Friends in Low Places
The critics on Alms for Oblivion
‘Simon Raven has always had a distinctive tone -confident, worldly-wise, insolently comic ... a highly entertaining narrative style ... Exciting, sleazy, cynical and funny ... Indulgently bizarre sex scenes rub shoulders with sharply observed human dilemmas and relentlessly exposed psychological and political manipulation’
Edwin Morgan, Sunday Times
‘Whereas Anthony Powell is indulgent to privilege and Lord Snow is indulgent to power, Mr Raven is savage to both ... Mr Raven seems to me to have a far clearer perception of what is going on in the world than either Lord Snow or Mr Powell... His whole sequence is marvellously witty, intelligent and entertaining’
Francis King, Sunday Telegraph
‘Nobody can complain of Simon Raven that he doesn’t try to give his readers their money’s worth ...
It is a strangely humble and endearing performance: less silly, less nasty and less affected than its up-market equivalent, A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell’
Auberon Waugh, Evening Standard
‘The Raven charivari is as scandalously compelling as Evelyn Waugh’s diaries. Vulgar, but not common (to borrow Waugh’s phrase), it can accommodate a whore’s parlour as readily as a smart cavalry mess’
Michael Barber, Books and Bookmen
A truly powerful vision of evil and corruption. This is an achievement which can hardly be dismissed as mere entertainment’
D. A. N. Jones, Times Literary Supplement
‘Alms for Oblivion is ... full of ingenuity, cunning codes and anagrams and bits of startling expertise ... Enormously enjoyable, a ready-made cult waiting to be discovered, a holiday bouquet asking to be picked, as invigorating in its irritations as in its satisfactions’
Alan Brien, Spectator
Simon Raven was born in London in 1927. He was educated at Charterhouse and King’s College, Cambridge, where he read Classics. After university, he joined the army as a regular officer in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry and saw service in Germany and Kenya where he commanded a Rifle Company. In 1957 he resigned his commission and took up book reviewing. His first novel, The Feathers of Death, was published in 19 5 9. Since then he has written many reviews, general essays, plays (which have been performed on both radio and television), plus a host of successful novels including the highly acclaimed ALMS FOR OBLIVION sequence, published for the first time in this Panther edition in chronological order. The sequence takes its title from a passage in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, has been referred to as ‘a latter-day Waugh report on another generation of Bright Young Things’, and has been compared favourably with the romans fleuves of Anthony Powell and C. P. Snow. Simon Raven lives and works in Deal, Kent.
Also by Simon Raven Novels
The Feathers of Death Brother Cain Doctors Wear Scarlet Close of Flay The Fortunes of Fingel
The ALMS FOR OBLIVION sequence, in chronological order:
Fielding Gray Sound the Retreat The Sabre Squadron The Rich Pay Late Friends in Low Places The Judas Boy Places Where They Sing Come Like Shadows Bring Forth the Body The Survivors
Essays
The English Gentleman Boys Will Be Boys
Plays
Royal Foundation and Other Plays
Simon Raven
Friends in Low Places
/
PANTHER
GRANADA PUBLISHING
London Toronto Sydney New York
Published by Granada Publishing Limited in Panther Books 1967 Reprinted 1967,1968,1972,1979
ISBN o j 86 02190 6
First published in Great Britain by Anthony Blond Ltd 1965 Copyright © Simon Raven 1965
Granada Publishing Limited Frogmore, St Albans, Herts AL2 2NF and
3 Upper James Street, London WiR 4BP 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, USA 117 York Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia V "SB
100 Skyway Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M9W 3 A6 no Northpark Centre, 2193 Johannesburg, South Africa CML Centre, Queen and Wyndham, Auckland 1, New Zealand
Made and printed in Great Britain by Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks Set in Monotype Garamond
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Granada Publishing ®
ALMS FOR OBLIVION is a series of ten novels {of which Friends in Low Places is the fifth) covering the 'English upper-middle-class scene since the war. The series is not planned as one long saga; each volume presents an independent story. But the ten major x characters are all loosely connected with one another by birth or upbringing. If there is one theme which dominates the series it is that human effort and goodwill are persistently vulnerable to the malice of time, chance, and the rest of the human race.
A GAME OF CHANCE
CUPID AND PSYCHE “Tell me,” said Patricia Turbot: “who else?”
PAN AND SILENUS
SOMETHING OF VALUE
BUYERS AND SELLERS
MIDSUMMER WEDDING
A BEAST IN VIEW
THE CHASE
THE KILL
VERDICTS
In Friends in Low Places we find Simon Raven’s upper-class rogues pursuing with undiminished brio their sordid, frolicsome paths to power, pleasure and final damnation ...
