Friends in Low Places Read online

  “One of these days,” said Alastair Dixon, his bald head gleaming in the April sun, “I shall work out a new opening.”

  “It would make a change,” said Rupert Percival, who was slightly the older of the two but still had a full head of glossy hair: “and of course you will have plenty of time for the game in your retirement.”

  “I'm not so sure. Remember my magnum opus: Forty Years in the House of Commons.”

  “I should have thought,” said Percival, “that it would have been enough to live through them without spending the rest of your life writing about it.”

  “The House is an addiction. Once it gets into your system you never get it out again. I shall need my book as a substitute.”

  “What it is to have a vocation.” Percival shifted a knight to complete the first stage of his own laborious version of the King’s Indian defence. “When I give up practice, I shall feel nothing but relief.”

  “You’ve virtually given up practice already. How many times a week do you go to that office of yours?”

  “I keep an eye on things. The young men handle the wills and the tax-returns. I reserve anything juicy for myself.” “Juicy?” said Dixon. “In Bishop’s Cross?”

  “You don’t know your constituents. We’ve had two divorces this last winter. And an amusing row with a headmaster about allegedly wrongful expulsion, which the headmaster quite rightly won. And a venomous to-do about the rough shooting rights at Thyme. So you see, I’m kept quite busy. And what with the Hunt and the Conservative Association. . . .”

  “That reminds me,” Dixon said. He took Percival’s knight with his bishop and then, to save his friend the trouble, took his own bishop with Percival’s pawn.

  “How do you know I want to do that? There’s such a thing as refusing an exchange.”

  “Not at your level there isn’t.”

  “I suppose not. . . . What reminds you?”

  “The Conservative Association. What are you doing about my replacement in the House this autumn?”

  “Ah,” said Percival, leaning back and taking out his snuff box, “I wondered when you’d get interested in that.”

  “Edwin Turbot wants to know.”

  “I don’t see that it’s his business. He’d better employed paying proper attention to his Ministry.”

  “He sees himself not only as a Minister but as a kind of Grand Vizier to the Party. And since the old man plays along with him, he has to be humoured.”

  “All the same, you might remind him that local associations are strictly independent.”

  “He only wants to know what’s going on,” said Dixon rather huffily: “after all, this is the safest seat in Wessex.”

  “The less need for Edwin Turbot to bother himself.”

  “He’s interested in what he calls the Party’s Overall Image for the General Election.”

  “Well,” said Percival between prodigious sniffs of snuff, “there’s an official short list of five names. But all you need to worry about is my personal short list, on which there are only two: Somerset Lloyd-James, whose father, you’ll remember, lives just over the border in Devonshire, and -”

  “ - Shagger Lloyd-James? Roman Catholic?”

  “That’s right. Distinguished recusant family. Well, Slugger’s son, Somerset, edits that beastly paper, Strix. You know, a sort of heavy journal of commerce which invents plausible reasons for money-grabbers to think themselves high-minded. But the boy’s got his head screwed right down to his neck, and he does know a great deal about money. Practice as well as theory.”

  “That will please Edwin. Modern commercial image with no intellectual frills.”

  “On the contrary. Somerset Lloyd-James is bristling with intellectual frills. He won the Lauderdale at Cambridge in ’48. But he knows when they’re not needed.”

  “I never met an intellectual who knew that,” said Dixon patronisingly. “And the other horse?”

  “Peter Morrison. . . . Formerly member for Whereham.” Alastair Dixon castled on the queen’s side, took out his cigar case, lit a cigar with avid concentration, and at last said:

  “So they’re bringing him back already?”

  “We in Bishop’s Cross,” said Percival firmly, “are considering whether to adopt him as our candidate. One of the reasons being that he has a wife and two children, which goes down well with the women.”

  “Central Office had nothing to say about it?”

  “Certainly not. He’s on their list of course - they kept his name there when he resigned in case he might want to come back. I gather, despite appearances at the time, that his resignation was entirely to his credit?”

  “Yes,” said Dixon. “There was some sort of family scandal, but he only used that as a smoke-screen. His real reason seems to have been that he didn’t want any part of Suez.”

  “Then why didn’t he say so? That Young England Group which he started - they’ve always been against antics like Suez and pretty plain about it.”

  “It seems,” said Dixon, with a mixture of admiration and bewilderment, “that this Mr Morrison has a very nice sense of honour. He felt that to speak against Suez, as was his duty if he stayed in the House, would be to stab the Army in the back. And to resign, giving Suez as a pretext, would have been just as bad. So since there was a story going about just then that he’d got some girl in trouble, he let it be known that he was resigning because of that.”

  “That won’t go down well with the women.”

  “There was never anything in it. .. . But I’m surprised he’s coming back quite so soon.”

  “He came to see me about that,” Percival said. “He told me - entirely off the record of course - that several of his friends in the Young England Group are anxious to have him back because they don’t much care for Carton Weir, who’s running it at present.”

  “I like Carton Weir,” said Dixon. “He’s a very civil... and civilised young man.”

  “You’re not in the Young England Group. They want Morrison, who, come to that, could have Whereham back by lifting his little finger.”

