by Stephen Fry
‘Not exactly in the great tradition is it? I mean, I don’t think that Pope Julius and Michelangelo came to a similar kind of arrangement about the Sistine Chapel. Not unless I’m very much mistaken.’
‘Don’t bet on it. Anyway, someone’s got to fuck me, haven’t they?’ Gary pointed out. ‘Since you won’t I’ve got to look elsewhere. Makes good sense.’
‘Suddenly the whole logic becomes clear. But what about work? I’m supposed to be working this term, don’t forget.’
Gary got to his feet and stretched.
‘Bugger that, that’s what I say. How was the porn?’
‘Incredible. You’ve never in all your life seen anything like it.’
‘Naughty pictures?’
‘I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to look a labrador in the face again. But, ruined as my faith in humankind may be, I have to say that we of the twentieth century are a pretty normal bunch compared to the Victorians.’
‘Victorian porn?’
‘Certainly.’
‘What did they do? I’ve often wondered. Did they have dicks and fannies and the rest of it?’
‘Well of course they did, you silly child. And the zestier volumes indicate that they had a great deal more. There’s a –’
Adrian broke off. He had suddenly given himself an idea. He looked at Gary’s cartoon.
Why not? It was wild, it was dishonest, it was disgraceful, but it could be done. It would mean work. A hell of a lot of work, but work of the right kind. Why not?
‘Gary,’ he said. ‘I suddenly find myself at life’s crossroads. I can feel it. One road points to madness and pleasure, the other to sanity and success. Which way do I turn?’
‘You tell me, matey.’
‘Let me put it this way. Do you want to pay off all your debt in one, plus the five hundred for wooden panelling? I’ve got a job for you.’
‘Okay.’
‘That’s my boy.’
*
Trefusis approached the counter of the reading-room. The young librarian looked at him in surprise.
‘Professor Trefusis!’
‘Good morning! How wags the world with you today?’
‘I’m very fit thank you, sir.’
‘I wonder if you can help me?’
‘That’s what I’m here for, Professor.’
Trefusis leant forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially, not an easy task for him. Among his many gifts he had never been able to count speaking in hushed tones.
‘Oblige the whim of a man old and mad before his time,’ he said, quietly enough for only the first twelve rows of desks behind him to catch every word, ‘and tell me if there is any reason why I shouldn’t have come in here an hour ago?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Why should I not have come into this room an hour ago? Was something afoot?’
The librarian stared. A man who services academics is used to all forms of mental derangement and behavioural aberration. Trefusis had always struck him as blithely and refreshingly free from nervous disorder. But, as the saying had it, old professors never die, they merely lose their faculties.
‘Well apart from the fact that an hour ago you couldn’t have been here …’ he said.
‘I couldn’t?’
‘Well not while you were at St Matthew’s talking to Mr Leyland on the telephone.’
‘I was talking to Mr Leyland on the telephone?’ said Trefusis. ‘Of course I was! Dear me, my memory … Leyland rang me up, didn’t he? On the telephone, as I recall. That’s right, it was the telephone, I remember distinctly, because I spoke to him through it. He rang me up, on the telephone, to talk to me about … about … what was it now?’
‘To check your authorisation for that undergraduate to read those … those Reserved Publications.’
‘Mr Healey that would have been?’
‘Yes. It was all right, wasn’t it? I mean, you did confirm …’
‘Oh yes. Quite all right, quite all right. I was merely … humour me once more and let me have a copy of the titles Mr Healey wanted to see, would you, dear boy?’
VI
‘Bust me, Sir!’ said Mr Polterneck. ‘Bust me if I haven’t just the little warmint for your most partic’lar requirements just now a-curling up in innocent slumber in the back room. You can bounce me from here to Cheapside if that ain’t the truest truth that ever a man gave utterance of. Mrs Polterneck knows it to be so, my Uncle Polterneck knows it to be so and any man as is acquainted with me could never be conwinced to the contrary of it, not if you boiled him and baked him and twisted him on the rack for another opinion.’
‘I am assured of your good faith in this matter?’ asked Peter.
