Friends in Low Places

by Simon Raven

  “Likes a bit of drama. He was charged, he told me, to acquaint Canteloupe with the P.M.’s intention as soon as possible and persuade him to accept as a matter of vital urgency. Said he thought it might be easier if the man was mellow. As if there was any doubt of Canteloupe accepting.”

  “Did he know what he was accepting?”

  “He affected to think that he was being made Lord Lieutenant . . . but he’ll get it straight when he wakes up with Weir in the house. I gather Weir’s to represent him in the Commons.”

  “That’s shrewd. With Weir to shore him up he can’t go far wrong.”

  “All the same,” said Sir Edwin clenching both fists, “it won’t do. It’s too bad and it won’t do. This isn’t the eighteenth century, and you can’t appoint clowns like Canteloupe to govern. If he wouldn’t do as Lord Lieutenant of the County, he won’t do as a Parliamentary Secretary.”

  “With respect,” said Tom slowly, “I think the P.M. has been rather subtle. The fact is that Canteloupe has shown a conspicuous talent for entertaining the young. He knows the kind of rubbish they want and he gives it to them in just the right package. Given enough scope, he can lay the same sort of thing on for the young of the whole nation ... for all those who are just old enough to vote, or soon will be. And this in a so-called age of leisure. It could help to give your crowd just the look they want - attractive, forward-looking, the party of progress and pleasure. An illusion of course, but it’ll take everyone some time to twig that, and by then there’ll be some other bright bubble to gawp at.”

  “None of which is government as I was taught it.”

  “Well, there you are,” said Tom. “If you will support people like Somerset Lloyd-James and keep out honest men like Morrison, you must expect this kind of thing.”

  “Hrrmmph,” said the Minister, and stumped off to bed.

  4

  PAN AND SILENUS

  _____________________________________

  MARK LEWSON wrote to Max de Freville from Venice. “What a dear little chap Lykiadopoulos is. Like the Michelin man and as bald as a balloon, a life-size toy for rich children to play with. Not a cold fish either, as you’d expect a Baccarat banker to be, but warm and frothy. I suppose that’s what fools the punters. ‘We can't lose money,’ I can hear them all say, ‘playing against a sweet little man like that’, and in they go laughing; and even after they have lost, it must seem more like giving it to a good cause, as though Lykiadopoulos were an orphan or something, so they feel all warm inside and hurry back to lose more. He really is a poppet.

  “But of course you know all about that. So down to work. I arrived in Venice the day after I left you and booked in at the Cavaletto, not quite the luxiest thing going, but I’m afraid the Contessa and I got ourselves a bad name in most of the bigger ones. The next morning betimes I rang up Lykiadopoulos at the Danieli and begged leave to present your note of introduction. The telephone nearly cracked with excitement, because it seems the poor old thing is very much alone in Venice as the police are so severe that he has to be horribly careful. He didn’t say so in so many words, of course; but I gathered that the idea of a nice, clean tourist chum with a British passport was very bien vu.

  “So we met for a delicious lunch in Harry’s and got on together like a kibbutz on fire. But then the trouble started. Lykiadopoulos (call me Lyki) wanted me to move in on the Danieli, and that was all right with me - had I not known that the minute I set foot in the place the manager would storm out with a load of the Contessa’s duds drawn on the Banco di Spirito Santo, which would really be v. shaming in front of a new friend. So what to do? Well, clearly I'd got to get the entree to the Danieli sooner or later, because if the letter was anywhere it was probably there, so I made a sort of semi-clean breast. There had, I simpered, been a little misunderstanding some years ago, when the currency regulations were still very fierce . . . . The dear, tactful, generous fellow took that at face value and volunteered to square the management. Quite what he did, I don’t know; if they produced the Contessa’s stumers, he never mentioned it then or later; but the upshot was that within three quarters of an hour I found myself installed in a suite at the Danieli, with everyone from the manager to the lift boy fawning on me like the Pope. My bag came over from the Cavaletto on a sort of magic carpet, the bill there was fixed with a flick of someone’s finger, and I was to regard myself, it seemed, as the guest of ‘‘Signor Lyki” at the Danieli Royal Excelsior Hotel until (and here, despite the toothflashing, there was precision) the Signore moved out to the Lido to be nice and handy for running his bank.

