A Quiver Full of Arrows by Jeffrey Archer Page A

business partner who not only stole his money, but for good measure his
wife as well. The very week that he was at his lowest he won the club
backgammon championship, put all his troubles behind him and, against the odds,
made a brilliant come-back. You know, he’s worth a fortune today.
    Now, wouldn’t you agree that that would make
one hell of a story?”

One-Night Stand
    T he two men had first met at the age of five
when they were placed side by side at school, for no more compelling reason
than that their names, Thompson and Townsend, came one after each other on the
class register. They soon became best friends, a tie which at that age is more
binding than any marriage. After passing their eleven-plus examination they
proceeded to the local grammar school with no Timpsons, Tooleys or Tomlinsons
to divide them and, having completed seven years in that academic institution,
reached an age when one either has to go to work or to university. They opted
for the latter on the grounds that work should be put off until the last
possible moment.
    Happily, they both possessed enough brains
and native wit to earn themselves places at Durham University to read English.
    Undergraduate life turned out to be as
sociable as primary school. They both enjoyed English, tennis, cricket, good
food and girls. Luckily, in the last of these predilections they differed only
on points of detail.
    Michael, who was six-foottwo, willowy with
dark curly hair, preferred tall, bosomy blondes with blue eyes and long legs.
Adrian, a stocky man of five-foot-ten, with straight, sandy hair always fell
for small, slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed girls. So whenever Adrian came across a
girl that Michael took an interest in or vice versa, whether she was an undergraduate
or barmaid, the one would happily exaggerate their friend’s virtues. Thus they
spent three idyllic years in unison at Durham, gaining considerably more than a
Bachelor of Arts degree. As neither of them had impressed the examiners enough
to waste a further two years expounding their theories for a Ph.D. they could
no longer avoid the real world.
    Twin Dick Whittingtons, they set off for
London, where Michael joined the BBC as a trainee while Adrian was signed up by
Benton&Bowles, the international advertising agency, as an accounts
assistant. They acquired a small flat in the Earl’s Court Road which they painted
orange and brown, and proceeded to live the life of two young blades, for that
is undoubtedly how they saw themselves.
    Both men spent a further five years in this
blissful bachelor state until they each fell for a girl who fulfilled their
particular requirements. They were married within weeks of each other; Michael
to a tall, blue-eyed blonde whom he met while playing tennis at the Hurlingham
Club: Adrian to a slim, dark-eyed, dark-haired executive in charge of the
Kellogg’s Cornflakes account. Both officiated as the other’s best man and each
proceeded to sire three children at yearly intervals, and in that again they
differed, but as before only on points of detail, Michael having two sons and a
daughter, Adrian two daughters and a son. Each became godfather to the other’s
first-born son.
    Marriage hardly separated them in anything
as they continued to follow much of their old routine, playing cricket together
at weekends in the summer and football in the winter, not to mention regular
luncheons during the week.
    After the celebration of his tenth wedding
anniversary, Michael, now a senior producer with Thames Television, admitted
rather coyly to Adrian that he had had his first affair: he had been unable to
resist a tall, well-built blonde from the typing pool who was offering more
than shorthand at seventy words a minute.
    Only a few weeks later, Adrian, now a senior
account manager with Pearl and Dean, also went under, selecting a journalist
from Fleet Street who was seeking some inside information on one of the
companies he represented. She became a tax-deductible item.