Corduroy Mansions Read online

  It was thoughtfulness on her part, touched, perhaps, by the slightest hint of ambitious self-interest. Marcia liked William; she liked him a great deal. It was a tragedy, she thought, that he was on his own; what a waste of a perfectly good man! For his part, he had never shown any interest in her beyond that which one has in a comfortable friend—the sort of interest that stops well short of any gestures of physical affection. She understood: a woman can tell these things, especially one as sympathetic and emotionally sensitive as Marcia believed herself to be. No, William had shown no signs of wanting closeness, but that did not mean that he might not do so in the future. So she continued with her culinary overtures and he, replete on vol-au-vents, reflected on his good fortune to have such a friend as Marcia. But in his mind she was just a friend, firmly on that side of the line.

  The stumbling block, Marcia thought, was Eddie. If William were truly on his own, and not sharing with his son, then she felt it likely that he would be more receptive to the idea of a relationship with a woman. Having his son there distracted him and took the edge off his loneliness. If only Eddie were to go—and it was surely time for him to fly the nest—then her own prospects would be better.

  Unfortunately, Marcia had once let slip her low opinion of Eddie, incautiously describing him as a “waste of space.” It had been unwise—she knew that—but it had been said, and it had been said when Marcia, who had been visiting William after catering for a rather trying reception, had had perhaps two glasses of wine too many. Eddie had been in the flat, listening to the conversation from the corridor. Nobody likes to be described in such terms, and he had pursed his lips in anger. He waited for his father to defend him, as any father must do when his own flesh and blood, his own DNA, is described as a waste of space. He waited.

  “That’s a bit hard on the boy,” his father said at last. “Give him time. He’s only twenty-four.”

  Perhaps Marcia regretted her slip, since she said nothing more. But then Eddie heard William say: “Of course, there’s a theory in psychology that many men only mature at the age of twenty-eight. You’ve heard of that? Seems a bit late to me, but that’s what they say.”

  Eddie had turned round and slunk back into his room, a Polonius in retreat from behind the arras. That woman, he thought, that blowsy woman is after my dad. And if she gets him, then she gets the lot when he snuffs it—the flat, the wine business, the old Jaguar. The lot. She has to be stopped.

  Then he thought: Twenty-eight? Twenty-eight?

  3. Dee Is Rude About Others

  AS WILLIAM LOCKED his front door behind him that morning, he heard the sound of somebody fiddling with keys on the landing downstairs. This was nothing unusual: the girls, as he called them, had a difficult lock, and unless one inserted the key at precisely the right angle and then exerted a gentle upward pressure, it would not work. It was not unusual, he had noted, for the locking-up process to take five or ten minutes; on one occasion he had gone out to buy a newspaper and returned to discover one of the young women still struggling with the recalcitrant lock.

  As he made his way downstairs, he saw that it was Dee on the landing below.

  “Having trouble with the key?” he asked jauntily.

  She looked up. “No more than usual. I thought I’d got the hang of it and then …”

  “Keys are like that,” said William. “They never fit exactly. I remember an aunt of mine who used the wrong key for years. She was determined that it would work and she managed to force the lock of her front door every time. But it took a lot of force. She had lost the right key and was in fact using the back door key. The triumph of determination over … well, locks, I suppose.”

  Dee stood back and allowed William to fiddle with the key. After a few twists the lock moved and he was able to withdraw the key. “There we are. Locked.”

  They started downstairs together. There were four floors in Corduroy Mansions, if one included the basement. William owned the top flat, the girls were on the first floor, and in the ground-floor flat lived Mr. Wickramsinghe, a mild, rather preoccupied accountant whom nobody saw very much, but who kept fresh flowers in a vase in the common entrance hall.

  “The others have all left for work?” asked William.

  “Some of them. Jo’s away for a couple of days. I’ve actually got the morning off, so I’m doing a bit of shopping before I go in at lunchtime. Caroline and Jenny are at work, if you can call it that.”

  William raised an eyebrow. “From that, I take it that you don’t.”

  Dee sniffed. “Well, look at Caroline. She’s doing that Master’s course at Sotheby’s. Fine Art. She goes to lectures and drifts around the salerooms. Very taxing.”

  “Very pleasant,” said William. “But she’ll have essays to write, won’t she? ‘The Early Giotto’ and that sort of thing. And articles to read? The Burlington Magazine, I suppose.”

  Dee was not convinced. She worked in a health-food shop, the Pimlico Vitamin and Supplement Agency; she knew what hard work was.

  “And Jenny?” William asked.

  “Her job consists of going to lunch, as far as I can tell,” said Dee.

  “There must be more to it than that,” said William. “Being a PA to an MP must involve something. All those letters from constituents. All those complaints about drains and hospital wards. Surely those must take up a lot of time?”

  “Oh yes, I suppose they do. But still she seems to have a lot of time for lunches.”

  William smiled. “Have you met her boss? The MP.”

