Friends in Low Places

by Simon Raven

  “That was a try-on by Accounts. Mistaken zeal after Philby’s call for economy.”

  “Just put them right then, dear.”

  Tom shook his curls reprovingly at Somerset and skipped to the outer door, where he paused to perform a brief tap-dance.

  “I shall be following what happens at Bishop’s Cross, dear,” he said. “You know how interested I am in everything you do.”

  When Fielding Gray left Gower Street, he took a taxi, to the Regent’s Park and sat down on a seat by the lake.

  So Somerset would try him, it seemed; and Captain Detterling, one time comrade in arms, might be approached to help over the publication of his books. At least he should be able to ensure that they were properly read, not just tossed on one side and returned without comment six months later. And since Fielding knew that he had had something real if limited to say, and since he was confident that in his two novels he had said it with style and precision, he could reasonably hope for a fair outcome.

  But what then? Suppose his work found favour with Somerset and his novels were published by Gregory Stern, suppose, even, that they achieved some measure of public esteem, what was to follow? Would there be anything more to say? Could he face the prospect of carrying on indefinitely with such a career? For did not even the two existing manuscripts pose the question, “While this is quite well done, was there ever, in truth, any real reason for doing it?” Works of supererogation . . . and of course that was how ninety-nine writers in a hundred made a living: producing work, conscientious in its kind, modestly saleable, worthy of some small critical attention, but work which, in the end of all, added not one jot to the human experience. Was consciousness of this essential sterility made bearable, he wondered, by the photographs, the occasional notoriety, the literary luncheons? Was it obliterated altogether, perhaps, by the women who wished to sleep, not indeed with the man, but with his books? (Would anyone wish to sleep with his books?) Or did authors suffer torment, in the reaches of the night, when faced with the inexorable fact that an entire oeuvre was little more than an elaborate tautology?

  But then again, an author’s occupation, by comparison with those of most citizens, could hardly be called sterile. At least he gave pleasure (a condition of earning his bread), did not spend his days persuading fools to buy rubbish or twisting regulations so that crooked little men might ride with their whores in Bentleys. The writer’s avocation was decent, civilised. ... Yes; but this was not why he had chosen it. He had chosen it because it was work he could do (or thought he could), work which might bring him reputation and money, and work - one of the very few kinds - the bare notion of which did not fill him with boredom or snobbish contempt. In other words, he was in it for the cachet; which brought him round again to the question with which he had started: would his proposed career be founded, so to speak, in the truth, or would it be one long vanity and vexation of spirit?

  But of course, he reminded himself, he was taking much too much for granted. He had not so much as started on this career: time enough to pose superior moral questions when he was properly established in it. The error of equating aspiration with fulfilment was a dangerous one which had taken toll of him before now; this time there must be no dream before there was substance. There were, he told himself, only two things he had to do for the present: to get on with his work with as much professional competence as he could muster; and to come to terms with his deformity.

  Or rather, to persuade other people to come to terms. Physical terms. For the most part, as he had already found, his appearance, after giving rise to brief shock as it had in Somerset that morning, was merely ignored. A very few seconds sufficed to reconcile people to his presence. But what, if anything, would suffice to reconcile people to his touch, to his bodily love? Since he required no one to kiss his hideous face, and since the rest of his body was wholesome enough for anybody’s kisses, in logic there should be no difficulty. But in the eye of the beholder, he knew, the part would infect the whole: because his face was an obscenity, his body would be deemed untouchable; and Fielding, now as ever, required urgently and often to be touched.

  He rose to leave the park. Nothing would be achieved by sitting here brooding; he would go and check through his novels, and that afternoon, perhaps, he would walk down Curzon Street and see if one of the girls would take him for ready cash. That would be a start. . . . There was a small, choking cry, and a little girl landed almost at his feet. Since no one came to her aid, Fielding knelt, helped her up, and started to wipe the dirt from her bleeding knees while she blubbered quietly into his shoulder. Eventually she drew back her face and regarded him with care.

  “One eye?” she said, with curiosity but without censure.

  “I mislaid the other.”

  The child accepted this explanation without further comment and allowed him to proceed with her knee. She at any rate did not resent his touch.

  “Where's your mother?” Fielding said.

  The child pointed to a bench a hundred yards away, where a large sluttish woman was talking with animation to a small wizened one.

  “Run back to her, then, and ask her to bandage you up.”

  But the child lingered, then leered into his face.

  “Pink,” she said, “lovely and pink.”

  Her hands came towards him in order to feel.

  “Nice, nice,” she cried, as her fingers passed over the smooth surface of his cheeks. “Not rough, like Dadda. Nice.”

  Fielding rose unsteadily to his full height and gave the child a gentle shove in the direction of her mother. Then he walked away trembling violently in every muscle, as he had not trembled since they brought him a looking glass for the first time.

  When Tom Llewyllyn left Gower Street he took the Underground to South Kensington, whence he walked to Buttock's Private Hotel in the Cromwell Road. In the hall was Tessie Buttock, who was busy gluing up letters she had just steamed open and placing them in the letter rack.

  “Censoring the mail now?” said Tom.

