Corduroy Mansions cm-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘Of course,’ said Barbara, ‘you can’t repeat things. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. So all those “me too” manuscripts that followed the Code ended up doing pretty miserably.’

  She was warming to her theme. ‘And the same goes for authors. Some of them have one book in them - just one - and they’re never going to be able to write anything else.’

  ‘Like God,’ said Oedipus.

  She looked at him quizzically.

  ‘He wrote the Bible, didn’t he? But he never really followed up with anything quite so successful.’

  ‘I was being serious.’

  He smiled. ‘So was I. But tell me about this author of yours. I’m intrigued.’

  Barbara buttered the rest of her bread roll. ‘He’s a first-time author,’ she said. ‘He came to us out of the blue. We get all sorts of manuscripts sent to us. The vast majority are impossible, of course, but every so often you get something really good. It’s like mining diamonds. You go through thousands of tons of kimberlite for one little diamond. And every so often, among millions of tons of the stuff, along comes a great big stone that gets De Beers jumping up and down with excitement. Well, that’s what it’s like with manuscripts. One beautiful idea among the tons of dross.’

  Oedipus Snark had left his roll untouched. Although he was trying not to show it, he was fascinated by what Barbara was saying. This was the sort of thing that he liked: better - surer - than looking for the next high performers on the alternative stock markets. You could waste months of your time doing that and at the end of the day find that you simply could not compete with the young men in the City, with their access to whispers and rumours.

  ‘Go on,’ he said evenly. ‘This person from out of the blue.’

  ‘It landed on my desk,’ said Barbara. ‘We have somebody who gives things a preliminary read. She sends most of the stuff right back, or at least sends it back after we’ve let it sit in the office for three weeks or so. One wouldn’t want the authors to think that we’d rejected them out of hand.’

  Oedipus raised an eyebrow. ‘So she said it had the makings?’

  ‘She did. In fact, she said that this was the one. I remember her precise words. “We must write to him and say thank you.” That’s what she said. Do you realise how rarely that happens in publishing? The last author who got anything like that was Wilbur Smith - you know, the man who writes about deeds of derring-do in Africa. Elephants and ancient treasure. Very exciting stuff. People love reading him. Sells millions. When he sent his first manuscript off to the publishers he was a complete unknown. He parcelled it up and sent it off - this was still the days of typewriters, of course, and it was maybe the only copy. Back came a telegram in no time at all: “Thank you for this wonderful book. Letter follows.”’

  ‘Nice,’ said Oedipus Snark.

  Barbara agreed. ‘Most of the time, when an author writes to an agent or a publisher to find out about the fate of a manuscript, he gets a reply saying, “Your manuscript is under active consideration.” You know what that means, Oedipus? It means: we’re actively looking for it.’

  Oedipus said nothing. It was a useful phrase, and he would have to use it himself in his own letters. ‘The point you raised with me is under active consideration.’ It was very nice.

  Barbara continued her story. ‘Well, I took this manuscript home with me. I didn’t look forward to reading it, I’m afraid - I hate reading manuscripts but I had to do it. So I made myself a stiff gin and tonic and sat down with this great pile of paper. I hadn’t even read the title at that stage. All I had seen was the name of the author. Errol Greatorex. Not a good start. Names are important in the book business, you know. You can have one author called Stan Jones, or whatever, who writes exactly the same sort of book as, shall we say, somebody called Jodi de Balzac. Whose book makes its mark? Not Stan Jones’s, I’m afraid. So we had a bit of a problem with Errol Greatorex. It was the Errol, of course - the Greatorex bit was fine. Full of literary possibilities.

  ‘I sat down with my gin and Mr Greatorex’s manuscript and looked at the title. The Autobiography of a Yeti.’

  Oedipus Snark’s eyes widened. ‘The Abominable Snowman?’

  ‘The very same. The yeti who lives up in the high forests of the Himalayas. On the edge of the treeline. That yeti.’

