Friends in Low Places

by Simon Raven

  “Hear that, mother?” he shouted - quite gratuitously, for the old lady’s hearing was perfect.

  “They’re having them specially dyed.”

  “Very expensive,” said the dowager, looking maliciously at Sir Edwin.

  “What nonsense,” the Minister mumbled from the head of the table.

  “Don't be such an old stick, Edwin,” said the Marquis. “You can perfectly well afford it. Now, suppose you were like me, with the Lord Lieutenancy hanging over you . . . . That's going to be like having a wedding every week.”

  The Marquis Canteloupe would never be Lord Lieutenant, because he drank too much and his flushed bruiser's face frightened the ladies. In sober daylight, he knew this very well and did not resent it. He had the consolation of being an immensely rich man who was daily growing richer, this from the exhibition of his house and gardens, which he directed with a kind of stunted genius: for since he combined considerable native shrewdness with the tastes of a retarded adolescent, he knew just what would appeal to other adolescents, and arranged rallies and spectacles which drew them in tens of thousands from all over Wessex. But although the money and notoriety thus accruing more than compensated him for lack of official place, there came a stage every evening (after about three whiskies and two thirds of a bottle of wine) when he suddenly conceived that as the senior nobleman in the area he ought to be offered the Lord Lieutenancy, and from this it was a short step to claiming that he very soon would be. Thus far the illusion was harmless; unfortunately, however, brandy in any quantity would then lead him to reflect that the long postponement of the honour was a deliberate slight to his order; a grudge that issued in a spiteful peevishness, which he would express by accusing his host of conspiring to keep him short of drink. Since the accusation was often well founded, it was hard to rebut save by making him free of the decanter; and since such indulgence only inspired him to comment the more cuttingly on the antecedent stinginess, the problem was considered insoluble throughout the county.

  The Turbots' answer to the dilemma was to invite the Canteloupes as seldom as possible, old friends though they were; but as Canteloupe had recently threatened, in a fit of boyish mischief, to take himself and his strawberry leaves over to the Labour benches of the Lords, Sir Edwin had felt obliged to undertake a series of entertainments to flatter and dissuade him. The best time to do this was over the port - while Canteloupe was still good-humouredly convinced that he would soon be Lord Lieutenant and before later doses of brandy had turned the conviction to rancour. When, therefore, the dowager had finally finished dunking at her melba, Sir Edwin gestured at Patricia, who rose and led off the ladies. The Minister now turned briskly to the reclamation of Canteloupe’s political loyalty, leaving Tom to talk to the Canteloupes’ house guest, Captain Detterling (M.P.), with whom he had been vaguely acquainted for some years and had recently come to know more closely as the new colleague of his publisher.

  “I suppose I ought to congratulate you on this engagement,” Detterling said, “but the very notion of people getting married irritates me beyond endurance. Nothing personal, you understand. It’s just that the best of couples behave so smugly - as though they thought they’d done something original.”

  “I entirely agree,” said Tom: “but as the years go on I feel the need for a little smugness in my life. I promise you I’ll not pretend that I'm doing anything original.”

  “You won’t be able to help it,” said Detterling morosely. “It’s a necessary condition of bringing yourself to get married at all. And another thing: all married couples - even working class ones - seem to think that the mere fact of marriage confers status . . . privilege. I put up with a lot of it in the Army. Quite junior men, subalterns, would ring up to say that they couldn’t do this or that - whether it was playing squash or going on a night exercise - because it didn’t suit their wives. Seemed to think that was the last word to be said.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Told ’em not to be so damned silly and be there on time, or else .... It made me quite unpopular.”

  “The theory is,” said Tom, “that bachelors lead a pleasant and carefree existence, and ought to make allowances for those who are rearing the new generation.”

  “Nobody asked them to,” said Detterling, his voice brittle with irritation: “in fact before long people will be begging them not to. The country’s too full already; a man can hardly move. But still these bloody women sit about breeding like mice, and then expect to be told they’ve done something clever.”

  “It is rather onerous,” said Tom: “they must be given some comfort.”

