Corduroy Mansions

31. Dinner at the Mermaid

At dinner at the Mermaid Inn, Oedipus Snark chose scallops as his first course. The waiter who took his order, a young man with neatly barbered hair who had just completed a degree in English at the University of Sussex, asked, ‘Scallops, sir?’ Oedipus nodded, and Barbara Ragg, looking up from her scrutiny of the menu, said, ‘Oh, scallops. Yes, I’ll have those too.’

The waiter scribbled on his notepad. ‘And for your main course, sir?’

‘Lamb cutlets, please.’

‘Such a wise choice,’ said the waiter, before turning to Barbara. ‘And your main course, madam?’

‘I’ll take lamb cutlets too,’ replied Barbara Ragg. She looked up at the young man with ill-concealed irritation. She did not think there was any need for a waiter to compliment one on one’s choice of food, and yet so many of them did. They should be neutral, equally impassive in the face of good and bad choices, as impressed by Mr Sprat’s opting for lean as by his wife’s preference for fat. But there was more: he had taken Oedipus’s order first, she noticed. Were waiters no longer trained to take the woman’s order first, or did they now feel they had to give the man precedence, purely to make the point that they had risen above the old sexist courtesies? For a few moments she mused on the implications of social change for the strict rules of etiquette. What, for example, was the position when dealing with same-sex couples? If two women in such a relationship were dining together, and if the waiter normally observed the rule of asking women first, should he then take the order of the more feminine partner before that of the more masculine one - if such a distinction were obvious? And would such a policy be welcome or would it provoke hostility? People could be touchy, and it might not be a good idea to do anything but leave it to chance. But if the waiter turned first to an overtly masculine-looking partner, he might be suspected of doing so solely in order to avoid being thought to attend to the feminine partner first. And that would reveal that he had secretly made a judgement of roles. So only one course of action remained - for the waiter to look at neither diner while he said, dispassionately staring into the air above their heads, ‘Now which of you two is first?’ That would perhaps be the most tactful way of addressing the matter. Perhaps.

Oedipus Snark also looked irritated. He had no objection to the waiter’s taking his order first - indeed he rather expected it, being an MP and being in the public eye. What he objected to was Barbara’s choosing exactly the same courses as he had. Had she no imagination? Or was she trying to be like him? That really annoyed him. He could understand, of course, why somebody should wish to imitate him, but he did not like it to be so obvious. I shall have to get rid of her, he thought; she’s going to have to go.

‘I read something interesting about scallops the other day,’ Barbara remarked. ‘Did you know that the best scallops are those that are hand-picked by divers? Apparently the other ones are sucked up by great vacuum cleaners and that bruises the scallop - ruins it, they say.’

Oedipus nodded. He was thinking of a new research assistant he had met in the House of Commons library. She had certainly been hand-picked, he thought, as opposed to being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. She was currently working for another MP but that little difficulty could be dealt with easily enough. And if she came to work for him, then he could get rid of Jenny and Barbara at one stroke, neatly inserting this new girl into the roles occupied by both of them. It would be a perfect solution - not only more convenient and entertaining, but cheaper too.

‘I think perhaps we should ask them where they get their scallops from,’ Barbara said.

Oedipus waved a hand in the air. ‘The fishmonger, I expect.’ He looked at her. ‘You’re not turning into one of these people who bang on about food miles, are you?’

Barbara frowned. ‘I don’t bang on about anything, Oedipus. But there is some point to the food miles argument. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the fresh beans in our local supermarket should come from East Africa?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Farmers there have to sell their produce. And if we didn’t buy it, then we’d be taking the food out of their mouths rather than putting it into ours. If you see what I mean.’

‘I’m all for free trade,’ said Barbara. ‘But think of the fuel it takes to airlift a sack of beans from Kenya to London.’

Oedipus shrugged. ‘Everything’s wrong,’ he said. ‘The whole way we order our affairs is wrong.’

Barbara reached for a piece of bread. ‘At least you can do something about it,’ she said. ‘You’re in Parliament.’

Oedipus erupted into sudden laughter. ‘Parliament? What’s Parliament got to do with it?’

‘Everything, I would have thought.’

‘Oh, Barbara, my dear,’ said Oedipus Snark. ‘Parliament decides nothing. I have no illusions about that. We’re voting fodder - a sort of press conference audience for the Prime Minister at Question Time. We’re more or less instructed to boo or shout. Parliament controls nobody. We’re thrown a few scraps of symbolic power from time to time, but the Government, in the shape of the Prime Minister and his close allies, decides everything. Look at the way our constitution has been changed. Just like that - no real consultation. Nothing.’

‘I thought—’ began Barbara.

‘And then there’s Brussels,’ Oedipus went on. ‘Brussels decides our fate to a very large extent. But do we actually vote for the people who make the decisions over there? Answer: no. And are they accountable to us? Again the answer is no.’

Barbara absorbed all this. ‘So why are you in politics if you can’t do anything?’

Oedipus fingered his tie. ‘It’s an agreeable career,’ he said. ‘And it gives most of the people in it a sense of belonging, and purpose too, I suppose. But let’s not delude ourselves as to what one person can do. Even somebody like me.’

Barbara decided to change the subject. ‘I’ve had a very trying week,’ she said. ‘A lot of stress.’

Oedipus smiled blandly. He did not really care very much what sort of week Barbara had had; in fact, he did not care at all. But if she wanted to talk, then he supposed that he could at least provide an ear for her to pour her troubles into. Silly woman.

‘Do tell me,’ he said. ‘Difficult colleagues again? Unreasonable publishers refusing to publish your pet authors?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that. Rather the opposite, in fact. You see, I’ve had somebody come to see me with a sure-fire, copper-bottomed bestseller. Fabulous story. Great pace. A tour de force if ever there was one.’

She saw a flicker of interest cross Oedipus’s face. At least he sees me now, she thought.

‘And?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what to do with it,’ said Barbara. ‘The author is difficult - but then so are all authors, without exception. He has his notions and he only wants to place it with the publisher of his choice. Our author is determined to try to get this particular publisher - he seems to care nothing for the suggestions I’ve made. He wants to go for this completely unsuitable high-end literary publisher.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Oedipus.

‘I’m going to have to sit tight for six months,’ said Barbara. ‘The author is off on retreat somewhere and doesn’t want me to do anything until he comes back. So I sit on this fabulous idea and watch it gather dust.’

Oedipus watched her; he was thinking. ‘Tell me about this idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know whether it’ll run the way you say it will.’