Friends in Low Places

by Simon Raven

  “At Bishop’s Cross they’re still rather old-fashioned.”

  “Not so old-fashioned that they want to send a stuffed dummy to Westminster.”

  “I think,” said Peter, irritated but kind, “that you had better stick to what you know about. I liked your last piece in Strix”

  “Don’t change the subject. It’s always the same with you people who inherit money when you’re young, nobody contradicts you and you soon start thinking you’re Christ Al - ”

  “ - Isn’t there some talk of a book?” persisted Peter, knowing just where and how close under the surface vanity would lie.

  “Two books as it happens. But we’re not talk - ”

  “ - Who’s publishing them?”

  “Gregory Stern. And I’m writing another one for him,” said Fielding, his face becoming fatuous with conceit, Peter’s shortcomings now graciously dismissed. Capitulation, Peter thought: what is it about writers that makes them so naive, as if they thought that writing books was the only worthwhile occupation and that the whole world talked of nothing else? Self-absorption, he presumed; their careers, to be fair, were so difficult and precarious that without their egotism to protect them they wouldn’t survive a week.

  “Stern’s over there with Detterling,” Peter said. “I thought he looked very well as best man. Let’s go and have a word.” On their way over they were joined by Tessie Buttock, who felt that she now had certain proprietary rights in Fielding. Stern, who looked a little tense, nevertheless bowed to Tessie with princely elegance when she was introduced.

  “So you’re the guardian angel of my authors?” he said. “I’ve often heard about you from Tom.”

  But since mention of Tom seemed likely to reduce Tessie to tears again, the subject was changed.

  “I’ve got to make a speech,” Stern said. “I’ve been trying to think of an original joke.”

  “There are none,” said Detterling: “not for this occasion.” The topic foundered.

  “I see,” said Detterling after a pause, “that Donald Salinger is keen to ingratiate himself with Canteloupe.”

  “Business, dear,” said Jonathan Gamp, who had suddenly appeared in their midst. “Donald’s printing the posters about Canteloupe’s caravans, and he’s hoping there’ll be more where that came from. He’s been steadily losing business for the last three years... ever since he got rid of Jude Holbrook.”

  “Jude Holbrook?” said Fielding with a glance at Tessie. Jonathan, who had never met Fielding, started a polite explanation.

  “Jude was Donald’s partner, you see. Until he put up a whopping great black. But the thing is, he really did understand business, so after he disappeared - and disappeared is the mot juste - poor old Donald started running downhill. Slowly, mind you. Donald’s no fool, it’s just that he hasn’t got the thrust Jude had, won’t ever take a risk.”

  “Would it amuse you,” said Fielding, “to hear that Jude Holbrook’s back in London?”

  “It would not,” said Detterling, “but it would interest me, I wonder what he’s up to.”

  “He pays regular,” Tessie put in; “and no dragging back.”

  “Need he be up to anything?” Fielding asked.

  “Oh yes, dear,” mewed Jonathan, wriggling his hips with pleasure. “Jude hasn’t come to London for the bracing air, you may depend upon that. Tell us more”

  “Nothing to tell. He’s taken a room with Tessie here and keeps himself to himself.”

  “Never stops for a chat,” Tessie said. “Hardly says good morning some days.”

  “I wonder,” Jonathan said.

  Helen came to stand by Peter.

  “I’ve been talking to Patricia Llewyllyn,” she told him, “and some of the bridesmaids. Patricia’s worried stiff about something. I hadn’t met her before, so I couldn’t press - ” There was a loud rapping and a call for silence. Stern went white; though he always acquitted himself beautifully on these occasions, he suffered torments of nerves beforehand. Alfie Schroeder belched loudly. “SSSHHH,” everybody went. Sir Edwin, standing on a chair, began to speak. His voice was without tone of any kind, without authority, without warmth, like the thin, level drone (Fielding thought) with which the ghostly heroes greeted Odysseus from the banks of hell.

  “I have an announcement to make,” Sir Edwin said. “The house is on fire. Those that wish may leave through the door on to the terrace.”

  He pointed to the exit in question, got down from the chair, and started talking, as if nothing at all had happened, to a lady in a vast yellow hat.

