Corduroy Mansions

24. Lemon Gems

James and Caroline sat on the sofa and ate the lemon gems they had just baked. The biscuits were, they felt, a success, although James was of the view that Nigella could have recommended just a touch more lemon. Caroline disagreed. ‘She never makes a mistake,’ she said. ‘She’s the domestic goddess, remember.’

‘I’m not saying that she’s wrong,’ James reassured her. ‘Heaven forfend that I would ever disagree with Nigella or Delia.’ He bowed his head respectfully, an unexpected gesture, but touching, thought Caroline. ‘Or Jamie, for that matter,’ he continued. ‘You have to trust these people, you know, Caroline. If we started to argue with our cookery writers, then where would it end . . . ?’

James, Caroline noticed, had a tendency to emphasise certain strategic words, to italicise them, a habit that gave particular weight to his pronouncements. Impressed with this, as with many of the things James said or did, she had tried to do the same, but found that she ended up emphasising the wrong words, thus adding opacity rather than clarity to what she said.

She looked at James. Since that moment of accidental, shared intimacy in the kitchen, she had been wondering whether the conversation would revert to the subject they had been discussing over coffee earlier that day. James had said nothing further about that, and she found herself somewhat relieved. Perhaps the whole matter had been set aside; it was a delicate topic, and the baking of the lemon gems had changed the atmosphere to one of comfortable collaboration. James returned her gaze, but not in a way which gave any indication of his intentions.

‘What about you?’ he said.

‘Me?’

James picked up another lemon gem. ‘I know so little about you. We’re friends, of course, and we know one another well. But there’s a difference between knowing somebody and knowing them. You know what I mean?’

Caroline was not sure, but decided that perhaps she did. James sometimes left her a bit behind, she felt, and she was eager that he should not think that she did not understand. ‘Yeah,’ she said.

James wiped a crumb from his lips. ‘So, I know a bit about your past, about Cheltenham and all that.’ He waved a hand in the air to indicate a whole hinterland of personal history - a county, a family, a set of social expectations - Caroline’s whole family history. ‘I know the sort of background you’ve had to endure. Your old man being a land agent and all that sort of thing. And your mother. I’m surprised they didn’t put your photograph in the front of Rural Living.’

Caroline froze. She was on the point of popping a lemon gem into her mouth, but now her hand fell to her lap. The lemon gem, held between nervous fingers, cracked slightly, but Nigella’s mixture held and it escaped being reduced to crumbs.

‘What?’ Her voice was small.

‘Rural Living,’ said James. ‘I can just see it, can’t you? Caroline, only daughter of Mr and Mrs Whatever Jarvis of Bin End, or wherever, is pictured here - in pearls. Caroline is reading Art History at Oxford (almost) and hopes to work at Sotheby’s.’ He laughed. ‘I can just see it.’

Caroline laughed, but her laugh came out strangled, prompting James to enquire whether she was all right.

‘I’m fine,’ said Caroline, offering him another lemon gem. That would distract him, she hoped, and perhaps steer the conversation into less dangerous waters.

‘Of course, you can’t help it,’ James went on. ‘Nobody can help their background. Although you can correct things later on, once you’ve got away from family influences. Not everybody does, of course. Some people remain clones of their parents all the way to the grave.’

‘I quite like my parents,’ said Caroline. And she did. They loved her; for all their fuddy-duddy ways and their outdated notions, they loved her, and she knew that she would never encounter such unconditional love again. Never.

‘Of course,’ said James quickly. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t picking on them in particular. I was just thinking of what parents can do to their children - often with the best intentions in the world. You know Larkin’s poem?’

Caroline was not sure.

James smiled patiently. ‘It’s the one with the rather - how shall we put it? - forceful first line about what parents do to their kids. It was in a poetry book we had at school and I remember that when we got to it, the English teacher went pale and moved very quickly to the next poem, some frightfully dull thing by Cecil Day Lewis. Of course that meant we all went and looked very closely at what Larkin had to say. But it’s mild stuff, really, compared with what everybody writes today. It must be frustrating being a poet - or any sort of artist - and not being able to offend anyone any more.’ Or were people still as readily offended, and all that had changed was the nature of what was permissible and what was interdicted?

He reached for another lemon gem - his sixth. ‘Sugar craving,’ he said apologetically. ‘Your fault, Caroline, for suggesting that we bake these things.’

‘Oh well . . .’

James licked his fingers. ‘Last one. That’s it.’ He stared at Caroline intently. ‘What would you have done, by the way, if your parents had tried to get your photograph into Rural Living? What would you have said?’

She looked away. James was proving persistent, and she would have to change the subject. ‘Let’s not talk about all that,’ she said. ‘My parents are my parents. I’m me. Same as you, really. You don’t sign up to everything your paren—your father stands for, do you?’

James shook his head ‘No. But if I’m honest, I can see my father in me. Some of the things I do.’

‘Well, that’s natural enough.’

‘Maybe. But look, we were talking about you.’ He paused, as if unsure about continuing. ‘Are you still seeing him?’ he asked. ‘What’s he called again?’

Caroline was on the point of answering, but stopped herself. Had she replied spontaneously, she would have confirmed that she was still seeing Tom. That was true, but she was only just still seeing him, and she had already decided that there was no future in the relationship. Her friendship with James was, she thought, on the cusp of change, and there was a chance that he might become more than a mere friend. Stranger things have happened, she said to herself - a banal phrase, a cliché, but one that nonetheless expressed the sense of opening out, of possibility, that she now experienced. Identity was not as simple a matter as many people believed: the old idea of clearly delineated male and female characteristics was distinctly passé, as old-fashioned as vanilla ice cream. Now there were new men, men in touch with their feminine side, and the intriguing category of metrosexuals, too - sensitive men, men who used male cosmetics such as ‘man-liner’, men who would enjoy baking Nigella’s lemon gems. These men could be more than adequate lovers and husbands, she believed; much better than the one-dimensional macho types who might score ten out of ten on the heterosexuality scale but who were somewhat boring in their conversation and hopeless in the kitchen. Men like Tom.