Friends in Low Places Read online

  Patricia flushed. Although she was eager to go into things, she did not want to be caught out, just yet, making overt judgments.

  “Well,” Tom went on, “in your terms you are quite right. Though perhaps sinful would be a better word. But there is nothing to be done about it now. One can exorcise ghosts, I dare say, but not the actions or events in which one joined with them. Past actions are immutable; the only thing to do about them, if they are inconvenient, is to forget.”

  “You can atone,” Patricia said. “You can ask forgiveness.”

  “Why should I?” Many of my worst actions have in the end proved mentally - even morally - enriching.”

  Patricia pondered this remark with peevishness and anxiety. Truth to tell, she was out of her depth. Brought up in confinement, her only close companions a younger sister and a faithful but stupid nurse, she had been able to take her intellectual pre-eminence for granted ever since she could remember. There had been no possible rival: her mother had bolted when her sister was ten months old; while her father, a stern and able man before the world, yet encouraged and indulged Patricia in a manner which implied that even he had nothing to teach her. Apart from oudining the basic rules of social practice, he had abrogated his role as tutor and deferred to what he called “the inborn feminine wisdom” of his daughter to the extent that she firmly believed this quality to be equivalent, if not superior, to intellect. Since she had been confirmed in this fallacy by the doting of her foolish nurse, by the subservience of her young sister, and by the Platonic attentions of an evangelical governess, Patricia Turbot had grown up a prim, priggish, spoiled, ignorant and not unkindly girl, whose substantial intelligence was badly stunted from lack of the need to exert it and whose assumption of superiority had yet to meet its check.

  And now here was Tom, the man to whom she was to give herself, questioning her edicts, disputing the moral and religious truths on which they were based, and, worst of all, advancing propositions which she could neither understand nor confute. It was not to be borne.

  “You’re evading the issue,” she told him. “I have to know about the other women, and you have to tell me, so that we can start fresh. With everything clear between us.”

  “There are no fresh starts in life,” said Tom, who was enjoying teasing her, “and you can never get anything clear. But I'll tell you about my sex life, since that’s what you want, provided you’ll tell me about yours.”

  “I’ve had no sex life,” said Patricia smugly.

  “What? No crushes on the girls at school? But of course, you had a governess . . . . Odd of your father, that.”

  “Daddy doesn’t believe in boarding-schools for girls.”

  “He sent your sister to one.”

  “She was getting out of hand. And when she went, it was more important than ever that I should stay at home to be with him.”

  “So no sex life. No games of doctor with visiting cousins? No hot, straying little hands during the Christmas game of Sardines? And what about that governess? From what you say, she was rather keen.”

  “No gentleman would talk like that.”

  She really meant it too, thought Tom. But she’d started it all and she could jolly well take what was coming to her. It would be useful practice for marriage.

  “Who’s evading the issue now?” he said cheerfully. “I’m going to tell you something, my sweet. One of the conditions of marriage, or of any relationship between two people, is that neither must try to see too much. You can look as hard as you like at what is shown you; don’t ask to see what isn’t.”

  “But two people in love should share everything.”

  “Only what they both understand. If you are shown what you don’t understand, you will resent it, and there will be the first breach in love. That’s where the Greeks were so sensible. They did not consult their women on important matters because they knew that lack of understanding would result in jealousy.”

  “We were talking of something quite different,” she snapped.

  “Of my sexual past. It is rather squalid, though no worse than a lot of other people’s, and you would not understand it. You may be able to when you are older, in which case I will tell you about it. Meanwhile, you must take my word for it that nothing which happened was important or need in any way call in question my love for you.”

  He turned towards her and kissed her on the forehead, then on the eyes, then on the mouth. Although she made no response, she pulled him back when he began to draw away.

  “Tell me why you love me,” she said.

  “Because you are beautiful and good . . . . Another Greek speciality. Because you are true. And because you will be worth teaching.”

  “What must I learn?”

