A Conspiracy of Friends: A Corduroy Mansions Novel

by Alexander McCall Smith

“I didn’t answer her, and so she said, ‘Well, actions speak louder than words, don’t they?’ And that was the beginning of our affair. There, I’ve said it. I had thought I was going to avoid being a gigolo, but that was exactly what I had become. I was a kept man too—”

  Barbara raised a hand to stop him. “Please don’t say that, Hugh! You were not a gigolo, neither were you a kept man. You were a captive. And that’s absolutely different. There’s an ocean of difference between the two. And anyway, it was only until you could escape—only until you reached Jamaica.”

  Hugh shook his head. “I wish that were true, but it isn’t, I’m afraid. You see, when we reached Jamaica, I went ashore with Irma. We went on a tour and saw the sights, and then we went to lunch at a restaurant just outside town. I could very easily have run away at that point—there was only one officer from the ship with our party and he didn’t seem to be watching me very closely. I could have escaped but, you know what, Barbara? I went back to the ship entirely voluntarily.”

  Barbara stared at him. “Why?” she asked.

  Hugh looked down at the floor. “I was enjoying myself,” he said. He raised his eyes and met her gaze. “So you see, Barbara, I was a gigolo in every sense of the word. I was signed up. Committed. Call it what you like.”

  51. In the Bag

  WILLIAM’S WEEKEND WITH his friends, Geoffrey and Maggie, was turning out to be neither restful nor enjoyable. Things could have been worse, of course: there must be weekends during which the hosts’ house burns to the ground, one of the guests murders another, the hostess is arrested in extradition proceedings or the guests are all poisoned by the inclusion of death’s cap mushrooms in the stew. Such weekends must be very difficult indeed, not least because of the wording of the thank-you letters that one would have to write. The disaster, whatever it was, could hardly be ignored, but must be referred to tactfully in the letter, and always set in proper perspective. Thus, in the case of mushroom poisoning, one would comment on how the other courses of the meal were delicious; in the case of the hostess’s arrest, one would say something comforting about the ability of defence lawyers in the jurisdiction to which she was being extradited—and so on, mutatis mutandis, trying at all times to be as positive as possible.

  In William’s case, the weekend got off to an egregiously bad start with Maggie’s extraordinary confession that for years she had nurtured a secret passion for him. Such declarations can be unsettling, especially when they come from the wife of one of one’s oldest friends. So it was hardly conducive to the spirit of relaxed and tolerant friendship that is the hallmark of a good weekend visit; and how badly it was to go further downhill with the subsequent realisation that Freddie de la Hay was lost, possibly permanently. This realisation dawned shortly before dinner, when Freddie had still not returned, and, in the fading light, William began to walk through the neighbouring fields, calling his dog’s name but getting no response: no bark or whimper, no howl, just silence as the descending night swallowed his calls.

  Those who had been invited for dinner—specifically to meet William—came and went with scarcely a glimpse of their fellow guest. They were disappointed but understanding; being country people themselves, they knew the importance of animals and could sympathise with the distress that follows upon the disappearance of a much-loved dog. A couple of them spotted William as they drove home—a figure outlined against the night sky, stumbling across a field, in danger, they thought, of suffering the fate of Freddie de la Hay himself—of losing his way, of falling into a ditch or breaking an ankle in a rabbit hole.

  But none of this happened to William, and he returned to the house shortly before midnight, dirty and dispirited. Geoffrey tried to cheer him up, pronouncing optimistically on the likelihood that Freddie would suddenly show up the next morning none the worse for his escapade. “They follow an interesting scent,” he said, “and then they suddenly realise that they’ve gone too far. They find their own way back, though, as often as not.”

  William was not in the least bit consoled by this, and when he awoke the next morning he did so with the sinking feeling that there would be no sign of Freddie that day. And he was to be proved right: though he covered even more ground in his searches, when evening came Freddie was still lost. Even Geoffrey seemed less optimistic, and dinner on Saturday was an affair of long faces and very little conversation.

