Corduroy Mansions

92. Caroline Goes to Lunch Again

If Barbara was certain that morning that she had found the man with whom she wanted to share her life, the same could not be said of Caroline. The final break with Tom, which could so easily have been messy, had proved to be simplicity itself. After his initial show of jealousy and resentment, manifesting itself in an almost immediately regretted bout of incivility towards James, Tom had proved to be perfectly reasonable. She suspected that they both wanted the break, and that his reluctance to let her go was no more than a vestigial sign of the feelings he had once had for her. Now it was done, and she was free again. Or was she?

James was a problem. She was becoming very used to his company - so used to it, in fact, that she found herself feeling dissatisfied and at odds on days when she did not see him. It was worrying, because it seemed to her that some sort of dependence was building up and she was not sure that that was what she wanted. Then there was also the question of James’s fundamental suitability. That he liked her was not in doubt, but could he ever be passionate about her? And if he could not, then what was the point of his being anything more than a friend?

That morning, James was not in the lecture room for the lecture on sixteenth-century Venetian painting. His absence was expected: he had told her that he was due to go for an interview for a position at a gallery; the interview was to be at eleven, and was to be followed by lunch.

‘A bad sign,’ Caroline had said. ‘If you go for a job and they ask you to lunch it’s a bad sign.’

James seemed surprised. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘They’re wanting to look at you in social surroundings,’ she explained. ‘They want to see how you hold your knife and fork.’

James laughed. ‘Hello? This is the twenty-first century, you know! People don’t care about that sort of thing any more.’

Caroline defended herself. ‘I’m not so sure about that. They won’t be up-front about it, but they still do it. Or some do. And a gallery like that would definitely subscribe to that sort of thing. Look at their clientele. Look at the people who work in those galleries. They’re not exactly rough diamonds.’

James looked downcast. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Do you think I should even bother to go?’

His tone made her rather regret having issued the warning. ‘Of course you should go. I was just telling you what I thought they might be doing. And anyway, I’m sure that your table manners are fine.’

He sighed. ‘I don’t know. Look, when you get a bread roll, you do break it, don’t you, rather than cut it?’

‘You do.’

‘And what do you do with smoked salmon? Do you put it on the bread and then cut the bread, or do you eat the salmon with a knife and fork and have bits of bread in between mouthfuls?’

‘I always put the smoked salmon on the bread,’ said Caroline. ‘Then I cut it into squares. But they’re not going to pay any attention to that sort of thing. They’ll just want to make sure that you don’t talk with your mouth full or burp.’

James thought for a moment. ‘What if I do burp?’ he asked. ‘What do I say?’

Caroline laughed. ‘My parents always told me not to say “pardon”. They said you should say “excuse me”. But they’re such snobs.’

‘Could you just say “oops”?’ asked James.

‘Maybe.’

‘And if I need to go to the loo,’ James went on. ‘What then? Do I call it “the gents” or “the loo”? Or what?’

‘My father calls it the lavatory,’ said Caroline. ‘I think that’s the approved word in really smart circles. Not the lav, but the lavatory. I don’t like that word much, I’m afraid.’

‘What about “the little boys” room”?’ asked James.

‘Definitely not. Extremely twee.’

‘“The washroom”?’

‘American. They’re very keen on euphemisms.’

James nodded. ‘“Letting go” means sacking someone. “I’m going to have to let you go” means “you’re sacked”.’

Caroline thought: I let Tom go. But then maybe he wanted to go. And at that point, she stopped her reverie, which had been a prolonged one, drifting from James to Tom, to home, to her parents; now the lecture on Venetian painting had ended and she found that all she had written in her Moleskine notebook was: ‘The boundaries of what we call the Venetian School . . .’

She snapped the Moleskine shut and followed her fellow students out of the room. She felt at a bit of a loose end; there was an essay to write but she felt disinclined to start on it. If only James had been here, she would have taken him for lunch at that bistro where they had met Tim Something. Poor James - it was lunchtime now and he would be under inspection by his prospective employers, his handling of smoked salmon being judged according to some arcane precepts of the proper way to tackle such things. Yes, poor James.

She decided on the spur of the moment: she would go for lunch at the bistro - she would treat herself. Why not? There was no rule against having lunch by yourself.

She walked round Bedford Square and into Great Russell Street. She liked this part of London, which was such a contrast to the garishness of Oxford Street, not far away. The shops here were small and had character, and even if she was not in the market for antiquities or first editions, she liked to see them in the windows. She paused outside the headquarters of a bookshop that was also a press. A selection of titles was displayed in the window and her eye was drawn to Sociobiology: The Whisperings Within. She liked that. There were whisperings within all of us; whisperings that prompted us to do one thing rather than another, whisperings that made us what we were.

‘The whisperings within,’ said a voice at her side. ‘Interesting! Should we listen to them?’

She spun round. Tim Something was smiling at her.

‘You don’t fancy a bit of lunch, do you?’ asked the photographer.

Caroline hesitated. She had a feeling that the answer that she gave to this question might determine a great deal for her; it was not just lunch at stake.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

It was as if the answer came from someone else; not from the cautious self which she thought ran her life, but from another self altogether, a self of more instinctive stamp, a self that beckoned from altogether wilder, more exciting shores. And she could tell, just by looking at him, that Tim’s invitation, as spontaneous as was her acceptance, came from the equivalent quarter within him.