Friendship

It’s strange, the people you keep in touch with after you leave school. Often it’s not the ones you liked best when you were there. It’s generally those who can be bothered to answer letters, and a great many people, especially when they get married and start to have children, tend to give up on this.

In the case of David; at school I found him an interesting character, though I never really thought of him as a friend. He was very intelligent, but most of the teachers disliked him. I think he was probably the most entirely amoral person I ever met: it wasn’t that he actually stole things, but he always said that he would, if it was worth his while and he could get away with it. And he had no regard at all for other people’s feelings: though he wasn’t ever particularly rude or insulting to me, except when he was blatantly showing off to some third party. When we’d all gone off to university I managed to keep in touch with lots of people from the school, and in most cases they stopped writing letters within a year or so, but David kept writing, though not as frequently as I wrote to him.

We met occasionally for several years, and I found I enjoyed his company much more than when we were at school. He was always an amusing talker and raconteur, though his approach to life was as cynical as ever. He was very well-read; we knew similar books, and his judgements about them were always interesting. We even tried writing together, and seemed to complement each other: he was the one who came up with the original ideas, whereas I was better at developing them and carrying them through.    

His career after leaving university was a succession of ups and downs. At times he held very good jobs, apparently with success, but then left them for reasons which were never made clear, and when next we got in touch, I discovered he was doing something completely different. His strongest point, I came to feel, was his tremendous enthusiasm for whatever he was currently doing. Even when he was temporarily out of a job, being unemployed was the thing to do. Similarly, he always followed the latest fashion, whether in clothes, music or ideas, not slavishly, but with every sign of really identifying with them.

Then I didn’t hear from him for a long time, and eventually I learned that he’d got into trouble. I couldn’t pretend I was surprised, but though I didn’t approve, I saw no reason why I should break off contact. I wrote several times, both to his last address and to his parents’ home, but he never replied, and as far as I was concerned, he disappeared without trace.

Like I said, it’s strange, the school friends you keep in touch with.