A Conspiracy of Friends

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She closed her eyes. The bath continued to run.

  14. Justice and Her Colleague, Nemesis

  THE NEWSPAPER ITEM on Oedipus Snark put Barbara in a thoroughly bad mood. It was not the tone that had this effect; the newspaper did not welcome the appointment, it simply reported it. She was galled because she knew what Oedipus was like: she knew the contempt he had for the electorate; she knew that it was personal gain rather than public service that motivated him. If she had no difficulty is seeing this clearly, why did others who had dealings with him miss it? Were they completely ignorant of his character? Was the Prime Minister, who presumably had made the appointment, such a poor judge of men that he should think Snark worthy of ministerial office?

  But it was not only these questions that caused Barbara to despair; what made her truly despondent was the fact that unworthy people could succeed—and often, as in this case, did so spectacularly. Like most of us, she believed in the existence of Justice. She believed that, by and large, the wicked and unworthy could not prevail for long and that Justice, although overburdened with an impossible case-load, would eventually get round to invoking Nemesis. Barbara really believed it, and could, if pressed, call to mind numerous cases where precisely this had happened. Sometimes these were major instances—as when a florid dictator was overthrown or put on trial; sometimes they were more modest—as when an outsider won against impossible odds, the victory of a little man against a bully and so on. And yet, if Justice were to accomplish her goals, she needed support, and specifically she needed somebody to whisper into her ear what she needed to know.

  As she stepped into the bath that morning, it occurred to Barbara that it was she who should be the invoker of Nemesis. She had been making a deliberate effort to put the issue out of her mind, but she had knowledge of something that could end Oedipus Snark’s political career within days. It had never really occurred to her to use this information but now she thought the time had come. She would have to use what she knew; it was her duty to do so.

  A few lines of Yeats came to her, something about the best lacking all conviction and the worst being filled with passionate intensity; she would not be so immodest as to list herself among the best, but those lines, she thought, had some bearing on the situation. Oedipus got away with it because nobody did anything. And that was always how evil triumphed; it counted on the inaction of those who, although they might have no taste for it and its works, did nothing to thwart it.

  She lay down in the bath and closed her eyes. She had added a few drops of Penhaligon’s Lily of the Valley to the water and now she luxuriated in the rich embrace of the bath oil. The warmth of the water and the delicious scent calmed her, and her mind began to drift back to a weekend three years earlier when Oedipus Snark had come to stay. He often did that then, arriving at her flat in time for a late dinner on Friday and staying until Sunday afternoon.

  She was pleased by the company. On Saturday mornings they did some shopping, sometimes traipsing across town to a food market before returning to laze about the flat for the afternoon. Oedipus liked crosswords and would spend several hours with one of the more difficult newspaper puzzles, all the while congratulating himself on defeating a compiler’s wiles.

  “Infantile,” he would say, tossing aside a completed crossword. “Predictable. Tedious. Infantile. Composed for ten-year-olds.” It did not occur to him that this might be a tactless remark to make in the full hearing of Barbara, who, although not unintelligent, found it difficult to get more than a few clues.

  “They don’t want to make them too hard,” she said. “We can’t all be …”

  “Geniuses?” said Oedipus scornfully. “Clearly not. You don’t need to tell me that, Barbara. I have constituents!”

  She wanted to retort: Who voted for you; who pay your salary. But she did not.

  Barbara would read, or spend time in the kitchen preparing the evening meal. Or she would sometimes wash the car, carrying hot water out in her old red bucket with the uncomfortable handle … It was bliss, even if she felt that this shared domestic existence could never last. She did not trust Oedipus even then, but tried as hard as she could to put this distrust out of her mind. Oedipus was an attentive lover; he could be amusing—in a waspish sort of way; he made her feel less alone. In short, Oedipus fascinated her, just as a cobra might fascinate its prey.

  Then, one Sunday after Oedipus had said goodbye and returned to his flat, she found that his briefcase, which he had placed under a coffee table in the living room, had disgorged a small pile of documents. When he came to leave, he had picked up the briefcase without noticing the spillage, and these were the papers that Barbara now discovered.

  She had not intended to read them, but her eye was caught by the name at the top of one of the papers—a very well-known name; a public figure, although not a politician.

  She could not help herself. Picking up the letter, she began to read. “Dear Mr. Snark,” the letter began, “I am writing to thank you for all that you have done to assist the passage of my company’s planning application. We have now been informed that we have been given approval, even if there were one or two members of the council who made shocking allegations in the course of the debate. The usual stuff—the revenge of failure, I call it. Socialists to a man, of course.

  “I would like to mark my appreciation of your assistance by increasing the unofficial retainer, bearing in mind we last reviewed this over two years ago. Assuming that the approval is indeed going to reach us this weekend, I would suggest that next weekend you and I meet to finalise things.”

