Alexander McCall Smith: Corduroy Mansions

‘But my flat is perfectly large enough,’ she said. ‘It has two bedrooms and then a study which could be used as a bedroom if one wanted. And the drawing room is really large too. It’s wonderful for parties.’

Rupert received this badly. His own drawing room was far too small for entertaining and they had never had a party in the house as a result. It would have been different if the flat in Sydney Villa - Barbara’s flat, or the flat she claimed to own - had come to him. They could have entertained on quite a scale then.

Rupert tried again. ‘Well, there may be a case for starting afresh somewhere,’ he said. ‘A lot of people like to set up in a place that is really their own - somewhere they’ve chosen together. Rather romantic!’

Barbara held his gaze. ‘And a lot of people don’t.’

‘Oh well,’ said Rupert. ‘I hope that you’ll be very happy, Barbara. Come, let me give you a kiss.’

He kissed her on the cheek and then went back to his own office. ‘You’ll never guess,’ he said to his wife on the telephone. ‘La Ragg is engaged!’ And then he said, ‘She doesn’t want to move, by the way. She’s installed the toyboy in the flat.’

Rupert’s wife sighed. ‘Oh well. We must take a look at him. I wonder who on earth would have taken her on? The yeti?’

‘I cracked that joke too,’ said Rupert.

Seated behind her desk again, alone in her office, Barbara found it difficult to concentrate on work. There were contracts to peruse but she felt too exhilarated to get down to it. So she closed her eyes and went over in her mind the previous evening with Hugh. The little blue flower by her plate; the care he had lavished on the preparation of the meal; his gentleness and humour; the way he looked at her. Everything. Everything.

She got up from her desk and returned to the window. The man in the attic flat opposite had appeared again. He was gazing at the red flowers he had placed outside on the lead surface of the roof. He yawned and looked across in her direction.

She caught his eye. He was only thirty or forty yards away. He smiled at her. They had seen one another from time to time and had occasionally waved. Now Barbara opened the window and leaned out. The man opposite leaned out too a little way, his hand resting on the edge of his tub of flowers.

‘I love your flowers,’ shouted Barbara.

‘Thanks,’ shouted the man in return.

A gust of wind had blown up and Barbara had to raise her voice to be heard. ‘I’m terribly happy.’

The man made a thumbs-up gesture.

‘I’ve just got engaged,’ Barbara continued.

The man clapped his hands together and then, reaching forward, plucked one of his red flowers and threw it across to her. It was a lovely gesture, even if the flower fell far short of bridging the gap between them and dropped, a tiny Icarus out of the sky, tumbling down to the street below.

If Barbara was certain that morning that she had found the man with whom she wanted to share her life, the same could not be said of Caroline. The final break with Tom, which could so easily have been messy, had proved to be simplicity itself. After his initial show of jealousy and resentment, manifesting itself in an almost immediately regretted bout of incivility towards James, Tom had proved to be perfectly reasonable. She suspected that they both wanted the break, and that his reluctance to let her go was no more than a vestigial sign of the feelings he had once had for her. Now it was done, and she was free again. Or was she?

James was a problem. She was becoming very used to his company - so used to it, in fact, that she found herself feeling dissatisfied and at odds on days when she did not see him. It was worrying, because it seemed to her that some sort of dependence was building up and she was not sure that that was what she wanted. Then there was also the question of James’s fundamental suitability. That he liked her was not in doubt, but could he ever be passionate about her? And if he could not, then what was the point of his being anything more than a friend?

That morning, James was not in the lecture room for the lecture on sixteenth-century Venetian painting. His absence was expected: he had told her that he was due to go for an interview for a position at a gallery; the interview was to be at eleven, and was to be followed by lunch.

‘A bad sign,’ Caroline had said. ‘If you go for a job and they ask you to lunch it’s a bad sign.’

James seemed surprised. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘They’re wanting to look at you in social surroundings,’ she explained. ‘They want to see how you hold your knife and fork.’

James laughed. ‘Hello? This is the twenty-first century, you know! People don’t care about that sort of thing any more.’

Caroline defended herself. ‘I’m not so sure about that. They won’t be up-front about it, but they still do it. Or some do. And a gallery like that would definitely subscribe to that sort of thing. Look at their clientele. Look at the people who work in those galleries. They’re not exactly rough diamonds.’

James looked downcast. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Do you think I should even bother to go?’

His tone made her rather regret having issued the warning. ‘Of course you should go. I was just telling you what I thought they might be doing. And anyway, I’m sure that your table manners are fine.’

He sighed. ‘I don’t know. Look, when you get a bread roll, you do break it, don’t you, rather than cut it?’

‘You do.’

‘And what do you do with smoked salmon? Do you put it on the bread and then cut the bread, or do you eat the salmon with a knife and fork and have bits of bread in between mouthfuls?’

‘I always put the smoked salmon on the bread,’ said Caroline. ‘Then I cut it into squares. But they’re not going to pay any attention to that sort of thing. They’ll just want to make sure that you don’t talk with your mouth full or burp.’

James thought for a moment. ‘What if I do burp?’ he asked. ‘What do I say?’

Caroline laughed. ‘My parents always told me not to say “pardon”. They said you should say “excuse me”. But they’re such snobs.’

‘Could you just say “oops”?’ asked James.

‘Maybe.’

‘And if I need to go to the loo,’ James went on. ‘What then? Do I call it “the gents” or “the loo”? Or what?’

‘My father calls it the lavatory,’ said Caroline. ‘I think that’s the approved word in really smart circles. Not the lav , but the lavatory. I don’t like that word much, I’m afraid.’

‘What about “the little boys” room”?’ asked James.

‘Definitely not. Extremely twee.’

‘“The washroom”?’

‘American. They’re very keen on euphemisms.’

James nodded. ‘“Letting go” means sacking someone. “I’m going to have to let you go” means “you’re sacked”.’

Caroline thought: I let Tom go. But then maybe he wanted to go. And at that point, she stopped her reverie, which had been a prolonged one, drifting from James to Tom, to home, to her parents; now the lecture on Venetian painting had ended and she found that all she had written in her Moleskine notebook was: ‘The boundaries of what we call the Venetian School . . .’

She snapped the Moleskine shut and followed her fellow students out of the room. She felt at a bit of a loose end; there was an essay to write but she felt disinclined to start on it. If only James had been here, she would have taken him for lunch at that bistro where they had met Tim Something. Poor James - it was lunchtime now and he would be under inspection by his prospective employers, his handling of smoked salmon being judged according to some arcane precepts of the proper way to tackle such things. Yes, poor James.