Alexander McCall Smith: Corduroy Mansions

Something had been in Oxford to cover the award of an honorary degree to an influential financier, having been commissioned to photograph the event for the financier’s company. Afterwards, he was having a cup of coffee in a coffee bar when Caroline came in with two of her friends. He had been drawn to her looks, which were typical of a certain sort of English girl who, although not overly intellectual, nonetheless has intelligence sufficient to animate the face.

Something had watched her discreetly from his table. He noted the style of her clothes - there was no sign of the ubiquitous blue jeans that virtually everybody else in the coffee bar was sporting. He noticed the single strand of pearls that she was wearing; the subdued, pastel-shaded blouse; the shoes (everybody else was in trainers). And he said to himself: Oxford Brookes, the university where girls of a certain background can go and be well placed to meet boys at the ‘real’ Oxford University, in so far as any of these would be considered by such a girl to be worth meeting.

He watched her, and then acted. Crossing to her table, he cleared his throat and said, ‘Look, I know you don’t know me, but would you like to have your photograph in a magazine?’

Caroline looked up at Something. ‘What magazine?’

‘One that mostly features dogs and horses,’ he replied.

‘Tim Something,’ said Caroline. ‘He’s a photographer. I’m sure he’s all right.’

‘Not a name to inspire confidence,’ said her father, Rufus Jarvis, a semi-retired partner in Jarvis and Co., a land agency in Cheltenham.

Caroline smiled. ‘But you can’t judge people by their names,’ she said. ‘It has nothing to do with them. You called me Caroline, for instance.’

There was a silence. They were sitting in the kitchen of the Jarvis house in Cheltenham, a rambling old rectory with a large Victorian conservatory and a monkey puzzle tree in the garden. Rufus Jarvis stared at his daughter. She had been a very easy teenager - no rebellions, as far as he could recall - but now that she was twenty-one, were resentments going to start to come out? Did she resent being called Caroline?

‘Caroline is a perfectly good name,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if we called you . . .’ He thought for a moment. Bronwen was a problematic name, to say the least. Or Mavis. A girl called Mavis these days might have every reason to resent parental choice. But Caroline?

‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with being called Caroline,’ said Caroline. ‘I was just making the point that you chose it, I didn’t.’

‘Well, you can hardly complain about that,’ said Rufus. ‘Parents can’t very well say, “I’m not going to call you anything until you’re twelve, or sixteen, or whatever, and then you can choose for yourself.” For heaven’s sake!’

Caroline sighed. ‘No, listen, Daddy, you’re not getting the point. What I’m saying is that parents choose names and children don’t. So you can’t judge anybody by their name. Because it has nothing to do with them.’

‘All right. But you must admit that there are some names that just don’t . . . don’t inspire confidence. That’s all. This chap, Something, how do you know . . . ?’ He did not finish.

‘He’s perfectly respectable. And he wants to put my photograph in Rural Living .’

Rufus frowned. ‘In the front? Where they have the photo of the girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘But are you looking for a husband?’

Caroline laughed. ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’

‘Come, come, my dear,’ said Rufus. ‘It has everything to do with it. Any chap - unmarried chap - reading Rural Living will see that you’re not yet married. Hello, he’ll say. Nice-looking girl, that. That’s how it works, my dear. Half of Mummy’s friends appeared in Rural Living . Mummy herself—’

Caroline gasped. ‘Mummy? Her photograph was in?’

‘Yes, it was. And she looked extremely attractive, if I may say so. I saw it and I said to myself, there’s a looker! And the rest, as they say, was history.’

Caroline was silent. She was shocked, indeed she was appalled, to discover that her father had found her mother in a magazine . Like everybody, she did not like to think that she was the product of . . . well, all that . And between her parents too! She had fondly imagined that her parents had met at . . . a dance, perhaps (and not too close a dance). They had had a formal and courteous relationship and then, after a decent interval, she had appeared on the scene. That was how she liked to imagine it. Anything else would have taken her into the Freudian territory of the ‘primal scene’, where the child, witnessing the closeness of parents, interprets the situation as one involving violence.

When she had recovered her composure, she glanced at her father and said, with a certain note of reproach in her voice, ‘I didn’t realise that you got Mummy from a catalogue .’

Rufus found this amusing. ‘A catalogue? No, it was hardly like that. After I saw her picture in the magazine I got somebody who lived near her father to get me invited to a do they had. That’s how I met her. Of course there were lots of other men all about her and I had to join the queue, so to speak.’

‘Daddy!’ This was unbearable. That her mother should have entertained advances from anybody but her father was inconceivable. How could she? It was almost as if she had discovered that her mother had a history as a courtesan: talked about by men; the subject of heaven knows what dark ambitions and fantasies.

That was where the discussion stopped. Caroline had discovered enough about the expectations that might be raised by the publication of her picture - which had already been taken - and she decided to contact Tim Something and get him to withdraw the photograph. She did not want a husband - at least not yet - and she certainly did not want people to think that she had agreed to have her photograph featured in this way purely for that reason.

She telephoned Tim Something. ‘That photograph,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to use it.’

‘But it’s great. They liked it a lot. That picture of you standing next to the monkey-puzzle tree in your old man’s garden. Fantastic. Have you ever thought of modelling? I know a guy in London who’s always on the look-out for likely vict—subjects. I could do a few portfolio shots. You know the sort of thing. You looking into the middle distance. You smiling. You’ve got a great smile, btw.’

She began to shout, but then calmed down and spoke more evenly. ‘You’re not listening to me,’ she said, adding, ‘btw. I said that I’m withdrawing my consent. You know what that means? No. Nyet . Nein .’

It was a moment or two before he replied. ‘Too late,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

‘What do you mean too late?’

‘I mean that they’ve made up the magazine. It’ll be ready for printing.’

Caroline drew in her breath. ‘Then they’ll just have to stop,’ she said. ‘I’m withdrawing my consent.’

‘Too late,’ he said. ‘Really. It’s just too late.’ He paused. ‘Of course you could get them to over-print it with a sign saying Sold. That’s what they do with houses that are off the market by the time the magazine goes to press.’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’ she hissed.

‘No,’ said Tim Something. ‘Just helpful.’

Caroline thought: It’s odd, sitting here, letting one’s mind wander, and who should come into it but Tim Something, of all people. Strange.