Corduroy Mansions

96. Three Sorts of Man Trouble

If Caroline had felt at a loose end that morning, she felt even more so in the afternoon. Her lunch with Tim Something had been concluded with an exchange of telephone numbers and an arrangement to meet for dinner two days later - ‘to discuss the modalities’ of the job offer, as Tim put it. She agreed to this, although she was not entirely sure what a modality was - a state of uncertainty later resolved by a visit to a dictionary. They had an agreement, it seemed, and now the formalities of that agreement would have to be worked out. She wondered why he could not have said that they would meet to discuss the details - it would have been so much simpler and would have involved no dictionary. She felt slightly irritated by this, but contained her irritation; if she were to work for Tim Something, she would have to stop herself objecting to the way he put things.

She returned to Corduroy Mansions at about three o’clock and tried to begin the essay that had been hanging over her head. The topic was easy enough: each member of the class had to write a four-thousand-word piece on a painting of their choice. This was a gift, because everybody would have four thousand words to say about a painting that interested them. James, she knew, had already written two thousand words on An Old Man and His Grandson by Ghirlandaio, a painting he had seen in the Louvre.

‘Two thousand words already,’ he had remarked to Caroline. ‘And I haven’t even got beyond the man’s nose! I’m still writing about that.’

Caroline knew the painting. ‘It’s a marvellous nose. So bulbous.’

‘Exactly,’ said James. ‘The painting is all about that nose, really. And I think that’s what the child is looking up at. He sees a nose. His grandfather is a nose to him. I could write a whole book about it, you know, Caroline. I really could. Like that whole book I’ve just read about Hopper’s Nighthawks.’

She envied James his facility with words, his ability to write two thousand words, and more, about a nose. She was out of her depth, she felt, compared with people like James. There was no place for her in the world of art, and all she was was a young woman from a conventional background in Cheltenham whose only distinction so far had been to appear in Rural Living magazine, on a page normally dedicated to attractive, marriageable, county-ish girls whose fathers were keen to get them off their hands. It was a bleak thought.

Unable to settle down to the not-yet-started essay on a not-yet-identified painting, Caroline decided to leave the flat and go for a cup of herbal tea at Daylesford Organic. The shop was busy; the ladies who lunched had been replaced by ladies who drank tea, and Caroline had to wait a few minutes for a table. But she found one eventually and sat down to page through a magazine while she waited for her tea. She glanced about her and saw, at a neighbouring table, a man looking in her direction. She turned away, but then looked back at him and realised that she recognised him. It was the man in the flat at the bottom of the stairs - the man whom she hardly ever saw, although Jenny had spoken to him. She smiled, and nodded, which was the signal for him to rise to his feet and approach her table.

‘Please forgive me for asking,’ he said, ‘but are you waiting for anybody?’

She shook her head. If he wanted to join her she would welcome it, given her unsettled mood.

Basil Wickramsinghe sat down opposite Caroline. ‘I believe I have met one of your flatmates,’ he said. ‘Jenny. She and I met here just the other day.’

‘Yes,’ said Caroline. ‘So I gather.’

Basil, who had brought his cup over with him, took a sip of tea. ‘It is a very fine building, Corduroy Mansions,’ he said. ‘I like living there. Do you?’

She nodded. ‘I do. I love it.’

‘And this area is so nice,’ Basil continued. ‘It’s so easy to walk to the parks from here. And we have all we need, don’t we?’

Caroline sighed. She was thinking of her lunch with Tim Something. What was she doing? She hardly knew him, and when she had met him before she had not even liked him. How could her feelings change? Was she that flighty?

Basil Wickramsinghe was staring at her. ‘You’re unhappy, aren’t you?’

She stared at him for a moment. He could tell. And she could tell, just by looking at him, that this quiet man could probably read her as easily as she felt she could read others. ‘I’m unsettled,’ she said.

Basil took a further sip of tea. ‘Which means man trouble, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose it does.’

Basil smiled. ‘There are three sorts of man trouble,’ he said. ‘There is one where there is no man. There is one where there is one man. And there is one where there is more than one man.’

‘Mine is the third. I can’t decide between two.’

‘That probably seems very difficult,’ said Basil, ‘but it isn’t. Not really. You can find the answer by doing a very simple thing. Close your eyes and then tell me which one you see.’

Too simple, thought Caroline.

‘Go on,’ urged Basil. ‘Close your eyes. Which man comes to you? Don’t think about it, just see who steps forward.’

‘I’m not sure if it’s that straightforward.’

‘No, try it,’ he urged. ‘It’s rather like dream analysis. Dreams are meant to tell us about our inmost desires, aren’t they? But the problem with dreams is that we can’t anticipate in advance which desires they will reveal. If you do what I suggest, your conscious mind can instruct your subconscious to respond. It’s rather like a lucid dream, where we know we’re dreaming but we continue to control the unfolding of the dream.’ He paused. ‘Go on. Just close your eyes and tell me which man comes to you.’

Caroline closed her eyes. For a moment there was nothing in her mind but the sounds of the café about her: the rattling of cups on saucers; the subdued drone of the conversation of others; the sound of leeks being chopped in the kitchen. But then she saw him, standing before her, smiling, his arms open, ready to embrace her.

It was neither James, nor Tim Something. It was somebody she did not know at all. A perfect stranger.

‘Open your eyes,’ said Basil.

She opened them and looked at her neighbour.

‘I can tell from your expression that you saw neither of them,’ Basil said. ‘Am I right? You saw a stranger.’

‘I’m afraid I did.’

Basil sat back in his seat. ‘Well, that means that you have yet to meet the right man for you. He is out there somewhere, but you have not yet met him.’