  Freddie was reported as missing to the local police on Sunday. Then, once that was done and William had made a final drive around the network of local lanes, stopping every so often to call for Freddie, he said goodbye to Geoffrey and Maggie, before heading home. There was nothing in his leave-taking with Maggie to give any indication that what was happening was more than one good friend saying goodbye to another; but William sensed that something was changed between them. Maggie embraced him, avoiding his eyes, and that confirmed his fears that things were not and could never again be the same.

  The drive home was melancholy. He switched on the car radio for distraction, but thoughts of Freddie de la Hay kept intruding. Was he still alive, or had he died some awful, suffocating death in a rabbit hole? Had he been run over and bundled guiltily into a ditch by a driver too cowardly to make enquiry or too selfish to take him to a vet? Both of these were possibilities, William thought, and both were very hard for him to accept.

  William wondered whether he should have stayed a little longer with Geoffrey and Maggie in order to widen the search. The difficulty with that, though, was that somebody had to open the shop the next morning, and his assistant was on a week’s holiday. And it would not make any difference, he decided, because Freddie was dead—he was sure of it.

  He parked the car in its lockup and made his way back to Corduroy Mansions. It was now late on Sunday afternoon, an emotionally flat time for many people, and for none more than William that day. Letting himself into the flat, he put on some music in an attempt to cheer himself up. He chose the Penguin Café Orchestra, a lively band that could normally lift any depressed spirit—but not his at that particular moment. And then he remembered why: this was Freddie de la Hay’s favourite music. He turned off the CD player and switched on the television. It was a banal game show, but at least it amounted to light and noise.

  He went into his bedroom and began to unpack his bag. He had bought a new pair of Belgian shoes, but he had barely worn them that weekend; he replaced them on the shoe rack next to his wardrobe. Then he took out his dirty washing and bundled it into the washing basket for his cleaner to tackle the following day. Then his spare pair of socks and … He stopped. Somebody had slipped an envelope into his bag, a white envelope on which these words were written: William—you must read this.

  He opened the envelope and took out a folded sheet of paper.

  “Dearest William,” he read. “Since I spoke to you on Friday I have been unable to think of anything but you. I have tried to fight my feelings, and I have failed. I cannot conquer them. I have to see you, my darling, I really do. If there was ever any doubt in my mind as to the rightness of our getting together, now there is none. And so, I am coming to see you in London. I’ll arrive at the end of the week and shall stay in Islington with my cousin. Please keep Friday night for me—I’ll come to Corduroy Mansions and we can go out for dinner, my treat. Thank you, and keep safe, my darling—Maggie.”

  52. Cosmo Bartonette Arrives

  IF WILLIAM WAS inclined to self-doubt, the same cannot be said for his son, Eddie. While his father wrestled with the anxiety stemming from his increasingly complicated life, Eddie was cheerfully embarking on the next stage of the plan that he and Merle had hatched to convert the house in the Windward Islands into a hotel. They had travelled there a week or so earlier, and were now waiting at the local airport—a modest affair—for the arrival of the aircraft that was bringing the celebrated interior designer Cosmo Bartonette, to put into effect his themed conversion of the house.

  Cosmo appeared to be not in the least tired by the long journey from London, via a
change of plane at Kingston.

  “My dears!” he said. “Here I am, completely un-wilted, thanks to the ministrations of British Airways first class. Bumped up from mere business class into first because somebody somewhere—and God bless him—recognised who I was! Honestly, my dears, I had no intention of trading on my name but I could hardly prevent them in their eagerness!”

  “Nice bit of luck,” said Eddie, taking Cosmo’s suitcase from him.

  “Indeed,” said Cosmo, kissing Merle on the cheek. “Perhaps I’m hedged about by the protection of the saint who looks after interior designers—and there must be one, though who knows what he’s called; I don’t. One thing’s for certain, though: he must have had tremendously good taste, both in this life and in the next. Perhaps he met his saintly end while rearranging furniture, or refusing to hand over to some beastly pagans the plans for the decoration of his bishop’s palace.”