  It was at this point that the waiter returned with the scallops. But neither of the diners paid much attention to the plate of elegantly served seafood that was placed before them. Barbara’s eyes were bright with the memory of the moment when she first began to read the manuscript. And Oedipus, for his part, was thinking: what if I took over this amazing story? What if I was the one to reveal this to the world? Me. Oedipus Snark. And something else crossed his mind too. Money.

  33. ‘An hairy man’ (sic)

  Oedipus was not one to show an overt interest in anything very much but Barbara Ragg could tell that he was acutely interested in Errol Greatorex’s manuscript. This pleased her; indeed, she basked in his attention, a rare experience for her. At least now he’s taking me seriously, she said to herself as she tackled the last scraps of scallop.

  ‘The scallops were just perfect,’ she commented, dabbing at her mouth with her table napkin. ‘They must have been hand-picked rather than sucked up, don’t you think?’

  ‘Very possibly,’ said Oedipus. ‘Perhaps some brave Scottish diver went down into the waters off Mull or somewhere like that. Tremendously cold, no doubt. But tell me, this Errol Greatorex . . .’

  Barbara was enjoying herself. ‘I wonder if they dive with air tanks?’ she mused. ‘Or do they just hold their breath and swim down? There’s something called free-diving, you know. I read about it.’

  ‘Maybe. But tell me, this manuscript . . .’

  Barbara ignored the incipient question. ‘They go down to an amazing depth, you know, these free-divers. Two hundred feet and more in some cases. All with one lungful of air.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But I don’t think that these scallop divers . . .’

  ‘There’s something called the mammalian diving reflex,’ Barbara continued. She had listened to him for so long; now he could listen to her for a change. ‘It makes it easier for your system to work on very little oxygen. You can get better and better at it if you train yourself. It’s quite amazing.’

  Oedipus pushed his plate aside. ‘I’m not really all that interested in free-diving, Barbara,’ he said. ‘This novel of yours: that’s what I want to discuss.’

  ‘But there’s not much to discuss,’ said Barbara calmly. ‘It’s just the story of a yeti’s life.’ She paused. ‘And it’s not fiction, you know.’

  She watched Oedipus’s expression. He looked mocking. ‘You mean he claims to be a yeti?’

  ‘No, of course not. Greatorex is not a yeti name. I would have thought that you would know that.’ She paused. I have just said something extremely witty, she said to herself. But Oedipus Snark just stared at her. ‘He’s called it an autobiography,’ she continued, ‘because the yeti told him his story. It’s an “as told to” book. You know, the sort that pop singers and footballers write. They’re just like yetis, in their way. Everybody knows that they can’t do it themselves and use ghost writers. Hence the “as told to” books.’

  Oedipus shook his head. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. The yeti doesn’t exist.’

  Barbara leaned forward slightly. ‘How do you know, Oedipus? How do you know the yeti doesn’t exist?’

  ‘For the same reason I know that Father Christmas doesn’t exist,’ he said. ‘Or the Tooth Fairy.’

  ‘Or Higgs’s boson?’

  Oedipus Snark’s eyes flashed. If Barbara imagines she can pull particle physics on me, he thought, she’s in for a surprise.

  ‘The Higgs boson?’ he snapped. ‘There’s mathematics for that. Where is the mathematics for the Tooth Fairy? And anyway, what about the W and Z bosons?’

  Barbara wondered whether she could ask for more scallops. ‘The W and Z bosons?’ she repeat
ed.

  Oedipus held her gaze. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I haven’t got the first clue,’ she said. ‘I’m not a physicist, Oedipus. You tell me about them. What are they, these bosons?’

  Oedipus waved a hand in the air. ‘Some other time,’ he said. ‘But where’s the evidence for the existence of yetis?’

  Barbara looked at her empty plate. She would buy some scallops when she got back to London and eat them privately in her kitchen, with a glass of white wine and Mozart playing in the background. It would be nice to be married, but could married people do that sort of thing? ‘There’s some evidence,’ she said. ‘Sightings. Big footprints in the snow. Quite a bit of this comes from perfectly level-headed people.’

