First Among Equals - books

20
FIRST AMONG EQUALS
larly bad sailor. Joyce only hoped that Paris would prove
to be
memorable--and it was. She had a miscarriage on the
second night of their
honeymoon.
"Prot.)ably caused by all the excitement," his mother
said on their
return. "Still, you can always have another, can't you?
And this time
folk won't be able to call it a little . . ." she
checked herself.
Ray showed no interest in havin- another. He completed
lus Erst-class
honors degree in law at Leeds and then moved to London,
as planned, to
complete his studies at the bar. After only a few months
in the metropolis,
Leeds faded from his memory, and by the end of
his two-year
course Ray had been accepted at a fashionable London
chambers to become
a much-soughtafterjunior counsel. From that moment he
rarely mentioned
his North of England roots to his carefully cultivated
new circle of
society friends, and those comrades who addressed him as
Ray received a
sharp "Raymond" for their familiarity.
The only exception Raymond made to this rule was when it
served his
budding political career. Leeds North had chosen Raymond
to be their
Labour candidate for Parliament from a field of
thirty-seven. Yorkshire
folk like people who stay at home, and Raymond had been
quick to point
out to the selection committee, in an exaggerated
Yorkshire accent, that
he had been educated at Routadhay Grammar School on the
fringes of the
constituency and that he had refused a scholarship to