  “Oedipus Snark? Yes, I met him once. He came round to the flat to deliver some papers to Jenny.” She shuddered involuntarily.

  “He didn’t make a good impression?”

  “Certainly not. A horrible man. Creepy.”

  They had now come out of the front door and continued to walk together along the street. William walked to work; Dee was heading for the tube.

  “His name hardly helps,” said William. “Oedipus Snark. It’s very unfortunate. Somewhat redolent of Trollope, I would have thought. What was the name of Trollope’s villain? Slope, wasn’t it? Snark and Slope are obviously birds of a feather.”

  “Creep.”

  “Yes,” said William. “That would be another good name for a villain. Creep. Of course that’s a name with political associations already. You won’t remember CREEP, but I do. Just. Watergate. Remember Watergate?” He realised that of course she would not. Just as she would know nothing about Winston Churchill or Mussolini; or Kenneth Williams or Liberace, for that matter. “CREEP was the name of the committee that President Nixon—he was a president of the United States, you know—had working for his reelection. The Committee to Re-elect the President. CREEP was the acronym.” Dee seemed to be paying very little attention to him, but William was used to that. He was terribly old by her standards. She was twenty-eight and he was in his late forties (well, early fifties if one was going to be pedantic). He was old enough to be her father, a thought which depressed him. He did not want to be a father figure to the young women who lived in the flat below. He wanted them to look upon him as a … friend. But it was too late for that. Being realistic, there were just not enough shared references in their respective worlds to allow for much of a friendship. The most he could hope for was a reasonably neighbourly relationship in which they did not condescend to him too much.

  “How does Jenny get on with Snark?” asked William. “Does she share your low opinion of him?”

  Dee became animated. “Yes. She really does. She hates him. She thinks he’s gross.”

  “I see.”

  “But then everybody hates him,” Dee continued. “Even his mother.”

  William laughed. “Surely not. Mothers rarely hate their sons. It’s a very non-maternal thing to do. Particularly if one’s son is called Oedipus.”

  He waited for her to react. But nothing came.

  “Oedipus—” he began.

  “But this one does,” interrupted Dee. “Jenny told me all about it.
She can’t conceal it. She hates him intensely.”

  “How does Jenny know all this?”

  “His mother has spoken to her about it. She said, ‘I wish I didn’t dislike my son so much, but I do. I can’t help it.’” She paused. “And she’s plotting against him.”

  William was silent. Mothers should not plot against their sons … and nor should fathers. And yet was that not exactly what he was doing? He was plotting against Eddie in that he was making plans for Eddie’s exclusion from the flat. But that was different: he was not working for Eddie’s downfall, merely for his moving out. It was a different sort of plot, but nevertheless he felt a degree of shame about it. And yet at the same time, he felt a certain satisfaction at the sheer cunning of his idea. Eddie could not abide dogs and was petrified of even the smallest and most unthreatening breeds. It would not be necessary, then, for William to buy himself an Alsatian or a Rottweiler; a mere terrier would do the trick. If a dog moved into the house, then Eddie would have to move out. It was a very simple and really rather clever plan.

  William smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Dee.

  “Nothing much,” said William. “Just an idea I’ve had.”

  4. A Generous Offer

  “HALF THE TIME,” said Dee, “I can’t follow what he’s going on about. It was Watergate this morning. Watergate and some guy called Nixon.”

  “Old people wander a bit,” said Martin, her colleague at the Pimlico Vitamin and Supplement Agency. “I had an uncle—or something—who lost all his nouns. He had a stroke and all the nouns went. So he used the word ‘concept’ for any noun. He’d say things like ‘Pass the concept’ when he wanted you to pass the salt.”

  Dee frowned. William was not all that old. But there was no need to correct Martin on that; the interesting thing was the salt issue. “He ate a lot of salt?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, there you are,” said Dee. “Sodium blockages. You know I’ll never forget when I went for iridology the first time and the iridologist looked into my eyes and said, ‘You eat a lot of salt.’ And it was true. I really freaked out.”

  Martin looked concerned. “How do they tell?”

  “Sodium rings in the eyes,” said Dee. “It’s pretty obvious.”

  Martin was silent. Then, after a few moments, “Could you tell? Yourself, I mean. Would you be able to tell if you looked into my eyes?”

  Dee smiled. “Maybe. Do you want me to?”

  It took Martin a minute or so to decide. Then he said, “Yes. It’s better to know, isn’t it?”

  “Of course you must know anyway,” said Dee. “You must know whether you eat too much salt. Do you?”

  Martin looked away. “Maybe sometimes.”

  “All right.”

  There were no customers in the Vitamin and Supplement Agency at the time and Dee pointed to a chair in front of the counter. “Sit down, Martin. No, don’t close your eyes. I’m going to have to shine a light into them. Just relax.”

  There was a small torch beside the cash register. They used it from time to time to look into the mouths of customers who wanted something for mouth ulcers or gingivitis. Dee reached for this torch and crouched in front of Martin. She rested a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. His shoulder felt bony; Martin did not eat enough, she thought, but that was something they could deal with later. For now it was sodium rings.

