Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

‘Not really,’ he mumbled. This was not true, however; he had thought about it a great deal and had even looked the matter up on the Internet, where he had found numerous descriptions of the process, complete with diagrams.

‘Well, you should think very seriously about it,’ said Dee. ‘In fact, why don’t I do it tomorrow?’

Martin suppressed a shudder. ‘Do what?’

‘Give you colonic irrigation,’ said Dee. ‘You really need it, you know. When I gave you the iridological analysis it was sticking out a mile. You really need it. All those toxins . . .’

‘I don’t think I’m particularly toxic,’ Martin said.

‘But you are, Martin! You are!’ She reached out and took his arm. ‘Listen, Martin. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Come round to my place. Come round to Corduroy Mansions tomorrow morning. Eleven o’clock, maybe. Round about then. And I’ll do it for you. I’ve got all the stuff there. All right?’

He looked about him wildly. ‘I don’t know—’

Dee cut him off. ‘You’re in denial, you know, Martin.’

‘I’m not—’

‘There you are - denying.’

‘I’m denying that I’m in denial. That’s not denial.’

‘Well, if it isn’t denial, then what is it?’ asked Dee. She did not wait for an answer. ‘So that’s settled then. Eleven tomorrow. Sunday’s a very good day to do it.’

Martin seemed defeated. He found it difficult to stand up to Dee and this, in spite of the intimacy of the subject, was no exception. Even if he did need colonic irrigation - and he had nothing against it in principle - he was not sure that it was something that one should have at the hands of somebody one knew .

‘I’m sorry, Dee,’ he said. ‘I know that I might need it but why don’t I go and get it from . . . from a colonic irrigation place? From somebody I don’t know.’

She stared at him. ‘And pay for it? Why? Why pay for it? I’m helping you to save money. You didn’t think I was going to charge you, did you?’ She laughed at the sheer absurdity of charging a friend or, in this case, an employee, for colonic irrigation. Colonic irrigation could be a gift between friends; surely he knew that?

‘It’s not the money,’ Martin protested. ‘Money’s got nothing to do with it.’

Dee seemed puzzled. ‘Well, what is it then?’ She paused, searching his expression for some clue. ‘You aren’t embarrassed, are you, Martin? Surely you aren’t embarrassed?’ She smiled playfully. ‘It’s that, isn’t it?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Oh come on,’ she said. ‘You won’t find it in the slightest bit embarrassing. Not after we start. I promise you. So don’t think twice about it. Really, don’t.’ She looked at him. ‘Feeling better about it? Good. Tomorrow then. Eleven.’

As this conversation was taking place between Dee and a reluctant and embarrassed Martin, Barbara Ragg’s thoughts could not have been further removed from vitamin D, polar bears, or indeed colonic irrigation. She was driving at the time, sweeping along the winding road from Rye in her British Racing Green sports car, with a young man in the passenger seat beside her. A cynic, standing by the roadside, contemplating the passing traffic, would have had no difficulty in describing the situation. He would have said, with all the snide innuendo that cynics so effortlessly muster, that here was a woman in her early thirties, prosperous - driving the fruit of last year’s bonus - accompanied by a trophy man a good few years younger. And the cynic would have observed that Barbara was driving, which underlined the status of the young man, who was nonetheless enjoying the trip greatly, a scarf trailing from his neck.

At the beginning of their journey, noticing the scarf, Barbara had warned him of the fate of Isadora Duncan.

‘Remember Isadora Duncan,’ she said as they drove out of the Mermaid Inn’s car park.

He looked at her blankly. ‘No, I don’t know her, I’m afraid.’

The car started down the cobbled street. ‘You wouldn’t,’ said Barbara. ‘She died in 1927. In tragic circumstances that are brought to mind, I’m afraid, by your scarf.’

The young man frowned. ‘You’ve lost me,’ he said.

Barbara explained. ‘The reason I know all about this is because I represented an author who wrote about Gertrude Stein. I’m a literary agent, you see. Anyway, Gertrude Stein, who was an American with a literary and artistic salon in Paris, said “affectations can be dangerous”. She said it when she heard about the death of Isadora Duncan, who was a famous dancer and femme fatale.’

The young man was watching her as she spoke. There was a light in his eyes - the light of discovery that ignites when one encounters for the first time an intellectually stimulating companion. Barbara noticed this light, and responded. Oedipus Snark never listened to her - she could say the wittiest things and he would just ignore her. This young man, by contrast, appeared to be appreciating her, and she felt glad; one might sparkle before such an audience, and she had him to herself all the way to London, and after that . . . Well, it was possible. These things happened in fiction, and if they happened in fiction, then they might just happen in real life; just . . .

She turned the car at the bottom of Mermaid Street, noticing as she did so their reflection in a shop window nearby. Seeing one’s reflection in a window is a reminder of what one is; this is what one is in the eyes of others. And she was a woman in an expensive sports car with an attractive young man at her side. How satisfying.

‘It’s rather a sad story,’ Barbara went on. ‘Isadora was given a lovely long scarf by a Russian artist. She was taken for a ride in Nice in an Amilcar GS - a very nice little sports car of the time - by a very glamorous Italian mechanic, Benoît Falchetto.’

Barbara thought: what it would be to be invited to drive off with a glamorous young mechanic, and an Italian to boot! And one called Benoît Falchetto . . .

‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘as they drove off, the scarf which Isadora had been wearing got caught in the back wheel of the sports car. It was made - the scarf - of very strong silk and when it wound round the wheel it tightened round Isadora Duncan’s neck. She was pulled out of the car and bumped along behind until the Italian mechanic stopped. But by then it was too late.’

She glanced at the young man. I haven’t even asked his name, she thought. I’ve picked him up in the hotel car park and I have no idea what he’s called. Bruce? Andrew? Mark? . . .

The young man felt gingerly at his neck, loosening the scarf slightly. ‘Not a nice way to go.’

‘No indeed. Even if it immortalises one.’ Hugging the side of the road, Barbara put her foot down on the accelerator. ‘You know, I’ve always thought that immortality comes at a price. If you look at the career of anybody who’s achieved enough to be immortal, there’s a cost. Neglected family, a relentlessly demanding muse, deep, driving unhappiness - it’s all on the balance sheet.’

‘I wouldn’t want it,’ said the young man.

‘No. Moi non plus. ’

They were breasting a blind rise in the road. To the east, the land dropped away into a valley; cattle grazed, a tractor moved slowly across an as yet unploughed field. As Auden observed in his ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, disaster always took place against a background of very ordinary life: Icarus fell from the sky while a ship went innocently on its way, while a farmer tilled his fields. So too, against a backdrop of the quotidian, did the knot of the scarf now suddenly fall apart, releasing a yard of tightly knitted wool in colourful stripes; and, while these ordinary country things were happening in the nearby field, the scarf snaked out backwards, too quickly for any movement of the hand to arrest it, and, by dint of aerodynamics and gravity, found its way to the revolving hub of the sports car’s near-side rear wheel.