The Liar

by Stephen Fry

  He found it achingly frustrating not to be able to crow about his part in it. Bullock, Sampson and Tom revelled in the anonymity, but Adrian longed for applause and recognition. Even jeering and hissing would have been something. He wondered if Cartwright had read his article. What would he think of it? What would he think of the author of it?

  He watched very closely to see how people reacted when accused of being a contributor. He was always trying to improve his mastery of the delicate art of lying and the spectacle of people telling the truth under pressure repaid close study.

  He noticed that people said things like:

  ‘Yeah, it was me actually.’

  ‘Piss off, Aitcheson! Everyone knows it was you.’

  ‘Oh God! How did you find out? Do you think Headman knows?’

  Adrian memorised all the replies and reproduced them as faithfully as he could.

  And then the authorities had struck back.

  Adrian’s Housemaster, Tickford, rose to his feet after lunch that same day, as did the other eleven Housemasters in the other eleven Houses.

  ‘All copies of this magazine will be collected from studies by the prefects before Games this afternoon and destroyed. Anyone found in possession of a copy after three o’clock will be severely punished.’

  Adrian had never seen Tickford look so furious. He wondered if he could possibly have guessed that Bollocks! had originated in his House.

  He and Tom had handed their two copies in cheerfully.

  ‘There you go, Hauptmann Bennett-Jones,’ said Adrian, ‘we have also an edition of The Trial, by the notorious Jew, Kafka. Berlin would appreciate it, I am thinking, if this too was added to the bonfire. Also the works of that decadent lesbian Bolshevik, Jane Austen.’

  ‘You’d better watch it, Healey. You’re on the list. If you had anything to do with this piece of shit then you are in trouble.’

  ‘Thank you, Sargent. You needn’t take up any more of our valuable time. I’m sure you have many calls of a similar nature to make in the neighbourhood.’

  But for all the sensational impact of the magazine, Adrian felt somehow a sense of anti-climax. His article would never make a shred of difference to anything. He hadn’t exactly expected open warfare in the form-rooms, but it was depressing to realise that if he and Bullock and the others were exposed tomorrow they would be expelled, talked about for a while and then completely forgotten. Boys were cowardly and conventional. That’s why the system worked, he supposed.

  He sensed too that if he came across the article in later life, as a twenty-year-old, he would shudder with embarrassment at the pretension of it. But why should his future self sneer at what he was now? It was terrible to know that time would lead him to betray everything he now believed in.

  What I am now is right, he told himself. I will never see things as clearly again, I will never understand everything as fully as I do at this minute.

  The world would never change if people got sucked into it.

  He tried to explain his feelings to Tom, but Tom was not in communicative mood.

  ‘Seems to me there’s only one way to change the world,’ said Tom.

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Adrian.

  ‘Change yourself.’

  ‘Oh, that’s bollocks!’

  ‘And Bollocks! tells the truth.’

  He went to the library and read up his symptoms in more detail. Cyril Connolly, Robin Maugham, T.C. Worsley, Robert Graves, Simon Raven: they had all had their Cartwrights. And the novels! Dozens of them. Lord Dismiss Us, The Loom of Youth, The Fourth of June, Sandel, Les Amitiés Particulières, The Hill …

  He was one of a long line of mimsy and embittered middle-class sensitives who disguised their feeble and decadent lust as something spiritual and Socratic.

  And why not? If it meant he had to end his days on some Mediterranean island writing lyric prose for Faber and Faber and literary criticism for the New Statesman, running through successions of houseboys and ‘secretaries’, getting sloshed on Fernet Branca and having to pay off the Chief of Police every six months, then so be it. Better than driving to the office in the rain.

  In a temper, he took out a large Bible, opened it at random and wrote ‘Irony’ down the margin in red biro. In the fly-leaf he scribbled anagrams of his name. Air and an arid nadir, a drain, a radian.

  He decided to go and see Gladys. She would understand.

  On his way he was ambushed from behind a gravestone by Rundell.

  ‘Ha, ha! It’s Woody Nightshade!’

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth, Tarty. Only you would know about something as disgusting as the Biscuit Game.’

