“Please forgive me for asking,” he said, “but are you waiting for anybody?”
She shook her head. If he wanted to join her she would welcome it, given her unsettled mood.
Basil Wickramsinghe sat down opposite Caroline. “I believe I have met one of your flatmates,” he said. “Jenny. She and I met here just the other day.”
“Yes,” said Caroline. “So I gather.”
Basil, who had brought his cup over with him, took a sip of tea. “It is a very fine building, Corduroy Mansions,” he said. “I like living there. Do you?”
She nodded. “I do. I love it.”
“And this area is so nice,” Basil continued. “It’s so easy to walk to the parks from here. And we have all we need, don’t we?”
Caroline sighed. She was thinking of her lunch with Tim Something. What was she doing? She hardly knew him, and when she had met him before she had not even liked him. How could her feelings change? Was she that flighty?
Basil Wickramsinghe was staring at her. “You’re unhappy, aren’t you?”
She stared at him for a moment. He could tell. And she could tell, just by looking at him, that this quiet man could probably read her as easily as she felt she could read others. “I’m unsettled,” she said.
Basil took a further sip of tea. “Which means man trouble, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose it does.”
Basil smiled. “There are three sorts of man trouble,” he said. “There is one where there is no man. There is one where there is one man. And there is one where there is more than one man.”
“Mine is the third. I can’t decide between two.”
“That probably seems very difficult,” said Basil, “but it isn’t. Not really. You can find the answer by doing a very simple thing. Close your eyes and then tell me which one you see.”
Too simple, thought Caroline.
“Go on,” urged Basil. “Close your eyes. Which man comes to you? Don’t think about it, just see who steps forward.”
“I’m not sure if it’s that straightforward.”
“No, try it,” he urged. “It’s rather like dream analysis. Dreams are meant to tell us about our inmost desires, aren’t they? But the problem with dreams is that we can’t anticipate in advance which desires they will reveal. If you do what I suggest, your conscious mind can instruct your subconscious to respond. It’s rather like a lucid dream, where we know we’re dreaming but we continue to control the unfolding of the dream.” He paused. “Go on. Just close your eyes and tell me which man comes to you.”
Caroline closed her eyes. For a moment there was nothing in her mind but the sounds of the café about her: the rattling of cups on saucers; the subdued drone of the conversation of others; the sound of leeks being chopped in the kitchen. But then she saw him, standing before her, smiling, his arms open, ready to embrace her.
It was neither James nor Tim Something. It was somebody she did not know at all. A perfect stranger.
“Open your eyes,” said Basil.
She opened them and looked at her neighbour.
“I can tell from your expression that you saw neither of them,” Basil said. “Am I right? You saw a stranger.”
“I’m afraid I did.”
Basil sat back in his seat. “Well, that means that you have yet to meet the right man for you. He is out there somewhere, but you have not yet met him.”
97. The Interview
JAMES HAD SAID that he would drop in on Corduroy Mansions round about six that evening. He had also said that he might phone and let Caroline know how the interview and the lunch had gone, if he had time. There had been no call, and so she knew nothing about what had happened until she saw the expression on his face. That revealed everything.
“You got it?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yes. I did.”
He was standing in the doorway; she was in the hall. Now she stepped forward and threw her arms around him. “Oh, James! Congratulations! You clever, clever boy!”
She kissed him on his cheek; she had intended to kiss him on the lips, but he moved and presented his cheek instead. He wriggled free of her embrace, not indecently soon but rather quickly nonetheless.
“I’ve brought a bottle of champagne,” he said. “I bought it from one of those places that sells them chilled so that they’re ready for an immediate celebration.”
She took the bottle from him and went into the kitchen to fetch two glasses. He followed her through, full of news about the interview.
“I was really nervous at the beginning,” he said. “There was this guy before me and he came out looking very depressed—defeated, really. I said to him, ‘See you at lunch.’ And he said that he had not been invited. I felt terrible about that.”
“Well, you knew that you had a better chance, then.”
James raised an eyebrow. “Except for the fact that he had a Ph.D. I had spoken to him before he went in and he told me—a Ph.D. from McGill on Tintoretto. A Ph.D., Caroline, for a small job in a gallery. That’s how tough things are.”
Caroline agreed; things were not easy. “Polish Ph.D.s drive trucks. Romanian neurosurgeons wait at tables here in London.”
“So there’s not much hope for somebody who hasn’t even got his Master’s yet,” said James. “At least that’s what I thought.”
“Were they nice to you?”
“Not to begin with. They looked me up and down and asked me to take a seat. Then somebody asked a question straight out of the blue—no preliminaries, nothing. He said, ‘You’ve heard of Marco Marziale, of course.’”
“Who?”
“That’s what most people would think,” said James. “But it just so happened that I had read about him yesterday. I couldn’t believe my luck. There he was, a really obscure painter who has something like eleven or twelve surviving paintings to his name, and I knew about him because I had seen one in a catalogue—one coming up at Christie’s in New York. And I had read that some people considered the figures in his paintings to be a bit wooden, and so I said, ‘A bit wooden. That Adoration that came to light recently had some beautiful passages, though. Really interesting.’”