  Barbara took the letter to her computer and scanned it into the memory. She did not ask herself why—she had no clear plan, but somewhere, in the depths of her mind, a small voice of self-interest, of self-preservation perhaps, bade her act. At that point she was still in love with Oedipus, and had no desire to compromise him. A retainer? Well, lots of politicians were paid retainers of one sort or another, which they openly declared …

  Barbara happened to know a young woman who worked as a House of Commons researcher. This woman undertook freelance editing to enhance her income and was occasionally given a manuscript by one of the Ragg Porter clients. When Barbara saw her next, she asked her to find out whether Oedipus had declared any payments in the Register of Members’ Interests. It was not a difficult request, and the reply came quickly: Oedipus had declared no payments of any nature. “He’s clean,” said the researcher.

  Barbara smiled. Clean, as in dirty, she thought.

  15. A Suppressed Memory

  OEDIPUS SNARK HAD not been the only difficult man in Barbara Ragg’s life. The other was Rupert Porter, her co-director of the Ragg Porter Literary Agency. Rupert was the son of Fatty Porter, who had founded the agency with Barbara’s father, Gregory Ragg. The business association between Fatty and Gregory had been a successful one, even if Gregory had always harboured a slight distrust of Fatty and had warned Barbara to be on her guard.

  “Remember one thing,” he had said. “Like father, like son.”

  She had pressed him to explain.

  “Just remember in your dealings with Rupert: like father, like son. These old adages have an uncanny habit of proving to be true.”

  She had smiled. “Like: ‘All cats are grey in the dark’?”

  “Yes, and don’t be so superior. The cats are metaphorical; the saying is telling you that you can’t be too sure about something when you can’t see it properly. Good advice, if you ask me.”

  She apologised. “I wasn’t laughing at you. Sorry.”

  “No offence taken. Say no more. Least said, soonest mended.”

  They both laughed at that.

  “But going back to Fatty and the firm: you think I should be careful of Rupert?”

  He hesitated, but eventually nodded. “Fatty was the sort of man to bear a grudge. He found it hard to forgive.”

  “An example?”

  “Plenty, but here’s one. Fatty represented a client, a rather we
ll-known author who died and left a fairly substantial literary estate. The main beneficiary was a young man, the client’s nephew. This nephew held a wake for his uncle and didn’t invite Fatty. It wasn’t an oversight—it was an intentional slight. He had never liked Fatty and had referred to him as Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove, and so on. This got back to Fatty and so the detestation came to be fully reciprocated. The non-invitation to the wake was the final straw.

  “Anyway, Fatty nursed that particular grudge, and a few months later he had the opportunity to wreak his revenge. He had received an offer for the film options on some of the late client’s books. Remember that as literary executor Fatty had unfettered powers to do what he saw fit, and so he accepted this offer although it was derisory. The films were eventually made and took millions. The estate got virtually nothing.

  “Of course, the nephew was furious. He wanted to sue Fatty for breach of fiduciary duty, but the lawyers told him that it would be difficult as there had been no other offers for the rights and Fatty would argue that a bird in the hand et cetera.

  “I asked Fatty why he had done it and he looked about him melodramatically to see that nobody was listening. Then he gave me his reply. One word: ‘Punishment,’ he said.”

  Barbara thought about this. She would not act like that—no reputable agent would: the nephew was quite within his rights, in her view.

  “I’m not suggesting that Rupert will necessarily do anything like that,” Gregory said. “But just be aware. Watch him. I have a feeling, for instance, that he resents my passing on the flat to you. Bear that in mind.”

  Gregory proved right, although he was not to live to see his prediction come true. Rupert bitterly resented the fact that his father had sold Gregory the flat currently owned by Barbara. “Pop would never have sold it,” he complained, “if he had known that Gregory was going to pass it on to her. He wanted to help Gregory out, not his daughter. Morally, that flat’s mine.”

  Barbara ignored the snide remarks that Rupert regularly made about her ownership of her flat. She paid no attention when Rupert let drop the fact that he and his wife had expected to have a little bit more living room, and would have had it, had things worked out “as we expected.”

  Then came the engagement to Hugh, and her offer to sell the flat to Rupert. The plan had been perfectly sensible: she could just as easily work at a distance if she had access to a broadband connection, and all she would need in London was a pied-à-terre to use when she came down for meetings.

  Rupert had been overwhelmed by the offer and appeared to put all resentment behind him.

  “That is astonishingly good of you,” he said. “I know that in the past I might have brought up certain issues, but …”

  “Water under the bridge,” she said. “Don’t let’s even think about all that.”

  “It’s really kind of you,” he said. “When shall we …?”

  “Would you mind giving me a bit of time? I need to sort everything out.”

  He had readily agreed. “Take as long as you like. This is a major life-change. You need to sort everything out, especially if you’re going to be working away from the office. We need to get the modalities of that all worked out.”

  Rupert liked the word “modalities” and made frequent use of it. Barbara imagined that even his shopping list contained modalities. Soap powder. Milk. Bread. Kitchen modalities …

  “You don’t see any difficulty with my working up there? These days, with broadband conferencing and pdfs and so on, one doesn’t really have to be in the office.”

  “No problem,” said Rupert. “None at all. You get the authors to submit in electronic format. Press the print button. Have a glance at the dreary, introspective rubbish. Send the rejection letter back that day by email.”