  They left the airport and set off on the hour-long journey to the house. Cosmo spoke more or less without interruption. “I must say,” he began, gazing out of the window at the passing countryside, “I must say that I’m getting a strong impression of green. That is undoubtedly the key of this delightful landscape. I believe in keys, you know, in the same way as musicians believe in them. The predominant shade provides the key in which we experience our surroundings. There are some places that are blue, and some places that are white. Finland is white. Have you been to Helsinki? It has a strong feeling of white: white steel, white glass, white snow-covered fields.

  “This place is very green. This is a green, green place. See over there, see those trees? That verdant, brilliant green. It’s all so green.

  “Have you been to Cape Town? I did some designs for one of those new hotels they have down there, near the waterfront. Its key is blue, not the dark blue that the sea tends to be but an attenuated blue, a hazy blue. I simply must tell you, I’ve never seen blue like that before—never, except once, in Western Australia. You know, where Australia turns a corner and goes on and on, all the way to the next corner, down near Melbourne? Well, that bit, that corner just below Perth, has the same blue. Remarkable.”

  By the time they reached the house, Merle had become grimly silent. While Cosmo unpacked in his room, she drew Eddie aside.

  “He’s a gas-bag, Eddie,” she whispered. “I wish he’d just shut up, or take a deep breath or something.”

  Eddie smiled, and pressed a silencing finger to her lips. “He’s the talent, Merlie. He’s the real thing. These guys are like that. There’s a direct link between their very creative minds and their tongues. They can’t help it.”

  Merle was not convinced. “And do you know what this is going to cost, Ed? Did you look at the figures in the letter he sent?”

  “Worth every penny, Merlie,” said Eddie. “You can’t get quality for nothing. My old man always says: you get what you pay for. And he’s right. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

  Cosmo reappeared and insisted that Eddie show him round the house. The building work had now been done, and the rooms were ready for Cosmo to supervise the installation of what he called the accoutrements. These had arrived from London a few days earlier and were waiting in a crate behind the main building.

  “We must start with the bar,” said Cosmo. “I’ve been dreaming about that bar, Eddie. Positively salivating at the thought of what we’re going to do there. The Hemingway Rum Bar. Ernest’s place. Eddie, it’s going to be seriously hot.”

  Eddie took him into the bar, which had been created by knocking together two large rooms at the front of the house. As they entered, Cosmo stopped just inside and let out a low whistle. “Magnifico! Oh, this is just right. Great big fishing trophies over there on the wall above the bar—perfect space—marlin, tuna, I’ve got both in the crate, you know. Not in formaldehyde, like Damien’s smelly old shark, but stuffed and mounted on gorgeous hardwood boards. Beautiful. And perhaps you could pay a few convincing fishermen to perch on the bar stools and thrill visitors with their fishing stories.”

  He moved further into the room. “I’m getting a very authentic feeling, Eddie. You know how it is when you realise that your vision is absolutely spot-on for the space? It’s all very well doing it on paper, Eddie—it can be so different from actually confronting the virgin space. Fortunately it hasn’t happened to me too often, but I have occasionally found myself working with a space that just refused to give itself up to the plan—like a Sabine woman resisting abduction by a pushy Roman! Well, perhaps not quite, but something not too dissimilar.

  “Not here, though. Everything is going to work perfectly—it really is. Fabrics, wall colours, surface textures. Everything. But let’s not just stand here and talk. I’m positively rolling up my sleeves, Eddie. Let’s get your boys in, and they too can roll up their sleeves and get down to work. Aux armes, citoyens!”

  Eddie had hired a team of local decorators to assist Cosmo, and this firm’s men duly arrived in a green van.

  “Green,” said Cosmo as he watched the van draw up. “You see what I mean, Eddie? Green is the key here. That is the leitmotiv. Green, with mere touches of blue to remind us that el mar is out there—el mar in which the great fish swim and cavort in all their Hemingwayesque strength and beauty!”

  “Sure,” said Eddie.

  53. The Real Man Within

  OVER THE NEXT few days, Eddie and Cosmo Bartonette worked feverishly to finish the decoration of the Hemingway Bar. Eddie was surprised by the energy of the celebrated interior decorator: he had imagined that Cosmo would direct operations but do little physical labour himself. The contrary proved to be true, with Cosmo lifting and shifting furniture and other items with as much gusto—and effect—as the crew of cheerful mesomorphs hired by Eddie.

