A Conspiracy of Friends

  Dr Ferman gasped. ‘Oh no!’ he wailed. ‘He will have been atomised.’

  ‘Excuse me, Dr Ferman,’ interrupted one of the scientists. ‘We have a rather curious burst of particle activity on this screen here. Look, just about junction 46 in the accelerator. All these quarks and stuff here flying off in every direction, quite an explosion. Look at that. Very unusual.’

  ‘His final photograph,’ muttered Dr Ferman, staring at the screen, at the delicate dancing lines of sub-atomic activity, like a burst of miniature fireworks against a small square of velvet sky.

  ‘Oh dear,’ muttered an MP. ‘Bye-election.’

  Chapter 63: Mariology Etc

  Basil Wickramsinghe was a man of private and scholarly pursuits. He occupied the ground-floor flat in Corduroy Mansions, a fact which meant that all the other residents had to walk past his front door on their way in or out. For the most part, he kept to himself, although on the rare occasions when there was what William called a ‘house party’, he came along and appeared to enjoy himself. For the rest of the time, he was hardly to be seen, slipping out of the house in the morning rather earlier than anybody else and returning in the late afternoon, shortly before everybody else came back from work.

  Basil was a High Anglican, a member of the congregation of a nearby church where mass was said, incense used, and devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary exchanged their arcane messages. Basil approved of incense, the smell of which he liked and had sought to emulate in his choice of aftershave lotion, and he had no objection to the use of the term ‘mass’. He was less enthusiastic about the cult of Mary, which made him feel somewhat uneasy but, being of a tolerant disposition, he accepted that those who found something in such areas of interest needed whatever it was that their practices gave them, and it was not for him to pass judgement. In particular, he remained silent when two middle-aged ladies claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary and St Anne on Ebury Street. Their claim was taken seriously by other mariologists on the vestry committee, but Basil had his doubts. These were based on the patent unlikelihood of the Virgin Mary, and indeed St Anne, feeling the need to manifest, on a Tuesday of all days - in Pimlico of all places - and on the fact that the visitation was supposed to have taken place on the pavement directly outside the ladies’ small - and struggling - gift shop. If the sighting were to be confirmed, of course, it would undoubtedly be good for business. This consideration had not escaped other traders in the area, who had been quick to report that they had themselves seen two unusually dressed women on the street early on the morning in question, one of them, significantly, wearing a long blue robe.

  But where Basil did have strong views was on the subject of liturgical language. Basil believed in the English language, and its ability to express spirituality in a particularly effective register. He knew all about James VI and I, and about his sponsorship of the Authorised Version. He had read and appreciated Adam Nicolson’s Power and Glory, which was all about the process of translation. Somehow the language had been just right - encapsulating the full beauty of the English of the time - a language both majestic and poetic. As a boy in Sri Lanka, a third-generation Anglican, he had read a copy of the King James Bible given to him by an uncle and thrilled at the language. When he first encountered the New English Bible, he could not believe the contrast: the poetry had gone, completely, to be replaced by the language of the call centre, the morning bulletin from the meteorological office or the assembly manual accompanying an item of do-it-yourself furniture. Why had they done this? he asked himself. Why had they rooted out all sense of mystery, of immanence, of solemnity, when everybody had been capable of understanding it? The answer was depressingly clear: this was done precisely to get rid of mystery, immanence and solemnity. And the same thing had been done to the Book of Common Prayer - with its echoing, resonant Cranmerian prose; the enemies of linguistic beauty had had a field-day there, thought Basil.

  Basil was an important member of the James VI and I Society, which he had helped to found, and which met every two months in his flat in Corduroy Mansions. The society’s purpose was to preserve the memory of that unusual monarch, celebrating his writings and achievements. Their annual party took place on the anniversary of the death of Elizabeth I, whom the Society did not like because of her role in the death of James’s mother. One might have thought that the elapse of a considerable number of centuries would be sufficient to allow forgiveness to take root, but not in this case. Elizabeth I had a lot to answer for, and the James VI and I Society was not going to let her off the hook so easily.

