Friends in Low Places

by Simon Raven

  “But Burke just hadn’t got it. Flick, flick, flick went her fingers, while he looked miserably at her and shrugged, terrified at what was coming. After a bit even she got the message; at first she looked at him like Medusa, then she stuck her nose in the air, started to walk away from the table - and was stopped by two polite men in dinner jackets. Burke stood there trembling and moaning; and finally it was Lyki who moved in to mend matters.

  “ ‘You have no money?’ he said.

  “ ‘No.’

  “ ‘At your hotel?’

  “She was ready to spit with rage. If there’s one thing a woman like that can’t stand, it’s being made to pay her own losses.

  “ ‘Ask him,’ she said, pointing at Burke.

  “ ‘No,’ said Burke, shuddering. ‘I’ve enough, just enough, to pay the hotel when I leave. You had 60,000,’ he said piteously: ‘I did tell you there wasn’t any more.’

  “ ‘You see?’ said Lyki. ‘Either you must pay yourself or you will be charged by the police. In this country it is a criminal offence.’

  “ ‘All right,’ she said, snarling like a vampire in one of those films: ‘I’ll send the money in the morning.’

  “ ‘One of these gentlemen,’ corrected Lyki,. ‘will probably choose to accompany you now.’

  “So that was the end of her. Off she went with one of the casino officials, while poor Burke scurried and fussed about behind them. God help him, I thought; and I should add that I’ll be very interested to find out, if ever I can, just what’s between that pair.

  “Well, you’ll have been wondering what all this has to do with the letter. Simple. What with the excitement of his coup and all the champagne and the pleasure of putting down Madame Holbrook, Lyki was disposed to be garrulous; and since the Holbrook incident had set his mind working that way he started up about similar cases of default. Now, the significant thing was that though he told me about several of these, involving sums of anywhere between ten pounds and ten thousand, he never once mentioned des Moulins. Unhelpful, you say? Certainly; but at least I now knew that he regarded the matter so warily that even in his unwonted cups he wasn’t going to tell the story. Conclusion: he was nervous. Further conclusion (tentative): other people had found out about the letter and were after it. Perhaps he even suspected me. Final conclusion: - no, good pussy-footing round playing at Raffles in the Royal Danieli. If he was being so cagey, the letter was probably locked up somewhere very safe; perhaps his bank. There was only one thing to do: come right out with what I knew, watch his reaction, and play it by ear from there.

  “ ‘You know, sweetheart,’ I said, ‘you’ve left something out. I know you were taken for a big ride by a frog called des Moulins - and I know how he paid you off.’

  “I’m not sure quite what I’d expected. Shock, suspicion, anger. Fear, perhaps, or just curiosity. But he showed none of these. He just looked terribly, terribly sad.

  “ ‘Poor des Moulins,’ he said. ‘He was a truly religious man. That’s what ruined him.’

  “ ‘Religious?’

  “ ‘He was for ever trying to ascertain the will of God. You don’t read Dante? No, none of the young do now. “In His Will is our Peace.” Since des Moulins thinks it was God’s will that he should be totally destroyed, he has accepted his degradation almost with rapture.’

  “ ‘And it was God’s will that you should be given the letter?’

  “ ‘You are interested in the letter?’

  “He seemed resigned and faintly amused.

  “ ‘Everyone is who knows of it.’

  “ ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘that letter. It could do much harm ... not least to innocent people. There is a boy, a youth, the one who carried it ... he would be crushed. It is a burden. I wish I could so dispose of it that it no longer had power to hurt.’

  “ ‘Why not destroy it?’

  “ ‘It was a gift, my dear. It is evidence of a most important historical truth. One must not destroy such things. There is little enough truth left in history.’

  “ ‘Then have it locked up.’

  “ ‘Then I die suddenly and it is discovered.’

  “ ‘Sooner or later it must be.’

  “ ‘Later is my hope. When everyone concerned is dead.’