  “Almost everything. When I first saw you at that party in London, I said, ‘There is the beautiful princess, sleeping the sleep of ignorance. When the prince comes to wake her, kissing won’t be enough: she’ll need a damned good shake’.”

  “She had one this afternoon.”

  “I know and I’m sorry. But there will be kisses too.”

  They walked over a meadow towards a sloping croquet lawn and a large, smug, square red house beyond it. Tom opened a door in a brick wall and stood aside for Patricia to pass. As they stepped on to the lawn, they saw Isobel Turbot, Patricia’s eighteen-year-old sister, come dancing out of the shrubbery towards them, her big breasts flapping, her thin legs (so unlike Patricia’s strongly fleshed ones) back-heeling sexily under her bottom, on the verge of a Charleston.

  “Lovely day for snogging,” she yelled.

  Her respect for her elder sister had declined since nursery days; low cunning and a boarding school education had supplied her with some dubious mental acquirements, on the strength of which she had set up as the sophisticated member of the household.

  “Heavy petting,” she said, giggling wildly, and Charlestoned off towards the stables which adjoined the east side of the house.

  “I can't think,” said Patricia, “where she gets her frivolity.”

  “I can,” said Tom, remembering mama the bolter.

  “I hope there's not to be trouble,” Patricia said.

  “She’ll sober up.”

  “Some of the young men she sees in London .... The ones that take her to those cellar places . . .”

  “She also had some more suitable friends,” said Tom dryly. “That guardee she produced the other day - "

  “I’m so afraid she leads them on. And the way she keeps running off to the stable to see Wilkes . . . ."

  There was in her eye a fierce, prurient look, combining acute distaste with speculation and even with yearning. Quite what it boded Tom did not know, and would not until their wedding night: because this time, he had told himself, he was going to wait; it might not be wise, but it would be a novel experiment - and not the only one which he proposed. For he had noticed with interest that he was still capable of such detachment, of loving Patricia with all his heart and yet of making cynical evaluations, about how to get the best value out of her, on the side.

  “Do you think she - ?”

  “Forget it," Tom interrupted her; “Isobel won’t come to any harm. She’s indestructible.”

  Although he could not be sure, he, fancied he caught a gleam in her eye which hinted at a wish for a very different answer: she wants me to cry lechery, he thought, because her conventions forbid her to give tongue herself; there’s strong magic bottled up there, and I’m the one that’s fated to remove the cork and release the djinn. This prospect he found exciting, yet also remote, unreal, like the dreams he sometimes had of being in bed with the Queen.

  They moved into the drawing-room for tea.

  Sir Edwin Turbot placed his buttocks before the fire and then stuck them insolently out at it. He held one crumpet in the flat of his left hand while he used the right to feed another into his mouth. He did not take separate bites; he placed it between his teeth and then slowly absorbed it, like a snake with its prey. When the fir
st crumpet had been engulfed, he surveyed the second cannily, as though he half thought it might try to escape, and said:

  “Bad business about Bishop’s Cross. Why does Morrison want to stick his nose in?”

  “I gather,” said Tom, “that he has quite a following at Bishop’s Cross. Enough to put him on the short list.”

  “Rupert Percival should never have allowed it,” said the Minister peevishly. He looked sharply at his crumpet, then whisked it to his mouth with a glint of revenge.

  “They say that Percival rather likes Morrison.”

  Sir Edwin, mouth full, acknowledged this by raising the toe of his left shoe and rapping smartly on the stone hearth. Patricia, who knew this indicated a sense of deprivation, poured her father an out-size cup of tea with seven lumps of sugar and proffered it with both hands.

  “April,” said Sir Edwin with contempt, and sucked down the last of his crumpet with a kind of inverted belch. “No more crumpets in a day or two, I suppose?” He took his tea from Patricia with a courteous nod. “April. Spring. I’ve always hated it. Brings nothing but trouble. And where’s Isobel?” he demanded, the connection of ideas being ominously plain.

  “Gone for a walk to the village, Daddy,” said Patricia smoothly.

