A Conspiracy of Friends (4 page)

W
ILLIAM’S SON
, E
DDIE
, was quite different from his father. He was not troubled by doubts—not in the slightest—and would not have recognised the soul-searching that his father engaged in from time to time. “Barmy,” he might say of such deliberations, “barmy” being the adjective that Eddie applied to anything unusual, creative or vaguely alternative. And if something went beyond barmy, it became, in Eddie’s eyes, “bonkers.” That which was barmy was at least understandable; that which was bonkers surpassed all understanding. Thus the United Nations was bonkers in Eddie’s view, as was the European Union, the management of the football team from which he had recently withdrawn his support in disgust, various archbishops and the entire massed ranks of those self-appointed opinion-formers disparagingly referred to as “the chattering classes.”

“You know how to ruin a perfectly decent country?” Eddie
would say. “You know how to ruin it? I’ll tell you, mate. You put people who are bonkers in charge of it and then you stand back. That’s how it’s done.”

William had long since ceased to reason with his son. He had tried, especially in what he believed were Eddie’s formative years, to bring about a more sophisticated view of the world in his son’s mind, but had given up. And that was when he realised that Eddie had already been formed by the time he reached those so-called formative years, and already it had been too late.

“I wish you’d think a bit more before you sound off about things,” he once said to his son. “I’m not saying that you shouldn’t express a view. I’m just saying that you might think a bit before you do so.”

Eddie sniffed. “I know what’s what, old man,” he said. “Believe me.”

William did not like being called “old man.” “I’m not all that old,” he said. “Late forties isn’t old. Not these days.”

“Maybe not,” retorted Eddie. “But you aren’t late forties, are you? More like fifty.”

William could hardly deny his age—or at least he could not do so to his son, who knew his own father’s date of birth—but he could resist his son’s claim to knowledge of the world.

“I wonder if you know quite as much as you think you do,” he muttered. “You haven’t exactly done very much, have you?”

That, of course, was true, even if it was a somewhat uncomfortable fact. Eddie had never really settled to any job and had no qualifications of any sort. “What’s the point?” he said. “What’s the point in getting a piece of paper? All it says is that you knew something on the date they tested you. But things are changing, aren’t they? You learn something today and the next moment it’s out of date. So why bother to learn it in the first place? You’d have to be barmy.”

“Or bonkers perhaps,” sighed William.

“Yeah, that too.”

Eddie had outstayed his welcome in his father’s house, not moving out until he was well into his twenties. “You don’t mind, do you?” he said. “Mum said I could stay, you know. She told me before she snuffed it. She said I should stay and look after you.”

William gritted his teeth. He had largely recovered from the loss of his wife, but it did not help to hear his son referring to her death in this way.

“Your mother did
not
snuff it, as you so offensively put it.”

“Oh yeah? So you’re telling me she’s alive?”

“And I’m not sure that she thought you should stay … quite so long.”

Such suggestions that Eddie should move out proved fruitless, and even William’s acquiring a dog, the Pimlico terrier known as Freddie de la Hay, failed to shift the known canine-aversive Eddie. At last, though, Eddie moved out to share a flat with a friend and William had his house to himself again.

He had his moments of guilt about his son, imagining him in a small and overpriced flat with malodorous drains and greasy, threadbare carpets. These feelings, however, turned out to be quite unnecessary, as Eddie then took up with a girlfriend, Merle, whose domestic circumstances were a very long distance from the world of malodorous drains and worn carpets. This girlfriend not only had a comfortable, airy flat in Primrose Hill, but also owned a house in the Windward Islands, for which she left the country each November to spend the next six months away from the trying and unpredictable British weather. Merle had inherited both of these properties from a well-placed but childless uncle, who had doted on her since her infancy; and with the legacy of the houses had come a large portfolio of shares and a substantial holding of Treasury bonds. “You know the government owes all this money,” Eddie quipped to his friends in the pub. “Well, you know who they owe it to? I’ll tell you. It’s Merle. They owe the money to her.”

