Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

‘Go on,’ he said evenly. ‘This person from out of the blue.’

‘It landed on my desk,’ said Barbara. ‘We have somebody who gives things a preliminary read. She sends most of the stuff right back, or at least sends it back after we’ve let it sit in the office for three weeks or so. One wouldn’t want the authors to think that we’d rejected them out of hand.’

Oedipus raised an eyebrow. ‘So she said it had the makings?’

‘She did. In fact, she said that this was the one. I remember her precise words. “We must write to him and say thank you.” That’s what she said. Do you realise how rarely that happens in publishing? The last author who got anything like that was Wilbur Smith - you know, the man who writes about deeds of derring-do in Africa. Elephants and ancient treasure. Very exciting stuff. People love reading him. Sells millions. When he sent his first manuscript off to the publishers he was a complete unknown. He parcelled it up and sent it off - this was still the days of typewriters, of course, and it was maybe the only copy. Back came a telegram in no time at all: “Thank you for this wonderful book. Letter follows.”’

‘Nice,’ said Oedipus Snark.

Barbara agreed. ‘Most of the time, when an author writes to an agent or a publisher to find out about the fate of a manuscript, he gets a reply saying, “Your manuscript is under active consideration.” You know what that means, Oedipus? It means: we’re actively looking for it.’

Oedipus said nothing. It was a useful phrase, and he would have to use it himself in his own letters. ‘The point you raised with me is under active consideration.’ It was very nice.

Barbara continued her story. ‘Well, I took this manuscript home with me. I didn’t look forward to reading it, I’m afraid - I hate reading manuscripts but I had to do it. So I made myself a stiff gin and tonic and sat down with this great pile of paper. I hadn’t even read the title at that stage. All I had seen was the name of the author. Errol Greatorex. Not a good start. Names are important in the book business, you know. You can have one author called Stan Jones, or whatever, who writes exactly the same sort of book as, shall we say, somebody called Jodi de Balzac. Whose book makes its mark? Not Stan Jones’s, I’m afraid. So we had a bit of a problem with Errol Greatorex. It was the Errol, of course - the Greatorex bit was fine. Full of literary possibilities.

‘I sat down with my gin and Mr Greatorex’s manuscript and looked at the title. The Autobiography of a Yeti .’

Oedipus Snark’s eyes widened. ‘The Abominable Snowman?’

‘The very same. The yeti who lives up in the high forests of the Himalayas. On the edge of the treeline. That yeti.’

It was at this point that the waiter returned with the scallops. But neither of the diners paid much attention to the plate of elegantly served seafood that was placed before them. Barbara’s eyes were bright with the memory of the moment when she first began to read the manuscript. And Oedipus, for his part, was thinking: what if I took over this amazing story? What if I was the one to reveal this to the world? Me. Oedipus Snark. And something else crossed his mind too. Money.

Oedipus was not one to show an overt interest in anything very much but Barbara Ragg could tell that he was acutely interested in Errol Greatorex’s manuscript. This pleased her; indeed, she basked in his attention, a rare experience for her. At least now he’s taking me seriously, she said to herself as she tackled the last scraps of scallop.

‘The scallops were just perfect,’ she commented, dabbing at her mouth with her table napkin. ‘They must have been hand-picked rather than sucked up, don’t you think?’

‘Very possibly,’ said Oedipus. ‘Perhaps some brave Scottish diver went down into the waters off Mull or somewhere like that. Tremendously cold, no doubt. But tell me, this Errol Greatorex . . .’

Barbara was enjoying herself. ‘I wonder if they dive with air tanks?’ she mused. ‘Or do they just hold their breath and swim down? There’s something called free-diving, you know. I read about it.’

‘Maybe. But tell me, this manuscript . . .’

Barbara ignored the incipient question. ‘They go down to an amazing depth, you know, these free-divers. Two hundred feet and more in some cases. All with one lungful of air.’

‘Yes, yes. But I don’t think that these scallop divers . . .’

‘There’s something called the mammalian diving reflex,’ Barbara continued. She had listened to him for so long; now he could listen to her for a change. ‘It makes it easier for your system to work on very little oxygen. You can get better and better at it if you train yourself. It’s quite amazing.’

Oedipus pushed his plate aside. ‘I’m not really all that interested in free-diving, Barbara,’ he said. ‘This novel of yours: that’s what I want to discuss.’

‘But there’s not much to discuss,’ said Barbara calmly. ‘It’s just the story of a yeti’s life.’ She paused. ‘And it’s not fiction, you know.’

She watched Oedipus’s expression. He looked mocking. ‘You mean he claims to be a yeti?’

‘No, of course not. Greatorex is not a yeti name. I would have thought that you would know that.’ She paused. I have just said something extremely witty, she said to herself. But Oedipus Snark just stared at her. ‘He’s called it an autobiography,’ she continued, ‘because the yeti told him his story. It’s an “as told to” book. You know, the sort that pop singers and footballers write. They’re just like yetis, in their way. Everybody knows that they can’t do it themselves and use ghost writers. Hence the “as told to” books.’

Oedipus shook his head. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. The yeti doesn’t exist.’

Barbara leaned forward slightly. ‘How do you know, Oedipus? How do you know the yeti doesn’t exist?’

‘For the same reason I know that Father Christmas doesn’t exist,’ he said. ‘Or the Tooth Fairy.’

‘Or Higgs’s boson?’

Oedipus Snark’s eyes flashed. If Barbara imagines she can pull particle physics on me, he thought, she’s in for a surprise.

‘The Higgs boson?’ he snapped. ‘There’s mathematics for that. Where is the mathematics for the Tooth Fairy? And anyway, what about the W and Z bosons?’

Barbara wondered whether she could ask for more scallops. ‘The W and Z bosons?’ she repeated.

Oedipus held her gaze. ‘Yes.’

‘I haven’t got the first clue,’ she said. ‘I’m not a physicist, Oedipus. You tell me about them. What are they, these bosons?’

Oedipus waved a hand in the air. ‘Some other time,’ he said. ‘But where’s the evidence for the existence of yetis?’

Barbara looked at her empty plate. She would buy some scallops when she got back to London and eat them privately in her kitchen, with a glass of white wine and Mozart playing in the background. It would be nice to be married, but could married people do that sort of thing? ‘There’s some evidence,’ she said. ‘Sightings. Big footprints in the snow. Quite a bit of this comes from perfectly level-headed people.’

Oedipus laughed. ‘Listen, light can play tricks. People see all sorts of things - ghosts, UFOs, the face of Elvis in their pizzas and so on. If you believed half of what people claim to have seen, you’d be very badly informed.’ He paused. ‘And as for footprints in the snow, an ordinary footprint gets much bigger as the snow melts around the edges. See?’

Barbara shrugged. ‘Well, you can believe what you will. I shall remain agnostic on the subject. All that I know is that Errol’s book is absolutely riveting. And it will sell. In fact, I’m prepared to bet that it will be pretty much number one on the lists. It’s absolutely compelling.’