  “Meanwhile, it appeared, I was not the first to show interest. When the minister from whom des Moulins stole the letter had discovered the theft, he had known who must be guilty and made enquiries. These had started talk in certain circles, des Moulins had been approached in Beirut, his hovel and himself turned upside down without result. Then, since something was known by the seekers of des Moulins’ former involvement with Lykiadopoulos, he in turn had - been approached.

  “ ‘They will never find it,’ he said.

  “ ‘They might turn nasty.’

  “ ‘They already have. And they may turn nastier yet.’

  “ ‘Then you must destroy it. Historical evidence or not.’

  “ ‘They would not believe me when I told them. To such men it is unthinkable that a document which could bring money or power could be wilfully destroyed.’

  “ ‘Then you must get rid of it. Give it away. Sell it.’

  “ ‘These men - the ones who have been pestering me - offered me a high price. But I do not need money, Mark, and I must protect that boy. What I really wish is to forget the whole thing. That is why I do not tell the story of des Moulins. Anyway, it does not belong among a gambler’s anecdotes.’

  “So there we were going round and round in circles. I’ve reported all this at some length to let you know, in case you didn’t realise already, what a very odd bird your chum is. Rather fascinating. These scruples of his, about not destroying historical evidence on the one hand and yet not incriminating that French boy on the other, indicate a moral conscience one would not expect to find in a professional gambler (beg pardon, my dear, but you know what I mean). And again, in many ways he’s so subtle but in others so crass. It’s just as you said. He’s taken no trouble to find out whether these people who are after him want to publish the letter or to suppress it, or what sort of agreements they might be prepared to come to if he let them have it. He’s as short-sighted as he’s devious. Or is he? What he really wants is for scholars to find the letter in 100 years’ time; and I suppose his hiding place has been chosen with that in view. Which is something to go on. At least I now know that the letter still exists and what processes of thought have dictated the methods of concealment. ‘They’ll never find it.’ That surely indicates, for a start, that it’s not in this mysterious hotel room of his; so for the time being at least I’ve decided not to risk annoying him by trying to track it down. Nor could it be on his person, as they say. Positive conclusions are harder to come by, and you’ll agree that the odds are unpromising. But I’ll keep at it like the Trojan I am and I’ll keep you posted. Arrivederci. Mark.

  “P.S. This has been a long and painstaking account, you will agree. Pray let this be borne in mind when pay day comes round once more. Which can hardly be too soon. M.”

  Max de Freville, though amused by Mark’s second despatch, was by no means as pleased with it as he had been with the first. While he had always realised that for Mark to put his hands on the Greek’s letter would be difficult, he had yet assumed, such was his confidence in the instinct which had led him to assign the task, that the thing would somehow be done. Now it seemed likely that the thing could not be done. A substantial disappointment; for although he did not want the letter for his own use, he had looked forward with keen enjoyment to following Mark’s machinations for its profitable disposal. Powerful and pompous men, once confronted with such a document, could have been made to cut some humiliating capers; and to Max in his role of political voyeur the spectacle would have been choice. This pleasure, as it now seemed, he must make up his mind to forego. But there were consolations: there was other folly doing in the world for him to relish. Spring had brought with it the usual rich crop of sexual antics and disasters in importa
nt circles; a prominent trust lawyer, whose name was a byword of integrity, was about to be apprehended (so he was informed from a reliable source) for embezzlement in the sum of half a million pounds; and there was a heartening promise of low comedy in Lord Canteloupe’s sudden promotion.

  One of the first people to call on the new Parliamentary Secretary was Somerset Lloyd-James. The interview, which ostensibly had to do with the economic problems which faced Canteloupe, had been set up by Carton Weir, who opined that the Marquis might now constitute a politico-social ally of some prestige. Aware of the threat posed to his leadership of the Young England Group by Peter Morrison’s possible return to Parliament, Weir, who would in any case have supported Lloyd-James in return for favours past, was now doubly assiduous in his cause.