‘Lord, Mr Flowerbuck. I’m in the way of weeping that you might have doubt of it! My good faith in this matter is the one sure fact you may most particular be assured of! My good faith is a flag, Mr Flowerbuck. It is a tower, Sir, a Monument. My good faith is not made of air, Mr Flowerbuck, it is an object such as you might touch and look upwards on with wonder and may you whip me until I bleed if that ain’t so.’
‘Then I suppose we might do business?’
‘Now then, Sir,’ said Mr Polterneck, producing a most preposterous handkerchief of bright vermilion silk with which he mopped his brow. ‘He’s a most especial warmint, is Joe Cotton. Most particular especial. To a gentleman like yourself as I can tell is most discerning in the nature of young warmints, he is a nonparelly. I could sonnet you sonnets, Mr Flowerbuck, about the gold of his tresses and the fair smoothness of his young skin. I could ballad you ballads, Sir, on the theme of the fair round softness of his rump and the garden of paradise that awaits a man within. I’ve a stable of young colts. Sir, as I can say the like would not be found in any district of the City, nor without the City too, and Master Cotton, Sir, is my Prize. If that ain’t recommendation enough you can hang me by the neck right now, Sir, from old Uncle Polterneck’s lintel, and have done with me for a lying rascal.’
It was all Peter could do to restrain himself from taking Polterneck fully at his word. The fear of what foul gases might ooze from the creature’s lungs as he did so and what contamination he would suffer in the handling of him kept his vengeful fury at bay quite as much as the reflection that he must proceed as levelly as he might with the business in hand.
‘I suppose you can tell me nothing of his provenance?’ he asked indifferently.
‘As to his provenance, Sir, I’m in the way of thinking, and Mrs Polterneck is the same, and Uncle Polterneck is hardly of a different persuasion, that he was sent down from Heaven, Sir. Sent down from Heaven itself to put bread in the mouths of my kinfolk and give pleasure and boon to gentlemen such as yourself, Sir. That is my opinion of his provenance and the man ain’t been given birth to who could shake me out of it. You never seen such beauty in a lad, Sir. And how he’s all compliance and skill in the Art he has been called to! A wonder to see him set to work, Sir. They say a young sister was sent down with him.’
‘A girl? His twin, perhaps?’
‘Well, now that you are in the line of remarking on the matter, I did hear mention as how the girl was his twin, Sir! A golden beauty of like complexion, for those that admires the same in the gentle sex. Where she might be, I have no knowledge, nor interest neither. Young cock-chicks is my game, Sir, the hen-birds is too devilish tickerly a proposition for a peaceable gentleman like myself. Bust me if they don’t start a-breeding and a-parting with chicks of their own afore they’ve paid their way and how,’ wheezed Mr Polterneck, ‘is a man of business to procure the blessing of prosperity for his hearth when his stock is all a-laid up and a-breeding?’
‘So you have no knowledge of this sister’s whereabouts?’
‘As to Whereabouts, whereabouts is different to provenance, Sir. Whereabouts is Mystery, and ask Mrs Polterneck and Uncle Polterneck if I don’t deal in nothing but certainty. The whereabouts of Miss Judith is in doubt, the whereabouts of Master Joe is in the back room. If you are n
eedful of a pretty little lady …’
‘No, no. Your Joe will do.’
‘Indeed, Sir, as I hope he will do.’
‘As for price?’
‘Ah now, Mr Flowerbuck,’ said Polterneck, wagging a greasy finger. ‘Seeing as we’re agreed on the warmint’s celestial provenance, I can’t have my proper say in the affair of Fees. If he was my own I’d say a crown, and Mrs Polterneck and Uncle Polterneck would cry that I was a-cheating myself cruel and I would shake my head sorrowful and raise the fee another crown to please ’em! I should happily settle at that price, though Mrs P. and Uncle P. would complain I was cheating myself still. I was born generous and I can’t help it and won’t give apology to no man for it. But for all I can cheat myself, Mr Flowerbuck, I can’t be cheating Heaven! It wouldn’t be right, Sir. I could rob myself with a will an it pleased my gentlemen, for my customers is all to me, but I can’t go robbing the Angels, Mr Flowerbuck, I can’t. It ain’t in me to do so. A full sovereign for the evening, back again by six next morning.’
