A Conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

them …” And there he had faltered.
    Took a lot of horses
. What did
that
mean? The meaning was quite clear now, of course, and she felt foolish that she had not understood then. Nor had she understood the significance of her father’s remarks on his education. “I had terrifically good luck with my education,” he explained to her. “There was a bit of a mix-up, you see, and I was left by mistake under a hedge when I was three. And this terrifically kind man whose hedge it was found me and took me in. He sent me to a little school nearby and then on to an expensive boarding place. It was a really good education and I made the most of it. My parents would never have been able to afford it.”
    “Did you see your parents again? Your real parents, that is.”
    “Yes. The man who took me in had a good idea who they were, and he made a point of keeping in touch with them. So my father came to see me every so often, right up to the time he died.”
    It seemed strange to her that a father might leave a son in a hedge and still be interested in him. “But he left you in a hedge,” she said.
    “I like to think that he knew what he was doing,” said Gregory. “I like to think that he was very well aware that my stepfather would find me and look after me. I think of it as an act of generosity on his part. He wanted the best for me, and he knew that the wayto secure it was to abandon me. It was an act of self-sacrifice. A noble act.”
    Barbara had lost interest and the matter was not pursued. Nor did her father make subsequent reference to his parents, and she picked up on the prickly feeling of discouragement that surrounded the subject. But it all made sense, all fitted so neatly into place, now that she knew.
    Her first reaction, of course, was shock. But, sitting in her office, she reflected on the meaning of what had been revealed to her. There was nothing wrong in being a gypsy, anything more than there was anything wrong in living a settled life in a house made of bricks and mortar. We were all the same, were we not, when we came into this world: we were all equal in our vulnerability and our malleability. And we did not
ask
for the bed in which we were born: that was one of the things over which we had no control at all, just as we had no say as to whether we would be redheads, or tall or short or somewhere in between; or whether we were born Polish or Zambian, Catholic or Muslim or Jewish. We had no choice in all this. And it was this, precisely this, that made it so wrong to think the less of another for what he or she was. There was no moral obligation to
like
others, nor necessarily to enthuse over them, but we did have to recognise their equal worth.
    Barbara stood up. On the wall beside her bookcase there was a mirror that she used to tidy up before a meeting. Now she saw herself reflected in it, and she leaned forward to peer more closely at her face.
“Gypsy,”
she muttered under her breath. And what looked back was the face of her ancestors: long-dead judges of horseflesh, occupants of colourful wooden caravans, the victims of all sorts of abuse and bad treatment. She reached out and touched the reflection. “Hello,” she whispered, as one who, for the first time, acknowledges some aspect of self long denied or unknown.
Hello
.

22. Coffee with George
    W HAT DIFFERENCE , B ARBARA considered as she made her way to the coffee bar, what earthly difference does it make who my grandfather was? Or my grandmother, for that matter. Rupert had not mentioned her, and neither had Gregory, now that she thought of it: her father had only spoken of his own father, and it had never occurred to her to ask him about his mother. Perhaps that was just another example of the fate of women in those days—to be eclipsed by men. Was her grandmother also a gypsy—or traveller? Should she be using the word “gypsy”—was it an act of discourtesy towards her own people? She rather liked the word, which she had never seen