  Basil had a sweet tooth, and one of his favourite ports of call was William Curley’s chocolate shop, not far from the shop where William had bought his ill-fated Belgian shoes. Mr Curley’s creations existed for the temptation of the likes of Basil, and virtually every day he called in there on his way back from work to buy a small selection of handmade chocolates. From time to time he would take a seat at one of the tables and order a cup of chocolate, which he would consume while reading the newspaper or correcting the proofs of the James VI and I News, of which he was the editor.

  On this occasion, though, Basil had neither newspaper nor proofs with him when he went into Curley’s. He had left his newspaper in the office, having lent it to one of the trainee accountants who had yet to return it, and there would not be another issue of the James newsletter for another three months. Nursing his cup of freshly made hot chocolate, he looked around the shop. There were a couple of young women gossiping at a nearby table, but their conversation was discreet and he could not hear what they were talking about. Basil liked women - and women liked him - and there was nothing he enjoyed more than being invited to participate in a conversation with women. But it rarely happened; the human world, he reflected, was divided into little clusters of people - tiny tribes, small groups of friends, families - and if you belonged to only a few of these, then your life was circumscribed. He would love to have a gossipy conversation with people he simply bumped into, but he lived in the wrong world for that.

  Noticing that somebody had left a magazine on the chair beside him, he picked it up and read the title: The World of Dogs. Basil smiled. There was a magazine for every interest, he thought; the other day he had paused in front of a newsagent at Victoria station and seen the bewildering array of magazines. He had been amused by the newsagent’s shelf categories: Women’s Interests; Lifestyle; Men’s Interests. The magazines under Men’s Interests were all about cars, motorbikes and DIY. Limited, he thought, but probably commercially astute. Other categories might be just as descriptive, but risked offending the customer. Computer magazines, for example, could be filed in a section labelled Geeks, and some of the more esoteric titles - were people really interested in that? - could be filed under Freaks. Mountaineering magazines, of which he noticed there were several, would of course go under Peaks, and ornithology magazines - again there was more than one of these - would be best placed under Beaks. The magazine for DIY plumbers, Home Plumber Today, would naturally be placed under Leaks … He stopped himself. The anarchic, inventive excursus was his weakness and could go on for hours, if he allowed it.

  He began to page through The World of Dogs. There was an editorial on obedience issues and an article on the economics of setting up a grooming parlour. There was ‘A Vet Writes’, a column of queries about canine complaints, all answered in measured, sensible terms. And then there was a double-page advertisement for a dog food. It featured, not surprisingly, a dog. The surprise came, though, in the face of the dog staring out at the reader.

  Basil recognised him.

  Chapter 64: Dogs, Models, Familiarity

  Basil stared at the glossy photograph of Freddie de la Hay. The dog looked familiar, but it took him a while to establish why this should be. Dogs of the same breed were all very much alike, in his view; how would one tell one Labrador from another? he wondered And yet presumably owners of Labradors could pick out their own dog in a crowd of other Labradors. He thought that this migh
t be on the basis of facial expression, or something to do with the eyes, but he was not sure.

  A dog, of course, could identify its owner in a large group of humans. Basil knew that there had been a lot of research into how people recognised one another, but he doubted whether anybody had been able to understand how it worked for dogs. They probably used the sense of smell more than visual clues; that, he had read, was how they remembered: the smells were filed away in a massive olfactory memory. How weak was our own memory of smells, Basil reflected. What did he remember? Incense, truffle oil, vanilla, cardamom, thyme, freshly ground pepper.

  The thought of pepper reminded him that he needed to buy some more. Basil refused to accept the black pepper sold in supermarkets. ‘Dust,’ he said. ‘Like the tea they put into tea-bags. Dust.’ How different were the fresh peppercorns he sent off for from a mail-order spice business in Sussex. This company imported pepper directly from Kerala and bagged it up for their clients in small linen sacks. These peppercorns, when put in the grounder and broken into fragments, released an aroma that trickled the nose and delighted the palate. It was a proper spice - a delicious, layered taste that bore little relation to the bland sneezing-powder sold as pepper to an unsuspecting public.

