Alexander McCall Smith: Corduroy Mansions

But now there was the issue of time-keeping, rather than smell, and William looked again at his watch and then glanced at Paul.

‘Not my fault,’ said Paul. ‘Somebody on the District Line. Everything stopped.’

William rolled his eyes. He suspected that Paul’s excuses for being late were not always true; indeed he thought that Paul, for all his merits - and he was a willing worker - had little idea of the difference between lies and the truth. This suspicion had been aroused on a number of occasions, most recently when, in the course of a desultory conversation during a slack period in the wine shop, William had commented on a newspaper report about a government minister found to have been lying.

‘Can’t blame him,’ said Paul. ‘Poor geezer. All those journalists after him like that. Can’t blame him.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said William. ‘He is a minister of the Government. He should not tell lies.’

‘A few porkies,’ said Paul. ‘Everybody tells porkies now and then. Specially if somebody’s trying to get you.’

William found himself almost speechless. ‘Porkies!’

‘Yeah, porkies. What difference does it make if he says that he didn’t do it? Nobody’s been hurt, have they?’

William was silent for a few moments. ‘You don’t mind being lied to? You don’t mind? When you trusted somebody and then he goes and lies to you when you’re paying him your taxes . . .’

‘Don’t pay all that much tax,’ Paul had said, looking reproachfully at William. ‘If I earned more, then I’d pay more tax and maybe I’d feel a bit different. But as it is . . .’

Now, glaring at his assistant, William resorted to sarcasm. ‘You seem to live in a highly suicide-prone area, Paul. How many this year? Four? Amazing. Other people don’t seem to suffer from quite as many person-on-track delays as you do. Extraordinary.’

Paul shrugged. ‘Awful, isn’t it? You’d think that they might choose a time when people didn’t need to get to work. Why jump in front of a train when people need to get to work?’

William found himself being drawn into the exchange. He had started off talking about punctuality, but the conversation was entering deeper waters. ‘People don’t think about these things,’ he said. ‘They’re usually very upset. But let’s not dwell on that. There but for the grace of God go I.’

Paul looked at him in astonishment. ‘What?’

‘Never mind. It’s an expression that means, it could happen to anybody. They don’t teach you people anything these days, do they?’

‘I wouldn’t choose the District Line,’ said Paul.

William opened one of the cases of wine and held a bottle up to the light. ‘Look at this lovely stuff. You do know that they gave this to the Queen when she visited Italy last, don’t you? They had a state banquet and served Her Majesty Brunello di Montalcino.’

Paul stared at the bottle. ‘They could hardly give her Lambrusco.’

‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Paul,’ said William. ‘Lambrusco has its place. Not the sort of stuff that we get in this country, but the real thing. They make it around Reggio Emilia and Parma. And I’ve tasted some very fine examples of it in the past. Out there it’s much drier.’

‘It tastes like sherbet here,’ said Paul.

‘Perhaps. But that’s because it’s the sweet version. The locals drink it dry, and eat some fresh Parmesan cheese with it. It’s delicious.’

William replaced the bottle of Brunello in its case. At this point the telephone rang and Paul, being closer, answered. He smiled as he spoke, and William began to wonder whether it was to be one of those long personal calls that irritated him so much. But then Paul mumbled something and handed the receiver to his employer.

It was Marcia.

‘I’m coming round at lunchtime,’ she said, ‘with some very interesting news.’

‘What is it?’

‘You just wait.’

Although Marcia had a habit of parking her van half-way over the pavement, she had never been given a parking ticket.

‘The wardens are sweeties,’ she once said to William. ‘Or at least the male wardens are - in my experience. If you talk to them reasonably, they understand that you don’t mean any harm. It’s the female ones who are the problem. They’re ruthless. Fortunately, I’ve never had any dealings with them, but my goodness, they’re a bunch of frumps. Amazons. And they take out all their sexual frustrations on drivers - all because they can’t get a man. Not one of them, I believe, has a man. Can you credit it?’

William had smiled. He was used to Marcia sounding off about all sorts of matters, and used to discounting most of what she said. She was full of prejudices, but in spite of that he found her entertaining. Nothing she said was really nasty; untrue, perhaps, and extreme, but not downright nasty.

That afternoon, she parked her car immediately in front of the wine shop, in a spot where the council might once have considered establishing a paid parking place but in the end decided not to. It was just right, Marcia thought; it was a car-shaped space that needed a car, or, as in this case, a modest-sized van, and she was doing no harm in leaving the van protruding just slightly over the pavement.

‘There you are,’ she said, as she walked into William’s office at the back of the shop. ‘Was that the coffee you were putting on?’

‘No, not exactly. But I can if you wish.’

She lowered herself into the chair on the other side of William’s desk. ‘There’s a dear. Thank you. As I said on the phone—’

‘You have some important news to impart to me.’

‘Yes, I do.’

William busied himself with the coffee as Marcia began to talk. ‘Eddie,’ she said.

William stiffened slightly. ‘Eddie?’

‘Yes, Eddie.’ She paused, and looked at him across the room. ‘You were telling me that you were keen to get Eddie into his own place.’

William unscrewed the top of the coffee canister and sniffed at the contents. Smells. He was very sensitive to smell, and coffee grounds were one of his olfactory favourites.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Eddie is twenty-four now and I have been thinking about helping him to move on. There was that place in Kentish Town . . .’

‘You told me about that,’ said Marcia. ‘The one that had no kitchen and a front door at a forty-five-degree angle.’

‘Yes. Not the best of places. But he could have made something of it.’

‘But didn’t.’

William sighed. ‘No. He didn’t.’ He turned and met Marcia’s stare. ‘Look, Marcia, Eddie may have his little failings but he is my flesh and blood, you know . . .’

She held up a hand. ‘Of course he is. Of course. And as his father you love him dearly. I know that.’

William turned back to the coffee. Did he love Eddie dearly? Would it be possible for anybody to love Eddie dearly? William’s late wife had done so, but that was because she was his mother. Every mother loves her son dearly - or should. Even after the son has done something egregiously terrible - tried to shoot the Pope, or something equally awful - the mother would still love him. There had been that man, of course, who had shot the Pope; what must his mother have thought? Perhaps it would depend on whether the mother was Catholic or not, thought William. A Catholic mother might find her maternal affection stretched if her son did something like that. But then again, she would have remained his mother and might have argued, ‘Well, dear, you must have had your reasons . . .’

The thought occurred to him that Marcia had found a flat for Eddie. That would be all very well, but the problem lay not so much in the finding of flats - there were plenty of those - but in getting Eddie to move into one of them.