  “Well, a suite with a drawing-room amounts, in hotel convention, to a built-in chaperon, so you’ll have guessed the rest. Hardly had I unpacked before there was the pitter-patter of Signor Lyki’s little feet. Son cosas de la vida. And really life is quite pleasant. There are delicious meals and amusing trips to look at churches, both in Venice and on the islands, about which Lyki is remarkably informative. His speciality is the Ghetto - did you know the Venetians claim to have invented the system? - where we have just spent a very long morning. Lyki is so energetic about his sight-seeing, to say nothing of his other amusements, that unless I find the letter and get out I shall soon be a total wreck.

  “And what about the letter? you’ll ask. Nothing doing so far. For a start, he always comes to my room; and so far, if you can believe this, I haven’t even been able to find out where or which his is. If I ask at the desk, they just ring through (“Camera di Signor Lyki - never a number) and tell him I want him, whereupon he either joins me straight away or fixes a meeting place over the buzzer - never, although I constantly suggest it, his own room. Very odd. The other tack I’ve tried is drawing him out about his gambling career, in the hope we’ll get on to des Moulins and the letter. No luck. He’s told me stories - v. good ones - about every trick in the game, but nothing about des Moulins and his coup de dishonneur.

  “So I’ll just have to keep trying. I’ve been in the Danieli for three days now, which gives me another six, I make it, before he moves out to the hotel on the Lido. He might take me with him but I doubt it. I gather that while the bank’s running he leads a dedicated life, and anyhow I don’t know that I could stand up to the wear and tear. Six days then: I’ll do my best but I guarantee nothing. And incidentally, if you meant what you said about making it worth my while to keep you informed, a little on account would not come amiss. I have to make some pretence of paying for the odd luncheon. By telegraph to the American Express is quickest - or so the Contessa always said. And that’s it for now. We’re just off out to the Lido to have din-dins and go to the Casino - a preliminary reconnaissance, I gather, to see what nick the place is in . . .”

  Max de Freville, just back from Menton, made a note on a desk-diary to send Lewson £50 by wire the following morning. Although the information was thin, Lewson had at least got inside the castle if not yet inside the keep. If he had spoken the truth about his efforts to date, he deserved a refresher now: if he had been lying, he would get his deserts later.

  “Not bad,” said the Marquis Canteloupe, surveying a hundred square yards of thickly carpeted office complete with cocktail cabinet and day bed, “not bad at all. So what’s to do now, eh?”

  “I dare say the civil servants will have something to say about that,” said Carton Weir; “but as far as we're concerned, we want a bigger and brighter image of government-sponsored public recreation.”

  “Oh dear me, no. Although the public demands to be I entertained, it would be most upset if it thought the government approved of pleasure. The public must be entertained in spite of itself: in spite of the opposition which it will feel in duty bound to put up.”

  “But you just said it demands to be entertained.”

  “So it does. But in the teeth of its own puritanical traditions. So first of all it wants to be reassured. You’ve got to convince it that entertainment is somehow a social right, : almost a duty, like having its kiddies educated. That will make it all resp
ectable. But pleasure for the sake of pleasure ... oh dear me, no.”

  “I’d thought,” said Canteloupe, shyly, “of government brothels.”

  “No” said Weir.

  “But all this talk of teenagers riddled with clap. My brothels : would be medically vetted.”

  “NO.”

  “I see. . . . State Casinos?”

  “In six or seven years, perhaps. Provided you charge a 50 per cent tax on winnings and only allow hard seats.”

  “Ah,” said Canteloupe, “I’m beginning to get the idea. Now what about this? Government-sponsored caravan sites for holidays. Make a filthy mess of some well known beauty spot - they’ll love that - and then publish a lot of balls about The People enjoying Its Rights in the Countryside, that kind of blab. Jam the bloody caravans as close together as possible - you know how they love being crowded - make a song and a dance about being good neighbours, give a prize for the best behaved family, and perhaps throw in compulsory P.T.”

