Corduroy Mansions

42. The Morning Sun was in Her Eyes

When asked whether she was driving back to London, Barbara Ragg hesitated before replying. She looked at the young man standing beside her: what business of his was her destination? She appreciated his materialising from nowhere and helping to pick up the shattered glass from her wing mirror, but she did not think that it gave him the right to ask where she was going. She looked at him coolly - or in a manner she hoped would give the impression of coolness - but even as she stared at him she knew that the effect of her gaze was probably quite different from what she wanted. She felt flushed, rather than composed; suddenly unsettled, rather than determined. Only a few minutes ago she had walked out of the Mermaid Inn filled with resolve and firmness - a free agent once again after deciding that no longer would she endure the humiliation of being a mere adjunct to Oedipus Snark’s life. And here, within the space of a few minutes, she found that a pair of green male eyes fixed on hers had reduced her to a state of vulnerability and indecision. How she answered this simple question, she vaguely sensed, would in some way determine the course of her life.

That, of course, was absurd. The pattern of one’s life could not be changed by a chance encounter in the parking place of the Mermaid Inn. And yet, it could - lives, even our own, could be changed by such apparently insignificant events, and Barbara knew it. An apparently throwaway remark by one person could send another in a direction that would have profound consequences for what they did. ‘Why don’t you write poetry?’ one young schoolboy had said to another young schoolboy - the sort of thing that boys used to say to one another in more literate days, and the sort of remark that might have no effect on the world unless . . . unless the boy to whom the suggestion was made was none other than the young Wystan Auden. Perhaps a similar boy had said to another small boy called Horatio, ‘Why don’t you go to sea?’, and the juvenile Nelson had replied, ‘Yes, why not?’

So, in less elevated circles, we might toss a coin as to whether or not to go to a party, decide to go, and there meet the person whom we are to marry and spend our lives with. And if that person came, say, from New Zealand, and wanted to return, then we might find ourselves spending our life in Christchurch. Not that spending one’s lifetime in Christchurch is anything less than very satisfactory - who among us would not be happy living in a city of well-behaved people, within reach of mountains, where the civic virtues ensure courtesy and comfort and where the major problems of the world are an ocean away? But had the coin fallen the other way - as coins occasionally do - then that wholly different prospect might never have opened up and one might spend the rest of one’s days in the place where one started out. Or one might pick up a newspaper abandoned in a train by a person not well trained in those same civic virtues, open it and chance to see an advertisement for a job that one would not otherwise have seen. And that same job might take one into the path of risk, and that very risk may materialise and end one’s life prematurely. Again the act of picking up the paper has consequences unglimpsed at the time, but profound nonetheless.

Barbara knew this, and knew that how she answered would have consequences for her. It would be safest to say, ‘No, I’m not going to London,’ but that would mean that she would never know why he had asked, and it would, in addition, be a lie, and she was a truthful person. Oedipus lied; he lied all the time, she thought, but somehow lies suited him. He was a natural liar - he had a gift for meretricious speech that would be the envy of any snake-oil salesman or politician in a tight corner, a facility based on the fact that he actually believed his lies. It was a great gift, as it had immense transformative powers: if everything that one said was true, then what power one had over the world. Bad weather could be changed at a stroke to good; a downturn of fortune could simply by misdescription become something quite different. But Barbara could do none of that, not even mislead a stranger as to her destination.

So she said, ‘Yes, I am going to London, as it happens.’

The young man holding the shards of glass looked over his shoulder. ‘One sec,’ he said. ‘I need to go and put these in the bin.’

He turned round and walked over to a small rubbish bin beside the hotel’s back door. She watched him. The morning sun was in her eyes and she used a hand to shade them. She watched the young man, and did not see Oedipus at the window of the hotel dining room, looking down at her. He was watching her.

The young man dropped the glass in the bin and came back to join her. She saw his face now, for those few seconds that are crucial - so psychologists say - for the forming of an opinion one way or the other about another person.

He dusted his hands on the side of his jeans. ‘I was wondering . . .’ he began.

‘Do you need a lift up there?’

She had not intended to say this; it just came out.

He smiled. ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind. I was going to catch a train, but I’d have to walk down to the station and get a ticket . . .’ He shrugged, and smiled in a self-consciously helpless way. ‘And I’d far rather travel in a car like yours than in a train.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s great.’

She glanced into the open-top car. ‘Have you got a suitcase? There’s not all that much room, but I can shift my things a bit.’

He had only a small bag, which he went into the hotel to retrieve. While he did that, Barbara moved the car to the side of the parking place and took stock of her situation. One should not give lifts to a stranger; that was now an elementary precaution, which anybody would be considered very unwise to ignore. The days of hitchhikers standing by the roadside seemed to be well and truly over, such was the distrust that prevailed. Everybody was a potential assailant; nobody spoke to one another for fear of being misinterpreted; nobody comforted another, put an arm around a shoulder - to do so would be to invite accusation. And yet here I am, thought Barbara, picking up a man whose name I don’t even know, allowing him to get into the car, and driving off to London. Anything could happen.

She reached for the key in the ignition. The simplest thing to do, the safest thing, would be to start the engine and drive out while he was fetching his bag. She turned the key and the engine sprang to life.