  “Only the old ones, dear. They've been hanging about for weeks, waiting for people who haven't come.”

  “Then why are you putting them in the rack?”

  “Makes a bit of a show, dear. Which is about all they're good for. It's been a dull old morning I've had reading them.” Albert Edward, Tessie's terrier, lifted his leg against the grandfather clock. Really, thought Tom, it was high time for a change. And a change there was now to be. But what should he tell Tessie? After all these years.

  “Tessie,” he said hesitantly. “I'm going away for a couple of nights. Down to the country.”

  “Very nice too, dear. . . . It's not that Albert Edward doesn't know better, but he never cared for that clock. Woozums, woozums,” she intoned; “woozums widdle on horrid clock.”

  “Tessie . . . .”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I'm engaged. You'll see it tomorrow in The Times. That's why I'm going to the country, to stay with my fianceé's parents. . . . She’ll be there too, of course.”

  “Well, don’t go overdoing it, dearie,” said Tessie, as if he were going round the corner for a drink. “Leave a little something to look forward to. That’s what I always told Buttock.”

  “And did he?”

  “Not so's you'd have noticed, no. Real horny, Buttock was. Until he went on the booze, and even then he could do as well for himself as most men between here and Highgate Hill. I remember one Sunday afternoon, just before the war - ”

  “ - Tessie,” said Tom, sadly but firmly. “When I get married I'll have to leave you.”

  “So I supposed, dear. Though you can have one of the back rooms for two quid a week. Pied-a-terre, if you take my meaning.”

  “Tessie. I am very much in love with my future wife.” “Of course you are, dear. But it never did no harm to have a pied-à-terre. You can come and do your writing when she starts throwing the pots about.”

  “She's a lady, Tessie.”

  “Go on? Starts break
ing up the mirrors, then, since she's a lady.” Tessie paused to quiz him with something as near affection as her bleak and greedy eyes could convey. “You’ve really come on these last few years, haven’t you, love? Those books and all, and now this. What’s she called?”

  “Patricia. . . . Patricia Turbot.”

  “Turbot. . . . Anything to do with that bossing minister man? The one that’s always telling us to work harder and save our money.”

  “Daughter,” said Tom reluctantly. “Oldest daughter.”

  “My, my. You have come on. But all the same, dear,” Tessie said, scooping up Albert Edward and tickling his groin, “I should think hard about that pied-a-terre if I was you.”

  “Like to look at some pictures, dear?” said plump, kind Maisie to Fielding Gray.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “No,” said Maisie, looking down at him rather apprehensively, “I can see that. But they’re rather fun all the same. There’s this photograph of two girl guides and a scoutmaster, and - ”

  “ - No pictures, thank you. . . . What did you say your name was?”

  “Maisie.”

  “Well then, Maisie. Like this. . . .”

  About thirty seconds later, Maisie said,

  “Don’t go away at once, love. Stay and talk a little.”

  “I thought . . . you’d want to go out again.”

  “No, love. I don’t usually go out in the afternoon. Or at all, for the matter of that.”

  “Then why were you out this afternoon?” said Fielding peevishly.

  “Lovely spring day. A girl gets restless. But what I really do, dear, is to have regular gentlemen. They come here for appointments, or I go to them. Lucky for me, really, now this new law’s going to come.”

  “Regular gentlemen?”

  ‘‘Ones who want something special. Or ones like you who might find it awkward getting a girl of their own.”

  It was so easily and pleasantly said that it was impossible to take offence.

  “You. see,” Maisie went on, “even the girls on the line might not be too keen. They’re an ignorant lot, and some of them think that an injured face means - well - an injured mind.”

  “They could be right.”

  “Not with you, dear. Not yet, anyway. I spotted that quick enough when I saw you coming along just now - it was the easy way you walked. You’ll be all right if you have someone regular, someone who understands. . .”

  “You think you understand?”

  “Not everything, love. But quite a lot. For instance, I know why you were so quick just now.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Not only that,” Maisie said. “You wanted to get it over quick for my sake . . . and for yours, in case I said anything.”

  There was so much in this now he came to think of it, that Fielding, who had been on the point of leaving, sat down again on Maisie’s bed.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Now we can relax. Spend the afternoon, if you like. It’ll only be another five quid if you’re going to visit regular. And you may as well look at these pictures, now we know each other. They’re all good for a laugh.”

  When Fielding left Maisie at half past five that evening, they had arranged regular appointments for two afternoons a week until further notice on either side.

  Ever since Tom Llewyllyn had left his office that morning, Somerset Lloyd-James had entertained vague feelings of unrest and dissatisfaction. The unrest he attributed to the surprise, by no means unpleasant but still unnerving, of seeing Fielding Gray again. The dissatisfaction he blamed on Tom. Why was Tom interesting himself in the Bishop’s Cross candidature? To what extent would he, could he, interfere?

