A Conspiracy of Friends Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.”

7. The Windward Islands
    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