A Conspiracy of Friends Read Online Free

that; he was far too modest and … Well, the other side of it was that he had nothing to write about. He would never get into Mensa, just as he feared he would never get his MW. William French, MW (Failed), Mensa (Failed): well, at least it was honest, and perhaps it would be no bad thing if more of us admitted to our shortcomings more readily—and in a spirit of genuine failure.

5. The Wali of Swat, Etc .
    N O, THOUGHT W ILLIAM , what I need is
purpose
. It was all very well taking each day as it came, reacting to things that happened, but what sort of life did it amount to in the end? People who led lives like that suddenly discovered at the end of the day that they had nothing to show for their time on this earth except a pension—if they were lucky—a house—again if they were lucky—and children who might or might not have much time for them. That was it. And what would the obituary writers say of such a life?
    William liked to read the obituary columns in the newspapers, not out of any morbid interest but because he appreciated potted biography. There were such extraordinary lives being led, he felt; it was a tribute to the inventiveness of humanity that people could devise such varied ways of passing the time. Unlike me, he thought, whose obituary might run to a few lines at the most and would make for very dull reading. William French, wine merchant, it would begin; and then what? There was no distinguished university record—no university record at all, in fact; there was nomilitary service—unless one counted a short spell in the Woodcraft Folk as a teenager, and that organisation was decidedly unmilitaristic in its outlook. His life had not even been touched by controversy; the obituaries of those touched by scandal often made very edifying reading, particularly if they recorded a comeback. The unfortunate Mr. Profumo, who suffered banishment because he did not tell the truth to the House of Commons, spent years thereafter doing good works and was justly rewarded in the end with a glowing obituary. Of course, he had the misfortune to mislead Parliament before it became standard practice for Parliament to be misled—on a daily basis—by half-truths and massaged figures.
    William’s favourite obituary was that of that great and good man, the Akond of Swat, also known as the Wali of Swat. His obituary in
The Times
following his death in 1987 was full of colourful detail. The Wali, who ruled over a territory that eventually ceased to exist, disliked lawyers and heard his subjects’ legal cases personally, his door being open to all. He grew roses and wore elegant English suits. The obituary concluded: “In the eyes of his people, in an age of pygmies a giant has just passed away.”
    We could not all be a Wali of Swat; nor, thought William, could we be a Richard Branson, creating airlines here and there and flying in immense balloons, or a Louis Mountbatten, running military campaigns in that titanic struggle against a
real
Axis, presiding over a crumbling Raj, dispensing advice to kings and presidents. By comparison with such lives, our days were inconsequential indeed, and yet even though our canvas was small, still we could paint a masterpiece—as long as we were content for it to be a miniature.
    The real issue was that of acceptance. Most of us, thought William, are in the same boat as I am. Most of us have not done anything remarkable, nor are we likely to. Most of us are destined to lead life on a relatively modest scale. Yet that does not mean thatwe should resent the apparent smallness of our lives, which are as large, in their way, as the lives of those caught up in great events. A moral dilemma is equally absorbing whether the stakes are the destiny of nations or the happiness of one or two people—at the most. And the same was true of a love affair: romantic heroes may have their romantic heroines, and the resulting romances may take place against exotic backdrops, but the essential