As an heiress, even if one without some of the graces that are sometimes associated with heiresses, Merle could have been more cautious of the intentions of the men who took an interest. She was satisfied, though, that Eddie was interested in her and not in her money; Eddie was too direct, she felt, to conceal a motive. And there was something about him—a cockiness, perhaps—that attracted her in a magnetic, irresistible way. And they were happy together; Merle was quite content to keep them both with the ample proceeds of her portfolio, and Eddie was quite content to listen to Merle, who was a great talker, giving her opinion on a wide range of subjects. He never disagreed with her—not once—but said at regular intervals, “You’re right, doll. You’re right there.”

Some women might have resented being called “doll,” but Merle did not. The image this term of address conjured up was, in her eyes, an attractive one: a curvaceous woman with blonde hair and high-heeled shoes. That was a doll. And if that was how Eddie saw her, then that was flattering, and reassuring. Men did not run away from curvaceous blondes in high-heeled shoes; they ran
to
them. So, although she had often feared that her men would leave her, she now felt much more secure. Eddie was comfortable with her, and called her doll. She fed him well, cooking the greasy fry-ups that gave him particular pleasure, and provided him with all the support and consolation a man might wish for.

“You’re marvellous, you know, Eddie,” she purred.

“Thanks, doll,” he said.

“You sure know how to keep a woman happy,” she added. “Know what I mean?”

“Yes I do, doll,” he said, winking broadly. “And thanks for the testimonial.”

M
ERLE’S HOUSE IN
the Windward Islands had been bought twenty years earlier by the childless uncle who had left it to her. The house, which overlooked a bay on the island of St. Lucia, had been more isolated in the past than it was now. Twenty years ago it would have been possible to walk in its garden by night and see no other lights puncturing the velvety darkness. Now the hillside behind the house had a road snaking up it, with houses off, and these at night made pinpoints of light.

The uncle adapted the house to his purposes, which were those of entertaining groups of friends who came out to stay with him, for weeks sometimes, occasionally for months. A swimming pool was created and an extension of bedrooms built to accommodate the guests at house parties. An additional shady veranda was added to the west side of the house to allow guests to enjoy sundowners while watching the sun sink into the sea. A gazebo, designed in no identifiable style by an eccentric architect whom the uncle had met in a bar, appeared in the corner of the grounds, surrounded by sea-grape trees, to be covered in an astonishingly short time by bougainvillea, and eventually to disappear, not to be missed because nobody had ever used it. With the house came a run-down marina and chandlery, which he put under the control of an enterprising local manager and which prospered greatly.

The uncle was a man of literary tastes, a voracious reader who expounded at length, to anybody who would listen, on the damp fate of books in the humid Caribbean climate. Merle was quite unlike him in this respect; she read virtually nothing other than the occasional beach novel, some breathless account of romantic
yearnings or the racy couplings of hedonistic twenty-somethings. She wanted very little out of life except for one thing: a man. It did not particularly matter, she thought, what sort of man might be allocated to her by Fate; the only important thing was that he would be there, to be looked after and guarded from the depredations of other women who were not in the fortunate position of having a man. It was a curious, somewhat limited view of life, but not without a trace of dim nobility. Merle did not envy what others had; she bore few resentments; she did not wish to despoil the world in any way. All she wanted was a nest.

Eddie suited her perfectly. She regarded him as uncomplicated, and had indeed described him as such to her friends. “With Eddie,” she said, “what you get is what it says on the tin.”

“That’s something,” said her friend, before adding, enigmatically: “The trouble with my ex was that he didn’t have a tin.”

Merle was not sure what this meant but sympathised nonetheless. “Pity, that.”

Eddie was content for Merle to look after him, and this quickly became her main concern. In this she manifested a selflessness which, had it been applied to a worthier project, would have seemed positively virtuous. The energy she poured into making sure that Eddie was well turned out, that his clothes were neatly folded and put away after he had tossed them down on the floor, was every bit as intense as that of the most devoted of nuns tending to the poor and sick. Her dedication was certainly as great even if its beneficiary was less meritorious. Not that Eddie himself regarded this as anything less than his due. He revelled in the attention shown him. It was, he thought, a stroke of the most extraordinary good fortune that he should find a woman like Merle, but it was nonetheless fortune that he had somehow always believed would come his way and he felt was, in some unexplained way, also his due.