  Sir Edwin decided to let this pass; but being determined to be put upon one way or the other, for he derived much pleasure from grievance, he reverted to the intrusiveness of Morrison.

  “Trouble,” he said with relish, as though it were the name of a family estate. “We knew just the sort of man we wanted in Alastair Dixon's place for Bishop's Cross. And when they took up this chap Somerset Lloyd-James, it couldn't have been better. People knew his father, Shagger Lloyd-James” -for a moment he looked a bit dubious - “and they also knew that the boy was clever about money. Just what we wanted: someone to help keep the money straight. Because,” he said, fixing his future son-in-law with a look that mingled irritation with respect, “even you left-wing fellows will admit that there isn't an unlimited supply. And what there is is getting jolly wonky, believe me.”

  Tom believed him.

  “So everything was fixed up for Shagger's boy,” continued the Minister in the smug tones of rational complaint, “and then what happens? Along comes the spring, and along comes trouble with it, in the shape of Mr Peter Morrison pushing himself in where he isn't wanted. Rocking the boat. Alastair Dixon says that's all he'll ever do; rock the boat. It's all he did last time he was in the House - him and that Young England Group. The fellow's just a confounded prig. Prig,” he repeated delightedly, as though he himself had just invented the word.

  “At least one can trust him, Minister,” said Tom quietly, “which is more than can be said for Shagger’s boy Somerset.” “Oh,” said Sir Edwin, who, unlike many other important men, was always prepared to listen to what he didn't want to hear. “You know Lloyd-James well enough to say so?”

  “For several years now I've done a lot of work for his paper. He is a brilliant editor and an amusing companion. He has a very shrewd grasp of practical economics, which is well supported by knowledge of relevant theory, both mathematical and political. He is a stylist. Despite a deplorable physique and bad utterance, he can charm. He is socially adept. He knows how to order a well-balanced and imaginative dinner, and he can cut a dash at the card table without getting himself into trouble. To know Somerset Lloyd-James is a first-rate education and at times an exquisite pleasure. But,” said Tom, slapping both hands down on his thighs, “he is a killer. He is as mean as hell with money and there’s nothing he won’t do to get it. He is also, when it suits his book, a betrayer. He has the authentic Judas touch.”

  Patricia sat goggling at this insight into the world and its wickedness. Sir Edwin, who disapproved of Tom to the point of obsession but was sharp enough to know when he was on to a good thing, gave him the look of commendation which he reserved for upper servants, and remarked:

  “Something of the kind used to be said about Shagger. A lot of people pooh-poohed it, but he was always regarded with caution.”

  “It has something to do,” said Tom, “with the special morality of Roman Catholics. They have always been adept at adjusting moral issues to suit their own circumstances . . . at claiming for themselves, as adherents to the original faith, a sort of divine licence for obliquity. And in England, where their faith has been actively persecuted, they have an even stronger excuse.”

  Sir Edwin snorted. This was mere speculation - not what the fellow was paid for. More and more Sir Edwin found himself thinking of Tom as the hired secretary or adviser he devoutly wished Tom was - someone to be ejected with a month’s notice if he got out of hand, not a permanent addition to the family. When first told of the engagement, Sir Edwin had been dumbfounded; but the habit of letting Patricia have her way had become so much a matter of course over the years that it was unthinkable that her intention should be thwarted or her wisdom questioned. For had it not been he himself who had always fostered and underwritten her pretensions? Too late to impugn them now. And so, conscious of his weakness and studying to compensate for it by craft, he had devised, in self-defence, a fiction whereby he accepted Tom as a disagreeable but talented assistant, whose personal shortcomings (the long curly hair, the sexual knowingness, the left-wing attitudes) were none of his affair provided only the young man did his job. Quite how he was going to adapt this system of deceiving himself when Tom and Patricia were actually married, he had not yet thought. Meanwhile, however, he contrived to tolerate Tom as a general tolerates a conceited but able aide-de-camp. Which did not mean, he now told himself crossly, that he had to listen to the fellow’s theories about the psychology of Papists.

