Friends in Low Places

by Simon Raven

  “I hope that will be different after this autumn. You may have heard - ”

  “ - I've heard.” Sir Edwin reflected. Finally he said,

  “Always tricky, this sort of thing. Wish you the best of luck, of course.”

  Not the voice, thought Peter, of a firm supporter. Tom was right: there was a smell of sulphur here.

  “Won’t be a moment, darling - excuse me, sir,” he said on impulse, and screwed his way through the crowd to where he could see Somerset, who was standing alone at one corner of a large table which held the wedding presents.

  “What did you send . . . you old crook?”

  “That,” said Somerset, pointing to a florid edition of Saint Augustine’s Confessions. “Rather appropriate if one considers Tom’s younger days.”

  “Proselytising, Somerset?”

  “It is a duty enjoined upon us. How are you, Peter?”

  “Pleased to see you, in a dreadful sort of way. And curious.”

  “Curious, my dear?”

  “Bishop’s Cross, Somerset. What’s going on?”

  “Naturally I’m very anxious to be chosen. It’s high time I got started.”

  “I’m anxious too. I want to get back. But you haven’t answered my question. What’s going on?”

  “You know very well,” Somerset told him, “that you can’t expect a direct answer to a crude question like that. What makes you think that anything’s going on?”

  “The way certain people are behaving. And the glazed look in your eye. It always used to come when you were up to something.”

  “Oh dear,” sighed Somerset, “I hoped I’d got over that.”

  “I find it rather endearing. A reminder of our childhood.”

  “When all the best prizes went to you,” said Somerset with sudden and naked resentment.

  “Well, Bishop’s Cross is one prize that isn’t coming to you. That much I will tell you. And if you want to save time and trouble for yourself and everybody else, you’ll withdraw your name. Because just this once the clean-limbed hero of the school is going to be put down by the school swot, and it might look better if he resigned gracefully first.”

  “I wonder,” Helen Morrison was saying to Sir Edwin, “what my husband is saying to Mr. Lloyd-James. They look rather flushed.”

  “I could tell you why,” said the Minister as he refilled his tumbler, “but I’d much sooner not. I’ll tell you something else instead. You remind me of my wife.”

  Helen looked distressed.

  “She left me, you know, when my younger daughter was a baby. I wonder,” he said, looking vaguely round the room, “where Isobel is?” For a moment his eyes misted, then focused again on Helen. “As I was saying, she left me very suddenly and no one ever found out why. There wasn’t even another man, not a proper one, just someone who -Well. So I had to look after the girls, and I’ve done my best, but sometimes, today of all times, I wonder whether - Oh dear. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I expect because you look like - ”

  “ - Please,” Helen said. “Patricia is a very fine young woman,” she instructed him stoutly, “and Tom Llewyllyn is - ” She tried to say a “fine young man” but for all the world she couldn’t manage it. “ - Very clever and distinguished,” she concluded.

  “Rumpff,” went Sir Edwin. “Sorry, dear lady. A trying occasion. Have some more champagne.”

  He gestured with vigour but made no attempt to get it for her, then, seeing Peter on his way back to them, excused himself hurriedly and made across the room towards Dixon and Percival, for it was time, his instinct told him, to start throwing a bit of charm about in that quarter.

  “Something’s up with Somerset,” whispered Peter as he rejoined Helen; “but I’m blessed if I know what.”

  “Something’s up,” whispered Alfie Schroeder to Tom on the other side of the room.

  Alfie had waited at the end of the queue so that he might have a better chance to make his point. Patricia had now strayed a few yards away to talk to some of the bridesmaids, and Alfie was urgent.

  “There’s something up,” he said.

  “On the job, Alfie?”

  “I came here as a friend, laddie, you know that, so I’m telling you. Get that girl of yours and get out - before something happens to stop you leaving. I wouldn’t want to see your honeymoon spoilt. It was about the one good thing that ever happened to me - but never mind that. You get going at once. That’s my advice, and it’s the best wedding gift you’ve had so far.”

