Alexander McCall Smith: Corduroy Mansions

‘You’ve found somewhere suitable for him?’ he asked. ‘He’s difficult, you know. He’s very fussy when it comes to flats. Corduroy Mansions seems to suit him rather too well.’

Marcia shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t found him a flat. But I’ve found a way of encouraging him to move out. It’s something you and I have already discussed.’

William poured two shots of espresso into a cup and brought it over to Marcia.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Strong.’

She looked at him appreciatively. ‘Remember you said you’d had the idea of getting a dog. You said that Eddie can’t stand dogs and that if you got one, then he would probably be inclined to move out. Remember?’

William laughed. ‘Yes, I do. I had planned that but the problem, you see, is that I can’t envisage keeping a dog for ever. What would happen once Eddie had taken the hint? You can’t take dogs back to the . . .’ - he waved a hand in the air - ‘to the dog place.’

‘But—’

William was emphatic. ‘No, you can’t.’

‘I know that,’ said Marcia, rather crossly. ‘But the point is that you could have a temporary dog.’ She paused, taking a sip of her espresso. William made such delicious coffee, and yet there he was single; such a waste . . . ‘Let me explain. I was catering for a dinner party in Highgate the other night. Quite a do, and some fairly well-known faces there. The host is a newspaper columnist. Not that I read him. But somebody must, I suppose. Always preaching to people, telling them what to do; holier than thou. Anyway, when I took things round before the guests arrived I got talking to him. They have this dog, you see. Odd sort of creature. A mongrel, I’d say, but he said it was a Pimlico Terrier. Now there’s a coincidence - you living in Pimlico. Have you ever heard of Pimlico Terriers? No? Neither have I.’

She took another sip of her coffee. ‘Anyway, he said that they liked this dog but they wished they had some sort of dog-sharing arrangement. He said that they had friends who had a set-up like that - the dog was shared by two households. If one set of people had to go away, the dog went to the other. It divided its time.’

William nodded. ‘A useful arrangement. People sometimes have that sort of thing for their elderly relatives.’

‘Exactly. So it occurred to me: why don’t you talk to them about sharing this Pimlico Terrier with them? You need a dog, but not a full-time dog. They have a full-time dog that they would like to convert into a part-time dog. If job-sharing is all the rage, then why not dog-sharing?’

Jenny was on her way to Dolphin Square, where she was to meet Oedipus Snark for what he described as dictée. She had asked him why he called it that, and he had replied, ‘Dictation, my dear Jennifer, is such an authoritarian word. If I were to give you dictation, I would feel so like a . . . like a Conservative . Dictators, no doubt, give dictation. Whereas dictée is what we used to have at the Lycée in South Kensington. Our dear teacher, Madame Hilliard, would dictate a complicated passage to us - Proust perhaps, with its dreadfully long sentences - and we poor élèves would write it all down in our little cahiers . So sweet. That’s why I call this taking of letters on your part dictée rather than dictation. See?’

Oedipus Snark had an annoying habit of adding see? to his observations. At first Jenny had been largely unaware of it, but then, after she had worked for him for a few weeks, she became acutely conscious of it and resented it greatly. She had even sent a letter about it to an agony aunt, in which she had written: ‘I work for a man in public life. He has his good points, I am sure, but I am finding his turn of phrase more and more irritating. At the end of many of his sentences he adds the word “see”. He is not Welsh; when Welsh people say that, or “look you”, it sounds rather nice, but he is not Welsh. Should I say something to him about this, or should I try to put it out of my mind? The work is otherwise interesting and I do not want to lose my job.’

The agony aunt had published this letter, and her reply.

Dear Anxious,

There is often nothing worse than some little mannerism in others that we become aware of and then look out for. I have a teenage son who adds ‘and stuff’ to virtually everything he says. When I ask him what time it is, he says, ‘It’s eight, and stuff.’ By comparison, what your boss says is mild, although I fully understand that my telling you that other people have worse verbal mannerisms must be scant consolation. I always remember the advice given by a rather wise psychiatrist, who said, ‘the contemplation of the toothache of another in no way relieves one’s own toothache’. That, I think, is broadly true.

What should you do? Well, the same doctor also said, ‘verbalisation precedes resolution’. And that, I think, is also very true. So I suggest that you talk to your boss and say that there is a little matter that is worrying you. Stress that it’s just you - that it’s an odd sensitivity you have - and then tell him what it is. My bet is that if you are frank - and if you mention that you have many faults yourself - he will be accommodating and will try to stop. Alternatively, of course, he may sack you.

The final part of this advice had persuaded Jenny that perhaps it was best not to say anything, and so she merely closed her ears to the ‘see’. And there was so much else to take exception to in Oedipus Snark that linguistic mannerisms were soon overshadowed. Jenny became used to the false excuses that he gave - ‘diplomatic excuses’, he called them - but still it made her uncomfortable to be party to them. Like all MPs, he received regular invitations to visit schools and libraries in his constituency, and he was in the habit of turning all of these down, without exception. ‘I shall, alas, be tied up with parliamentary business on that day’ was the standard excuse. It was then followed by fulsome praise of the school’s efforts: ‘May I take this opportunity to tell you how many people have expressed their admiration for the high standards that your school has achieved over the last year. I really must congratulate you: it is not easy to motivate students in these distracting days, and you seem to achieve this with conspicuous success.’ This was said to every school, and had even once been inserted into a letter to a local baker, who had written about European regulations and their baneful effect on small bakers.

For invitations to functions that were several months away, more inventive excuses were necessary. It was difficult to turn down an invitation received in, say, March for an event that was to take place in October. But Oedipus Snark was not loth to do this, and he had even told a pensioners’ action group that he could not attend a meeting planned for six months hence. ‘I very much regret that I shall be unable to attend,’ he dictated, ‘on the grounds that . . .’ He paused, and looked at Jenny as if for inspiration. ‘On the grounds that I shall be attending a funeral on that day. There!’ he said. ‘That settles that.’

Jenny looked up from her notebook. ‘But . . .’ she began. ‘But, how could you know? Funerals are usually arranged only a few days beforehand. They’ll know that you can’t possibly be booked to go to a funeral six months ahead.’

Oedipus Snark glared at her. ‘Oh yes?’ he challenged. ‘And what about cases where people are given six months to live? You have heard of those, I take it? Well, there you are. It’s perfectly possible that if somebody has been given six months to live and has told his friends, they’ll pencil his funeral in the diary. Perfectly possible.’ And to underline his point, he added, ‘See?’