A Conspiracy of Friends

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Having to hang about in this hospital,” said Caroline.

  “I don’t care about that at all,” said Ronald. “The important thing is you. Poor you.”

  It was at this moment that something profound and changing happened to Caroline. She was not sure whether it involved a decision taken consciously and deliberately, or whether one did not take a decision to fall in love. But whichever it was, something that happened to her or something that she willed to happen, there was no doubt in her mind: five minutes ago she had not been in love; now she was.

  She closed her eyes and then, opening them again, looked straight at Ronald. He smiled at her, and she thought: His smile is very beautiful.

  She remembered her parents. “Could you phone my folks?”

  His smile broadened. “I’ve done it already. I let them know you were going to be all right.”

  She felt a flood of gratitude for his thoughtfulness. James would have panicked; he would not have thought things through, as Ronald had. James would not have borrowed a car; James would not have—She stopped herself. It was disloyal to think in that way about James, and she should not compare the two of them anyway. James had been kind to her, and she had repaid him by lying to him.

  A doctor appeared. “I need to take a look at this leg of yours,” she said. “We can do it in the treatment room down there. Your boyfriend can wait here if he likes.”

  “That’s fine,” said Ronald. “I’ll wait.”

  As the doctor said the word “boyfriend,” Caroline noticed that Ronald gave her hand an extra squeeze: a squeeze of affirmation, of possession.

  48. The Effects of Gravity

  BARBARA WAS NOT unconscious at any stage: she had not fainted, but simply collapsed. It was a curious feeling, one for which she could not find exactly the right words.

  “My limbs just seemed to lose their strength,” she later said to a friend. “I was standing there, listening to Hugh, and suddenly my legs felt as if they had … well, as if the bit in the middle, the bone, had lost all its firmness. Very peculiar. It was as if my body was saying, ‘There’s no point in standing up any more.’ Very curious.”

  “I fell down once after being in the gym,” said the friend. “I’d spent fifty-five minutes on the cross-trainer and when I got off, my legs just didn’t work. They went on strike.”

  “Yes, it’s odd, isn’t it?” mused Barbara. “Here we all are, standing up, when the natural position for all of us is really on the ground. If we gave up our daily fight against gravity, then that’s where we’d be.”

  HER RECOVERY HAD been quick, and she had insisted that Hugh continue his story.

  “They threatened you?” she asked.

  “Yes, and I think they meant it,” he continued. “If it had been anywhere else, I would have been prepared to chance things, but not Colombia. I really had no alternative but to do what they ordered.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” said Barbara. “But go on—what happened?”

  “Well, there I was, in my dinner jacket,” said Hugh. “I must say, it was a nice fit. And good material too—silk. The patent leather shoes were the real thing—and there was a starched white dress shirt. I had to put on my badge, which said Official Gentleman in English rather than Spanish. I didn’t like that badge, but they told me I had to wear it.

  “Well, as I said, I felt awful, but I was also quite hungry by now. My headache had worn off and I seemed none the worse for the drug they had used on me, so I set off for the dining room, which was at the back of the ship—the stern, I suppose. I picked up quite a few nautical terms over the next few days. Forward and aft, and things like that.

  “When I went into the dining room, the head steward came over to me and winked. It was a horrible wink—a sort of leer, almost—as if he was party to some awful knowledge about me. Which I suppose he was, really. He said, ‘I’ve got just the table for you, my friend. Over there by the window—you see it? Seven ladies—and you! Lucky fellow. Ha, ha! Trade you jobs any day of the week!’

  “He took me over and introduced me to the women. ‘Look who’s coming to sit at your table, ladies,’ he announced, in a horrible smarmy voice. ‘Just for you and your entertainment!’

  “Some of the ladies giggled. ‘He speaks perfect Spanish, by the way,’ said the steward. ‘So none of you ladies say anything rude—he’ll understand it!’ Then he winked at the women, more or less one by one. It was awful. He told them that my name was Hugo—they could never pronounce Hugh—and so that was what I was known as.