  Oedipus laughed. ‘Listen, light can play tricks. People see all sorts of things - ghosts, UFOs, the face of Elvis in their pizzas and so on. If you believed half of what people claim to have seen, you’d be very badly informed.’ He paused. ‘And as for footprints in the snow, an ordinary footprint gets much bigger as the snow melts around the edges. See?’

  Barbara shrugged. ‘Well, you can believe what you will. I shall remain agnostic on the subject. All that I know is that Errol’s book is absolutely riveting. And it will sell. In fact, I’m prepared to bet that it will be pretty much number one on the lists. It’s absolutely compelling.’

  Oedipus became placatory. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to rubbish your book. It’s just I doubt if it can be true. I’m sure that it’s a great read - as fiction. Look, why don’t you tell me a bit about it? How did he meet the yeti?’

  Barbara sat back while the waiter served the second course. ‘Errol Greatorex is an American travel writer. He mostly writes for magazines but was working on a coffee-table book on the Himalayas when all this happened.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Oedipus.

  ‘His encounter,’ said Barbara. ‘He had an encounter.’

  Oedipus rolled his eyes upwards. ‘The effect of thin air,’ he said. ‘The oxygen-starved brain hallucinates.’

  ‘Not when you’re acclimatised,’ snapped Barbara. ‘Errol had been there for several weeks. He would be unlikely to be hallucinating at that stage.’

  ‘All right,’ said Oedipus grudgingly. ‘So he had an encounter. What exactly happened?’

  Barbara sat back in her chair. ‘He was staying in a Buddhist monastery up in Nepal. It was a very remote place. Can you picture it? Prayer flags fluttering in the wind. Bare green pastures ringed by mountains. Grey rocky outcrops. The chant of monks hanging in the air.’

  She waited for him to respond. He nodded.

  ‘One of the monks came to him one morning and said that he wanted to show him something very unusual. Most of the monks spoke no English, but this one had a few words and was able to make himself understood. He said that it was not something that he would show to anybody; Errol Greatorex had been kind to him, he explained, and he trusted him.

  ‘This monk led him off to the back of the monastery. They had a whole lot of buildings - it was all rather higgledy-piggledy. One of these buildings was a sort of classroom; he had walked past it once or twice and had seen a class of boys being instructed in religious texts. There were no schoolboys there at the time, but Greatorex saw the teacher sitting at a desk apparently marking a pile of little school notebooks. For a while the teacher did not appear to notice his visitors, but then he looked up from his task and Greatorex saw his face for the first time.’

  Barbara paused. Oedipus Snark was watching her intently. ‘And?’ he prompted. ‘What was he like?’

  ‘He was hairy,’ said Barbara. ‘Like Esau. An hairy man.’

  ‘A hairy man,’ corrected Oedipus.

  ‘An,’ she said. ‘Esau was an hairy man.’

  He looked irritated. ‘What are you going on about?’ he asked.

  34. William Plans a Soufflé

  While Barbara Ragg regaled Oedipus Snark with her account of Errol Greatorex’s manuscript, William French, wine merchant and now part-owner of the dog known as Freddie de la Hay, was in his flat in Corduroy Mansions, waiting for the return of his son, Eddie. Eddie spent Friday evenings in the pub with his friends, but would usually come home first; however, he had not done so that day. William wondered if he had gone straight to the pub, in which case he might not see his son until well after midnight - if he had the stamina to wait up for him.

  He felt distinctly disappointed. Now that he had taken the plunge and acquired Freddie de la Hay, he was eager to get the inevitable confrontation with Eddie out of the way. It would not be easy - he knew that - because Eddie had a temper and was given to emotional outbursts. He would not take the presence of Freddie de la Hay lying down.

  Which, as it happened, was what Freddie de la Hay himself was doing at that moment. He had found a spot on the rug in front of the drawing-room fireplace and had curled up there, his eyes just sufficiently open to watch William as he moved about the room.