  ‘Takes one to know one.’

  Adriam mimed taking out a notebook.

  ‘“Takes one to know one,” I must write that down. It might come in useful if I ever enter a competition to come up with the Most Witless Remark in the English Language.’

  ‘Well I beg yours.’

  ‘You can’t have it.’

  Rundell beckoned with a curled finger. ‘New wheeze,’ he said. ‘Come here.’

  Adrian approached cautiously.

  ‘What foul thing is this?’

  ‘No, I’m serious. Come here.’

  He pointed to his trouser pocket. ‘Put your hand in there.’

  ‘Well frankly … even from you, Tarty, that’s a bit …’

  Rundell stamped his foot.

  ‘This is serious! I’ve had a brilliant idea. Feel in there.’

  Adrian hesitated.

  ‘Go on!’

  Adrian dipped his hand in the pocket.

  Rundell giggled.

  ‘You see! I’ve cut the pockets out. And no undies. Isn’t that brilliant?’

  ‘You tarty great tart …’

  ‘Keep going now you’ve started, for God’s sake.’

  *

  Adrian reached Gladys and sat down with a thump. Down below, Rundell blew an extravagant kiss and skipped off to replenish his strength before trying the game on someone else.

  Why can’t I be satisfied with Tarty? Adrian asked himself, wiping his fingers on a handkerchief. He’s sexy. He’s fun. I can do things with him I wouldn’t dream of doing with Cartwright. Oh hell, here comes someone else.

  ‘Friend or foe?’

  Pigs Trotter lumbered into view.

  ‘Friend!’ he panted.

  ‘La! You are quite done up, my lord. Come and sit this one out with me.’

  Trotter sat down while Adrian fanned himself with a dock-leaf.

  ‘I always think the cotillion too fatiguing for the summer months. Persons of consequence should avoid it. When I have danced a cotillion, I know for a fact that I look plain beyond example. The minuet is, I believe, the only dance for gentlemen of rank and tone. You agree with me there, my lord, I make no doubt? I think it was Horry Walpole who remarked, “In this life one should try everything once except incest and country dancing.” It is an excellent rule, as I remarked to my mother in bed last night. Perhaps you will do me the honour of accompanying me to the card room later? A game of Deep Bassett is promised and I mean to take my lord Darrow for five hundred guineas.’

  ‘Healey,’ said Trotter. ‘I’m not saying you did and I’m not saying you didn’t, I don’t really care. But Woody Nightshade …’

  ‘Woody Nightshade,’ said Adrian. ‘Solanum dulcamara, the common wayside bitter-sweet:

  They seek him here, they seek him there,

  Those masters seek him everywhere.

  Isn’t he nimble, isn’t he neat,

  That demmed elusive bitter-sweet.

  ‘A poor thing, but mine own.’

  ‘You’ve read his article, I suppose?’ said Pigs Trotter.

  ‘I may have glanced through it a few times in an idle hour,’ said Adrian. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well …’

  There was a catch in Trotter’s throat. Adrian looked at him in alarm. Tears were starting up in his piggy eyes.

  Oh hel
l. Other people’s tears were more than Adrian could cope with. Did you put an arm round them? Did you pretend not to notice? He tried the friendly, cajoling approach.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey! What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Healey. I’m really sorry b-but …’

  ‘You can tell me. What is it?’

  Trotter shook his head miserably and sniffed.

  ‘Here look,’ said Adrian, ‘there’s a handkerchief. Oh … no, second thoughts this one’s not so clean. But I have got a cigarette. Blow your nose on that.’

  ‘No thanks, Healey.’

  ‘I’ll have it then.’

  He eyed Trotter nervously. It was cheating to let your emotions out like this. And what was a lump like Pigs doing with emotions anyway? He had found a handkerchief of his own and was blowing his nose with a horrible mucous squelch. Adrian lit his cigarette and tried to sound casual.

  ‘So what’s troubling you, Trot? Is it something in the article?’

  ‘It’s nothing. It’s just that bit where he starts talking about …’

  Trotter drew a copy of Bollocks! from his pocket. It was already folded open on the second page of Adrian’s article.