  Basil’s attention returned to the photograph of the dog. Yes, it was very familiar … He smiled as he placed it. It was that dog upstairs - Freddie de la Hay - William French’s dog. Basil had always rather liked him, and on the relatively infrequent occasions on which he had met him, he had bent down and let Freddie lick the back of his hand appreciatively.

  Of course this would just be a dog who looked rather like Freddie - it was unlikely to be the same dog. Basil found that he never actually knew the people whose picture appeared in papers or magazines, and the same would apply a fortiori, perhaps, to pictures of dogs. Presumably people who featured in advertisements were recognised by their friends, who might say things like, ‘Oh, there she is eating chocolate again.’ Or, ‘Oh, there’s a picture of Bill shaving’. The male models were the funniest; they all sucked in their cheeks so assiduously. Perhaps the marketing experts had worked out that we were impressed by men who sucked in their cheeks when they faced the camera; that we trusted them and would therefore want whatever product they were advertising.

  Basil’s eye ran across the advertisement. There was a tiny credit printed along the side, and he strained to read it. Photo: East Anglia Graphic Arts; model: FDLH. He reread it, just to make sure. FDLH: Freddie de la Hay. It had to be him; most dogs did not have initials, or just had one, such as R. It was highly unlikely - indeed impossible - that there could be another dog with those initials. No, this was his friend, Freddie.

  Basil wondered whether William had seen the advertisement. He had presumably lent his dog to the photographer for this purpose but he might not have seen the published photograph. If this were so, then he should perhaps take the magazine home and show it to him. It would be a neighbourly thing to do, decided Basil.

  He opened his briefcase and was about to slip the magazine inside when a thought occurred to him. Was this magazine his now or did it still belong to somebody else? Basil was scrupulously honest; so honest, indeed, that the tax authorities had asked him not to submit quite so many receipts when preparing his own tax returns. ‘We like to see the paper record, Mr Wickramsinghe,’ a tax inspector had said, ‘but a receipt for seven pence is probably taking things a bit far. And as for declaring a five pound note that you found in the street and picked up - well, we’re not quite sure that that counts as income. Anyway, it’s not yours, you know.’

  It was an interesting point that had sent Basil off to telephone a lawyer friend and ask him for a ruling.

  ‘He’s right,’ said the lawyer. ‘Lost property still belongs to the person who lost it. That fiver belongs to the poor chap out of whose pocket it dropped.’

  ‘But what do I do if I don’t know who he is?’ ‘You hand it in to the police or a lost property department. They try to trace the owner - theoretically. I can’t imagine them making much effort with a five pound note. But something big would be different.’

  ‘And if the owner doesn’t come forward?’ asked Basil.

  ‘Then you get it as the finder,’ said the lawyer. ‘Or I think that’s the rule.’

  ‘Who owns rubbish?’ asked Basil. ‘The things in the bin in the park? Who owns them?’ ‘I don’t think one would want to stick one’s hand in there. That’s abandoned property, I think - or it’s been made over to the council. The general rule is that if property is abandoned it belongs to the person who finds it.’

  Basil looked at the magazine. If it had been abandoned, then he could become the owner and it would be perfectly permissible to put it in his briefcase. He glanced around him. The two young women at the nearby table were certainly not the owners of The World of Dogs; had it been a copy of Harper’s Bazaar, then they might have been - but not this. What about the shop itself? No, he had never known them to leave magazines about the place.

  With the magazine tucked away in his briefcase, Basil left the chocolatier’s shop and walked the short distance back to Corduroy Mansions. That evening, after he had eaten his solitary dinner in front of the television, he retrieved the magazine from his briefcase and went upstairs to knock at William’s door.