  When William had first taken him upstairs, the dog had rushed around the flat, sniffing at the furniture. Once he had completed his inspection, he had gazed up at William, as if awaiting instructions.

  ‘Well,’ said William, looking down at his new companion, ‘that’s about it, Freddie, old chap. I suppose it’s not all that exciting from the canine point of view, but you should be comfortable enough.’

  Freddie cocked his head to the side, as if to elicit a further remark from William. The dog was aware that something had changed in his life but he was not quite sure what. His inspection of the flat had yielded nothing significant - there were none of the smells he had been trained to detect at the airport, and so there was no need to bark. But he was puzzled: he had picked up the smell of two people in the flat, yet as far as he could see, there was only one. That was about as far as Freddie’s limited reasoning powers could go. Two smells, one person. All he knew, then, was that there was somebody missing.

  William went into the kitchen to prepare himself something to eat. Since the death of his wife some years earlier he had become an accomplished cook, at least in respect of the twenty or so recipes that he had written out in a small Moleskine notebook that Eddie had given him for Christmas. These recipes he had numbered from one to twenty, and he worked through them one by one, in numerical order. Tonight was number seventeen, which was an easily prepared cheese soufflé served with broccoli and Puy lentils.

  He started to grate the small block of Gruyère that he had bought the day before. That done, he helped himself to a glass of Chablis from an open bottle in the fridge. The Chablis, he thought, would go well with the Gruyère, the flinty taste of the wine providing a sharpness that would sit well against the cheese. Then he began working on the roux for the soufflé while the lentils boiled on the stove. How comfortable, he thought; how nice to be in the flat by myself without music drifting down the corridor from Eddie’s room. He has such appalling taste in music, thought William. All that insistent, throbbing bass rhythm - what can he possibly find to like in it?

  William had once asked Eddie what his music actually meant. His son had looked at him blankly.

  ‘What do you mean what does it mean?’ Eddie asked. ‘It’s music. That’s all.’

  ‘But music means something,’ William pointed out. ‘It has structure. It tells you something. It creates a mood, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No, it just sounds good,’ said Eddie. ‘You like old music because you’re old. I like something more lively because I’m not past it like you.’

  William was used to such comments. ‘I wasn’t talking about our individual preferences,’ he said mildly. ‘I was just wondering what your music - that thudding stuff you play - what it actually says about . . .’ - he searched for the right words - ‘about anything at all. Does it say anything?’

  ‘It’s random,’ said Eddie.

  William sighed. And now, appreciating the silence, he thought about how much of Eddie’s random music he had been obliged to endure. He, who liked Mozart and Gregori
an chant, had put up with the filling of his personal space with the very antithesis of all that. Well, now was the time to do something about it, and he would; it was his music that would be heard in the flat from now on.

  He was thinking about this, relishing the thought, when he heard the key turn in the lock. He put down the bowl in which he had been whisking the eggs for the soufflé. Eddie was his son; he had no reason to be afraid of him. And yet his breath came quickly and his mouth felt curiously dry as he made his way from the kitchen into the hall. He would have to tell Eddie about Freddie de la Hay before his son saw the dog. He needed to get the upper hand right away so that he would have the advantage in the confrontation that would inevitably ensue.

  Eddie opened the door and came into the hall.

  ‘I’ve got some interesting news,’ William blurted out.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Yeah,’ said William. ‘I’ve acquired a pet.’

  Eddie frowned. ‘You?’ he asked. ‘You’ve acquired a what?’

  ‘A pet,’ William repeated.

  Eddie burst out laughing. ‘A hamster?’ he said. ‘That’s pretty tragic, Dad. “Elderly Wine Merchant Acquires Hamster for Company”.’ Eddie liked to talk in newspaper headlines - another habit that irritated William.

  William shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘“Middle-aged Wine Merchant Gets Dog”.’

  Eddie, who had been walking across the hall towards his room, stopped where he was. ‘Dog?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes. A very agreeable dog,’ confirmed William. ‘He’s called Freddie de la Hay. He’s through there in the drawing room. Go and take a look, if you like.’