  “Why? It’s not compulsory. People just don’t think straight. Old friend of mine turned up at the club the other day with a face as long as a riding boot. Wife expecting third child, he told us: got to give up the club, give up his cricket tour in the summer, even give up his occasional round of golf. Why? I said. Money, he said, and went into a long spiel about education policies and the Lord knows what. But the thing was, he thought he was being dutiful, that everyone ought to say what a splendid fellow he was. In fact he was just one more bloody fool, and so I told him. You didn’t have to get married in the first place, I told him, and even if you did you don’t have to spawn like a frog. He was quite put out, I can tell you.”

  “Have you no crumb of consolation for me?” Tom said mildly.

  “Yes,” shouted Canteloupe, who had been trying to engage their attention from the far end of the table: “whenever you sleep with another woman it’ll be adultery and not fornication. Sounds more stylish, don’t you think? Now pass the port” Detterling made a long arm and passed it. Sir Edwin gave a persecuted look, seized the decanter as soon as Canteloupe had filled from it, and impounded it in the crook of his arm with the officiousness of an excise man.

  “Drink runs in the Canteloupe family,” Detterling explained softly to Tom. “Canteloupe isn’t too bad, but his brothers and sisters are in and out of the bin like cuckoos on a clock.”

  “You seem to know a lot about them.”

  “I’m a second cousin. Canteloupe asked me down to look at some memoirs his father wrote. Although, he’s as rich as Midas he’s always sniffing round for a little extra, so he reckons I can get Gregory Stern to publish them.”

  “And will you?”

  Detterling turned his eyes up.

  “I’ll see they’re read.”

  “Someone else,” said Tom, “is shortly going to ask the same favour. I’m afraid I put him on to you. Major Fielding Gray.” This time Detterling did not turn his eyes up. He narrowed them into a look which conveyed a shrewd interest rather oddly mixed with remorse.

  “I heard what happened,” he muttered. “He should never have been in the Army. Not as a regular.”

  “Will his books be any good?”

  “Could be,” said Detterling non-committally, having quickly reverted to his normal manner. “He was a clever chap. Something had gone wrong - I never quite knew what.”

  “But you’ll help him?”

  “Of course. We served together. Pass the port,” he called sharply to his host.

  “Yes,” boomed Canteloupe; “before we all die of thirst.”

  “The ladies. . . .” began the Minister.

  “Can wait. Port,” said Canteloupe. The decanter passed round. Canteloupe filled, drained, filled again, and then clasped both hands round the decanter, like a rich child who refuses to part with his toy to a poorer one. Sir Edwin, blinking with self-pity, resumed his blandishments.

  “We’ll have to get him out soon,” murmured Detterling to Tom; “but one can’t sit with an empty glass all night just because there’s a drunk in the party. I’ll tip Molly the wink to have the car called early.” He looked meditatively at Tom. “And since there’s something I want to tell you before I go,” he said, “I’d best tell you now. You know Max de Freville? The man who runs the big chemmy game?”

  “I’ve seen him occasionally.”

  “He’s b
y way of being a chum of mine. The thing is that lately he’s developed a very odd sort of hobby ... A new game, you might say.”

  “I should have thought,” said Tom, puzzled, “that he’d had enough of games.”

  “That’s just it. He’s bored and needs distraction, and this is new and different. It’s a kind of power game. He collects information. He doesn’t use it, he just collects it, so that he can feel he’s got to the bottom of things and that if he did want to interfere .... You see what I mean?”

  “Roughly.”

  “Well,” said Detterling. “He’s already got a lot of sources and he’s busy getting more. He shows me a lot of the stuff, you see. And I thought you should know that he’s got an informant in this house. I mean, if you’re going to marry into the family . . . .”

  “Not .... not the Minister?” said Tom with a giggle.

  “No. Isobel.”

  “Isabel?”