Peter forbore once more to put a period to the rottenest life in the rottenest den in the rottenest borough in the rottenest city in all the rotten world. He pressed a coin into Polterneck’s hand.
‘Bring the boy to me!’ he whispered.
Polterneck clapped his hands.
‘Flinter!’
In the shadows at the back of the room a figure rose from out the straw. It was the figure of a boy, no older in appearance than fourteen years, although in a city where children of six have the eyes and gait of old men, indeed the same life of experience to look back upon, and where youths of twenty are so kept back in growth by filth and hunger that they retain the aspect of frail infants, it was impossible for Peter to determine the true age of this specimen. But that was never his concern, for his eyes were ever fixed upon the face. Or upon the part where the face ought by rights to have been. For it was not a face he fixed his gaze upon. A face, my Lords and Ladies and fine gentlemen, has eyes, does it not? A face must boast ears, a mouth, some arrangement of all the features that sniff and see and hear and taste before it can lay claim to that title. That they sniff the stench of villainy, see the deepest shame, hear the most degraded blasphemies and taste aught but the bitterest sorrows – that is never the face’s affair! The face presents these organs each set in their place to look at what they will and listen where they please. What countenance deserves the name therefore – my lords who look upon gold plate, my ladies who breathe fine perfumes, my friends who taste plump mutton and hear the sweet harmony of a loving voice – what face can be called a face which has not a nose set upon it? What term might we invent to describe a face whose nose is all ate up? A face with a hole in its middle where a nose should have stood – be it a nose pinched and long, swollen and bulbous, or Roman and aloof, be it any kind of nose plain or pretty – a face, I say, with a black nullity where nostrils and bridge should be presenting themselves for admiration or disgust, that is no face but the face of Shame, no countenance but the countenance of Want. It is the visage of Sin and Lust, the aspect of Need and Despair but not – I beg the favour of your believing me – not, an hundred times never, the face of a human child.
‘Flinter! Fetch down young Joe for the gentleman. And Flinter! don’t you never dream of touching no part of him neither, or bust me if you don’t find your head a suddenly lacking of two ears also!’
Polterneck turned to Peter with an indulgent smile, for all the world as if to say ‘Bless my buttons if I don’t lavish more care on my young lads than they deserve!’ He must then have caught sight of the expression of revulsion and horror on Peter’s face, for he hastened to whisper an explanation.
‘The pox, Mr Flowerbuck! The pox is a sore trial in my line of working. He was a good worker was Master Flinter and nor I don’t have the heart to dismiss him now the pox has taken away his smeller.’
‘I should imagine,’ said Peter, ‘that …’
‘Slow down, for God’s sake,’ said Gary. ‘My fucking wrist is about to drop off.’
Adrian stopped pacing the room.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was getting carried away. What do you reckon so far?’
‘Not sure about “bulbous”.’
‘You’re right. I’ll check it tomorrow.’
‘It’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m about to run out of ink. I’m going to crash.’
‘Finish the chapter?’
‘In the morning.’
In a service-station car-park off the Stuttgart–Karlsruhe Autobahn, a Tweed Jacket and a Dark Blue Marks & Spencer’s Leisure Shirt were licking their wounds.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ the Leisure Shirt was saying. ‘I mean out of nowhere and for what?’
‘Perhaps they fancy themselves as latter day highway robbers,’ offered the Tweed.
‘Well that greasy one in a safari suit wasn’t exactly my idea of a Dick Turpin.’
‘No,’ said the Tweed. He looked at the Leisure Shirt, who had turned away and started kicking a tree stump.
‘Why did I have to go and suggest what is obviously the most secluded bloody service-station on the whole sodding Autobahn?
‘I blame myself, Adrian, I should have parked nearer the main building, I do hope you are all right?’
‘Well they didn’t take my passport or wallet, at least. In fact as far as I can see they didn’t take anything.’
‘Not quite true.’
The Tweed gestured forlornly towards the back seat of the Wolseley.
‘My briefcase, I regret to say.’
‘Oh. Anything in it?’
‘Some papers.’