  The transformation of the empty room was largely completed by the end of the third day. The walls had been painted dark green—a choice of colour about which Eddie had been unenthusiastic at the beginning but now fully accepted—and they had been hung with the fishing trophies that Cosmo had sent over from London. A large stuffed marlin, its colours accentuated by varnish, now dominated the space behind the bar, and here and there on the other walls there were tuna, barracuda and one or two unidentifiable fish, all mounted on trophy boards, on which the details of their capture—probably apocryphal—had been inscribed in black lettering.

  Then there were numerous framed photographs that were to occupy almost all the remaining wall space.

  “I feel very proud of these,” said Cosmo, as he began to unpack the pictures from their crates. “Look at this one, Ed. This is absolutely gen, apart from the signature, which I did and I’m frankly rather proud of. It’s Hemingway standing outside Sloppy Joe’s bar, his local, you know—quel nom! And that’s Scott Fitzgerald, or his friend, Bill Bird. Who knows? So I signed Fitzgerald’s name—because who on earth knows how Bill Bird signed his name? Pas moi.

  “And this one here—what a frame, Ed! See? That’s Hemingway—you can tell by now, of course, I don’t need to explain to you. But that’s him in Africa, on safari. The elephant’s dead, by the way—its eyes are open but our bearded friend has dispatched him, I’m afraid. He dispatched rather a lot of things, I regret to say, but let’s not go there. I expect the people who come to this bar will not be exactly sensitive.”

  And so it continued until, at the end of the third day, Cosmo sank into a copious leather armchair—one which he had designated as Papa’s Chair.

  “Well!” he exclaimed. “Here I sink. Papa himself—that’s what old Hem was called, Ed—Papa himself could have sat here and ended the day with a whisky. I’ve worked far harder today than he ever did—old fraud. Oops, not the thing to say in the Hemingway Bar, but I feel I deserve a little bit of truth after working like a Trojan all day. Did the Trojans work, Ed? You bet yours they did! Whoever they were!”

  “Yeah,” said Eddie. “They worked all right. Always working.”

  “Quite so. But listen, Eddie boy, would you be kind enough to fix ol
d Cosmo a large G and T? None of your smelly old rum, if you don’t mind. Gordon’s and Shh-you-know-who, and not too much of the latter. Ta terrifically.”

  They sat at the open window, sipping their drinks, the glasses cold and moist against their hands.

  Cosmo looked thoughtful. “You know something?” he suddenly asked.

  “Maybe,” said Ed. “Depends what.”

  “You know, I don’t think I like this Hemingway character.”

  Eddie shrugged. “He seemed all right to me.”

  “He was fighting against something, you know,” Cosmo went on. “There he was trying so terribly hard to be tough. All the time. Woke up in the morning and presumably had to remind himself to be tough. And they aren’t, you know, Eddie. Men like that aren’t really tough.”

  Eddie shrugged again. “Depends. Some are.”

  Cosmo shook his head. “No, I don’t think they are. And I’m saying that because … Well, I may as well let you into a little secret: what you see with me isn’t really what you get.”

  Eddie glanced at Cosmo over the rim of his glass. He was not sure where this conversation was leading and felt slightly uncomfortable.

  “No, don’t worry,” said Cosmo. “I’m not going to embarrass you. Let me tell you right now, Ed, I’m straight. There, I’ve said it. I’m straight. I’ve got a partner in London—a woman. We’ve been together for eleven years.”

  Eddie could not conceal his surprise, and Cosmo smiled at the reaction.

  “Yes, I knew that would make you raise an eyebrow. You see, in order to get on in the interior design business, you have to camp it up a bit. Which is what I’ve been doing all along. I do it so well that it’s become second nature.”

  “Oh,” said Eddie.

  “When I started in the business,” Cosmo continued, “I was just myself, and it didn’t work. I was treated with condescension because people thought, how could somebody as straight and boring as this have a good eye? That’s what they thought—you could just see it. And so I decided it would be better for business if I acted up a bit, and that’s what I did. Business went through the roof. I was a really good actor.”