Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

Caroline listened carefully. She had suspected ever since their conversation over homemade lemon gems that there was something that had to be dealt with in James’s past and now she knew that it was so. He was undoubtedly right: one had to confront these things if one wanted to lance the boil that they represented. In her own case, there had been the incident at the pony club, which she had brooded over for years, until somebody - somebody quite unconnected with the pony club - had casually mentioned it and it had all come pouring out. That was when she had discovered that what had seemed large was, in fact, small - ridiculously so - and suddenly she was able to talk about the pony club again without feeling guilty. I did not cheat, she said to herself. I did not. But although she was convinced of the liberating power of revelation, she was not sure that this bistro, over lunch, was quite the right place and time to encourage James to talk.

‘Perhaps we should talk about it some other time,’ she said gently. ‘I don’t want you to think that I’m not willing to listen - I am, I really am. It’s just that . . .’

James looked at her imploringly. ‘I want to talk, Caroline. I want to tell you about what I saw behind the cricket pavilion . . .’

‘Of course you can . . . But couldn’t we go back to the flat? Go back to Corduroy Mansions and talk there?’

James shook his head. ‘The moment is sometimes right,’ he said. ‘And . . . Well, I feel secure here. Do you understand?’

She reached out to take his hand again but stopped herself in time. He saw this and smiled. ‘No, please go ahead. It seems right. Please go ahead. I’ll talk. You hold my hand. I’ll talk.’

But she did not have the opportunity. Two men at a neighbouring table had just paid their bill and one of them now stood up and looked intently in her direction.

‘It is you, isn’t it?’ said Tim Something.

Caroline looked up at the man who had come across to their table and was standing before them. He had been lunching with somebody - a man with a moustache - who was obviously in a hurry because he was already at the door and waving perfunctorily to his erstwhile companion.

The thought occurred to her that the answer to this question of whether one is one must always be yes. If somebody says ‘It is you, isn’t it?’ then what else can one answer? No? That would only be possible if one read into the question a proper noun - implicit and unspecified - immediately after the pronoun. Of course it was her, but perhaps not the her this man had in mind. And then she realised. Tim Something!

‘Tim,’ she said weakly. ‘It is you , isn’t it?’

Tim laughed. ‘Of course it is. Well, I hope it is. It’s me.’

Caroline felt warm with embarrassment. Tim Something was not somebody she wanted to meet - or not with James. She remembered the conversation she had had with James in which he had made light of those pictures of young women in the front of that country magazine, and she had said nothing, had failed to confess to him that she herself had in fact been one of those young women. Now here was Tim Something, the very photographer who had taken the photograph, and he would be bound to mention that fact. James would look at her and remember that he had made a joke about it and realise that all the time she must have been squirming. And then he would feel guilty about not having known how cruel his words must have seemed to her.

Tim looked at James. ‘I’m Tim Something,’ he said, extending a hand.

Caroline almost blurted out: But he doesn’t like to be touched! Here was James, coming for a quiet lunch after a lecture on Caravaggio, and suddenly everybody was touching him.

But James did not seem to mind. He reached up and took Tim’s proffered hand and shook it. Yet he dropped it quite quickly, thought Caroline; it had not been a lingering handshake.

‘Tim what?’ asked James. ‘I didn’t quite get your name.’

‘Something,’ said Tim.

James glanced at Caroline. ‘Tim Something,’ she muttered.

James looked increasingly puzzled.

Caroline decided to take the initiative. ‘How are things, Tim? Are you working in London?’

Before Tim Something could answer, Caroline turned to James and said, ‘I know Tim from Oxford.’

‘Yes,’ said Tim, ‘I took a—’

‘When was it, Tim?’ Caroline interrupted. ‘Over two years ago now, wasn’t it?’

‘What?’ asked James.

‘I haven’t seen Tim for a couple of years, I think,’ Caroline went on. ‘And now, well . . . London. What are you doing, Tim?’

There was a third, unoccupied chair at their table, which Tim now lowered himself into. ‘Do you mind?’

Caroline wanted to say, yes, I mind a lot. I was talking to my friend James and he was about to say something important, something really important to him, and maybe to me . . . And then you came along and sat down at our table uninvited and . . .

‘Yes,’ said Tim, leaning his elbows on the table. ‘I do a bit of work over in Oxford and thereabouts from time to time - I’ve still got a flat there, you know - but most of the time I’m in London. More work here. And I must say that I got a bit fed up with taking those photographs of village fetes and . . .’ He paused, and smiled at Caroline. ‘County-ish girls for the inside page of the mag. Sorry, Caroline!’

‘What mag?’ asked James.

‘You should ask her,’ said Tim with a grin. He nodded in Caroline’s direction. ‘There’s this mag that county types read and they love having—’

‘What sort of work do you get in London?’ Caroline blurted out.

Tim turned back to face her. ‘This and that. Some social stuff, quite a lot of business-related work. The City. Men in suits sitting in boardrooms or behind desks. I do them really well, you know. You have to make them look solid and reliable but not too dull. Apparently there’s a look that’s just right. You see the photo and you think: that chap’s got ideas. And sometimes I photograph the odd actor or author. That chap who bought me lunch - you probably saw him leaving the restaurant - Christopher Catherwood, I’ve just taken his photograph for a magazine.’

Caroline wondered whether James was getting annoyed with Tim and his interruption of their conversation. But if he was, he did not show it. In fact, he seemed quite pleased that Tim had sat down at their table. Perhaps, she thought, James did not really want to speak about whatever it was that he had been going to speak about - in which case he probably welcomed Tim’s arrival.

‘So you were at Oxford Brookes with Caroline?’ James asked Tim. ‘Did you study art history too?’

Tim shook his head. ‘No. I was at Bath Spa University. They have a degree course in photography. I did that.’

Caroline saw her opportunity to navigate the conversation away from perilous shoals. ‘Bath Spa is terrific,’ she said. ‘I had a friend who did design there. She had a great time.’

‘When?’ asked Tim.

‘When she was there. She had a great time when she was there.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ said Tim. ‘I meant: when was she at Bath Spa?’

‘Oh, same time that I was at Oxford Brookes.’

‘Then I wouldn’t have known her. When you were at Oxford Brookes was when I took that—’

Caroline interrupted again. ‘She was called Stella.’

Tim looked interested. ‘I knew a Stella. What was her name again? Her surname? You know, you forget these things. Stella . . .’

‘Stella Something,’ suggested James.

Tim looked at him. He opened his mouth to say something - or something other than Something - but Caroline seized the initiative again. They needed to talk about anything but photographs and country magazines. Anything.