  “But Alfie. There are going to be speeches and a cake and God knows what.” He glanced at Patricia; but she was safely occupied, it seemed. Even so he moved Alfie further away, “What on earth’s the matter?” he said.

  “Never you mind. It’s just that there’s going to be a nasty shock round here before the day’s out, and I’d like to see you well away from it.”

  “But Alfie. . . . How can you know?”

  “Let’s just say I looked in the woodshed. Or the stables, to be more precise.”

  “Whatever you saw, we can’t just push off.”

  “You would have done three years ago.”

  “Things change. There must be speeches, Alfie. It must all be done properly. For Patricia’s sake.”

  “I suppose so,” said Alfie miserably. “Try to get a move on, that’s all.”

  But the proceedings, Tom reflected, would take their own time. There were too many rules and too many people; nothing he could do. In any case, Alfie had roused curiosity in him rather than apprehension. If something was going to break, Tom wanted to be in on it. As a writer, he could not afford to miss a good scene; and he was - always would be - a writer before he was a husband. No, he thought; let things take their course: the wedding trip was to last six weeks, and he could well afford a day or two’s delay if there was anything to show for it. Absent-mindedly he took a glass of champagne from a tray, then realised this was the first drink he had had time for and drained it in one.

  “Christ” he nearly shouted, as the malignant fluid rasped down through his chest.

  “Christ” Vanessa Salinger was complaining to her husband Donald. “They must have made it themselves.”

  “Champagne’s always like that at weddings,” Donald said; “it’s the occasion that counts, remember.”

  “Stop being so smug.”

  Donald pouted.

  “We ought to have a word with Lord and Lady Cantaloupe,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Good manners require it.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Donald. We don’t even know them.”

  “That’s just the point. We ought to. The firm’s printing the stuff for the advertising campaign about Canteloupe’s Country Culture Camps.”

  Deferentially Donald stalked Lord Canteloupe, who was standing, glumly and with an empty glass, between Lady Canteloupe and Carton Weir. (The dowager was busy gathering a representative selection from the buffet to take home in her handbag.) Since the Salingers knew Weir slightly, having met him over de Freville’s chemmy table from time to time, Donald signed to him for assistance; but Weir, preoccupied with the sight of Sir Edwin courting Rupert Percival, did not respond.

  “Lord Canteloupe, I’m - er - Donald Salinger,” Donald eventually said.

  “Who?” said Canteloupe savagely.

  Carton Weir, his attention recalled by this exchange, whispered in the Secretary’s ear.

  “Of course,” boomed Canteloupe. “Delighted to meet you. Doing a great job with the printing. Be a good chap,” he said to Weir regally, “and get me some more of this poisonous stuff.”

  Refusal being tactless in present company, Weir took the empty glass and moved off towards the bar.

  “And this,” Donald Salinger began, “is my - ”

  But Vanessa, anxious for a little light relief, had followed Weir.

  “Shall I tell you something amusing?” she said.

  “I could do with it. Trailing round with that lot isn’t very joy-maki
ng.”

  “Well then. Sir Edwin Turbot’s pissed.”

  She nodded towards where the Minister was talking, red with effort, to Percival and Dixon.

  “What of it? So would Canteloupe be if I gave him half a chance.”

  He poured an ungenerous glass of champagne and started back with it.

  “Sir Edwin’s pissed,” Vanessa said, “because he doesn’t like this marriage.”

  “We always knew that. He doesn’t care for Tom Llewyllyn.”

  Deftly, Carton Weir forged a passage between a jowly M.P. and a shapeless county lady, Scylla and Charybdis.

  “You haven’t seen the point,” Vanessa said. “It’s not that he doesn’t care for Tom. He’s jealous.”

  “Old Oedipus again? Quite normal.”

  Vanessa put up her hand to detain him while they were still out of earshot of Donald and the Canteloupes.

