A Conspiracy of Friends Read Free Page A

yourself. I’m sure that’ll be fine.”
    “But I didn’t bring any,” he hissed. “The guests have nothing to drink.”
    Berthea smiled. “But there’s a tap in there, isn’t there? What about water? Surely Liberal Democrats are quite happy with water.”
    He raised his voice, attracting glances from a small knot of party volunteers standing near the door. “It’s not funny!”
    “Isn’t it?” asked Berthea airily. “Actually I think it’s really rather amusing. The same problem as the wedding at Cana of Galilee.” She paused. “Perhaps there’ll be a miracle and the water will turn—”
    “What have weddings got to do with this?” snapped Oedipus. “You’ve really let me down, Mother. I trusted you, and this is how you repay me.”
    Berthea looked at him coldly. Was this how Liberal Democrats addressed their mothers? It was all very well occupying the moral high ground on electoral reform, but what really mattered, she thought, was how you treated your mother. Conservatives, she had observed, were very good to their mothers, and to their nannies as well. And Labourites were equally fond of their mothers, and sometimes made their mothers government ministers or put them in the House of Lords. So kind! Sometimes, though, they could be a little less than understanding when mothers made reactionary or
bigoted
remarks, as mothers sometimes do. But that was a small fault, as faults go.

4. In a Spirit of Failure
    I F O EDIPUS S NARK was a flawed character, the same could certainly not be said of William French, Master of Wine (Failed). That particular failure—his regrettable performance in the MW examinations—was his own fault and nobody else’s, and he certainlydid not try to shift the blame. He had become intoxicated in the practical tests and completely confused the attribution of the sample wines. He recognised that it would have been a travesty had he passed, and he knew that he had a great deal of work ahead of him if he were eventually to obtain the treasured qualification.
    Whereas Oedipus was unpopular with all those who got to know him at all well, the warmth of feeling that people had for William only grew as they spent time with him. It was difficult to put one’s finger on the reason for this, but it was a quality of kindness, perhaps, that people most noticed: kindness, leavened with a large measure of charity in his attitude to others. One realised, of course, that William had a problem with finding direction in his life, but that counted for very little when one looked at the broader character of a person who had a strong sense of where he was going. The ranks of such persons were not entirely occupied by the ruthless, the selfish and the insensitive—but those characteristics were certainly well represented there.
    His friend Marcia Light, who owned the outside-catering firm Marcia’s Table, was well aware of William’s lack of direction. For some years after William had been widowed, she had wanted him to marry her. She used every ploy known to woman to secure this end, but eventually admitted to failure.
    “It’s not going to happen,” she had confided to a friend one day as they prepared a large selection of canapés for a reception at the Norwegian embassy. “The problem is chemistry. The chemistry’s either there or it isn’t. It’s as simple as that.”
    “Are you sure?” her friend asked. She was an incurable romantic and believed, in the depths of her soul, that any man could be enticed as long as one knew what his appetites—in the culinary sense, of course—were. “There are ways, you know …”
    Marcia knew what her friend was driving at. “It’s not that simple,”she said. “Yes, there are men who just want domestic comfort, who want somebody to cook for them. William’s not like that.”
    “Pity,” said the friend.
    “Yes. But there we are. He’s looking for something else.”
    William would not have disputed that assessment. He was aware of his