  If Somerset had known about Tom’s engagement to Patricia Turbot and his consequent visit to Sir Edwin in the country, he would have been very put out indeed. Even as it was, past experience told him that Tom, if so minded, could do a lot of damage. For Tom, despite tendencies to dissipation, combined energy, integrity and intelligence; as he had shown more than once, if he undertook something he saw it through. It was plain from what had passed that morning that he wished Peter Morrison, whom he had always admired, back in Parliament, and that for this reason among others he resented Somerset’s application to Bishop’s Cross. If Tom had nothing much else on for the summer, thought Somerset crossly, he would make every difficulty he could.

  But what difficulties could he make? Tom was a “heavy” journalist of some reputation, and he had also published three books: an early and striking political novel, then, in 1956, a brilliant assessment of Russian cold-war strategy since 1945, and finally, in the Autumn of 1958, his Analysis of Practical Politics, which had enjoyed even greater critical esteem than its much acclaimed predecessors. All this added up to authority, to waxing authority at that; as things now stood, Tom might request and receive space from almost any prestige journal in the kingdom; the question was, how much of it would he care to devote to so trivial a matter as the candidature at Bishop’s Cross?

  Very little, Somerset decided. Editors wouldn’t like it; the Bishop’s Cross selectors wouldn’t heed it; and in any case the only really damaging material Tom had against him was quite unprintable. It followed that Tom’s activities must take another form, that of personal intrigue or canvass; and while Tom, as he acknowledged, was a tried performer in that genre, Somerset was no novice himself. It would be a fair match, one to which in other circumstances he would have looked forward with some relish. The trouble was that he would have so much else to do this summer that he was not anxious to open up a special new front for Tom.

  But that, he thought, must be as it may be. Leave Tom aside for the moment, and how did things look? Pro: his family had a good name in the country round Bishop’s Cross; Alastair Dixon was on his side; Carton Weir, a rising M.P, who was privileged to whisper in important ears, would whisper in his favour; and last, least but not negligible, his own brand of conservatism was less flexible than Morrison’s and might therefore find the more favour with Bishop’s Cross. So far, so good. But . . . Contra; Rupert Percival, the local chairman, did not like him; Carton Weir’s support was only valid in the House itself and might at any moment be rendered useless and even dangerous by grave scandal, for Carton persisted in playing with private fire of a kind liable to cause public conflagration; Morrison was, quite simply, a more attractive man and - what would undoubtedly operate to his advantage - a far less able one; and to top everything, Somerset’s long association with Strix, though it would commend him in many quarters, would arouse distaste in the leaders of a rural and agricultural community - who would instantly recognise in Morrison the farmer a kindred spirit, albeit from a distant land.

  All in all, the odds were unpromising, and there was no reason why Somerset should not have been speaking the truth when he told Tom that he did not give a lot for his chance. But he was not speaking the truth, as Tom had perceived, and he did give a lot for his chance. He gave a lot for his chance because (as Tom had also more or less perceived) he had one impalpable but very powerful advantage: he was prepared, indeed determined, to fight dirty if he saw his way. He had yet to see it (here too Tom was right); but his spies were posted and his aircraft hovered, and any day now he might hope for the intelligence he needed to mount his subtle and treacherous campaign.

  Meanwhile it was important, with all that lay before him, that he should not neglect his health; so he had made an appointment with Maisie for half past six. Maisie, so lust-making yet always (any time these four years) so soothing and understanding; Maisie, mistress and mother, aphrodisiac yet anodyne, the prostitute-priestess who incited frenzy and then extended pity. Our Lady of the Red Lamp. (Steady now: God be merciful to me a sinner.) And tonight, she had promised him, a new consignment of photographs would be in: a brilliant series of permutations of boy scouts with girl guides. With any luck, this should help them to construct a whole new fantasy, for the present one was wearing rather thin. Maisie could be a c
ub-mistress and he would be a wolf cub, who had wetted his camp bed . . . Jubilantly Somerset lurched down Gower Street, barely restrained himself from the expense of a taxi, and stuck out his tongue at the Spectator bill (“Gilmour on God”) as he passed.

  3

  CUPID AND PSYCHE

  _____________________________________

  “TELL ME,” said Patricia Turbot: “who else?”

  “No one of importance,” Tom said.

  “Nevertheless I must know.”

  Patricia Turbot was a girl of spirit in more senses than one. To start with, as her father never tired of saying, she had a lot of spunk, and she was also endowed with a high moral and spiritual sense. It was her habit to employ the “spunk” in the propagation of the morality; and now, as she walked across the Wiltshire Downs with Tom, she was conducting an inquisition into his past. Her spiritual sense, to say nothing of female possessiveness, had told her that such an enquiry ought really to be conducted before they became engaged; but she had been afraid lest this might deter Tom from proposing at all, and had restrained both conscience and curiosity until he was safely in the bag. Since in the bag he certainly now was, with all the authority of that morning’s Times to prove it, she felt safe at last to obey her spiritual promptings and was more than making up for the delay.

  “It’s a question of truth,” she was saying. “I quite see that you may have had adventures - Daddy says most men do - and I promise I won’t be angry. But I must know, in order . . . . How can I put it? . . . In order to exorcise the past.”

  “The past,” said Tom, “is not exorcisable.”

  “All evil can be exorcised.”

  “So you assume my past was evil?”