  “When a girl hasn’t got a mother,” she said, “she sometimes has a very special thing with the father. And vice versa. Far more than the usual father-daughter thing. I had a girl friend once ... it was much the same story as this, important family, almost as much money. Just before the couple went off from the wedding breakfast in their car, her father went berserk. He raged round the car cursing at the top of his voice, and started cutting all the old shoes and things off the back bumper with a pair of garden shears. Then he ran into the house again snapping the shears at the guests - dangerously, not just pretend - and wouldn’t leave his bedroom for a week.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Helpful hints, sweetie, for a young politician on the make. Afterwards, my friend’s father was a changed man. Within a year of the wedding he was caught with his hand in the till. Embezzling clients’ money. Only a few hundred quid which he didn’t begin to need. You see what I mean?”

  “Edwin Turbot’s made of sterner stuff.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure, sweetie. Change of life, you see.”

  “Please, darling.”

  “Men can have it as well as women - particularly if they’ve been doing a woman’s job, standing in for mummy like Sir Edwin here. Now, most women have their change at just about the same time as their children are growing up and leaving them, so if Sir Edwin’s going to have one, it’ll happen now. Elder daughter getting married - just the time when her mother would have been going funny and having all those operations. As surrogate mother, he must do it instead.”

  “Angel” said Carton, who was getting rather restless and was not at all sure how seriously Vanessa’s theory should be taken.

  “And if you throw in a dose of jealousy to help unsettle him -”

  “ - Are you suggesting he’ll go potty like your friend’s papa?”

  “Not potty. Odd. It can take a number of forms - like this boozing today. One thing which happens at the change of life is they start taking to the bottle.”

  Carton Weir dilated his eyeballs at her, then led on firmly to the Canteloupe group, which had now been rejoined by the dowager. Canteloupe, who was panting slightly, snatched at the glass of champagne. Donald flashed vicious annoyance at Vanessa and went on being ponderously bonhomous to the marchioness. The dowager offered wedding canapes all round out of her handbag and then, taking an immediate fancy to Vanessa and having an instinct for likely informants, propelled her on to one side to ask questions about Tom Llewyllyn’s private life. Carton Weir, keeping a careful eye on Canteloupe, considered Vanessa’s theory about Sir Edwin.

  It was, of course, preposterous; but there was no doubt that the Minister had been soaking up champagne - out of a tumbler at that. Smaller things than this had been known to herald important changes in important men . . . .

  “So that’s fixed,” Sir Edwin was saying to Rupert Percival.

  “What is?” said Percival, who was being wary.

  “That I’ll drive over and talk to you on Monday. Before I go up to London.”

  Suddenly Sir Edwin felt exhausted. If only they’d all go away; Patricia, Tom, Dixon, Percival, the lot. Go away and leave him in peace. Never mind Lloyd-James and his threats, never mind squaring this smug provincial solicitor, never mind this abominable wedding and the concomitant follies: sleep, that was the thing, sleep .... Come, come, this wouldn’t do. In a minute or two he must make a speech, he must pull himself together, life must go on to the last, what he needed was more champagne.

  “Alastair,? he said to Dixon in a brittle voice, “please get me something to drink.”

  Dixon, accustomed by years of political life to fagging and bootlicking, took the empty tumbler and moved away. Percival, who had long since sensed an ulterior motive behind the Minister’s attentions and regarded Dixon’s despatch as the preliminary to a private assault, bristled and made ready.

  “Yes?” he said sharply.

  “Yes what?” sighed Sir Edwin.

  “Your proposal - to visit me on Monday - is a little sudden. I’m not very clear as to its purpose.”

  “Exchange of ideas. It’s always a good thing for those of us at the centre of the party to hear what you’re thinking down in the constituencies.”

  “It’s a long time since anyone of your . . . eminence . . . has shown such an interest.”

  “Too long perhaps,” muttered the Minister. Where was Dixon with that drink?

  “We aren’t fools,” Percival said. “We know that this kind of interest ... this condescension ... is only the preface to some demand. Why can’t you leave us in peace?”

  “I sympathise with your attitude, believe me.”

  “Then why not leave us in peace?”

  “Because something has come up ... to disturb the peace.”