Caroline laughed. “Served them right.”
“Yes. The person who had asked me looked really deflated. I was tempted to say to him, ‘You’ve looked at that one, I take it.’ But I didn’t. Which was just as well because I think that would have sunk me. They were looking for something, you see—they were looking for coolness under fire.”
“And they got it.”
James looked away modestly. “Maybe. And the rest of the interview went really well. The person who’d asked about Marziale tried it again, of course, with a real underarm ball about Honthorst’s portrait of Charles I in the National Portrait Gallery. But again, it just so happened that I knew that one and was able to talk about it. After that, he gave up.”
While James was talking, Caroline had eased out the cork of the champagne and was now filling the glasses. She handed one to James and raised her own glass. “To clever you. Well done.”
“And then there was the lunch,” James continued. “They were relaxed by that stage, and so we talked about all sorts of things. It turned out that one of the directors knew my uncle. In fact he had been the best man at my uncle’s wedding. So we talked about him, and his wife, and so on. All very chatty. Until one of them looked at his watch and realised that it was already three o’clock. So they called for the bill and the chairman said, ‘The job’s yours, by the way.’”
Caroline did not want to cap James’s story immediately, so she waited for a while before she brought up her own news.
“I was offered a job today as well,” she said. “I hadn’t been expecting it.”
James looked at her in astonishment. “You never said anything about an interview.”
Had it been an interview? She did not think so. “Actually, it wasn’t an interview—it was a lunch. Lunch with Tim Something, the photographer.”
James looked confused. “What’s he got to do with a job?”
“He offered me one,” said Caroline. “He’s expanding his photography business and he wants me to join him.”
She could tell at once that James was concerned. “You? A photographer?” But it was not her going to work for a photographer that worried him, she felt—it was the fact that the photographer was Tim Something. James was jealous.
She realised very suddenly that she had to say something; she could pretend no longer. “James, listen, I think we should be honest with ourselves. I like you an awful lot—you know that—but I really don’t think it’s going to work between us. We can still go to Paris. But it’s not going to work, is it?”
For a moment he said nothing, but stood quite still, holding his champagne glass in his right hand. The silence was such that she could hear the tiny bubbles of the wine bursting—an almost inaudible crackling sound. Then he looked at her, and his look was full of tenderness. “No, you’re right. It won’t. And I’ve been meaning to tell you something. I’ve met somebody else. Somebody … well, somebody who makes more sense for me—for the way I am.”
She felt immediate relief, mixed with pleasure for him. She wanted James to be happy.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
It was a misjudged question. “It’s a she, actually. Her name is Annette.”
Caroline looked into her glass. She could have forgiven him had it been Adam or Andrew, but not Annette. And why, she thought, should another woman get him? If any woman was going to get him, then it would be her. She was clear about that.
She would get him back. She was not going to take this lying down.
98. Martini Talk in Cheltenham
WHILE THIS YO-YO of an encounter between Caroline and James was taking place in Corduroy Mansions, in the kitchen of the house owned by Terence Moongrove, mystic and seeker after understanding, a dinner was being prepared by Berthea Snark. Terence was giving his sister a certain degree of assistance, but not much, as he had already performed several of the tasks assigned to him incorrectly, with the result that they had had to be redone.
“We don’t normally cut our potatoes into squares,” said Berthea as she contemplated the results of his attempt to prepare roast potatoes. “Especially such tiny squares.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Berthy,” said Terence. “I really don’t think I’m much of cook. I know that a man should be able to cook these days; I know that. But even if I can’t cook, there are lots of other things I can do jolly well.”
Such as? thought Berthea. She could not think of a single thing at which poor Terence excelled; even his sacred dance had not been very impressive and at one stage she had seen him going widdershins when he should have been going deasil. That had almost caused the BBC cameraman to be knocked over, which Berthea thought would have been a rather satisfactory development given her unease about his presence in the first place. No, poor Terence really could do very little, if anything, and it would have been surprising had cooking been an exception to the rule.
“So rather than do anything else the wrong way,” Terence continued, “I’m going to pour us both a little drinkie-poo. How about a martini? That would be such fun.”
Berthea thought this a very good idea. “I’ll carry on cooking,” she said. “You bring them through and we’ll have martinis in the kitchen. What a treat.”
Now as it happened, mixing martinis was another thing that Terence did not do very well. The result was two immensely strong gin martinis: tasty—perhaps by accident—but extremely potent.
“Down the hatch!” said Terence, raising his glass to his sister.
Berthea reciprocated the sentiment and sampled her martini. “Extremely good,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Terence. “And when you’ve finished that one, I’ll make you another one—with the other bottle, this time.”
They continued to chat, the conversation becoming pleasantly mellow as they worked their way through their martinis.
