Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

‘Different from what?’

‘From the friendships that men have.’

Gloria looked at her husband. He was always talking about a whole cast of friends, but she very rarely saw any of them; nor, she thought, did he. ‘David and Jonathan?’ she asked. ‘That sort of friendship?’

‘Not many men have that,’ said Rupert. ‘Most men have rather distant relations with their male friends. Whereas women are much more emotionally engaged with their female friends. They love their friends. They’re much better at that than we men are.’

Gloria thought that Rupert was generalising rather too much: there were some men with a great talent for friendship; there were some, too, who were emotionally engaged with their friends to the same extent as were women. But then there were so many men who were, quite simply, lonely; who did not seem to know how to conduct a friendship. There were legions and legions of those.

But now she came back to the other question that was troubling her: who was Ratty Mason? Wives believe they know their husbands, but often do not - not really - she now realised. There are whole hinterlands that they do not see: old friends never mentioned, private sorrows, worries about virility, doubts and disappointments. And men go through life bearing all these in the name of masculinity and manliness, until it all becomes too much and they dissolve into tears.

‘Who was Ratty Mason? Tell me about him.’

Rupert shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Can’t.’

Barbara Ragg, of course, had not been troubled by Rupert’s feelings over her flat for the simple reason that he had never expressed them within her hearing. There had been the occasional comment that was mildly suggestive of envy, but nothing unambiguous. That would have been difficult; one person could hardly say to another that he considered her house to be his by right. Although there were cases where that was said - at an international level - by those who eyed with intent the land and dwellings of others. Such claims are made here and there in our troubled world by bullies and expansionists of every stripe. But Rupert was not one of these - not by the remotest stretch of the imagination - and so he never revealed to Barbara the views he discussed with Gloria. ‘They stole that flat,’ he remarked to his wife. ‘Her father did not pay a full market price. Dad thought that Gregory wanted to live in it himself. And all the time he was planning to give it to Barbara! If Dad had known that it was for her, he would have passed it on to me instead. They stole it - it’s as simple as that.’

Gloria was not so sure. She was a fair-minded person and although she thought that Barbara, in Rupert’s words, directed negative waves towards her, she was not prepared to leap to conclusions about her involvement in this particular historical injustice - if that was what it was.

‘But they did buy it, didn’t they? Fatty sold it willingly. “Willing seller, willing buyer” - isn’t that what they say?’

This annoyed Rupert. ‘Who says? Who is this they that people talk about?’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Gloria. ‘It’s an expression, that’s all. It’s a way of saying “I’ve heard it said”.’

‘Well, you should be more exact,’ said Rupert peevishly. ‘At Uppingham we had this really good housemaster. He used to fine you a penny if you made any statement that couldn’t be supported. He collected all the fines and then used the money to buy books for the house library.’

Gloria stared at him. ‘The point is, it’s no good raking over old coals. Even if Gregory induced your father to sell on the understanding that he would live in the flat himself, you can’t go back and re-open all that. It’s old business. You have to move on.’

Rupert looked irritated. ‘I have moved on,’ he said. ‘I moved on ages ago. I wouldn’t dream of taking this up with Barbara - it’s just that I do occasionally think of it, and it makes me really cross. It’s like when you hear of some great injustice - it rankles, even on an individual level. You may know that you can’t do anything about it, but it’s there - it’s there in the room with you and you can’t ignore it.’

‘Such as?’

‘A great injustice?’ Rupert asked. ‘Oh, there are bags of those. Which one do you want me to name? The Poles?’

‘What about the Poles?’

Rupert spread his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘We let them down. The whole world let them down. We put them into the hands of the Soviet Union - into Stalin’s bloody hands. Ireland. The Kurds. The list is a very long one.’

Gloria nodded. ‘We were bullies, I suppose. We broke our promises. We stole people’s land on an epic scale. But so did everybody else.’

‘We were bullies?’ repeated Rupert. ‘We jolly well were. And have we said sorry?’

Gloria thought for a moment. ‘On one or two occasions,’ she said. ‘Mr Blair said sorry to Ireland, but he was the first British leader to find it possible to do that. Nobody else bothered. Mr Clinton also said sorry to quite a few people. And remember when that German Chancellor - it was Willy Brandt, I think - went to Warsaw and fell to his knees, and people were so moved by his contrition? That was a very profound moment, a moment of utter apology. Yet it’s strange how hard it is to say sorry.’

Rupert agreed. ‘Sometimes politicians dress it up in the language of regret. They say that they regret what happened.’

‘That’s not the same as saying sorry,’ said Gloria. ‘Look at Mr Nixon. What did he say? He said that mistakes had been made. That’s very different from admitting that you have done something terrible.’

‘That’s not always easy,’ said Rupert. ‘What you can do, though, is do things that make up for the past. That’s maybe even more important. You can show that you mean business. You can do things.’

For a moment they were both silent as they contemplated historical injustice. Then Gloria said, ‘There comes a point at which one has to forgive. One has to forgive others - and also forgive oneself.’

‘Oh yes?’

Gloria’s reply was emphatic. ‘ Yes . Because if we continue to think about historical wrongs, then nobody can get on with life. The memory of old wrongs poisons relations - freezes them too. Those people are our enemies because of something that they did fifty, one hundred years ago - that sort of thinking is fatal. It clutters everything up. We can’t get on with life if we allow all sorts of unfinished business to distort our dealings with others. So we draw a line and say, “That’s the past. The past is dead.”’

‘Except that the past is never dead,’ Rupert said quietly.

‘Are you thinking about that flat again?’

Rupert looked away, ashamed. He was.

‘Listen, Rupert,’ said Gloria, ‘you really have to do something about this. You need to sort yourself out. No, don’t make that face. You’re going to have to listen to me. And what I want to say to you is this: you live far too much in the past. No, listen to me - don’t look like that. Listen. You need to get your past sorted out. You need to tackle all the baggage you carry with you. Barbara Ragg’s flat, for instance. No, I called it that deliberately. It’s her flat. It’s her flat, Rupert! We’ve got a perfectly good flat of our own. What? You think it’s smelly. Don’t be so ridiculous. Our flat doesn’t smell. Where? Nonsense! And the other thing you have to sort out is Uppingham - you really do. Uppingham is in the past , Rupert. You’re thirty-six. You left Uppingham eighteen years ago. I know that it’s a wonderful school. I know that you were very happy there. But it’s past business , Rupert. You haven’t got a housemaster any more. We have a bedroom, Rupert, not a dorm . And I am not your housemistress.’ She paused. ‘Who was Ratty Mason, Rupert? Let’s start there.’