Merle met Eddie shortly after he had moved out of Corduroy
Mansions. She was then living in London, in the Primrose Hill flat that belonged to her uncle, which he had offered to her when he began to spend most of his time on St. Lucia. Merle had a job helping a friend who ran a retro clothing shop on the Portobello Road. It was not well paid—in fact, the friend sometimes forgot to pay her at all—but it suited her very well as it enabled her to indulge her interest in clothing and at the same time to hone her quite exceptional skill at selling things.

This talent enabled her to persuade people that the clothing they were trying on was exactly the thing for which they had long been searching. Merle’s power to do this was almost hypnotic.

“That is definitely you,” she would say. “No, seriously, it looks just right. And you look fantastic in it—you really do. You owe it to yourself to buy it, you know.”

Flattered in this way, and compelled by the suggestion that the purchase was somehow a tribute to themselves, the customers would do as Merle prompted and purchase the item. Of course there were consequences, mostly in the shape of disappointment on the part of the customers over the fact that they had bought such manifestly unsuitable garments, but these came later, in the cold light of home.

After the death of her uncle and the receipt of the news of the legacy he had left her, Merle continued to work in the retro clothing store, but as owner. Her friend, who had tired of the musty odour of the old clothes, of the old jackets and sad dresses, had readily accepted the offer that Merle was now able to make for the business, including the freehold of the shop itself.

Now that she was the owner, Merle decided to clear out the old clothing and rename the business Everything Olive. Where the racks once groaned under their weight of stoutly built old greatcoats and morning suits, newly installed shelves now bore bottles of exotic and expensive cold-pressed olive oil, alongside jars of olives
with every conceivable stuffing. Then there were bars of olive oil soap, bottles of olive oil moisturiser and tubes of olive oil hand cream. And all parts of the olive tree were used inventively, as captured whales were in the past, with displays of coasters, soprano recorders and desk sets made from olive wood.

Everything Olive proved to be a resounding success.

“I can’t understand how retail places can fail,” Merle remarked to Eddie one afternoon. “The business model is so easy. Buy something for one pound and sell it for two. Simple. You can’t go wrong.”

Eddie smiled. “Yeah, maybe. But sometimes people don’t want to buy. That’s the problem, I think.”

“Then find out what they want to buy and sell them that,” retorted Merle.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Eddie.

He was not really interested in discussing retail theory with Merle. As far as he was concerned, such matters could be left entirely to her. She had a head for business, he had decided, which suited him very well. Money worries, and the indignities they brought, were not what Eddie had in mind for himself. He was looking forward to a life in which he did not have to bother about such concerns, and now, thanks to Merle, it looked as if just such a life was beginning.

“Marry me, doll?” he asked.

M
ERLE SAID NOTHING
. It was not that she had failed to hear Eddie, who often mumbled, running his words together in the way of some speakers of Estuary English; she had heard his proposal
perfectly well. Consequently this was not one of those embarrassing cases where the person to whom the question is popped has to say: “Sorry, I didn’t quite get that. Are you asking me to
marry
you?” There have been many such cases, including some where the proposer, embarrassed by the incredulity to which his question has given rise, has replied: “No, of course not.” And this has been followed by awkward silence, sometimes heralding the end of the relationship in question.

Eddie’s question was followed by silence because Merle was thinking. She was pleased that Eddie had asked her to marry him, as she had entertained thoughts of marriage from the age of eighteen onwards and had been waiting for a man to propose. None had, or not until now, and it was inconceivable that she would turn down this offer. And yet there was something within her that prompted her to caution. It was not that she had her doubts about Eddie in particular—he was, as far as she was concerned, almost perfect—it was just that she had recently heard a disturbing statistic about the brevity of marriages entered into without a period of reflection beforehand.