviste. He’s the one who discovered that water could remember things that happened to it – stuff you put into it. It remembers it all and reacts to the same stuff when it next has it put into it. Amazing.”

Mr Marchbanks moved the top set of his false teeth out over his lower lip; it was a little mannerism of his that manifested itself when he was puzzled. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

“Indeed you will be,” Terence went on. “Of course there are bags of people – bags of them – who were ready to throw cold water on this idea …”

“Cold water,” said Mr Marchbanks. He wondered whether the water would remember being thrown.

“Yes. People with closed minds – people who aren’t prepared to accept any new ideas that don’t match their view of how things are. There are plenty of people like that, Mr Marchbanks.”

The mechanic looked thoughtful. “So are you suggesting that cars have memories?”

“They might have,” said Terence. “I wouldn’t state it as a fact – not categorically. But think of it – if inanimate objects can absorb vibrations, waves, energy, call it what you will, then it explains a lot, doesn’t it? Hauntings, for instance. Energy is absorbed by stones and then released. It explains why places have an atmosphere.”

Mr Marchbank looked interested. “Yes, places do have an atmosphere, don’t they? My mother-in-law’s house, for instance. I’ve always said that there’s something rum about that place. My wife doesn’t agree, but I always pick up a very negative feeling when I go there.”

Terence nodded encouragingly. “There you are, you see. Something negative has gone into the bricks and mortar. You’re just picking it up, Mr Marchbanks.”

“But I’m not sure about cars. Houses are one thing, but cars …”

Terence made a gesture of acceptance. “I didn’t say that cars necessarily have that ability, but they could do. My Porsche, for instance. I must admit I get a sort of … vibration when I drive it. I feel somehow … a bit … well, a bit younger.” He blushed. “A bit amorous even! Not that I would say that to anybody else, of course, but you’re a mechanic …”