  “It seems she got into one of his gaming parties with a boy friend one night. The boy friend guaranteed her, so although she was obviously under age Max let her play. She lost a thousand odd, couldn’t pay of course, and didn’t want Max to make her look silly by coming down on the boy friend for it. So they did a deal. Max would cancel the debt and Isobel would send in regular bulletins about the Minister’s home life.”

  “I can’t think that amounts to much.”

  “I don’t know. Dinner parties like this. Canteloupe’s a name, to say nothing of Llewyllyn. And as Max says, the most boring information very often contains the essential clue to something really big . . . the missing number in the combination ....”

  “Isobel’s a perfect little madam,” Tom said. “Any day now she’ll get herself knocked up by an errand boy.”

  “Max thinks she’s cleverer than people know. So I thought I’d give you the tip.”

  “But you say de Freville doesn’t actually use what he’s told.”

  “He could turn dangerous later. He’s vain, bitter, obsessed. ... So if I were you, I’d keep clear of Isobel.”

  Detterling rose as if he himself had been host.

  “Come on, cousin Canteloupe,” he said. “You can’t sit there sozzling the whole evening.”

  “No,” said cousin Canteloupe. “I’m sick of port anyhow. I need a little brandy.” He pushed the port decanter peevishly away. “A lot of brandy,” he emended.

  In the drawing-room the four women were discussing hymns for the wedding. Isobel had just contributed “Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,” when the men entered in some disorder which had been occasioned by Canteloupe’s neglect to button his fly after going to the loo. When reminded, he had simply opened it wider and announced that these days there was never anything worth seeing. Sir Edwin, who was more put out by this than anyone else, had constituted himself a movable screen between Canteloupe and the public, and was now bobbing uneasily from side to side in order to sustain the role. Fortunately or otherwise, he did not have to do so long; for Canteloupe turned his back on the company as soon as he entered the room and made a rush for the sideboard, where he announced his intention of trying every single bottle. After signing to Lady C., who nodded wanly, Detterling went to the telephone to order the car up from the village; while the dowager sat back happily, long since inured, like a member of a Greek chorus, to any form of disaster - and indeed rather grateful to it for passing the time. Desultory conversation continued in front of the fire. Patricia took up some sewing and attacked it with moral fibre. There was an occasional slurp from the sideboard.

  “Kent has a good chance in the County Championship this year,” said Detterling as he re-entered.

  Sir Edwin, who had been interrupted in the middle of his favourite story about Lord Curzon, looked like an affronted guinea hen. What he didn’t realise was that Detterling’s remark was a special code for warning Lady Canteloupe that the car was on the way without letting her husband know; for if he twigged that he was being taken home early he used to hide or lock himself in the lavatory, and had once even pretended to have a fit, in the hope that a particularly parsimonious host would come across with more brandy. This evening all went well. On receipt of a second code-message, “I wonder why Colin Cowdrey’s bottom is so huge,” (“What?” said Sir Edwin), Lady Canteloupe and the dowager moved into the hall to put on their coats. After another two minutes Lady C.’s head came round the door, to indicate that the car had arrived and the dowager was safely inside it. This was the testing moment: the essential thing was to get Canteloupe out of the house and into the car before he realised what was happening and could start a scene. Expedients ranging from cries of “Fire” to promises of naked ladies on the lawn had all been used and superannuated in their time; and it was getting difficult to think of anything effective. Oddly enough, however, on this occasion Lord Canteloupe, without a word being said to him, suddenly muttered, “Car’s here, I suppose,” and moved from the sideboard towards the door with no attempt at protest.

  “I’m going quietly,” he said, “so nobody need worry.” He struck a match and carried it shakily to his half-smoked cigar; the flame never came within six inches of its target, but he seemed satisfied with his effort and sucked contentedly on the dead tube. “And I’ll tell you why I’m going quietly,” he continued between sucks: “my car’s not the only one out there. If you look through the window by the sideboard, you’ll see that you are about to be visited by three car-loads of police. The fun - such as it ever was - is over for tonight.”

  Canteloupe had exaggerated. There were only two cars, and only one of them connected with the police. His lordship was further mistaken in supposing that he could slip away quietiy, as it was himself who was wanted.