  Underneath the table Dixon’s short legs frisked in irritation.

  “Then why had he come here?” he said.

  “He doesn’t want to unseat the chap who took over Whereham in ’56. Unfair, he says. And since we’ve got a vacancy. . . . Whose turn is it to win this game?”

  “Mine,” said Dixon, untruthfully. “You might as well resign anyway. . . . And which of the two do you really want? Lloyd-James or Morrison?”

  “That,” said Percival, po-faced, “will be for the selection committee to decide.”

  “Suppose they pick one of the other three on the official short list?”

  “For someone who has spent forty years in the House, and boasts about it, you understand very little of politics.”

  “I understand enough to know that Edwin Turbot’s not going to be keen about Morrison, whatever your committee decides. He’s respected, Morrison, but he’s apt to be a nuisance. The Young Englanders have settled down nicely, under Weir, as a harmless prestige group. No one wants Morrison stirring them up again.”

  “Apparently they do,” said Percival. “And Sir Edwin can hardly complain about that.”

  “He won’t. He’ll just say that it’s too soon after the scandal for Morrison to come back.”

  “You said there was nothing in the scandal.”

  “Who’s being naive about politics now? Check mate,” said Dixon, spitefully plonking down his queen.

  “Don’t thump the pieces about,” said Percival placidly. “They’re expensive. Whatever Edwin Turbot may think or feel, Minister or not, Grand Vizier or not, there’s no way he can bully a local association.”

  “Isn’t there just?” said Alastair Dixon. “You wait and see.”

  On this same April evening, some three miles from the East Anglian market town of Whereham, Peter Morrison was bowling to his eight-year-old son in a net which he had put up on his abundant lawn.

 
; “One more over, Nickie,” he called. “This one will be well up and outside the off stump. Left foot well over now.....”

  Six foot two inches tall, broad both at chest and waist but giving no impression of overweight, carrying his huge round head thrown back like a guardsman’s, he lumbered easily to the bowling crease and placed the ball just where he had told his son, who hit it back hard over his head and laughed aloud with pleasure.

  “Not bad, but your foot wasn’t there. That one should have gone through the covers, not straight back. After it, Jeremy.”

  Five-year-old Jeremy, younger brother and ball-boy, scampered down the lawn and returned his father a chest-high catch.

  “Nice throw, my dear. . . . Now then, Nickie. Good length outside the leg stump. Don’t hit too hard and aim at midwicket.”

  From a central door in the long, low house of stone, stepping (like a goddess) just a little larger than life, came Helen Morrison. She stood quietly behind Nickie, appraised his next stroke, murmured something through the netting, then moved to her husband and took the ball from his hand.

  “Telephone call from the West country,” she said.

  “Hell. . . . Give him four balls, darling. Then pack it in.”

  “And Jeremy?”

  “His turn tomorrow. Younger sons must learn their place early.”

  Leaving his wife to work out for herself how seriously she should take this remark (his tone had been light but without irony), Peter ambled away towards the house, like a comfortable monk strolling in a cloister. Never, in his sons’ presence, would he betray any sense of urgency. For two pins, he told himself, he would have finished the over; but that might have smacked of discourtesy to his caller. As he stepped off the lawn and through the door, he heard with satisfaction the level tones of his wife:

  “. . . No, just some old friend of Daddy’s he hasn’t heard from for a time. . .”

  Later that evening, Peter said to Helen (who had not enquired):

  “That telephone call was about the seat for Bishop’s Cross.”

  “So I imagined.”

  “I gather my closest rival for the candidature will be Somerset Lloyd-James, of all people.”

  “Will that embarrass you? After that business three years ago?”

  “No . . . though of course he’ll need watching. Somerset’s devious by nature, that’s all. It’s no good blaming him. He’s always been like that, and in other ways he’s a lot of fun. I remember when he stayed here once, just after the war . . .” He fell into a silence which Helen did not attempt to break. “There’s another slight worry,” Peter said at length. “Rupert Percival said that Alastair Dixon, the retiring member, reckons Edwin Turbot won’t like me coming forward just now.”

  “There’s nothing he can do to stop you.”

  “Officially, no. Although Edwin Turbot’s a kind of Provost Marshal inside the Party he still can’t dictate to local branches. Not openly, that is; but he can make himself felt in other ways.”

  “What sort of man is Rupert Percival?”

  “A strong man and an honest one.”

  “Then there is nothing to worry about.”

  “I don’t know. Percival may be strong, but he is not one for superfluous exhibitions of strength. Somerset is in every way as proper a candidate as I am, and if Percival understood that senior men, in Central Office perhaps, had good reason for preferring him, he might just accept this and follow suit. His honesty would not be compromised. He is under no moral obligation to support me.”

  “But suppose,” said Helen, “that Central Office’s reasons for preferring Somerset Lloyd-James are not good? Did Percival say what they might be?”

  “No. He didn’t even mention Central Office. He just said that Turbot might not want me.”

  “And Turbot’s reasons?”