  “I sat between two ladies in their forties. They were dressed up to the nines, dripping with jewels, and one of them had already been to the cosmetic surgeon. You can always tell, you know—and it really doesn’t help, does it? They had that slightly pinched look which comes when your skin is too tight. It’s the same look that people have when they’re wearing clothes that are too tight. They look as though they might pop out of their outfits if they move the wrong way. It’s the same with cosmetic surgery. These people look as though their faces will fall off if they laugh.

  “They asked me about myself. Had I been working on the ship for long? Where was I from? And so on. I realised that I could not tell them the truth about how I’d ended up there, since the officer had specifically warned me not to. So I made up something about having come to Colombia to teach English and then decided that dancing on a cruise liner was my true vocation.

  “They thought this very interesting. ‘If you have to dance, you have to dance,’ said one. And the others all nodded their heads at this pearl of wisdom.

  “Then one of them asked me whether I’d brought my girlfriend with me. There was a silence, with all the ladies at the table staring at me. I suppose I blushed. I told them that I didn’t have a girlfriend at the moment. That, as it happened, was true.

  “A couple of the women muttered something I didn’t hear, and one of them laughed. But the woman sitting right next to me, who had introduced herself as Irma, whispered, ‘I understand. You mustn’t worry about it. I like sensitive men …’ I didn’t know what she meant at first, and then suddenly I realised. And that was when I had my brilliant idea: I would dance with the ladies—as ordered—but while we were dancing I would let drop a remark that they would interpret as meaning … well, that I wasn’t interested.

  “I turned to Irma and said, ‘Well, there we are. But I really like dancing.’ She nodded and said something about how what was most important was how one felt inside. At that moment the waiters brought the food and everybody started eating.

  “At the end of the meal, after they had served coffee, the band struck up. I took Irma’s hand, and she got up, looking triumphantly at her friends. We took to the floor and started to dance. She was quite a good dancer, and I rather liked her. She told me that she was from Buenos Aires and that her husband owned an aeronautical engineering firm. ‘He only thinks of aeroplanes,’ she said. ‘Never of me.’ I said, ‘That’s very bad luck,’ and she nodded. ‘You’re very simpático,’ she said. ‘And you can dance so well, for one who speaks English.’

  “I could see that we were going to get on. And then my second brilliant idea occurred: it was risky, but I thought it worth a try. ‘Irma,’ I whispered as we moved about the dance floor, ‘could I stay with you in your cabin? I don’t mean anything more than that—I mean just stay. I’m so lonely. Just for company—I can sleep on the sofa, if you’ve got one. Or on the floor. That’s all, I promise.’

  “She looked at me quizzically. ‘Are you sure you’re really …?’ She left the sentence unfinished. I nodded. ‘Well, why not?’ she said. ‘Cruises are full of lonely people, aren’t they? And I like you, Hugo. So yes, you move in with me. I’ve got a stateroom actually, so you can have your own cabin.’

  “I felt immensely relieved. ‘One thing, though,’ I said. ‘Will you tell one of the officers about this? I need permission, you see. But he won’t object. It’s that officer over there, by the door.’

  “She nod
ded, and we danced over towards the door. It was the social officer, and he was watching me. She went up to him and spoke to him briefly before coming back. ‘All fine,’ she said. ‘He just nodded discreetly and said that the company was happy to oblige.’

  “As we left, the officer drew me aside. ‘Well done,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘Quick work there. She’s a very important customer.’

  “ ‘I also like to oblige,’ I said. ‘And we Britons can teach you Latins a thing or two about these matters, you know.’

  “I said the last bit in English, though, and he didn’t understand. Which was just as well, I suppose.”

