Free Symposium by Muriel Spark Page B

the hundreds
of guests. ‘The moneyed class,’ murmured Luke. ‘That’s right,’ said his
companion behind the white cloth-covered table. He was there to serve special
requests. ‘Whisky and soda, sir? Of course. Which brand?’
    At the
end of that long Saturday of the country wedding, Luke went back up to London
by car with his new friend who asked to be called Garnet. They went to a club
to eat and relax. And there Luke learned of the exact prices to be gained by
anyone with a list of good names, or even one name, present at a party and
therefore away from home. Luke and Garnet, who also boasted a few more reliable
members of his team, were assured of their pay whether the names were useful or
not, as Garnet pointed out. ‘More often than not’, confided Garnet, ‘it’s too
risky. Servants, guards, in the house. Dogs. Sophisticated alarms. They’re
alarms that go off at the police station but not in the house, so the police
have time to come and catch the fools. All that is no concern of us. Sometimes
the people don’t go to the dinner or whatever at the last minute. Not our
fault. No concern of us. We give the list and take the money. It could be done
by word of mouth, no proof. As I say, a list like the wedding today would be
worth a lot. Somebody else no doubt provided one. But, as I say, even if it’s a
duplicate a list is a list and the principals pay. They like to encourage.
They’re generous, as I say.’
    As
Garnet said they would be, they had been generous with Luke. He had been far
enough away from any field of action not to feel any guilt. Ella and Ernst
would have said they could trust Luke with their lives. They wouldn’t ever need
to lock anything up with Luke in the house. They were right. They had no idea
how greatly Luke prospered.
    ‘Luke,
I have a friend, the artist Hurley Reed and his life-companion, extremely
charming Chris Donovan. They’re giving a party. We’ll be there. Will you give
them an evening of your time to help with the serving?’
    ‘I
think so,’ said Luke. ‘Hopefully I’ll be free.’ To Ella this meant he would
certainly take on the job. She had never known him refuse.
    It was
only the matter of the very expensive watch that gave them to think, and then
they thought wrongly, both arriving at the immediate conclusion that Luke had
received this many-thousand-dollar treasure in return for sexual favours.
     
     
    Helen Suzy was writing to
her friend, Brian Suzy’s daughter.
     
    Dear Pearl,
    I suppose Brian wrote and told you about our robbery.
You can imagine he was very upset, in fact a bit too upset in my humble
opinion. I know you warned me he’s another generation, they think of their
goods and chattels. You can’t take it with you. Pearl, I think sometimes I’m
going crazy. He says he’s been raped, how would he know about rape? In fact in
a funny psychological way he wants to be raped, they say we all do!!! I feel I
sympathize with your Mother when she was married to him. But it’s still another
generation. I was truly sorry our stuff was stolen, and that they urinated all
over. We had to get the walls done anyway. I never liked those chair covers.
Now we hear the gang is operating outside London, a house in Dulwich and a big
house in Wembley. The people were out but they wounded a servant who is still
in hospital. The police say it’s the same gang as came to us. They seem to
know. We were in bed. We could have been killed. They seem to have found out in
the other cases when people were out to dinner or the theatre. The big thing as
Brian will have told you was they left the Picture on the wall by Francis
Bacon, very costly. Now he’s cutting down on the phone etc. to make up for our
losses, so I didn’t ring you up. In my humble opinion we should spend more to
cheer ourselves up like a trip to Venice. Brian says maybe yes, a trip to
Venice, so I put an idea in his head perhaps. We have a couple of dinner
parties then we could go off. He has a