  “There’s nothing direct the old fool can do for you,” as he remarked to Somerset the day before the meeting; “but it will do you no harm at all to be well in with him. To be known to be well in with him.”

  And so Somerset had called on the Lord Canteloupe - in correct morning dress, a courtesy which he rightly surmised would both flatter the patrician ego and appeal to the patrician sense of style.

  “Strix?” said Canteloupe dubiously. “Never had much time for reading. I’m afraid. Not what you’d call cultured. That,” he added with characteristic insight, “is why they’ve asked me to do this job,”

  “Strix” said Somerset smoothly, “has nothing to do with culture. We’re interested in money.”

  “Ah,” said Canteloupe with undisguised warmth.

  “The thing is,” Somerset pursued, “do you see your way to running this show at a financial profit for the exchequer?”

  “Any damn fool can run at a profit. Find out what they want and make ’em pay a proper price for it.”

  “Exactly,” said Somerset; “but how does one find out what they want? Impresarios, P.R.O.s, film magnates, men who are accounted experts in interpreting the public taste, are constantly getting it wrong and losing millions.”

  “Because they don’t keep in touch. If a thing works once it’ll probably work twice; the mistake they make is to think that it’ll work for ever.”

  “But won’t it?” said Somerset. “Basically, what they want stays the same. Sex, flattery, and a spot of mystery to keep them curious.”

  “Right,” said Canteloupe. “But you’ve got to shift the emphasis from time to time. It’s a matter of suiting presentation to the public mood. You take that period just after the war. People were frustrated because they’d won a great victory, or so they were told, and they hadn’t got a damn thing to show for it - not even enough to eat. They felt cheated. So what to do with them? Simple. Invite them to revenge themselves on those who are cheating them (i.e. the authorities) by cheating back. That’s why the spiv was the most popular character in the late forties - the fellow who got whatever he wanted despite all the regulations saying he mustn’t have it, and got it, what’s more, for nothing. That gave me the clue: let them think, I told myself, that whatever I’m offering them or showing them in my house is somehow illicit, that they’re getting what they’re not allowed.”

  “Rather difficult in the stately home business?”

  “Not at all. Emphasise the luxury, the social injustice, the immorality of it all - and then invite them to join in. Encourage them to feel like lords and ladies living in the lap and grinding the faces of the poor. There wasn’t much they could actually do, of course, except feel each other in my park, but I made them think they were being awfully wicked by getting everything up to look naughty. Homy paintings, the third marquis’s silver jerry for pissing in under the table while the port went round, the odd man trap in the cellars, the authentic bed where they caught Lady Kitty rogering her black page. That sort of thing.”

  “And how shall you apply this formula to public recreation?”

  “I shan’t. That was just after the war, and the mood’s changed since then. Many times. We’ve had romantic moods and aggressive moods and so called creative moods and teenage moods and hands off the Empire moods - we’ve had the lot. Just now the mood is one of aspiration and high ethical principle. Everyone’s got everything he wants and more - except a purpose. So civic virtue, respectability, married love, moral rearmament - that’s the line now.”

  And Lord Canteloupe went on to enlarge on his scheme for caravan parks and to explain how their ugliness and regimentation would appeal to the contemporary taste for moral endeavour. Somerset, impressed by Canteloupe’s theory and wondering why the man was commonly written off as a moron, reflected that if his premise about a prevailing passion for virtue were correct, the Conservative Party might be well advised to change its pre-electoral policy of plugging material benefits and introduce a more spiritual tone.

  “But don’t you worry,” said Canteloupe, as though reading his mind: “if anyone was to take this morality line so far as actually to suggest people could do without a few things, could lower their own standard of living to help feed a few of their black brothers, they’d lynch him. They want it both ways: they want to live wealthy and feel worthy.”

  “Moral seriousness is a prerogative of full bellies?”

