Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

‘She sometimes misses things,’ he said. ‘She’s far from papal in her infallibility. Hah!’

‘Not this time,’ said Barbara. ‘I asked her to double-check. She said that there had been something in the diary for Saturday - something to do with a development charity - but you had begged off. So, she said, it was quite free.’

Oedipus Snark fiddled with his tie. It was, his mother had once pointed out, a displacement activity, an Übersprungbewegung , and it occurred when he felt cornered.

‘Why Rye?’ he asked peevishly. ‘What’s so special about Rye?’

‘There’s a lovely old hotel there,’ said Barbara. ‘The Mermaid Inn. On Mermaid Street, not surprisingly. I went there years ago and loved it. Low ceilings and four-poster beds, and tremendously ancient into the bargain.’

‘Well, we can’t sit in the hotel all day,’ said Oedipus, ‘however ancient it may be.’

‘We won’t have to. There’s a lot to see. There’s Henry James’s house, which was also lived in by E. F. Benson - you know, the Mapp and Lucia man - and they’re having a concert in one of the churches. A young Canadian pianist. We could go to that.’ She fixed Oedipus with a steely look. ‘There’s plenty to do.’

Oedipus had been out-manoeuvred by the combined forces of Jenny and Barbara Ragg and had no choice but to agree. So it was that they checked in to the Mermaid Inn shortly before dinner on Friday evening, having driven down in Barbara’s open-topped MG in British Racing Green. The evening was warm, one of long shadows and no breeze to speak of. The air was heavy, and had that quality to it that comes at the end of the day - a comfortable, used quality.

Oedipus, who had been grumpy at the beginning of the journey, was positively ebullient by the time they arrived at the Mermaid Inn and immediately ordered them large gin and tonics in the bar.

‘Not a bad choice,’ he said, looking about appreciatively.

He paid her so few compliments that for a few moments Barbara was quite taken aback. She wanted him to be happy. She wanted him to stop rushing around and looking anxious, and instead have some time for her, to talk about her day, her concerns - just now and then. She wanted to marry Oedipus Snark and make him happy, not just over the occasional weekend, but for years. That is what Barbara Ragg wanted.

She was realistic, of course. One did not get where she had got in a difficult and competitive field without being astute. And she knew full well that Oedipus had no intention of settling down - at least not for the time being. That meant that she could either try to trap him into matrimony, by getting him to believe, for example, that it would help his political career to get married, a conclusion that often strikes politicians when they are just on the verge of achieving high office. Or she could simply enjoy what she already had: a relationship of convenience (for him) where they spent some time together, but not very much, and where certain subjects of conversation (marriage, children, joint establishments and so on) were no-go areas, fenced about with electricity and warning bells.

Her friends, hostile almost without exception to Oedipus and, in the case of one or two of them, even given to shuddering involuntarily when his name was mentioned, spoke with one voice on the subject, even if their exact words varied.

‘Give him up.’

‘Show him the door.’

‘Find a decent man, for heaven’s sake.’

All of this was sage advice, intended to be helpful, and Barbara might have acted upon it if she felt that there was the slightest chance of getting somebody to replace her unsatisfactory political lover. But there was not. For some reason, possibly one connected with her manner, which was somewhat overpowering from the male point of view, men steered well clear of her. She was one of those women who inhibited men because of what some people described as her briskness. And she knew this. She knew it because she had once heard the nickname that some spiteful person had pinned on her and which had acquired wide currency. The Head Prefect.

I am not like that, she said to herself. I am not.

But in the eyes of others, she must have been. And when she attempted to be more feminine and to eschew any sign of high-handedness, it did not help at all. Then somebody made matters worse by coining a new nickname, again one which stuck, and travelled. Mrs Thatcher.

Who among us wants anything more than to be appreciated by some and loved, we hope, by a few? Why is the world so constructed that some find this modest goal easy to achieve and others find that it for ever eludes them? The essential unfairness of the world? Yes. Its heartlessness? Yes. Its unkindness to a certain sort of brisk and competent woman? Yes again.

At dinner at the Mermaid Inn, Oedipus Snark chose scallops as his first course. The waiter who took his order, a young man with neatly barbered hair who had just completed a degree in English at the University of Sussex, asked, ‘Scallops, sir?’ Oedipus nodded, and Barbara Ragg, looking up from her scrutiny of the menu, said, ‘Oh, scallops. Yes, I’ll have those too.’

The waiter scribbled on his notepad. ‘And for your main course, sir?’

‘Lamb cutlets, please.’

‘Such a wise choice,’ said the waiter, before turning to Barbara. ‘And your main course, madam?’

‘I’ll take lamb cutlets too,’ replied Barbara Ragg. She looked up at the young man with ill-concealed irritation. She did not think there was any need for a waiter to compliment one on one’s choice of food, and yet so many of them did. They should be neutral, equally impassive in the face of good and bad choices, as impressed by Mr Sprat’s opting for lean as by his wife’s preference for fat. But there was more: he had taken Oedipus’s order first, she noticed. Were waiters no longer trained to take the woman’s order first, or did they now feel they had to give the man precedence, purely to make the point that they had risen above the old sexist courtesies? For a few moments she mused on the implications of social change for the strict rules of etiquette. What, for example, was the position when dealing with same-sex couples? If two women in such a relationship were dining together, and if the waiter normally observed the rule of asking women first, should he then take the order of the more feminine partner before that of the more masculine one - if such a distinction were obvious? And would such a policy be welcome or would it provoke hostility? People could be touchy, and it might not be a good idea to do anything but leave it to chance. But if the waiter turned first to an overtly masculine-looking partner, he might be suspected of doing so solely in order to avoid being thought to attend to the feminine partner first. And that would reveal that he had secretly made a judgement of roles. So only one course of action remained - for the waiter to look at neither diner while he said, dispassionately staring into the air above their heads, ‘Now which of you two is first?’ That would perhaps be the most tactful way of addressing the matter. Perhaps.

Oedipus Snark also looked irritated. He had no objection to the waiter’s taking his order first - indeed he rather expected it, being an MP and being in the public eye. What he objected to was Barbara’s choosing exactly the same courses as he had. Had she no imagination? Or was she trying to be like him? That really annoyed him. He could understand, of course, why somebody should wish to imitate him, but he did not like it to be so obvious. I shall have to get rid of her, he thought; she’s going to have to go.

‘I read something interesting about scallops the other day,’ Barbara remarked. ‘Did you know that the best scallops are those that are hand-picked by divers? Apparently the other ones are sucked up by great vacuum cleaners and that bruises the scallop - ruins it, they say.’