  “That’s it,” said Carton Weir: “that’s just the ticket.”

  “Further to my last,” wrote Mark Lewson from Venice, “we’re a little warmer now though hardly hot.

  “After I signed off the other evening, we duly set sail in Lyki’s motor-boat to take a butchers at the Casino. The only plan I had, and a pretty poor one, was to wait till we got back to the Danieli and then follow Lyki to his room, so that at least I’d know where it was. If he caught me, I was going to pretend to be tight and say I’d lost my way; so the first thing I had to do was to prop myself against the Casino bar and consume, or appear to consume, an immense number of drinkies.

  “The end of it was that I really did get tight. Lyki, who disapproves of drinking in casinos, had gone prowling off on a tour of inspection, and I was enjoying an interval in my dipso act, when in came Burke Lawrence, the advertising man. Now, believe it or not, Burke is one of the few people on earth who might be said to owe me money, because the Contessa, who was a nutty old cinephile, once put up a few hundred quid for some amateur film he was trying to make. Whenever we meet he always buys me champagne to stop me going on about what happened to the money, and this time was no exception. In fact he called for a magnum. Very pleased with himself was Burke. It seems that he’s in Venice to help organise some festival to do with advertising films - I believe the Venetians would throw a Festival of Plumbing if anyone suggested it — and he regards this as professional recognition of a high order. The only trouble, apparently, is that he’s lumbered with an out of date model called Penelope Holbrook, who was once his mistress and now follows him around wherever he goes making scenes and whining for work. Not that she needs it, as her ex-husband pays her a handsome alimony, but she’s anxious to make a come-back. This evening, however, he reckons he’s safe, because one of the other geniuses to do with the festival has made a pass at her and she’s busy goosing him up in high hope of an offer.

  “So there we were, tucking happily into Burke Lawrence’s magnum of fizz and talking about the dear old days, when a sort of frisson goes over the entire room and we see an agitated crowd forming round the top roulette table at the far end. And guess what’s going on. Lyki, looking like a man in a fever, is plastering the table with maximum bets all round the number 20. 50,000 lire en plain, 100,000 for each of the chevaux, and so on through the carré bets and the transversals right out to the even chances - noir, pair, passe - on each of which he places one and three quarter million. God alone knows what’s got into him. As soon as the chef sees what he’s up to, he suggests to Lyki that he should call the bet and deposit the total sum needed with the croupier, thus leaving room on the cloth for someone else to play; but Lyki’s beyond listening and just goes on wanging down plaques as though they were dominoes until he’s made the entire spiel. You never saw such a sight. The table piled high with plastic of every colour in the spectrum, Lyki’s eyes glaring through the smoke like fog lamps, the croupiers all sweating buckets, and the spectators squawking and yakking like a parrot house. Only the chef kept calm; he was a chap with a pan like Tiresias who’d obviously seen the lot in his day and was beyond being impressed by anything. Which was just as well, because otherwise they’d still be sitting there; he had to flick his fingers three times before he could get the croupier responsible to pick up the ball and throw for the coup, and even then the poor fellow bungled it and had to stop the wheel and start all over again.

  “But eventually we were off. Wheel turning, ball whirring round the groove at the top of the bowl, dead silence now, Lyki’s whole body trembling like a witch-doctor throwing a seizure, ball begins to drop, bounces on one of the diamonds, rides for a second on the rim of the wheel, and then clunk.

  “ Uno,” calls the croupier; ‘le premier.’

  “So that was that, it seemed. But as you of all people will know, one lies next to twenty on the wheel; and when the wretch looked again, his face turned a rich green and started sort of oozing. Whereupon the chef took over.

  “ ‘Venti,’ he called after a stern inspection of the wheel, ‘vingt, zwanzyg, twenty. Noir, pair, passe.’

  “After this they led Lyki away to the manager’s office to make him out a cheque. He re-emerged, rather flushed, about twenty minutes later, came over to Burke and me, ordered more champagne, and started lapping it up like a figure of farce. And he didn’t forget his chums. Pretty soon we’re all floating in the stuff, and what with the brandy I’ve already put down in order to pass my drunk act off on Lyki, and what with the gamblers pressing round to gawk at him and touch him for luck, I’m beginning to feel mildly hysterical.