  “Quite a rumpus the other night” (as Isobel was later to write to Max de Freville). “Canteloupe dined here with Lady C. and the old woman, and by ten o’clock he was absolutely squiffed. Just as they were all going home about a million cars came up the drive brimming with policemen. Lord C. is scared stiff of the police, rather odd for someone in his position, but apparently they were beastly to him on Boat Race night years ago. Anyway, there he was scowling away on the front steps with his trousers open from top to bottom and just about to lunge into his Rolls, when out of one of the cars which wasn't a police car steps a squat, queeny little chap in one of those joke dinner jackets which look like all cuffs and collar.

  “ ‘Ah, Lord Canteloupe,’ says this nance; ‘I thought we’d never find you. These country lanes . . . like a labyrinth, my dear . . . my dear Lord Canteloupe, that is.’

  “So Canteloupe stands there with his underpants streaming in the breeze and says nothing, then out comes Daddy in a frightful bait, takes one look at the siss in the D.J., and says: “ ‘Oh, it’s you, Weir. What the devil’s all this?’

  “So then lovey-dovey, who turns out to be an M.P. called Carton Weir, explains that he couldn’t find the way and had to get this brigade of bobbies to guide him. It seems that he’s by way of being the Downing Street go-between and he’s got an important message. So then Daddy preens himself up, thinking it's for him, but it isn’t at all, it’s for poor old pissy Canteloupe. So then the policemen salute like crazy and we all go inside again, having first dredged Lady C. and the other old cow out of the Rolls, and Lady C. tells C. to do up his trouser buttons, and C. as good as thumbs his nose at her, and Daddy looks ready to shit with temper because he's not the centre of attention, and C. looks so full of juice that it’s clear he can’t understand a single thing that’s being said to him. He’s funny when he’s sozzled, he can talk more or less like he was sober but he can’t take anything in. Anyway, the end of it is that Daddy and Canteloupe and the faggot go off to Daddy’s study, and Patty and me and Patty’s boy Tom are left to make polite noises at Lady C., the dowager, and some chum of C.’s called Captain Detterling who they brought along to din-din . . , rather a poppet this one, a bit long in the tooth but with that distinguished hair, he must have done his captain bit about ten generations ago. Both th
e captain and Tom know all about the poovy man in the tux, and the dowager, who’s as sharp as the razor she shaves with, asks about a trillion questions, while Lady C. looks as sour as goosegogs because she’s afraid her old man is in no shape to rise to the occasion . . . . Which it turns out about three hours later is quite some occasion, because Lord C. is being made a kind of mini-minister, a Parliamentary Secretary I think they call it. All drop dead.”

  “Parliamentary Secretary for the Development of British Recreational Resources,” said Sir Edwin to Tom when the guests had at last departed. “It seems that this is an experimental appointment to give the Party a . . . new look, as they call it . . . for the election.”

  “You yourself were consulted?”

  “Of course,” said Sir Edwin. He went to the sideboard and mixed himself a very stiff whisky. “And I must tell you straight away that I was violently opposed to it. It appears that my wishes have been disregarded.”

  Sir Edwin was in many ways an honest man. Although he often found it expedient not to form an opinion, he was jealous and eager for those which he did hold, and he was, moreover, prepared to own to their consequences. In admitting that he had been snubbed he was paying Tom no special compliment: he had done and said what he felt was right, and anyone who enquired into the matter should be told so.

  “It’s not even,” Sir Edwin continued, “as if he was a reliable member of the Party. He treats the Lords as ‘a jolly good laugh’ - his own expression. As you know, he’s so lacking in responsibility that he was even threatening to change sides.”

  “For a jolly good laugh, presumably. Perhaps that’s why they’ve made the appointment. To keep him loyal.”

  “That’s not Party discipline as I was taught it.”

  “True. But these stately home impresarios are right in the public eye. They are considered to be modern, progressive, with it. Canteloupe’s defection would have been noticed . . . . Though for the life of me I can’t think why Carton Weir had to drive down here in the middle of the night.”