Sir Edwin Turbot, high-ranking Tory minister ... lascivious Angels Tuck, talking unspeakable pillow-talk ... bumbling Lord Cantaloupe, founding culture-camps for Fitness, Family and Faith. Motto: Strength through Self-Indulgence ... gigolo Mark Lewson, trading his youth to the rich and aged, finally getting his comeuppance ... saturnine Gregory Stern, publisher of Britain’s Bright Young Things, all wired teeth and fiddling fingers ... gambler Max de Freville, unnaturally fascinated by corruption in high places ... unscrupulous Somerset Lloyd-James, still editor of Strix ... golden-hearted Maisie, always ready to pander to a customer’s special requirements.
And they’re all interested in a highly confidential and very compromising letter...
Simon Raven was born in London in 1927. He was educated at Charterhouse and King’s College, Cambridge, where he read Classics. After university, he joined the army as a regular officer in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry and saw service in Germany and Kenya where he commanded a Rifle Company. In 1957 he resigned his commission and took up book reviewing. His first novel, The Feathers of Death, was published in 1959. Since then he has written many reviews, general essays, plays (which have been performed on both radio and television), plus a host of successful novels including the highly acclaimed ALMS FOR OBLIVION sequence, published for the first time in this Panther edition in chronological order. The sequence takes its title from a passage in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, has been referred to as ‘a latter-day Waugh report on another generation of Bright Young Things’, and has been compared favourably with the romans fleuves of Anthony Powell and C. P. Snow. Simon Raven lives and works in Deal, Kent.
Also by Simon Raven
Novels
The Feathers of Death
Brother Cain
Doctors Wear Scarlet
Close of Play
The Fortunes of Fingel
The ALMS FOR OBLIVION sequence, in chronological order:
Fielding Gray
Sound the Retreat
The Sabre Squadron
The Rich Pay Late
Friends in Low Places
The Judas Boy
Places Where They Sing
Come Like Shadows
>
Bring Forth the Body
The Survivors
Essays
The English Gentleman
Boys Will Be Boys
Plays
Royal Foundation and Other Plays
Simon Raven
Friends in Low Places
PANTHER
GRANADA PUBLISHING
London Toronto Sydney New York
Published by Granada Publishing Limited
in Panther Books 1967
Reprinted 1967,1968,1972,1979
ISBN 0 86 02190 6
First published in Great Britain by
Anthony Blond Ltd 1965
Copyright © Simon Raven 1965
Granada Publishing Limited
Frogmore, St Albans, Herts AL2 2NF
and
3 Upper James Street, London WiR 4BP
1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, USA
117 York Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
100 Skyway Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M9W 3A6
110 Northpark Centre, 2193 Johannesburg, South Africa
CML Centre, Queen and Wyndham, Auckland 1, New Zealand
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks
Set in Monotype Garamond
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Granada Publishing ®
ALMS FOR OBLIVION is a series of ten novels (of which Friends in Low Places is the fifth) covering the English upper-middle-class scene since the war. The series is not planned as one long saga; each volume presents an independent story. But the ten major characters are all loosely connected with one another by birth or upbringing. If there is one theme which dominates the series it is that human effort and goodwill are persistently vulnerable to the malice of time, chance, and the rest of the human race.
Table of Contents
I
A GAME OF CHANCE
2
A GAME OF CHESS
3
CUPID AND PSYCHE
4
PAN AND SILENUS
5
SOMETHING OF VALUE
6
BUYERS AND SELLERS
7
MIDSUMMER WEDDING
8
A BEAST IN VIEW
9
THE CHASE
10
THE KILL
11
VERDICTS
I
A GAME OF CHANCE
_____________________________________
“Jesus Christ,” said Mark Lewson: “what a bloody boring place this is.”
“You don’t have to stay,” said Angela Tuck.
They were sitting on the promenade at Menton, drinking champagne cocktails at half past noon on a Sunday in the April of 1959.
“I like being with you, dear. It’s so suitable. We can console each other in our grief.”
“Tuck was killed nearly three years ago,” said Angela Tuck. “Neither then nor later have I needed consolation.”
“You’re heartless, that’s your trouble. I need consoling. It’s only a few weeks since my beloved wife passed away to the happy land, leaving me desolate in more senses than one.”
“How did she die, Mark? You’ve been a little vague.”
“Drink, dear. Even the coffin smelt of gin. It caused a great scandal among her dreary relations.”
“They came all the way to England for the funeral?”
“The two sisters. To see if there was any money left.”
“Which there wasn’t?”
“There never had been very much. When the old Count Monteverdi died, having spent most of his life in England, he left about a hundred thou, in the funds, as they say, a few valuable paintings, and a little property in Rome. Felicity’s share after duties was twenty-odd thou., one small Sisley and three Dalis, and a flat in the Piazza Navona.”
“Enough to be going on with,” Angela said.