  “I should prefer a more concrete and factual assessment,” he said pompously. “Somerset Lloyd-James: in what respects has he shown he is not to be trusted? Never mind his religion.”

  “I mind it very much,” said Tom: “without it he’d Just be another amusing rogue. But his religion lends him a conviction of righteousness which makes him pitiless. Nobody’s safe: not friend, lover, servant . . . dog.”

  “Please to be specific.”

  “Very well. Usury - at fantastic rates.”

  “It takes two to agree the rates.”

  “Granted. What about bribery?”

  “Give me an instance.”

  “He once offered me three times the normal fee,” said Tom blandly, “to fudge the facts for an article he wanted written.”

  “Editorial privilege,” rasped Sir Edwin. “They’re allowed to be selective.”

  “Attempted blackmail then?”

  This time Sir Edwin turned thoughtful.

  “For money?”

  “There was money in it. But mainly for power.”

  “That” the Minister said, “is certainly something. You can vouch for it?”

  “I was cat’s paw . . . I didn’t realise till too late,”

  “You seem to have been much . . . involved . . . with Somerset Lloyd-James.”

  “One can’t help it if one lives in certain circles. He haunts them like a ghoul.”

  “But now . . .?” put in Patricia hopefully.

  “Now” said Tom, “I am by way of being an expert on him. But I still have to look sharp. It’s like dealing with Proteus: you don’t know what shape he’s going to take from one second to the next.”

  “Hmm,” mused the Minister. “Not the sort of chap one puts up for one’s club.”

  “He’d get in just the same if he set his mind on it.”

  “But for all this,” said the Minister, “I don’t care for the idea of Bishop’s Cross adopting Morrison. He’ll stir up that Young England Group again, for a start. And damn it all, it’s not three years since he resigned because of that scandal.”

  “Nobody believes in the scandal.”

  “Some of the public will. The public memory is as long as it’s inaccurate . . . for any kind of dirt, that is. It’s just too soon for Morrison, and that’s all about it. His name sho
uld never have been kept on the list at Central Office.”

  “From what I hear,” said Tom, teasing faintly, “there was a number of very important people who took great care that it should be.”

  This reminder that Sir Edwin’s disciplinary hold on the Conservative Party was not as absolute as he would have wished produced, at last, a sense of injury too strong to be merely pleasurable. The Minister put his cup down with a crack and strode to the door.

  “Black tie for dinner,” he said, as though proclaiming an interdict. “Eight for half past. The Canteloupes are coming with the dowager and a house guest. Chap called Detterling, who says he knows you and that Jew publisher of yours.” For a moment Sir Edwin looked as if he had been about to institute a pogrom but had thought better of it at the last minute. Instead, “Please not to pass the port too freely,” he enjoined with gloomy rancour: “Canteloupe’s head does not improve.”

  “So when,” asked Lady Canteloupe with a saccharine smile, “is the wedding to be?”

  “Time enough to think about that,” Sir Edwin said, “when we’re through with the general election.”

  “The wedding’s to be at mid-summer,” said Patricia firmly.

  Sir Edwin turned up his eyes and stuck his spoon into the middle of his peach melba, with the air of a soldier planting a sabre to mark a fallen comrade’s newly filled grave.

  “I’m going to be chief bride’s maid,” said Isobel. Even the ice-cream running down her chin seemed somehow to have sexual significance. “Patty and I have fixed on the dearest little short green dresses.”

  “Flowers?” said the Dowager Marchioness Canteloupe, mopping up the last of her melba juice with a stray piece of toast.

  “Carnations.”

  “Green carnations?” said Lord Canteloupe, who affected to think that all young men with long curly hair and left-wing opinions must of necessity be sodomites.

  “Yes,” said Tom; “we’ve already arranged to have them dyed.”

  Lord Canteloupe laughed generously. He liked young men with spirit, whatever their social provenance, nor did he give a tinker’s fart, as he himself might have put it, whether Tom was a sodomite or not.