  Chapter 65: A Generous Gesture

  William considered Basil Wickramsinghe to be the ideal neighbour: quiet, courteous and helpful. In fact, the only respect in which the domestic arrangements in Corduroy Mansions could be improved upon, he thought, would be if Basil Wickramsinghe were to move from the ground-floor flat to the flat immediately below his own, and if Caroline and the girls - there was a boy now, too, he noticed - were to move into the ground-floor flat in place of Basil. This view was not formed by any antipathy to Caroline or her flatmates; it was just that there were occasions, and not many at that, when he heard a bit of noise coming from the flat below. Basil, by contrast, was as quiet as a church mouse.

  ‘Mr Wickramsinghe!’ William exclaimed when he answered the door that evening. ‘Do come in, please. This is a rare honour!’ ‘I do not like to disturb you,’ said Basil. ‘I hope that this isn’t inconvenient.’

  ‘Of course it’s not inconvenient. Come in, come in. May I offer you something? A glass of something?’ ‘Last time I was here you gave me an extremely delicious glass of wine,’ said Basil. ‘It had a nutty flavour, as I recall.’

  ‘That will have been Madeira,’ said William. ‘Very suitable to be taken by the glass. That particular Madeira, I think, was recommended by my friend, Will Lyons. I don’t know whether you’ve read his column at all, but he knows what he’s talking about in my view. That was quite an old Blandy’s. None left, I’m afraid, but I can offer-‘ ‘Please don’t open anything special for me,’ said Basil.

  It was typical of his neighbour’s self-effacing modesty, thought William; others would have no compunction in sampling the best thing on offer when visiting the flat of a wine-dealer.

  ‘But I do have another Madeira, as it happens,’ said William. ‘I’ll find it and we can sample it.’

  William went to fetch the Madeira, returning with two generous glasses of an iodine-coloured liquid. Handing one to Basil, he raised his glass in a toast, which Basil reciprocated.

  They sat together in the drawing room. To begin with, the conversation was mostly small talk. William asked what had been happening in the James VI and I Society, and Basil replied that there was very little going on. ‘We’re mostly reactive,’ he said. ‘We exist to protect the reputation of James. If anybody launches an attack, then we’re ready to defend his memory. But at the moment, nobody seems to have it in for him.’

  ‘I know so little about him,’ mused William. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it, how you find so few people these days who mention James I. You get a bit of discussion down at the pub about Charles I, and Charles II too. But James - nothing really.’

  ‘Which pub?’ asked Basil with interest. ‘Which pub do
they discuss Charles I in?’ ‘Oh, I didn’t mean any particular pub,’ said William. ‘I meant pubs in general.’

  Basil looked disappointed. ‘I would love to find a pub where these matters are debated,’ he said. ‘It’s usually football. And I’m afraid I have no interest in that at all.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ said William. ‘All these prima donnas prancing about the football field. I thought it was meant to be a team game.’

  ‘It’s the same with everything,’ said Basil. ‘The cult of celebrity has infected everything.’ He paused. ‘And their wives. People keep going on about footballers’ wives. Why not other wives? Mathematicians’ wives, for example. How about taking an interest in them?’ William laughed. ‘The wives of mathematicians will surely be very different,’ he said. ‘But I suspect that they won’t make such entertaining television.’

  Basil nodded. ‘Indeed,’ he said.

  Then Basil glanced round the room. ‘Where’s Freddie?’ he asked.

  William looked down into his glass; the feeling of loss was every bit as raw as it had been when he drove down to London on that melancholy evening. ‘Frankly,’ he confessed, ‘I don’t know. He may be dead - in fact, I think he is.’

  Basil was aghast. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t-‘ William brushed the apology aside. ‘Nothing to apologise for,’ he said. ‘You weren’t to know.’

  Basil asked what had happened and received a full account of Freddie’s disappearance at the farm and the fruitless search that followed. ‘I phoned the RSPCA,’ William went on. ‘I put the word out, but no dogs answering his description have been handed in. So I fear that we’ve lost Freddie altogether - probably down a rabbit hole or something like that.’