Corduroy Mansions Page 0,139
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.”
97. The Interview
JAMES HAD SAID that he would drop in on Corduroy Mansions round about six that evening. He had also said that he might phone and let Caroline know how the interview and the lunch had gone, if he had time. There had been no call, and so she knew nothing about what had happened until she saw the expression on his face. That revealed everything.
“You got it?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yes. I did.”
He was standing in the doorway; she was in the hall. Now she stepped forward and threw her arms around him. “Oh, James! Congratulations! You clever, clever boy!”
She kissed him on his cheek; she had intended to kiss him on the lips, but he moved and presented his cheek instead. He wriggled free of her embrace, not indecently soon but rather quickly nonetheless.
“I’ve brought a bottle of champagne,” he said. “I bought it from one of those places that sells them chilled so that they’re ready for an immediate celebration.”
She took the bottle from him and went into the kitchen to fetch two glasses. He followed her through, full of news about the interview.
“I was really nervous at the beginning,” he said. “There was this guy before me and he came out looking very depressed—defeated, really. I said to him, ‘See you at lunch.’ And he said that he had not been invited. I felt terrible about that.”
“Well, you knew that you had a better chance, then.”
James raised an eyebrow. “Except for the fact that he had a Ph.D. I had spoken to him before he went in and he told me—a Ph.D. from McGill on Tintoretto. A Ph.D., Caroline, for a small job in