Alexander McCall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

‘Highly unlikely,’ said Berthea. ‘That last Pope, for instance - he travelled a lot. Were all those airports somehow different after he had been through them?’

‘Very possibly,’ said Terence. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it, but very possibly they were.’

Berthea chose to say nothing. It was the best thing to do with Terence, she had decided. There was no point in trying to persuade him of anything; he was on another wavelength altogether and he simply did not take in what you said, no matter how hard you tried.

They rounded the house and found themselves at the edge of a sweeping lawn, beautifully tended, surrounded on three sides by a tall yew hedge. In the middle of the lawn a group of about twelve people, all dressed in white, were standing in a semi-circle, hands joined. Beside them, conspicuous for their dark clothes, stood two men, one with a large video camera resting on his shoulder. The cameraman was engaged in conversation with one of the dancers, who was describing circular movements with his hands.

Terence turned to Berthea. ‘Oh look, Berthy! The BBC!’

Berthea had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘I don’t know if I want to dance with them looking on,’ she said. ‘They’ll . . . they’ll interfere with the flow. Spoil the karma.’

Terence was not going to be put off by this. He turned to his sister and shook a finger. ‘Naughty, naughty! I see that the Devil can quote scripture for his own purposes! Naughty!’

One of the dancers, a small woman somewhere in middle age, came over to join them. She looked inquisitively at Berthea and then turned her gaze to Terence.

‘I’ve brought my sister,’ said Terence. ‘Minnie, this is Berthea. And Berthea, this is Minnie.’

‘Peace be with you,’ said Minnie.

Terence leaned over and whispered to Berthea. ‘You say: “Peace be upon your house, and in your steps.”’

Berthea did as she was told. In what steps? she wondered. In the steps of the house? Or in the steps of the dance?

Minnie acknowledged the greeting. ‘I thought perhaps you had brought a girlfriend, Terence,’ she said playfully.

‘I’m between girlfriends,’ said Terence.

‘Oh well,’ said Minnie. ‘Such a gay cavalier! There’ll always be another time. The Beings of Light are patient. They think in centuries.’

‘I would have thought that they don’t think at all,’ said Berthea. ‘Are they not above thought?’

There was complete silence. The other dancers, who had been chatting to one another, all turned and stared at Berthea.

She gulped; there was no going back now. ‘Time is meaningless, ’ she said. ‘It is . . . without meaning.’

The silence persisted. ‘Without time, we are timeless,’ Berthea went on.

Now there was a buzz of excited conversation. Minnie raised a hand for people to be quiet. ‘Our sister has revealed something to us today,’ she said. ‘And what she says is . . . Well, it’s just so true . And now I’d like to dedicate our first dance to an interpretation of our sister’s insight. This dance will be called “Without Time We Are Timeless”. Our sister will stand in the middle of the circle to represent time itself. We shall weave around her, all holding hands, inviting the Beings of Light to join us. Then we’ll see what happens.’

Bertha found herself pushed into the middle of the circle. From a woman standing on the edge of the circle she heard the comment, ‘That’s a tennis dress, you know. It is not a pure garment at all.’ She did not see who said it though, and could not respond with a discouraging glare. She was conscious of the BBC camera, which was moving from one member of the group to another, its automatic telephoto lens whirring in and out as the focus adjusted.

The dancers began to move round in a circular motion, like the figures in Matisse’s painting. Some of them were chanting, others were silent, but all were smiling benignly as they danced. Minnie occasionally uttered a high-pitched whistling sound.

‘O Sister Time,’ implored Minnie. ‘Tell us about time.’

‘Yes,’ sang a thin woman dancing next to Minnie. ‘Enlighten us, O timeless one.’

Berthea, who had been swaying slowly from side to side, more from embarrassment than conviction, looked at her wristwatch; she would have to say something.

‘It’s ten-thirty,’ she chanted.

‘Ten-thirty!’ repeated one or two of the dancers.

At this point the BBC cameraman, who was standing just outside the circle, his camera trained on the dancers, began to laugh. Minnie, looking over her shoulder, frowned at him, as did the thin woman who had also been singing invocations to Sister Time.

‘I’m sorry,’ muttered the cameraman, trying to control himself. But it was just too difficult, and the camera resting on his shoulder began to wobble wildly. His assistant, who was holding a powerful lamp on an extended pole, began to giggle.

‘Beings of Light!’ intoned Minnie.

‘That’s you,’ muttered the cameraman to his assistant.

This brought more giggles from the lighting man.

‘Stop!’ shouted Minnie, clapping her hands together. ‘We have some very negative forces present today.’ She turned and glared at the cameraman. ‘You’re behaving very discourteously,’ she admonished, ‘and I must ask you to leave.’

The cameraman lowered his camera. ‘I’m sorry,’ he spluttered. ‘I really am. It’s just that . . . You know how it is, sometimes one gets an attack of the giggles for no reason at all. It’s nothing to do with you.’

‘But it is,’ said Minnie, shaking a finger at him. ‘It’s everything to do with us. You think we’re funny, don’t you? Oh, there are plenty of people like you, you know - people who mock the spiritual lives of others. We admitted you to our dance and now you’re laughing at us.’

The cameraman looked down at the lawn.

‘I think you should leave,’ said Berthea from the centre of the circle. ‘It’s easy to laugh, isn’t it?’

The cameraman looked at her with regret. His assignment was ruined; they would never get an interview with Minnie now. He would have to explain himself to his editor. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘I really am.’

Berthea looked at him intently. She was the hard-bitten psychoanalyst now. She was angered by this man and his presumptions.

‘I don’t think that you’re really sorry,’ said Berthea. ‘Not really. You’ll laugh at these people behind their backs, won’t you? The moment you leave. Your type thinks it funny to humiliate people, to laugh at them.’

The cameraman turned to his assistant. ‘We’d better pack up, Bill.’

The assistant nodded.

‘We shall resume our dance in due course,’ said Minnie. ‘Agreed?’

The dancers all agreed.

‘They’re jolly rude,’ said Terence, with some force. ‘But then what can you expect these days? Everybody’s so rude.’

It had been William’s idea that James should take the Poussin with him.

‘There’s no point my trying to find out anything more about it,’ he said, pressing the painting into James’s hands. ‘You take it and show it to the right person.’

James looked at the painting dubiously. It was nice to hold a Poussin, but a stolen Poussin? He glanced uncertainly at Caroline.

‘Or Caroline could hold on to it,’ he suggested. ‘Then it can stay safely here in Corduroy Mansions. My place . . .’

Caroline came to the rescue. ‘Is less secure,’ she supplied. ‘James’s building has had two break-ins recently. Or is it three, James?’