  49. Vertical Take-off

  “IRMA HAD WHAT was probably the best accommodation on the ship—a set of staterooms. When I moved in with her that evening, I was astonished by the splendour of the appointments; my own tiny cabin, stuffy and claustrophobic, gave one barely enough room to turn round while getting dressed. I suppose that is how ships’ cabins usually are, but it seemed to me that the naval architect who had designed mine must have taken perverse pleasure in stipulating such cramped and awkward dimensions.

  “By contrast, when he sat down to design the staterooms he must have been filled with the spirit of Versailles. The door from the corridor outside admitted one immediately to a large sitting room that was filled with natural light. The light came through a pair of French doors of toughened glass giving out onto a private veranda deck outside. There were chintz-covered chairs and sofas and, on the tables behind the sofas, large bowls of flowers. I remember being struck by the scent of the roses and wondering how one could keep flowers fresh after days out at sea. Presumably there were cold rooms down in the bowels of the ship for this purpose. Perhaps the flowers were stacked there, surrounded by sides of beef and other foods—an extraordinary juxtaposition of beauty and simple human necessity.

  “Beyond the sitting room, there were two further cabins. One was the principal bedroom and the other a dressing room of the sort that you find in grand houses—a small room with a single bed and a table to lay out your clothes. Irma directed me to this dressing room, which had its own small bathroom. Then she went to a fridge in the corner of the sitting room and extracted a bottle of champagne.

  “I stored my stuff in my cabin, and joined her on the sofa. It was very chaste and respectable: she sat at one end and I at the other. She handed me a large flute of champagne, and we toasted each other in our new-found domesticity.

  “She wanted to talk, and I sat there and listened. I had the impression that she was a very lonely woman and yearned for conversation. She told me straight out how old she was—forty-one—and she was pleased when I expressed surprise. ‘I have a very conscientious beautician in Buenos Aires,’ she said. ‘She leaves nothing to chance. There are many creams.’

  “Her husband, she explained, was a workaholic and took absolutely no interest in her feelings or in what she did. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I believe that he doesn’t notice whether I’m there or not. Last year I went to Italy for two months—we have a house on Lake Maggiore—and I think that he didn’t even notice. I told him I was going, but when I returned, he expressed surprise when I began to talk about having been in Italy. Really, it is most deflating to discover that one’s own husband should be so unaware of one’s whereabouts.’

  “I asked her if he knew that she was on this cruise. ‘I told him,’ she said, ‘but I’m not sure if the information was absorbed. So I’d say that he probably doesn’t.’ She paused, and looked at me in an amused way. ‘You must not worry, by the way. My husband is not remotely interested in the people whom I see. I have had friends before, and he has never expressed any views at all. I think he’s quite relieved that I don’t bother him in that respect. It’s the planes, you see.’

  “I asked her to tell me more. She had told me while we were dancing that he was the owner of an aeronautical engineering firm, and now she spoke a little bit more about this. ‘He is really the only person in South America who knows about making planes. Those Venezuelans and Brazilians think they can make planes but, pouf-là, their planes barely get off the ground. You certainly wouldn’t catch me flying in any of those. Nor in a Russian plane. You should hear what my husband has to say about Russian aircraft—it’s unprintable.

  “ ‘My husband made the GH-56. Have you heard of that one? It’s marvellous for flying over the Andes because it’s very easy to handle in those tricky air currents. And it takes very little to learn how to fly it: my husband says that he could train a complete novice—that’s you or me—to fly one of those planes in under a week. Of course, he never had time to teach me how to fly—he’s always been far too busy.

  “ ‘But it’s not the GH-56 that takes up all his time. He’s been working for years on a plane that he calls the Bi-directional, or Bi-D. It’s a real obsession for him, I’m afraid. He had the idea when he started to study the causes of many of the light-aircraft crashes that take place up in the mountains. Apparently what happens is that pilots who are disoriented or not paying enough attention find themselves flying straight into slopes. By the time they see the ground ahead they often don’t have enough time to turn round, and so they crash. My husband asked himself: what if they could simply stop, as if in a car, and then reverse?