  “There's a nice thing,” Tessie said, “to happen on Tom's wedding day.”

  But neither she nor anyone else made any effort to move. Apart from the conversation being rather muted, while people tried to remember what they had been discussing and take it up again, everything went on as before. It seemed generally agreed that Sir Edwin’s interruption could be ignored.

  “Bonkers," Vanessa Salinger was saying to the dowager: “the house is no more on fire than I am. I knew he was going funny.”

  “There is rather a smell of burning,” said the younger Lady Canteloupe.

  “Only cigarette smoke,” said Donald, who had a horror of fires and was looking slightly peculiar.

  “Gamp’s cigarette,” said Weir, remembering.

  He hurried away past the bar, peered into the inner room through which the queue had stretched, and returned grinning.

  “The carpet’s caught,” he said, “and there’s a large sofa smouldering.”

  “That doesn’t mean the house is on fire,” Vanessa sniffed: “sheer exaggeration.”

  “Ought it to be put out?vn

  “Turbot must have seen it, otherwise he wouldn’t have made that speech. So I expect he’s made arrangements. Told the servants or something.”

  “Then why did he ask us to leave?”

  “He didn’t. He only suggested.”

  “I think,” said Vanessa, who had been watching Tom and his new bride talking together in one corner with anxious faces, “that there’s more in all this than meets the eye.”

  Lord Canteloupe was taking advantage of this diversion among his attendants.

  “Can you get me a drink?” he said to a passing waiter.

  “Sorry, my lord.”

  “What do you mean, sorry.”

  “Been told to drop everything and look for Miss Isobel Sharpish.”

  “Miss Isobel can take care of herself.”

  “But the house is on fire, my lord.”

  “It’s nothing of the kind. Please get me a drink.”

  “I’m only a servant here, my lord. Which means I believe what Sir Edwin says and do what he tells me.”

  And indeed, as the waiter moved away (none too eagerly, Canteloupe noticed), smoke started wafting into the reception room and with it a faint uneasiness among the weaker-minded guests.

  “Do you suppose he really meant it?” said Tessie.

  “It can’t be anything much,” Jonathan Gamp assured her. “I expect someone’s dropped a cigarette.”

  “I think,” said Gregory Stern, “that everyone feels it would be bad form to show panic. So no one can be the first to move, and they’ll all roast to death rather than commit a social solecism. Very English.”

  Alfie Schroeder, who was perfectly prepared to commit a social solecism, hovered near the glass door on to the terrace, where he was joined by Tessie.

  “Quite right, love,” Alfie said. “Much the safest place.”

  “But what is going on?” bleated Tessie.

  “If you want my opinion,” Detterling was saying to Stern, “the motivation is slightly different. Refusal, by members of a ruling caste, to acknowledge that they could be inconvenienced. Therefore they must behave as if the fire did not exist. There was an officer in my regiment who was once mortally offended because a soda-siphon ran out while he was using it. He regarded it as a kind of insolence on the part of the siphon. That’s what this fire is - a piece of insolence on t
he part of nature, to be pointedly ignored until it gets ashamed of itself and goes away.”

  Meanwhile the smoke grew thicker. Vanessa Salinger, who wasn’t quite well enough bred to know that the fire mustn’t be acknowledged, coughed and attracted pitying glances. The dowager selected from her handbag a canape of a curious mauve and sat down to enjoy it.

  “I think your theory is over-sophisticated,” Fielding Gray was saying to Detterling. “I think this is more like a nasty smell in a car. You just drive on and hope for the best.”

  “Same thing,” Detterling commented. “My car wouldn’t dare break down. A member of the lower class, on the other hand, would get out to see what the matter was.”

  “Only,” contributed Peter Morrison, “because he would know about engines and we don’t.”

  They were joined by Somerset Lloyd-James.

  “It reminds me of the time John Dorsetshire tried to kill himself,” he remarked. “In full view of everyone at Newmarket, but they all thought it would be impolite to take any notice. They left him on the ground, I’m told, until after the result of the photo-finish was announced.”