“I saw a crop circle today,” said Terence. “In a field of wheat. A perfect circle. It was jolly exciting. I pointed it out to Monty Bismarck and he saw it too. He said that we should phone the newspaper and get them to take photographs.”
“How strange,” said Berthea. “Is there any rational explanation for these things? I assume that there is.”
Terence shook his head. “They are the product of energy forces of which we have no current inkling,” he said. “Crop circles contain ancient wisdom. Either that, or they’re a warning from another planet. They’re a warning that we need to heed.”
“What are they warning us about?” asked Berthea, slurring her words slightly as the martini took effect.
“This and that,” said Terence airily.
“But then why don’t they give the warning in English?” asked Berthea. “Why use circles?”
Terence smiled. “Because the beings who make these circles,” he explained, “are not linear. We are linear and our languages are linear. These beings are circular. That’s obvious.”
“Mmm,” muttered Berthea, draining her glass. “Terence, that martini was divine. Be an angel and get me another. Not too strong, of course. Just like that one. My, how quickly martinis vanish as you get older.”
Terence withdrew and soon returned with another two martinis.
“Tell me about your book, Berthy,” he said, his own words beginning to slur in the same way as his sister’s. “Your un-authorised biography of Oedipus. How’s it going? Have you had lots of interesting information from the chaps he knew at school?”
“Bags and bags,” said Berthea. “They didn’t like him, you know. They threw him into a pond once. Just as a joke, of course.”
“He was such a horrible boy,” mused Terence. “I often thought that I should throw him into something or other. I just didn’t get round to it.”
He looked slightly guilty after this remark, but then he saw that Berthea did not appear to have taken offence.
“Oh, I thought that too,” she said. “You know, as an analyst I should be prepared to reveal my inmost thoughts but I’ve never really discussed with anybody else these feelings I have about my own son.”
“Negative feelings?” asked Terence.
“Very negative. In fact”—she paused, and took another sip of her martini—“once or twice I’ve been visited by dreams in which I have done something terrible to him.”
Terence’s eyes widened. “What fun!” he said. “Not that I think we should actually do this, not in real life, but it would be such fun to electrocute him. In the same way in which I jolly nearly electrocuted myself. We could invite him to come down for the weekend and he could sleep in that old brass bed in the spare room on the first floor—you know, the one that Uncle Edgar used. Oedipus could sleep in that and we could tie an electric wire to the frame. Then, when he was asleep, we could turn the switch on.”
Berthea drained her second martini. “Wishful thinking,” she said.
“Or here’s another idea,” said Terence. “You know that lightning conductor on the roof? It has that funny flat wire that goes down the side. Mr. Marchbanks told me that it was copper. Anyway, it goes past the window of the spare room, and so we could pass a wire from the conductor and connect it to the bed. When lightning comes, bang! It would go down that copper wire and into the room and give Oedipus a jolly big shock. But they couldn’t send us to prison because it would have been death by lightning and that’s an act of God, isn’t it?”
Berthea shook a finger at Terence. “We mustn’t allow ourselves to think like this,” she said. “Oedipus is my son and your nephew.”
“Yes,” said Terence. “God will punish him when he dies. Not before.”
Berthea thought about this. “Actually, it would be much more satisfying if God punished him in this life so that we all could see. And you know what the best punishment for him would be? You know what?”
Terence shook his head.
“I
f God were to make him prime minister!” shrieked Berthea.
Terence roared with laughter. “Oh Berthy, what a brilliant idea! It must be such a horrid job. Especially now.”
99. Basil Buys a Blazer
WILLIAM SURPRISED HIMSELF by how quickly he got over the loss of the Poussin. His initial reaction had been one of utter dismay but within hours of the event he had come to see it all in perspective. The painting’s attribution had never been confirmed, nobody appeared to be missing it and Freddie de la Hay himself appeared to be making a rapid recovery from the ingestion of a major work of French art.
Life, William thought, was taking a distinct turn for the better. In the space of only a few days, Marcia had settled down in Corduroy Mansions very easily and was proving to be an unobtrusive and considerate flatmate. The rules of engagement had been quickly and amicably agreed: each had his or her own bedroom, William had his study, and the drawing room and kitchen were shared space. Marcia insisted on paying rent, and William put this straight back into the kitty they had set up for the purchase of household supplies. The purchase of these was undertaken by Marcia, which greatly relieved William as he had never enjoyed shopping.
“It’s very nice having you here,” William observed over breakfast. “It seems as if you’ve lived here for ever.”
“And I’m happy to be here,” said Marcia.
No more was said. Any further observation would have been unnecessary, possibly too much: delicate understandings are sometimes best left largely unspoken. And the same may be said of feelings; a refined brush works best there too. I am happy, thought William; that was all he needed to think.
The moment seemed right to William to hold a party, and he put the idea to Marcia that day.
“Let’s invite the other people in the house,” he said. “Maybe one or two others. Not a big do—a buffet, perhaps. I’ve got some rather good champagne at the shop at the moment, which would probably go down well.”
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