  “Percival could only go on what Alastair Dixon had said, which was all conjecture anyhow, and he was kind enough to indicate that he didn’t think much of it. But one thing you can be quite sure of: if Turbot has reasons, good or bad, for wanting me out of the way, they will be framed and presented as speciously as the Sermon on the Mount.”

  The next morning just before ten a.m. Somerset Lloyd-James shuffled into Gower Street from his lodging in Russell Square, paused to examine the weekly bill outside the offices of the Spectator (“Levin on Working-Class Fascism”), leered knowingly, and slouched on up the street to Philby House (so called since 1958) from which he edited Strix. Since only three out of the four electric fires in his office were switched on, he rang for his secretary to require an explanation, was reminded of a directive issued by Lord Philby, the Proprietor, 'who enjoyed economy in such matters (it was, after all a delicious April morning), personally switched on the fourth electric fire and the second bars of the other three, and called for the mail.

  “There is a gentleman,” his secretary said, “waiting to see you.”

  “A gentleman?”

  “I use the term advisedly. He has been here since half past nine, and claims to be an old friend of yours.”

  “Name?”

  “Major Gray. A retired rank, I gather.”

  “ De profundis” said Somerset, mildly shaken. “Bring in the mail, and then, in exactly five minutes, bring in Major Gray.”

  When his secretary had set the mail on his desk, Somerset, having established in thirty seconds that what was not routine was merely trivial, selected from the pile of letters the one typed on the most imposing note-paper and placed it dead in front of him, side by side with a sheet of blank foolscap. On the latter he wrote carefully as follows:

  FIELDING GRAY.

  Left school Autumn 1945.

  Father (died ’45) well off; but (??) something odd thought to have happened to the money.

  Anyhow, F.G. in smart cavalry regiment from ’46 onward. Last heard of in ‘55, when seen by Peter Morrison, who was on Parliamentary tour, on small island off Malta. At that time responsibly employed (? Officer Commanding a Squadron on detachment) and apparently resigned to his lot, though still bitter (in theory, so to speak, rather than practice).

  Questions:

  (1) Why has he left the Army?

  (2) What does he want of me?

  (3) Am I under any enforceable obligation to him?

  Answers:

  (1 and 2): To be presently resolved.

  (3) No. But prudence directs that his claim of friendship, since he sees fit to call it so, be honoured, and any reasonable request considered.

  Under these notes, which took up about a third of the page, he ruled two lines in red ink; the rest of the page could now be used for recording further information, under the pretext of drafting an answer to the important letter before him at the same time as he was conducting the interview. A corny technique, which seldom failed to unnerve his visitors. Since his secretary was now twenty seconds late in producing Gray, he reached forward with irritation to press the buzzer; but before his finger reached it the side door opened from the secretary’s office and he found himself rigid in his chair, his hand arrested two inches short of the button, his every muscle paralysed by the horror of what he now saw.

  Fielding Gray had been, when Somerset last saw him, a lithe and beautiful boy of seventeen. From Peter Morrison’s description, given four years back, Somerset gathered that he had thickened somewhat, and that drink was already beginning to show in his cheeks, but that he still retained poise and even distinction. As indeed he did now. His figure, correctly adorned as for an officer on leave in London (well cut dark suit with waistcoat, white shirt with stiff collar and regimental tie, bowler hat and gloves carried in the left hand), did him no discredit for a man in the early thirties, while his movements were easy and precise. The only trouble was his face. It was impossible to tell now whether Peter had been right or wrong about the burst veins in the cheeks, because the cheeks, like everything else except a thin, twisted line of mouth and one red, bald, tiny eye, were coated with a mottled surface of shining pink like icing
clumsily spread upon a cake.

  Gray moved calmly up to Somerset’s desk, as though about to report to his Commanding Officer on a semi-formal occasion. A foot from the desk he halted and then, looking Somerset straight in the face with his one little eye, held out his hand.

  “It is kind of you to see me,” he said.

  The voice was normal but the mouth writhed with every syllable. Somerset, who was already so far in control of himself as to have recovered his powers of motion, rose to shake hands. A prompt enough answer to question (i), he thought.

  “Fielding,” he said, his voice soft yet grating, like a mixture of powdered ash and clinkers being raked from a dead hearth, “what a long time it has been.”

  He gestured to a chair, then sat down again himself; he took up a pen, glanced down at the letter and the sheet of notes in front of him. No, he thought, you can’t do it, not now, not with him. Yes, he answered himself, you must; you must do everything as you always do - the more pitiable Fielding, the more steadfast your routine. Slowly he retrieved and straightened the two sheets of paper, which he had already begun to brush to one side.

  “Well, my dear?” he said, and the words whispered back down the years, with echo upon tiny echo, so that it seemed nearly a minute before there was silence between them once more.

  “As you see,” said Gray in matter-of-fact tones, “I’ve been badly injured and have left the Army. An explosion in Cyprus,” he added, almost apologetically, in answer to the question that glinted behind Somerset’s thick lenses. “A local truce had been declared, you see, but the Cypriots neither understand nor respect the nature of contract. Any form of treaty with them will be meaningless .... But I don’t suppose you need my opinions about that.”