  “That’s because they were too interested in the photo-finish . . . unlike poor Dorsetshire. He knew where his horse had come in.”

  “They do say it was slowed down by one of the bookies.” At this stage Sir Edwin got up on the chair again. This time he was more animated.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I fully appreciate the delicacy of feeling which prompted you to ignore my first warning. But now, since the fire-brigade will be here at any moment, and since they will require space in which to manoeuvre . . .”

  As Sir Edwin’s courteous speech droned on, Alfie and Tessie, standing by the glass door, witnessed the following sequence of events. Along the road, which was visible beyond some 300 yards of down-sloping meadow and which led to the entrance of Sir Edwin’s drive, came a large black limousine, which Alfie correctly assumed to be the hired car that was to take the newlyweds the fifteen miles to Salisbury station. Behind the limousine, clanging its bell but unable to pass because of the narrowness of the road, came a fire-engine of a design which Alfie had not seen since the blitz. When the limousine was still about a quarter of a mile from Sir Edwin’s gate, there was a loud roar from the area of the stables on the other side of the house, and a few seconds later an open sports car of blue and white, rather like a giant co-respondent’s shoe, could be seen by Alfie and Tessie shooting down the drive. At the wheel was a young man whom neither of them knew; next to him was a girl dressed in the striking shade of green affected for the occasion by the bridesmaids.

  “That’s the chief one,” Tessie said, “the one who was taking care of the little boy in the kilt.”

  “I know,” said Alfie with grim satisfaction.

  As the sports car hurtled down the drive towards the gate, it was hidden from the limousine on the road by thickets of rhododendron, while its noise (Alfie presumed) was drowned by the clanging of the fire-engine. The chauffeur of the limousine was therefore quite unprepared for the emergence of the sports car, which, without any pause and doing about fifty miles an hour, shot out in a wide left-handed turn on to the limousine’s side of the road and then made straight for it. True, the driver of the sports car was steering it back on to the proper side of the road, and succeeded in gaining this without hitting the limousine; but by that time the limousine had braked very sharply and the fire-engine had run into it from behind. The sports car - God knows how it squeezed through on the narrow road, Alfie thought - did not stop but roared away in the direction from which the limousine and fire-engine had been approaching; a dazed chauffeur lurched out of the limousine and tottered to the rear; some men climbed off the fire-engine and began to inspect a twisted figure which seemed somehow to be impaled against the back of its open driving seat; and that, Alfie thought, is one poor bugger’s one-way ticket home.

  “And so,” Sir Edwin was saying, “if you will kindly proceed on to the terrace . . .”

  I told Tom, Alfie thought, to get away before anything happened; and now this. Not that it was quite what I expected, but it will serve even more surely to delay him.

  “Oughtn’t we to tell someone?” Tessie said.

  Alfie nodded. First things first, he thought. Get this absurd fire put out, and then tell them about the girl and the rest of it. He pushed his way through the crowd to where the Minister was still politely perorating from the chair. Since Alfie was short, his head hardly reached Sir Edwin’s knees; so he tugged at one tail of his morning coat, and was brushed off like a fly.

  “It will not, of course, be possible to have the usual speeches before we go outside,” Sir Edwin was saying, “and there will be logistic difficulties about refreshment. But if you will take your glasses with you and congregate at the southeast corner of the lawn, we will contrive to drink a toast. Thank you.”

  Sir Edwin got down from the chair and was rather surprised to see Alfie get up in his place.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Alfie said. “The fire-engine has had an accident. It can’t get here.”

  No one disputed this, and there was a buzz of tired interest.

  “Why didn’t you say so straight away?” said Sir Edwin. “I'll go and telephone for another.”

  But as Alfie had anticipated, there were those who favoured action more direct. The Minister’s first speech had simply been a scientific proposition, but his more recent mention of the fire-engine had constituted social recognition (so to speak) of the fire, and it was now permissible to have dealings with it. While Tom escorted Patricia, who was still talking at him intently, to safety with Tessie by the glass door, Captain Detterling picked up two buckets of melted ice and marched through to the conflagration. Peter and Fielding did likewise. Somerset took the opportunity of going over to the Canteloupe group to tease Donald Salinger, who had been nervous about fires ever since his hair was set alight during a drunken party at Oxford. Detterling came back out of the inner room.