  “Ah. So there is something you want.” - Dixon returned with the Minister’s champagne. In a wine glass, Sir Edwin regretfully noticed: what had he done with that commodious tumbler? And then, Percival’s not giving much away, he thought: how will he react? After all he’s no catch-penny moralist, he’s one of us, one of the old guard, he should be able to take it. But with these country chappies one could never tell; they might turn out to be the most colossal prudes, or they might develop some kind of feudal mania and start asking for earldoms. Not, he gathered, that Percival was the type who asked for things ... and so much the worse. But he was really too tired to consider the details now. He would give the fellow some idea and leave the rest till Monday. Sir Edwin drank off his champagne and for a moment felt slightly better.

  “We need your help,” he said in a level voice: “don’t we, Alastair?”

  Dixon, as yet unconscious of the real issues at stake, assented with a practised air of conviction.

  “In what respect?” said Percival.

  “Over your choice of a successor to Alastair here.”

  “Indeed,” said Percival, his eyes rippling with hostility: “not a topic for a wedding breakfast.”

  “No,” said Sir Edwin suavely: “for Monday.”

  Trained to achieve the last word (and thus to leave every contest, if not victorious, at least for the time undefeated), he turned before Percival could answer and moved off to arrange for the speeches to start. As he went he passed Peter Morrison, who was talking, he noticed, to that odd chap with one eye.

  Still euphoric from the last glass of champagne, he smiled genially, forgetting that Morrison was now an obstacle which must, at any cost, be shifted.

  “Well, well,” said Peter to Fielding. “Earlier on he hardly knew me. What’s all this you were trying to tell me in the church? About Somerset?”

  “That he’ll be a tricky opponent.”

  “Not news, Fielding.”

  “I dare say not. But there’s one thing more.” Fielding lowered his head slightly. His good eye was both amused and shifty. “Mind you,” he said, “Somerset’s been kind to me since I’ve been back. But it seems to me from what I’ve heard ... from what Llewyllyn and others have been saying ... that it would be better if you were given the seat at Bishop’s Cross.”

 
“Better?”

  “Yes. The House of Commons may no longer enjoy much esteem, but there are limits, and they don’t include Somerset. So for old times’ sake I’ve something to tell you.”

  Peter said nothing but turned his enormous face full on to Fielding.

  “Something,” Fielding went on, “about yourself rather than Somerset. Something which your supporters are too close to you to see. Or perhaps too respectful to mention.”

  “Well?”

  “Just this. Your trouble is that you’re such a frightful bloody prig. Oh, I know what you’re going to say,” he continued steadily as Peter opened his mouth to speak; “you’re going to say that I’ve hardly seen you in fourteen years, so what can I know about it? Well, I’ve always followed your career, more recently I’ve listened to friends of yours in London, and just now I’ve spent the afternoon watching you and your wife. So I’ll say it again, Peter. You’re a pompous, self-satisfied prig. All this prate about duty and honour and loyalty, and not a row of beans to show for it. Nothing: except for this resignation three years ago - just when things were beginning to look difficult. You’re so infatuated with your own vision of yourself that you think it’s beneath you to make an effort, to do something concrete. You won’t lift a finger - in case you spoil your pose. Say what you like about Somerset, at least he joins in. He’s not afraid to get his hands blistered.”

  “Or dirty. I thought you were on my side,” said Peter, sweaty and flushed.

  “I am. That’s why I’m telling you that it’s no good just sitting on your arse and expecting to be wafted back into Parliament on clouds of virtue like a baroque picture of God.”

  “Decency imposes certain rules.”

  “So does necessity. First you’ve got to get back. Then you can start talking about decency - and I grant you that a little’s badly needed. But for God’s sake stop being so self-righteous and get yourself moving. Otherwise Somerset’s going to walk all over you.”

  “So he’s just been telling me.”

  “There you go again. The retort courteous. It’s no good any more. People don’t want your unruffled gentleman act, all patronising and paternal, they want interference, action, indignation - even pettiness, so that they know you’re one of them.”