  “ ‘The first time,’ Lyki was saying, ‘the first time I have ever drunk wine in the Rooms. And you know why? It is not the money, though that is pleasant. It is that I have now fulfilled one great ambition: to make the Grand Coup de la Table, to back the winning number in every possible way, all seventeen bets, and to do it at the maximum. Roulette is a miserable game, a game for old women and children, but this I have always wished to do, as some men wish to climb a mountain or sail alone across great oceans.’

  “ ‘An expensive hobby,’ Burke suggested.

  “ ‘Yes. But this evening I was certain. It was as though a little devil was standing on the number and beckoning me . . . I was always lucky.’

  “At this stage our pleasant evening was sharply interrupted. A tall scowling woman, with a low forehead and mean, prying nostrils, marched up to Burke and demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing. This was the passée model, Penelope Holbrook; it seemed her escort for the evening had ditched her soon after dinner and had not been at all helpful about her career. Bad temper and disappointment had turned her very ugly, and the wonder was, from where I sat, that she’d ever made it as a model at all. Why Burke has anything to do with such a frightful bitch I can’t imagine; he was clearly irritated by her arrival, as he’d taken a fancy to Lyki and vice v., but he treated her with considerable courtesy all the same, got her a chair, introduced her all round, and never once batted an eyelid though she was pumping pure poison at him without stopping to draw breath.

  “ ‘My whole career at stake,’ she was saying, ‘and you have to sneak off here without telling me.’

  “ ‘But my dear,’ said Burke meekly, ‘you said you wouldn’t need me.’

  “ ‘You should have let me know where you were. So that I could get you if I wanted you.’

  “ I did try to tell you. But you were so absorbed in the prospect of your dinner with Perry - ’

  “ ‘ - Perry,’ she snorted. ‘Another dried up queen. No wonder it’s so hard for a girl to get proper recognition.’

  “She was one of those women who’ve got homosexuals on the brain. You know the sort of thing: anyone who doesn’t fawn round them all day long is automatically a criminal pervert and ought to be put in chains.

  “ ‘Get me a coke,’ was her next contribution.

  “Lyki offered her champagne, but no, she’d got some idea Coca-Cola was the smart thing, she
’d read that story about the top model who’d insisted on drinking it at Maxim’s and afterwards married a Viscount, so she was going to have Coca-Cola too. Brother, what a woman. You could just hear her tiny little brain clicking over as she wondered what was the surest way of making herself the centre of attention and spoiling everyone’s evening at the same time. Eventually she thought up a real winner.

  “ ‘Since we’re here.’ she said, ‘we may as well gamble. Give me some money.’

  “So Burke passed over 10,000 lire.

  “ ‘I said money.’

  “Burke gave her 10,000 more, whereupon she sniffed at Lyki and me as though we were samples of inferior cocaine and stalked off to one of the chemmy tables, with Burke trotting after her like a page boy.

  “ ‘We should see this,’ Lyki said. ‘It will be interesting. That woman lives in her fantasies, and her present fantasy, is that she is an ex-king’s mistress losing a spectacular sum in full view of all at Monte Carlo.’

  “How right he was. As soon as she got to the table she called ‘banco’ to 60,000, lost, handed over the 20,000 Burke had given her and 40,000 more which he reluctantly produced, and then called ‘suivi’.

  “ ‘No, dear,’ Burke whispered, I haven’t got it.’

  “ ‘You’ll just have to find it, won’t you?’

  “God knows what sort of hold she’d got on him. It was certainly a great deal stronger than that of a former mistress. Whatever the answer, Burke went quite haggard; his face drooped in despair and anguish just because he hadn’t got 120,000 lire on him for this ghastly woman to toss away at chemmy. Not that she was taking the slightest notice of what he said. She’d already picked up her cards and asked for another - which she didn’t get because the bank held a natural. So far from being put out, she was obviously delighted, and stood there triumphantly flicking her fingers at Burke for the money, for all the world (as Lyki had foretold) like a royal courtesan.