“As it happened, not.” Mark giggled. “The two sisters went home to Tivoli and interested themselves in pious works. Felicity stayed in England and interested herself in me. She was fifteen years older, of course, but I thought, what the hell, she’s a good-natured cow and they say she’d got a lot of cash. As usual, ‘they’ had exaggerated. We’d barely finished with the honeymoon before she announced that the crinkle had run out.”
“Twenty thousand?”
“I’d bought a small yacht. You see, no one,” Mark said petulantly, “had told me that twenty thou, was all there was.”
“She must have been mad.”
“Right, dear. Mad about me.”
I’m not surprised, Angela thought. She surveyed the cherubic face with the weak, vicious chin; the dark wavy hair; the torso, thin but tough under the flowery shirt; the Botticelli legs under the white flannel shorts. She surveyed all these, and thought of other things, and decided that a woman fifteen years his senior might well have been mad about Mark Lewson, so mad as to spend her entire fortune buying him a yacht. But I, she thought, am not fifteen years his senior, only five; he’ll get little enough out of me and what he gets he’ll earn. In fact, I’m not sure that he hasn’t already had his ration.
“What happened to the yacht?” she said.
“Sold at a loss when things began to get difficult.”
“Rotten luck.”
You mean sow, Mark Lewson thought. I know all this chat about Felicity’s money is just a way of telling me that I’ll get none from you. You’d hang on to the little bit Tuck left you if they tried to drag it out of you on the rack. And you’d better hang on, dear, because there’s not going to be much left of you in another five years. You’re all crows’ feet and flab as it is, and teeth awash in cheap brandy nine nights out of ten. You’re jolly lucky to get me, simply because I’m having a bad patch, for bed, board and pin money. But I’m only passing through. Something will turn up, it always does, and then it’s toodle-ooh to you, Angela Tuck, you and your sagging tits.
Meanwhile, however, make the best of the bed and board. “Let’s have another drink,” he said.
“You’ve already had three.”
“I’ll do my stuff after lunch, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
The narrow eyes glinted and the weak chin twitched with simulated lust. The Botticelli legs straddled. Sweating with the sudden excitement of it, Angela decided that she was not yet quite finished with him after all.
“All right,” she said, as Lewson beckoned a waiter and gestured at the empty glasses, “but only one. They’re expensive.” She passed him two notes over the table, each for a thousand old francs. “What happened,” she said, “after you sold the yacht?”
“We got along for a while. Then the Dalis went. Then the Sisley. Finally the flat. After that, we’d only got her family name and the title. Née Monteverdi. Contessa - or contessina for sentimental old men. This was a help in cashing cheques.”
“Not for long, I bet.”
“Longer than you’d think. We kept moving.”
“And in the end?”
“In the end she died.”
“Just when she’d ceased to be useful.”
Mark grinned.
“She died of drink, dear. Drink and the English winter.”
“I’ll buy it... as you’ve been so frank about the rest.”
“I wouldn’t try it on with you, dear. You’re up to everything.”
The compliment was sincere. Mark Lewson was telling the truth, and finding it a great relief to be free, just for once, from the Jacobean complexities of his own invention. Not that he was consciously seeking relief in this unaccustomed candour; it was just that Angela - he felt it in his bones - wou
ld neither believe his lies, brilliant as they often were, nor, if she did believe, be impressed. This was still not to say that he told her the truth out of respect: there was just no point in telling her anything else.
“You’re up to everything,” he repeated “You’ve got a kind of genius for being a slut.”
And after three and a half champagne cocktails, he thought, you don’t look too bad at that. So he leaned over to whisper in her ear, and she squirmed with pleasure in her seat.
“After lunch,” she said with an effort. “So she left you with nothing?”
“Except a bad name in half the hotels in Europe.”
“So what are you going to do now?” she asked him, not unkindly.
“Have some lunch and a lot of fun after it.”
“And then?”
“Sufficient unto the day. . . .”
“But not unto the morrow.”
“Since you ask me,” he said, “I need an angle. Something I can work, like I worked the Contessa’s name for cheques. Something to go on. That’s why I get so fed up with Menton. There’s nothing here, never could be.”
“There’s peace. And economy.”
“Not what I need.”
“We’ll have to see what we can find for you,” Angela said.
Angela had enjoyed her last fortnight with Mark Lewson and, other things being strictly equal; she wished him well. But with Mark other things, so far from being equal, were not even commensurate; and despite the manifest and mounting excitement of the present moment Angela knew, for she was an experienced woman, that in a few days time at most she must get him out of the way. He represented menace: to her, to her money, to her little house in the town. So rid of him she must be; but if she could only do him a service at the same time, so much better for both of them, as they could part in kindness and no harm done. She wouldn’t, couldn’t pay him off in cash; she must find him what he called his “angle”. She might think, for a start, about that story she had heard from Max. . . . Angle, not Angela, she said to herself, and giggled.