  “It’s taken quite a hold,” he said: “find all the buckets you can.”

  Fielding came after him.

  “The water’s been cut off. I’ve been through to the kitchen. ...”

  “It often happens,” said Sir Edwin conversationally, “about this time of the afternoon. They’re laying new pipes.”

  “The stables?”

  “It will be the same there.”

  “Only one thing for it, Edwin,” said the dowager. “Use the champagne.”

  “The champagne?”

  “Not a time for economy.”

  Canteloupe came to life.

  “Champagne,” he roared.

  He ran behind the bar, had two bottles open within seconds, took a swig from each, then rushed through to the fire and started hosing it with a twin frothy stream.

  “More,” he called from within.

  “Champagne,” the cry went up.

  With gay abandon bottles were opened and passed down an improvised chain gang to where Canteloupe, supported by Weir and the dowager, poured the amber fluid through clouds of steam on to the immense sofa and large areas of carpet.

  “About all it’s fit for,” Canteloupe was saying, though treating himself to copious gulps.

  “More . . . more,” howled the dowager.

  “Over there in the corner,” Weir said: “there’s something odd behind the writing desk. ... I can’t quite see . . .”

  “Nonsense. Finish the sofa first.”

  In the reception room Alfie took Tom on one side.

  “The chief bridesmaid,” he said: “it was your sister-in-law?”

  “Yes. Patricia’s very worried because she’s, been behaving oddly . . . disappeared somewhere after the service.”

  “She’s disappeared in the rough direction of Bristol,” Alfie said, “doing about ninety miles an hour in a sports car which is driven by a young man who’ll have manslaughter to answer for.”

  Alfie explained.

  “Iso
bel has peculiar friends,” was all Tom could find to say.

  “Have you seen my little boy,” a harassed woman was asking them, “the page in the kilt? Isobel Turbot was taking care of him, but she seems - ”

  “ - I should look in the garden,” said Tom gently.

  The woman hurried off.

  “Upstairs?” said Alfie.

  “Perhaps. ‘Now, darling,’ ” Tom said in a clumsy parody of Isobel, “ ‘Auntie Isobel’s got to go. So you walk through there to find all the nice people. . . .’ ”

  “But he couldn’t have been - ”

  Tom set off down the champagne chain and into the smoke.

  “Have you seen the page?” he shouted at Weir.

  “The page,” the cry went back along the chain, “the page.”

  “There’s something behind the desk.”

  “Oh my God.”

  The smoke was thicker now. Tom blundered over to the desk.

  “The champagne’s run out.” “Has anyone seen the page?”

  “There’s some men at the door with a stretcher and - er - something on it.”

  “A chauffeur, out of his wits with temper.”

  “ . . . The page . . .”

  Tom hauled out a small, dirty, blubbering figure in a kilt.

  “What were you doing there, laddie? Why didn't you call for help?”

  “The man told me to hide. Half an hour, he said, and if I didn't he'd find me one day and cut my head off.”

  On the lawn, after comfort had been administered by paternal Alfie and then by Mummy, the rest of the story came jerking out.

  “This man . . . . Auntie Isobel's friend . . . . He said, here's five bob for you, duckie, and you go and hide, and don't tell anyone we've gone for a good half hour, that's what he said, or I'll find you one day and I'll - ”

  “ - Yes, yes. What was he like?”

  “He had a funny bottle he kept drinking from. And he smelt nasty when he talked.”

  But Auntie Isobel had liked him well enough, it seemed, and had been expecting him, because they'd gone specially to the stables to find him, and Auntie Isobel had put her arms round him straight away and gone umshlllppp all over his face. And then the man had had a drink from his funny botde and had said something about leaving a letter or something, but Auntie Isobel said “No”. So then the man had gone umshlllppp all over Auntie Isobel's face, and after that Auntie Isobel had gone all funny and hadn't said anything. So the man had given him the letter and also the five-shillings, and told him to hide, and he'd hidden, and then the smoke. . . .