Read Online Keeping Bad Company by Caro Peacock - Free Book Online Page A

held his nerve and kept walking. When he came to a halt, a few yards away from them, there was a smile on his face. Everybody had gone quiet so that it seemed as if the great hall was concentrated on the meeting between the two enemies.
    Mr Griffiths spoke first, in a conversational tone, but loudly enough for bystanders to hear.
    â€˜Good afternoon, McPherson. Sporting your jewellery collection, I see.’
    McPherson gave him a hard look down his boxer’s nose. ‘I’m surprised you’ve got the face to come here. Or are you getting up a protest meeting?’
    His voice was a deep and arrogant drawl. If he’d ever had a Scottish accent, it had vanished in his time out east. Some of the men round him tittered as if he’d made a good joke. It seemed an unfair encounter, McPherson surrounded by his cronies, Mr Griffiths very much alone.
    â€˜I don’t need protest meetings,’ Mr Griffiths said, sounding quite unworried. ‘I think actions are better than words. Although words have their uses too.’
    â€˜Are you threatening me?’
    McPherson’s voice was a bull-like roar. It looked as if he was having to restrain himself from charging at Mr Griffiths and tossing him aside.
    â€˜With words?’
    If McPherson was the bull, Mr Griffiths was taunting him like a picador, though it was hard to see why what he said should annoy his target so much.
    â€˜You’re determined to slander me, aren’t you?’ McPherson said.
    â€˜How could any words of mine hurt the reputation of a man so prosperous and well regarded?’
    Mr Griffiths’s tone was satirical, but it seemed an odd thing to say for a man who had spent years bombarding McPherson’s reputation with words.
    â€˜If you have anything to say against me, why not come out with it?’
    Mr Griffiths smiled. ‘I shall, in the fullness of time.’
    â€˜So I suppose I must wait and tremble,’ McPherson said.
    His attempt to meet sarcasm with sarcasm sounded forced, but it brought louder sycophantic titters from his supporters.
    â€˜Just so,’ Mr Griffiths said. ‘Meanwhile, make the best of what’s left to you.’
    He nodded towards the hawk, turned and walked away and out of the hall as steadily as he’d walked with me by the river the day before.
    McPherson stood looking after him, the men round him chattering and laughing as if he’d scored a victory. I was worried about Mr Griffiths and might have gone after him but at that moment the door to the committee room opened, Tom came out and McPherson was called inside. It was his turn to give evidence. Tom was pale-faced and miserable. Some of the men who’d been waiting closed round him, obviously wanting to know what had happened. When they’d got their answers they strolled away, leaving Tom standing there on his own. By this time, there was no sign of Mr Griffiths. I went up to Tom. He might have been angry that I’d come there, but I could no more have left him than when he’d been lost and alone in the woods at home. He came towards me and gripped my hand.
    â€˜Oh Libby, I feel like Judas.’
    I tried to reassure him that none of it was his fault. We walked together through the hall and out into the sunshine.
    â€˜Was it worse than you’d expected?’
    â€˜Not really worse, but bad enough. Some of them were really out to destroy Griffiths, every little rumour and sneer from cutting one of the governor’s dinners to wearing native dress sometimes. Why shouldn’t a man dress as he likes in his own bungalow?’
    â€˜I can’t see what that’s got to do with the proper government of India.’
    â€˜Disrespect for the authorities, bringing the English into disrepute. As if some of the wine-swilling bullies we send out there weren’t doing that all the time. McPherson will twist that committee round his finger. I suppose he’s in there now, demanding