  “ ‘Of course there’s a good reason why they can’t—in most planes, if you lose forward momentum, you stall and go down. Simple—even I know that. But that’s forgetting that we already have vertical take-off and landing planes. So why not design one that could go into reverse and fly backwards, thus taking everybody out of danger?

  “ ‘So that’s what he’s been working on these past few years—a plane that can go in reverse. He’s got close to it, but isn’t quite there yet. So I never see him—he’s always away at the factory, or going off to meet engineers in places like Houston. He does not love me, Hugo—he does not love me at all. He loves his planes. He loves the Bi-D most of all; he also loves the GH-56. There is no love left for me—none at all.’ ”

  50. Just a Gigolo

  IT WAS A sad story, said Hugh, even if it was told without self-pity.

  “There was something about her that appealed to me,” he continued. “She was a very attractive woman, of course, but her allure was broader than that. Perhaps it was the way she talked to me—she was one of those people who draw you in, so to speak, who make you feel that they’re sharing some tremendous confidence with you. You know the type? When you analyse what they’ve said, it doesn’t necessarily amount to much, but you don’t feel that at the time. It seems as though what they’re saying is terribly, terribly important.

  “So there I was, spending my first night on board in the best accommodation on the ship. We finished our champagne, and she went off to her room and I to mine. I must say that I was rather pleased with myself: what had started as a bleak prospect now seemed much more palatable. Spending time in Irma’s company was not going to be a chore at all—in fact, I rather looked forward to it—and being her companion meant that I would be protected from the attentions of other ladies. It was also clear that with Irma protecting me, there was little the sinister entertainments officer could do to harm me.

  “Did I think of escape? Well, yes, I did, but I realised that I could bide my time. I knew the cruise was going to be calling at a number of places; now that I was with Irma, I would no doubt be able to go ashore with her, and then lose myself in a crowd. We were due to go to Jamaica, I’d heard, and it would be easy to seek refuge in Kingston or Port Antonio. If it was Kingston, I could claim the protection of the British High Commission there, and I would no doubt be on a flight home within days. So, for the time being, I decided that I might as well just enjoy myself.

  “The next morning we had breakfast together on the veranda deck of the stateroom. Irma ordered a couple of trays to be brought up, and we sat there enjoying the best that the kitchens could produce. Then we went for a walk along the main deck. Irma took my arm, and we looked, I imagine, like any oth
er couple on the boat. She stopped to talk to a few of her acquaintances, and I saw them glancing at me and then at her knowingly. It was clear what they thought, and I knew that my plan was working well. I think she took a certain pleasure in showing me off.

  “And so it continued over the next few days. We played deck quoits, went swimming in the first-class pool and played a weird South American card game which she taught me. We went to see films too, and entered the ship’s fancy-dress competition. I went as a pirate and Irma as a female aviator; she had obtained flying glasses from somewhere or other, and one of those strange leather caps pilots and racing drivers used to wear. She looked very glamorous and dashing … I suppose it would have continued like that had it not been for …”

  Hugh hesitated, and Barbara, who had been listening to him intently, urged him on.

  “Something went wrong?”

  He did not answer immediately.

  “Oh Hugh,” Barbara said, “you can’t keep me in suspense.”

  He swallowed hard. “I’m ashamed of the next bit, Barbara. I’m afraid that … Oh well, here goes. It was quite hard sharing a stateroom with her, if you see what I mean. She was very attractive, and she had these marvellous silk pyjamas and … Well, I’m afraid that one thing led to another.”

  He paused, watching for the effect of his words. Barbara did not flinch. “One thing often leads to another, I’ve found,” she said quietly.

  Hugh looked miserable. “Are you going to think the less of me? Please don’t. You see, I had no intention of starting anything with her, but I’m afraid I just couldn’t help it. And she … Well, she was a bit surprised and said, ‘What does this mean, Hugo? Have you decided to change? Or are you like that aircraft my husband keeps building—the one that goes backwards and forwards? The Bi-D.’

  “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—”