Alexander McCall Smith: Corduroy Mansions

She decided on the spur of the moment: she would go for lunch at the bistro - she would treat herself. Why not? There was no rule against having lunch by yourself.

She walked round Bedford Square and into Great Russell Street. She liked this part of London, which was such a contrast to the garishness of Oxford Street, not far away. The shops here were small and had character, and even if she was not in the market for antiquities or first editions, she liked to see them in the windows. She paused outside the headquarters of a bookshop that was also a press. A selection of titles was displayed in the window and her eye was drawn to Sociobiology: The Whisperings Within . She liked that. There were whisperings within all of us; whisperings that prompted us to do one thing rather than another, whisperings that made us what we were.

‘The whisperings within,’ said a voice at her side. ‘Interesting! Should we listen to them?’

She spun round. Tim Something was smiling at her.

‘You don’t fancy a bit of lunch, do you?’ asked the photographer.

Caroline hesitated. She had a feeling that the answer that she gave to this question might determine a great deal for her; it was not just lunch at stake.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

It was as if the answer came from someone else; not from the cautious self which she thought ran her life, but from another self altogether, a self of more instinctive stamp, a self that beckoned from altogether wilder, more exciting shores. And she could tell, just by looking at him, that Tim’s invitation, as spontaneous as was her acceptance, came from the equivalent quarter within him.

Terence Moongrove drove Berthea back from the sacred dance in his newly acquired Porsche.

‘This is a very noisy car,’ Berthea observed. ‘And it is also rather low. It would be very difficult to get into it if one had arthritis.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Terence. ‘The engine is deliberately noisy. Mr Marchbanks told me that it is something they do on purpose. And as for its being low, that is just the way it is. It has something to do with making it possible to creep up behind people on the road and give them a fright when you overtake them.’

Berthea gave her brother a withering look but said nothing. Homo ludens , she thought - man at play. And while she would normally apply any observation about man in general to women as well - particularly in the case of the term Homo sapiens - in this case by homo she meant vir rather than femina. No woman, she imagined, would find creeping up behind someone in a Porsche fun. It was just not something a woman would ever do. Indeed, when she came to think of it, most women looked at cars as functional machines and judged them accordingly. Cars got one from A to B - that was the point of them. Certainly it was nice to have a car that did this in comfort, and it was also nice to have a car that looked appealing, but that was about the extent of female interest in cars. Men, it seemed to Berthea, never grew out of their boyhood fascination with cars; there was an unbroken line of psychological continuity between the toy cars that boys played with and the real machines they later acquired as men. Puer ludens , she thought, and immediately congratulated herself on the term. She could use it, perhaps, as the title of a paper. ‘ Puer Ludens : Men As Boys’. That was rather nice.

Already the paper was being shaped in her mind. She would postulate a hypothetical mature man - the man who confronts the world in a rational, non-exploitative way; the man who treats others with consideration and is not constantly jockeying for position in relation to other men. And then she would investigate how the vestiges of boyhood prevent most men from reaching this plateau, this resolution.

Terence dropped Berthea at the house. ‘I think I shall go for a little drive,’ he said. ‘I need to get used to the gears.’

‘Be careful,’ said Berthea, and she repeated the advice under her breath as she watched her brother disappear down the drive, the Porsche’s throaty roar becoming fainter.

Terence drove slowly down the road. His foot was barely touching the accelerator and yet the car’s engine seemed ready to run away with him. But this was not the place to test the car’s performance - he would find a larger road for that, one where he could start overtaking. He had never been able to overtake anybody in the Morris Traveller and the thought of flashing past other drivers at speed rather appealed to him, particularly if he surprised them. I have so much overtaking to make up, he thought.

After a few minutes, Terence found himself on the very edge of town. The open road lay ahead, and the traffic, he noticed, was moving faster. He eased his foot down on the accelerator and the car shot forward. He glanced at the speedometer - the needle had edged up to sixty and his foot was barely on the pedal. He pressed it down a bit further. Seventy now. Was that the speed limit, or was it one hundred and seventy? He could not remember - it had all been so hypothetical with the Morris Traveller.

He looked in the rear-view mirror. There was a car behind him, a car that looked remarkably like his own: another Porsche. That’s nice, thought Terence. Two Porsches out for a run together. He looked in the mirror again and recognised the face of the driver: Monty Bismarck. So that was his new Porsche; it looked very smart, Terence had to admit. He waved, and Monty Bismarck waved back. How nice for him to see me in his old car, thought Terence.

He decided to go a little bit faster, and pressed his foot down sharply. The car responded immediately, surging ahead as the powerful engine showed its form. The sudden increase in speed alarmed Terence, and he took his foot off the accelerator and applied it to the brake. Behind him, Monty Bismarck, seeing the brake lights glow red, himself braked sharply. This prompt action avoided a collision between the two cars, but it meant that Monty had to watch powerlessly as Terence’s car, although now travelling much more slowly, left the road and shot through a hedgerow and into a field of ripening wheat.

When his car went off the road, Terence’s first response was to close his eyes. But he quickly reopened them once he found himself in the field, with the car obediently continuing its journey, although at a slower pace. He was relieved that the consequences of the accident were so slight; all he would have to do, it seemed to him, was to drive round in a circle and he could then make his way out through the hole that he had created when he went through the hedge.

Terence described a complete circle in the field of wheat, arriving back at his point of entry. There he found Monty Bismarck standing beside his own Porsche, anxious to check on his welfare.

‘You OK, Mr Moongrove?’ Monty called out as Terence drew to a halt.

‘Perfectly all right, thanks, Monty!’ Terence replied. ‘This is a jolly good car, you know.’

‘Can’t beat them, Mr Moongrove. But you need to be careful.’

Terence assured Monty that he would be. He switched off the engine and got out of the car to stretch his legs. Then he saw it.

‘My goodness,’ he said, pointing to the field behind him. ‘A crop circle. See that, Monty?’

The first thing William did that morning was take Freddie de la Hay out for a walk. The streets were quiet at that time of day, although William often encountered fellow dog-owners similarly exercising their charges. There seemed to be a comfortable free-masonry between the owners, clear common ground in a city of too many strangers, and greetings and dog news would often be exchanged. The dogs, too, appreciated the canine contact, Freddie de la Hay being on particularly good terms with a small, rather fussy Schnauzer and an elderly Dalmatian. William wondered what it was that led to a canine friendship - was it simple recognition of shared experience, random affection, or was it some similarity of viewpoint? Or possibly smell? He wondered whether one dog liked another dog because the smell was right. Humans, he had read, made friendships on that basis - even if they were unaware of it.