Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

‘What about you?’ he said.

‘Me?’

James picked up another lemon gem. ‘I know so little about you. We’re friends, of course, and we know one another well. But there’s a difference between knowing somebody and knowing them. You know what I mean?’

Caroline was not sure, but decided that perhaps she did. James sometimes left her a bit behind, she felt, and she was eager that he should not think that she did not understand. ‘Yeah,’ she said.

James wiped a crumb from his lips. ‘So, I know a bit about your past, about Cheltenham and all that.’ He waved a hand in the air to indicate a whole hinterland of personal history - a county, a family, a set of social expectations - Caroline’s whole family history. ‘I know the sort of background you’ve had to endure . Your old man being a land agent and all that sort of thing. And your mother. I’m surprised they didn’t put your photograph in the front of Rural Living .’

Caroline froze. She was on the point of popping a lemon gem into her mouth, but now her hand fell to her lap. The lemon gem, held between nervous fingers, cracked slightly, but Nigella’s mixture held and it escaped being reduced to crumbs.

‘What?’ Her voice was small.

‘ Rural Living ,’ said James. ‘I can just see it, can’t you? Caroline, only daughter of Mr and Mrs Whatever Jarvis of Bin End, or wherever, is pictured here - in pearls . Caroline is reading Art History at Oxford (almost) and hopes to work at Sotheby’s.’ He laughed. ‘I can just see it.’

Caroline laughed, but her laugh came out strangled, prompting James to enquire whether she was all right.

‘I’m fine,’ said Caroline, offering him another lemon gem. That would distract him, she hoped, and perhaps steer the conversation into less dangerous waters.

‘Of course, you can’t help it,’ James went on. ‘Nobody can help their background. Although you can correct things later on, once you’ve got away from family influences. Not everybody does, of course. Some people remain clones of their parents all the way to the grave.’

‘I quite like my parents,’ said Caroline. And she did. They loved her; for all their fuddy-duddy ways and their outdated notions, they loved her, and she knew that she would never encounter such unconditional love again. Never.

‘Of course,’ said James quickly. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t picking on them in particular. I was just thinking of what parents can do to their children - often with the best intentions in the world. You know Larkin’s poem?’

Caroline was not sure.

James smiled patiently. ‘It’s the one with the rather - how shall we put it? - forceful first line about what parents do to their kids. It was in a poetry book we had at school and I remember that when we got to it, the English teacher went pale and moved very quickly to the next poem, some frightfully dull thing by Cecil Day Lewis. Of course that meant we all went and looked very closely at what Larkin had to say. But it’s mild stuff, really, compared with what everybody writes today. It must be frustrating being a poet - or any sort of artist - and not being able to offend anyone any more.’ Or were people still as readily offended, and all that had changed was the nature of what was permissible and what was interdicted?

He reached for another lemon gem - his sixth. ‘Sugar craving,’ he said apologetically. ‘Your fault, Caroline, for suggesting that we bake these things.’

‘Oh well . . .’

James licked his fingers. ‘Last one. That’s it.’ He stared at Caroline intently. ‘What would you have done, by the way, if your parents had tried to get your photograph into Rural Living ? What would you have said?’

She looked away. James was proving persistent, and she would have to change the subject. ‘Let’s not talk about all that,’ she said. ‘My parents are my parents. I’m me. Same as you, really. You don’t sign up to everything your paren—your father stands for, do you?’

James shook his head ‘No. But if I’m honest, I can see my father in me. Some of the things I do.’

‘Well, that’s natural enough.’

‘Maybe. But look, we were talking about you.’ He paused, as if unsure about continuing. ‘Are you still seeing him?’ he asked. ‘What’s he called again?’

Caroline was on the point of answering, but stopped herself. Had she replied spontaneously, she would have confirmed that she was still seeing Tom. That was true, but she was only just still seeing him, and she had already decided that there was no future in the relationship. Her friendship with James was, she thought, on the cusp of change, and there was a chance that he might become more than a mere friend. Stranger things have happened, she said to herself - a banal phrase, a cliché, but one that nonetheless expressed the sense of opening out, of possibility, that she now experienced. Identity was not as simple a matter as many people believed: the old idea of clearly delineated male and female characteristics was distinctly passé, as old-fashioned as vanilla ice cream. Now there were new men, men in touch with their feminine side, and the intriguing category of metrosexuals, too - sensitive men, men who used male cosmetics such as ‘man-liner’, men who would enjoy baking Nigella’s lemon gems. These men could be more than adequate lovers and husbands, she believed; much better than the one-dimensional macho types who might score ten out of ten on the heterosexuality scale but who were somewhat boring in their conversation and hopeless in the kitchen. Men like Tom.

‘He’s called Tom,’ said Caroline.

James nodded. She had spoken about Tom before but he had not really been paying attention. ‘Of course. Tom. I remember - you told me. And . . .’

She looked at him enquiringly. ‘And what?’

‘Are you and Tom still together ?’

She wanted to choose her words carefully. It was not that she was prepared to be untruthful, it was just that she was not entirely sure about her feelings, which were changing anyway. Togetherness was not a word she would ever have used to describe her relationship with Tom. They might have been together in the most general sense of the term, but they were not together in the way in which James pronounced it - they were certainly not italicised. ‘I still see him,’ she said, and added, ‘now and then.’

He was watching her. No, she thought then. Whatever happened in the future between Tom and her, this incipient thing with James, this fantasy, would never work. Not James, her wonderful, sympathetic, companionable James. She had a friend who had wasted three years in pursuing a man who was not in the slightest bit interested. At the time she had warned this friend that one could not expect to change something so fundamental, but her warning had been ignored. She must not do the same thing herself. Some men were destined to be good friends and nothing more. James was like that; it was so obvious. She should accept him for what he was and not encourage him to be something that he so clearly was not. He was fine as he was. He was perfect. Why nudge him into a relationship that would be inauthentic to him?

James was smiling. ‘You don’t sound enthusiastic. You see him. That sounds really passionate, Caroline.’

She looked away. James was right: it was not a passionate relationship.

James continued. ‘Tell me this: how do you feel when you’ve got a date with him coming up? Do you count the minutes until you see him? Feel breathless? Fluttery?’ He rubbed a hand across his stomach. ‘You know the feeling. Like that?’