Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

Berthea looked at him with surprise. ‘Who said I was bossy?’

Terence spoke sheepishly. ‘Well, I’m afraid I have a teeny confession to make,’ he said. ‘I called you bossy when I was talking to Mr Marchbanks. I said that you were bossy and you stuck your long nose into my business. And I’m terribly sorry that I said it. It was the electricity, I think. I really don’t think that way.’

Berthea looked at him reproachfully. She had saved his life by her prompt action and in return he had called her bossy. Well, if she had not stuck her long nose into his business - and her nose was not long at all, she told herself - then Terence would be no more. He should remember that, perhaps.

‘I know,’ said Terence, holding up a hand, ‘you must think me utterly beastly for saying something like that. I really am sorry, Berthy. But at least I’ve got it off my chest now and I can see the forgiveness in your eyes. It’s like a great light, you know, from where I’m sitting. It’s like the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria - a beam of forgiveness piercing the encircling gloom.’

Berthea looked at her brother. If anybody’s nose was long, she thought, it’s his. But there was no point in saying it; one of the things she knew, both as an analyst and as a person, was that remarks about the nose of another would never be anything but the cause of misunderstanding or annoyance. The only thing anybody ever wanted to hear about their nose was that it was a very fine and attractive one; that was the only acceptable thing to say. You could not say to somebody, ‘Your nose is average,’ or ‘Nobody will notice your nose.’ You had to be positive.

‘Well, at least you’ve told me,’ she said. ‘And you’re right, I don’t think you were yourself for a little while after the accident.’ She paused. ‘But how are you feeling now?’

‘I feel extremely well,’ said Terence. ‘Quite optimistic, in fact, especially since I made my decision to replace the Morris.’

‘Good,’ said Berthea. ‘Well, I shall stay, if I may, for another couple of weeks, just to make sure everything’s settled. Sometimes accidents like that can leave one feeling a bit vulnerable for a while. I’ll stay until you’re absolutely sure that you’ve recovered from the experience. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Not at all,’ said Terence. ‘We can go to sacred dance together, and do those photies I mentioned - the ones that Daddy took in Malta.’

‘Maybe,’ said Berthea quickly. ‘I was also hoping to get some of my book done - the biography of Oedipus that I mentioned. I’ve got as far as his schooldays at Uppingham. I don’t have much information about that part of his life, but I’m hoping that I’ll hear from people who spent more time with him than I did in those days. I’ve written to one or two of his contemporaries and I’ve already had a couple of replies.’

‘Oh,’ said Terence. ‘From his school friends?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did they say?’

Berthea looked evasive. ‘Nothing very much, I’m afraid. In fact, now that you ask, they weren’t very helpful. One of them wrote and asked for Oedipus’s address because he had something to discuss with him. I didn’t like the letter and so I didn’t send Oedipus’s address. I didn’t fancy the way that the handwriting became shakier and shakier as the letter progressed - as if the writer were under acute emotional stress.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Terence. ‘Perhaps the writer was a lunatic. Did he write in green ink, by any chance?’

‘What’s the significance of green ink?’

Terence nonchalantly waved a hand in the air. ‘It’s well known,’ he said. ‘Lunatics choose to write in green ink. Everybody knows that.’

‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Berthea. ‘To begin with, the term lunatic is frightfully old-fashioned.’

‘Nutters, then,’ said Terence.

‘Even worse,’ said Berthea. ‘ Differently rationaled is the term, you know.’

Terence raised an eyebrow. ‘Whatever you say. Anyway, I’m jolly glad that you’re going to stay, because I really appreciate you, Berthy. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that, but I really do appreciate you. So you can stay as long as you like - and we can even go on some trips in my new car. How would you like that?’

‘That would be fine, Terence,’ Berthea said. ‘But listen, what sort of car will it be?’

Terence’s brow knit with concentration. ‘I think . . . I think it’s something beginning with a P. Yes, I’m pretty sure of it. I can’t remember the exact name though. Mr Marchbanks is going to get me one - he’s promised.’

‘A Peugeot,’ said Berthea. ‘That’ll be very suitable, Terence.’

‘Yes, I believe it’s a Peugeot. Are they good cars? It’s the sort that Monty Bismarck drives.’

‘I don’t know Monty Bismarck,’ said Berthea. ‘But I wouldn’t be surprised if he drives a Peugeot.’ Monty Bismarck drew up in his Peugeot. Yes, that sounded very appropriate.

She rubbed her hands in satisfaction. Two weeks in the country, away from the demands of her patients and the noise and crush of London, was exactly what she needed. And yes, she would like to go for drives with Terence in his Peugeot, out along the rural roads that led through little valleys, deep into England, into the country that everybody took for granted but which was so beautiful, and fragile, and threatened.

It was at three o’clock in the afternoon that the doorbell rang. Berthea was sitting in the small morning room at the back of the house - the sunny side - reading a rather slow-moving autobiography when she heard the bell. She laid the book on the table with some relief and decided, at that moment, that she would pick it up again only to replace it on the shelf in her brother’s study. Terence’s house was replete with books but very few of them were to her taste. She had seized on the autobiography - which was by a minor literary figure of the nineteen-thirties - hoping that the claim on the back cover would prove true. ‘A gripping account of a life of passionate involvement,’ the publisher enthused, ‘a life lived to the full in turbulent and trying times.’

The book, unfortunately, failed to live up to this promise. After eighty pages, the author had done nothing more exciting than contemplate going to Spain to visit a friend who was cooking for the Republican forces. However, he had developed a heavy cold and had cancelled his passage on grounds of ill health. That was the high point of a narrative that was otherwise mostly concerned with the minutiae of a very modest existence, that of an assistant editor of a literary magazine. Names were bandied about, of course, but it seemed that the author had never had any conversations with the well-known writers of the day, although MacNeice wrote to him once and he spoke to Spender on the telephone when the poet called the magazine office. The call, however, had been a mistake. Spender had been given the wrong number and had really wanted to speak to somebody else. Nonetheless, he had commented on the weather before hanging up, and the author had made a note of the exact words he used, observing that the sentence in question was undeniably an iambic pentameter.

‘That’s a frightfully exciting book,’ Terence had said when he saw his sister reading it. ‘I must say they had a jolly lively time, those writers of the thirties. I wouldn’t have minded being alive then.’

Berthea looked doubtful. ‘Nothing much seems to have happened so far,’ she said. ‘He’s just got to Oxford and had a letter from a friend in Florence.’

‘Jolly exciting,’ said Terence. ‘I remember that bit - I think. Does he write back?’