  The torch threw a small circle of weak light onto his cheek. She moved it up closely until it was shining directly into his right eye.

  She felt Martin’s breathing upon her hand, a warm, rather comforting feeling. Then it stopped; he was holding his breath.

  “See anything?” he asked.

  “Hold on. I’m just trying to see. Yes … Yes.”

  “Yes what? Are there any sodium rings?”

  “Yes. I think so. There are some white circles. I think those are sodium rings all right.”

  She turned the torch off and stood back. Martin stared at her balefully.

  “What can I do?”

  “Eat less salt for starters.”

  “And?”

  “And the sodium rings should disappear.” She paused. “But there were other things there.”

  He looked at her in alarm. “Such as?”

  “Flecks. And quite a few yellow dots. I don’t know what those mean. I suppose we could look them up.”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the first customer of the morning. He wanted St. John’s wort and a bottle of echinacea. Dee served him while Martin tidied the counter. Afterwards, when the customer had gone, Martin turned to her. His anxiety was evident.

  “Should I cut out salt altogether?”

  She shrugged. “We need a certain amount of salt. If you cut out salt altogether you’d die. So maybe just a bit less.”

  He nodded. There was a mirror in the washroom and he would have a quick look at his eyes in that. If he could see the sodium rings himself, then he could monitor his progress in getting rid of them.

  “It’s not the end of the world,” said Dee reassuringly. “People live with sodium rings for a long time.”

  “And then they die?”

  “Maybe. But you’re not going to die, Martin. Not just yet. As long as you take sensible precautions.”

  Martin looked thoughtful. “Supplements?”

  Dee shook her head. She knew that Martin was already on a number of supplements—they all were—and probably needed nothing else. No, the yellow flecks she thought she had seen in his irises pointed to colon issues.

  “I think that you need colonic irrigation,” she said. “Those yellow flecks I saw are probably related to the colon.”

  Martin said nothing.

  “Colonic irrigation is the answer,” Dee pronounced. “We all need it, but very few people take it up.”

  Martin swallowed. “You have to …”

  “Yes,” said Dee. “It’s not a very savoury subject, but it’s no use running away from it. The transit time for food through the system should ideally be less than twenty-four hours. The average time for British men—of which you, Martin, are an example—is over sixty hours. Sixty hours!”

  Martin swallowed again. “And it involves …”

  “Yes,” said Dee. “It does. But we don’t need to go into that. One doesn’t have to look.”

  She stared at Martin. She liked this young man. There was something innocent about him; something fresh. And yet when she had looked into his irises …

  She smiled at him. “Don’t be too concerned. It’s not as bad as you think it is. I’ve had colonic irrigation. I went to Thailand and had a special course of it on Ko Samui. But you don’t have to go that far.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. Not at all.” She reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “How old are you again, Martin?”

  “Nineteen. Twenty next month.”

  “Twenty years of impurity,” mused Dee. “Look, why don’t you let me do it for you? It’s not difficult, you know.”

  Martin looked down at the floor. He was not sure what to say. It was such a generous offer.

  5. Unmarried Girls

  DEE MIGHT HAVE HAD a low opinion of her flatmate Caroline’s work, but for all that it was about as removed as was at all possible from the factory floor—in so far as any factory floors remained—still it required a measure of talent, and considerable application. And that was not all: in addition, the annual fees for the course amounted to seventeen thousand pounds, and that was just for tuition. On top of that one had to live, and for most of the people on the course with Caroline—and for Caroline herself—the living was the expensive part. One could not do a Master’s degree in Fine Art and just exist. There were certain standards to be kept up, and those were expensive.

  Caroline had the distinction of having had her photograph featured in Rural Living, a fact she carefully concealed from her flatmates. Not that this was difficult: Dee’s reading was more or less confined to the v
egetarian and alternative therapies press—Anti-oxidant News, for example, or The Healthy Table; Jenny read political biographies, and little else; and Jo, as far as anybody could ascertain, read nothing at all. So there was little chance that any of them would have spotted her in the magazine, immediately after the property advertisements and just before the editorial on rural policy.

  The publication of full-page photographs of attractive young women of a certain class was one of the great traditions of British journalism, better established than the rival—and vulgar—tradition of plastering naked women across page three of the Sun. The Rural Living girls could not have been more different from their less-clad counterparts in the Sun, separated by social and cultural chasms so wide as to suggest that each group belonged to a fundamentally different species.

  Rural Living girls were photographed in a rural setting, although from time to time one might be featured in a cloister or some other suitable architectural spot. Generally they wore clothes that were not entirely dissimilar to their mothers’. Indeed, in the case of those girls of very ancient breeding, where long bloodlines had not been synonymous with commercial success and where genteel penury was the order of the day, the clothes they wore were in fact their mothers’, having been passed on with relief when it was discovered that fashions had come full circle and the outfits were once again à la mode.