  “Very funny!”

  “But on the nose. Have you noticed how many unpublishable memoirs of awful experiences we’re getting these days? Three a day. Four sometimes.”

  Barbara thought he was being unsympathetic. Rupert was a man, and men, in her experience, did not like to read about the misfortunes of others. Women, by contrast, loved to do just that, drawing on the vast wells of feeling built up over the generations. “But lots of people have dreadful things happen to them,” she objected. “In their childhood, for instance. All sorts of cruelty and insecurity.”

  “True. But lots don’t. How about some memoirs from them for a change?”

  She wondered whether Rupert had ever suffered. He was so self-assured, so apparently pleased to be Rupert Porter …

  “Nothing nasty ever happen to you, Rupert?” she asked. “When you were a boy?”

  Rupert shook his head. “Not really.”

  “Never bullied?”

  “Not that I remember. The odd fight in the playground, of course, but who didn’t have that sort of thing? Part of growing up.”

  He paused, and for a moment she thought that he was going to say more. He did not, but he was remembering something now: how his father, Fatty, had once punished him for some transgression. His father had sat on him, forcing the wind out of him under that great, crushing weight. “Do it one more time,” Fatty had warned, “and I’ll sit on you again!”

  The moment passed, and the suppressed memory of darkness and a struggle for breath faded.

  16. Her Own Decision

  BARBARA HAD NOT told Hugh immediately that the buyer she had in mind for her flat was Rupert. When she did eventually reveal this to him, though, he frowned and looked doubtful.

  “Why him?” he asked.

  “Because he’s wanted it for years,” she explained. “He has this bizarre notion that it’s his by right because his father sold it to my father. He thinks about it all the time and can’t resist any opportunity to bring it up. Snide remarks. References to his flat being too small, and so on. It’s really tedious stuff, and so I thought that I might as well put a stop to it by giving him what he wants.”

  Hugh’s frown deepened. “Is there any merit in his claim?”

  “None at all. It’s ridiculous. Just because your father owned something doesn’t mean that it should be yours. It’s nonsense …”

  “Then don’t do it,” said Hugh. “You haven’t signed anything yet, have you?”

  She had not.

  “Then you’re in the clear,” Hugh went on. “Remember that when it comes to houses you can say what you like right up until the moment at which contracts are actually exchanged. It all means nothing before that. People agree to sell flats all the time and then change their mind when a better offer comes along, or when they decide they don’t want to move after all.”

  “But I told him,” said Barbara.

  “Tell him that you’ve changed your mind.”

  “But I haven’t.”

  “Then you should.”

  “Why?”

  Hugh’s concern registered in his expression. “It would be a very bad mistake, I think, to sell your flat right now. The market is tricky. If you hold on to it, then you would probably get a much better price a couple of years from now. Everybody’s saying that. Read the papers. They’re all making the same predictions: a recovery in prices won’t happen for quite a few years.”

  She was silent. She was not one to change her mind arbitrarily and she certainly was not one to go back on her promises. She told Hugh so, and he listened gravely.

  “I know that,” he said. “And I admire you for it. I wouldn’t want to marry somebody who changed her mind about important things, somebody fickle or untrustworthy. No. But this is different.”

  “Why?”

  He reached out and took her hand. She marvelled at his touch; she still did. “Listen,” he said. “There are promises and promises. Some things we say bind us; others don’t. A solemn promise is binding, but an offer to do something that we don’t really have to do is … Well, there’s a certain amount of discretion there. We can change our minds because it’s understood that there’s flexibility. There’s no moral obligation
to do favours to others.”

  “Moral obligation?” she said. “Isn’t there a moral obligation not to disappoint others when we’ve said we’ll do something for them?”

  “It depends,” said Hugh. “If it’s implicit that we may change our minds because of the nature of the promise, then we can. As I’ve said, a promise to sell a house is always like that. The other person knows you’re entitled to change your mind. That makes a big difference.”

  He saw that she was not convinced and tried another tack. “He brought pressure to bear on you, you said? Over the years.”

  She nodded. “I suppose you could say that.”

  Hugh spoke triumphantly. “Then your position is even stronger! You have absolutely no moral obligation to see this through. It’s a promise extracted under duress. He’s ground you down—taken advantage of you; pushed you into making the offer.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  He did.

  “I don’t know, Hugh. It’s going to be very awkward.”

  “Darling, would you like me to do it for you—would you like me to tell him?”

  She considered this offer for a moment before rejecting it. “I don’t think so. This strikes me as being dirty work that one should do oneself.”

  “Except it’s not dirty,” he objected.

  “Really?”

  “You’re being taken advantage of by a man who has tried to wear you down over the years. He has behaved badly and frankly he doesn’t deserve what you offered him. Now, on more sober reflection, you’re deciding to withdraw your offer. That’s all.”

  She had eventually been persuaded. Hugh, she felt, was right, and she should not have been so impetuous in her original offer. She would tell Rupert, who would be angry, of course, but he had been angry about things before and she had weathered the storm. I do not need to be frightened of him, she said to herself. Rupert is a bully. I shall stand up to him.