  “Something like that,” said Canteloupe, who mistrusted other men’s epigrams. “They’ll come and play at austerity and moral seriousness in my caravan parks, like Marie Antoinette played at being a dairy maid. But when the chips are really down, when they’ve got to vote about their future, it’ll be cars, cookers and fancy cans, and up yours I’m laughing.”

  “You wouldn’t mind if I wrote an article for Strix about these caravan parks? Illustrating your theory of the economics of entertainment?”

  “Is it a theory?” said Canteloupe, pleased. ‘I thought it was plain common sense.”

  “It’ll look like a theory by the time I’ve finished with it,” Somerset promised.

  “Good of you to take the trouble.”

  “Not at all. It’s my business to go into these things - not only as editor of Strix but as a prospective Parliamentary candidate.”

  Somerset lowered his eyes demurely and allowed this to sink in.

  “I see,” said Canteloupe. And then, “From what I can make out we need a few more chaps like you. Chaps who know a good thing when it’s under their nose. Who look into matters first and make their theories afterwards. It’s usually the other way round.”

  The interview ended a few minutes later, when Somerset undertook to complete the first draft of his article within five days and invited Canteloupe to dinner on the sixth so that he might read it and give his comments.

  Both parties were highly satisfied with their meeting. Somerset considered that he had found a useful supporter who, while his political influence was as yet small, was destined for higher circles of government as time went on. Clearly, in this instance someone (the Prime Minister?) had at last decided to revert to the sound pragmatic principle of giving jobs to men who understood what was needed and how to provide it. In a generation which was increasingly concerned with fighting off boredom during its ample leisure, opportunities for Canteloupe to practise his proven expertise, and so magnify the power of his office, could only multiply. True, the probable outcome was such as to make a civilised man shake in his shoes, but that was not the point. The point was that Canteloupe, despite his rank and background, was of the age and understood it. This transformed his rank and background from liabilities into assets and opened up for him all save the very highest places in the kingdom, and possibly even those. His diagnosis, that what was currently required was something ugly and uncomfortable, was a minor stroke of genius, Somerset considered. Here was a new and bright star in the mid-century firmament, and Somerset proposed to hitch his wagon to it ... at a discreet distance, of course.

  For his part, Canteloupe was much impressed with Somerset. Here was a fellow who knew how to dress and behave, who was (as Carton Weir had made plain) soundly connected, who understood and appreciated what Canteloupe was trying to do, a
nd who was prepared to give it a boost in his mag. Canteloupe knew nothing about Strix (though he was to learn a great deal in the months which followed) but he knew a gentleman when he saw one and he recognised intelligence. In short, Somerset Lloyd-James would do. That he was manifestly not only a gentleman but also a howling shit did not deter Canteloupe one iota: for one thing, as he reflected, he was a shit himself, and for another he preferred working with them. For the great thing about shits was that they got on with it (provided the price was right) and didn’t ask damn silly questions.

  Max de Freville, setting out for a meeting with his accountant, was handed a telegram:

  SUCCESS SUCCESS CATCH FIRST POSSIBLE PLANE EXPLANATIONS LATER MARK.

  5

  SOMETHING OF VALUE

  _____________________________________

  RUPERT PERCIVAL and Alastair Dixon sat on Percival's terrace and gazed towards the Quantocks. The cards on the table between them were ready for Piquet, but Dixon, restless and fretful despite an excellent luncheon, had twice refused to begin.

  “It’s no good sulking,” Percival said, “just because you can’t have it all your own way. You’re old enough to know that.”

  “I’ll have it my way yet. But I don’t at all care for it when men like Edwin Turbot prove unreliable.”

  “He’s got his own troubles. They appointed Canteloupe against his considered advice. One in the wind-pipe for his amour propre.”

  “That’s no reason,” said Dixon, “why he should vacillate over other matters. Some time ago, as you’ll remember, he asked me to enquire what was doing down here. When I told him what you told me, he was quite plain: he supported Lloyd-James for the candidature - ”

  “ - Which, by the way, has nothing to do with him - ”