  Adrian looked at him in surprise.

  ‘I wouldn’t get caught with this if I were you.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’m going to throw it away. I’ve copied it all out by hand anyway.’

  Trotter dabbed a finger down on a paragraph.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘read that bit.’

  ‘“And they call it puppy-love,”’ Adrian read, ‘“well I’ll guess they’ll never know how the young heart really feels.” The words of Donny Osmond, philosopher and wit, strike home as ever. How can they punish us and grind us down when we are capable of feelings strong enough to burst the world open? Either they know what we go through when we are in love, in which case their callousness in not warning us and helping us through it is inexcusable, or they have never felt what we feel and we have every right to call them dead. Love shrinks your stomach. It pickles your guts. But what does it do to your mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly, you’re above the ordinary …’

  Adrian looked across at Pigs Trotter who was rocking forwards and tightly gripping his handkerchief as if it were the safety-bar of a roller-coaster.

  ‘It’s a misquotation from The Lost Weekend that bit, I think,’ said Adrian. ‘Ray Milland talking about alcohol. So. You … er … you’re in love then?’

  Trotter nodded.

  ‘Um … anyone … anyone I’d know? You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.’ Adrian was maddened by the huskiness in his throat.

  Trotter nodded again.

  ‘It … must be pretty tough.’

  ‘I don’t mind telling you who it is,’ said Trotter.

  I’ll kill him if it’s Cartwright, Adrian thought to himself. I’ll kill the fat bastard.

  ‘Who is it then?’ he asked, as lightly as he could.

  Trotter stared at him.

  ‘You of course,’ he said and burst into tears.

  They walked slowly back towards the House. Adrian wanted desperately to run away and leave Pigs Trotter to welter in the salt bath of his fatuous misery, but he couldn’t.

  He didn’t know how to react. He didn’t know the form. He supposed that he owed Trotter something. The object of love should feel honoured or flattered, responsible in some way. Instead he felt insulted, degraded and revolted. More than that, he felt put upon.

  Trotter?

  Pigs can fly. This one could, anyway.

  It isn’t the same, he kept saying to himself. It isn’t the same as me and Cartwright. It can’t be. Jesus, if I were to declare my love to Cartwright and he felt a tenth as pissed off as I do now …

  ‘It’s all right, you know,’ said Pigs Trotter, ‘I know you don’t feel the same way about me.’

  Feel the same way about me? Christ.

  ‘Well,’ said Adrian, ‘the thing is, you know, I mean it’s a phase, isn’t it?’

  How could he say that? How could he say that?

  ‘It doesn’t make it any better though,’ said Trotter.

  ‘Right,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t bother you. I won’t tag onto you and Tom any more. I’m sure it’ll be all right.’

  Well there you are. If he could be so sure that it would be ‘all right’ then how could it be love? Adrian knew that it would never be ‘all right’ with him and Cartwright.

  Trotter’s wasn’t the Real Thing, it was just Pepsi.

  They were nearing the House. Pigs Trotter dried his eyes on the sleeve of his blazer.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ said Adrian, ‘I wish …’

  ‘That’s okay, Healey,’ said Trotter. ‘But I ought to tell you that I have read The Scarlet Pimpernel, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, in the book, everyone wanted to know who the Scarlet Pimpernel was and so Percy Blakeney made up that rhyme: the one you just did a version of: “They seek him here, they seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere …”’

  ‘Yes?’ What on earth was he on about?

  ‘The thing is,’ said Trotter, ‘that it was Percy Blakeney himself who was the Scarlet Pimpernel all the time, wasn’t it? The one who made up the rhyme. That’s all.’

  IV

  Adrian managed to get into Chapel early next morning, so that he could sit behind Cartwright and ponder the beauty of the back of his head, the set of his shoulders and the perfection of his buttocks as they tightened when he leant forward to pray.

  It was a strange thing about beauty, the way that it transformed everything in and around a person. Cartwright’s blazer was outstandingly the most beautiful blazer in Chapel, but it came from Gorringe’s like everyone else’s. The backs of his ears, peeping through the soft golden tangle of his hair, were skin and capillary and fleshy tissue like any ears, but nobody else’s ears set fire to Adrian’s blood and flooded his stomach with hot lead.