‘Phew. Lucky escape then, I suppose. Shall we call the police?’
3
I
AT THE FRONT of the tractor, fed from its power-take-off, was a picker. A conveyor belt ran along the side and disgorged the potatoes onto a rolling rack. Adrian and Lucy’s job was to ‘dress’ them, to pull out the rotten, green or squashed potatoes as they trundled on their way to Tony, who stood at the end of the line, bagging the survivors. Every twenty or thirty minutes they would stop and unload a dozen full sacks into a pile in the middle of the field.
It was revolting work. The rotten and the good looked alike, so Lucy and Adrian had to pick up and examine each potato that jigged and bounced along in front of them. The bad ones burst under the slightest pressure, exploding in a squelch of stinking mucus. When it rained, mud sprayed up from the wheels and spattered their faces and clothes; when it was dry, clouds of dust choked them and matted their hair. The endless clanking, grinding, whining roar could have been the soundtrack for one of those Hieronymous Bosch visions of Hell, Adrian thought, where the moaning damned stand with their hands over their ears while demons frolic gleefully around them, probing their intimate parts with forks.
But in hell the inmates would at least try to strike up conversations with each other, hard as it might be to make themselves heard above the rumble of the treadmills and the roar of the furnaces. Lucy and Tony, brother and sister, never said a word to Adrian beyond a ‘’Ning’ when he turned up, freezing, at dawn and a ‘’Nernight, then’ at dusk when, stiff as a statue, he mounted his bicycle to pound wearily home to bath and bed.
Lucy just stared at the potatoes. Tony just stared at his bagging apparatus. Sometimes Adrian caught them staring at each other, in a manner which reminded him of the joke definition of a Cotswold virgin: an ugly girl under twelve who can run faster than her brother.
Lucy was no beauty, but if the looks she exchanged with Tony were anything to go by, Adrian guessed that she was no sprinter either.
The fact that he was expected to work at all in the Easter holidays had come as a blow. He was quite used to being told to find a job for the summer: waiting on tables at the Cider With Rosie restaurant, folding bolts of baize at the wool factory, treadling the cardboard-box machine at the ICI plant in Dursley, picking currants at Uley, feeding the birds at the Wildfowl Trust in Slimb
ridge.
‘But Easter!’ he had moaned into his cereal, the first morning of the holidays. ‘No, Mother, no!’
‘You’re fifteen, darling! Most boys of your age like the idea of some kind of light work. Father thinks it’s a good idea.’
‘I know he does, but I’ve already got work to do. My school project.’ Adrian was thinking of the article he had promised Bullock he would write for the school underground magazine.
‘He doesn’t want you wasting your time loafing around indoors.’
‘That’s pretty rich coming from him. He spends the whole bloody year cooped up in his sodding laboratory.’
‘That’s not fair, Ade. You know it isn’t.’
‘I’ve never had to get a job in the Easter hols before.’
His mother poured herself a fourth cup of tea.
‘Won’t you try it for me, darling? See how it goes?’
‘Well it just means I’ll have to write my essay over the Easter weekend, doesn’t it? Or am I expected to pick bloody potatoes all through the most important sacred festival in the whole bloody Christian bloody calendar as well?’
‘Of course not, darling. I’m sure you’ll enjoy working for Mr Sutcliffe, he’s a very nice man. And Father will be so pleased.’
She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. But Adrian wasn’t going to take it gracefully. He stood up and washed his bowl under the tap.
‘Don’t bother, darling. Betsy will do that.’
‘It’s a bloody swizz. I mean, it’s cricket next term. I’ve got to get some practice in.’
‘Well I’m sure you’ll get nice and fit at the farm, dear.’
‘That’s not the same as practising is it?’
‘Don’t whine, Ade. It’s a very ugly sound. And I must say I’m not sure I know where this sudden enthusiasm for sports comes from, dear. Mr Mountford said in your report that you failed to attend a single rugby game or a single PE lesson last term.’
‘Cricket’s different,’ said Adrian. ‘I mean, you send me off to school for most of the year and then as soon as I come back you can’t wait to get rid of me. I just hope you won’t both be surprised if I lock you in an old people’s home when you’re old and smelly.’