  The hymn was ‘Jerusalem the Golden’. Adrian as usual fitted his own words.

  ‘O Cartwright you are golden, With milk and honey blest. Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice opprest. I know well, O I know well, What lovely joys are there, What radiancy of glory, What light beyond compare.’

  Tom, next to him, heard and gave a nudge. Adrian obediently returned to the text, but lapsed again into his own version for the final verse.

  ‘O sweet and blessed Cartwright, Shall I ever see thy face? O sweet and blessed Cartwright, Shall I ever win thy grace? Exult O golden Cartwright! The Lord shall play my part: Mine only, mine for ever, Thou shall be, and thou art.’

  Six hundred hymn-books were shelved and six hundred bodies rustled down onto their seats. At the east end, Headman’s heels rang out on the stone floor as he stepped forward for Notices, hitching up the shoulder of his gown.

  ‘Boys have been seen using a short cut from the Upper to Alperton Road. You are cordially reminded that this path goes through Brandiston Field, which is private property and out of bounds. The sermon on Sunday will be given by Rex Anderson, Suffragan Bishop of Kampala. The Bateman Medal for Greek Prose has been won by W. E. St. J. Hooper, Rosengard’s House. That is all.’

  He turned as if to go, then checked himself and turned back.

  ‘Oh, there is one more thing. It has come to my notice that a more than usually juvenile magazine of some description has been circulating about the school. Until the authors of this nonsense have come forward there will be no exeats, no club activities and all boys will be confined to their Houses in free time. Nothing else.’

  ‘It’s a fucking outrage,’ said Adrian as they streamed out of the Chapel into the sunshine. ‘And so pathetic, so completely pathetic. “A juvenile magazine of some description!” As if he hasn’t read it a hundred times and trembled with fury as he read it!’

  ‘He just wants to make it sound as if it isn’t such a big deal,�
� said Tom.

  ‘Does he really think we’re going to fall for that? He’s scared, he’s bloody scared.’

  Heydon-Bayley came up.

  ‘Gated for the rest of term! The bastard!’

  ‘It’s just a feeble attempt to try and get the school to turn against the magazine and do his detective work for him,’ said Bullock. ‘It won’t work. Whoever’s responsible is too clever.’

  *

  Adrian was once more at a loose end that afternoon. It was a Corps day so there was no cricket and he didn’t dare climb up to Gladys Winkworth in case he bumped into Trotter again. Officially he should be visiting his old lady and doing odd jobs for her, but she had died of hypothermia the previous term and he hadn’t been supplied with a replacement yet. He had just decided to go down to the School Gramophone Library and practise conducting to records, a favourite legal pastime, when he remembered he had a standing invitation to tea from Biffen the French master.

  Biffen lived in rather a grand house in its own grounds on the edge of town.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ said Adrian. ‘It’s a Friday, so I thought …’

  ‘Healey! How splendid. Come in, come in.’

  ‘I’ve brought some lemon curd, sir.’

  There were about six boys already in the sitting room, talking to Biffen’s wife, Lady Helen. Biffen had married her at Cambridge and then taken her back to his old school when he joined as a junior master. They had been here ever since, objects of great pity to the school: an Earl’s daughter tied to a no-hope, slow-lane pedagogue.

  ‘I know you!’ boomed Lady Helen from the sofa. ‘You are Healey from Tickford’s House. You were Mosca in the School Play.’

  ‘Healey is in my Lower Sixth French set,’ said Biffen.

  ‘And he mobs you appallingly, Humphrey dear. I know.’

  ‘Er, I’ve brought some lemon curd,’ said Adrian.

  ‘How kind. Now, who do you know here?’

  Adrian looked round the room.

  ‘Um …’

  ‘You’ll certainly know Hugo. He’s in your House. Go and sit next to him, and get him to stop spoiling my dog.’

  Adrian hadn’t noticed Cartwright sitting at a window seat, apart from the main group, tossing bits of cake at a spaniel.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, sitting down next to him.