The Liar

by Stephen Fry

  Jenny got up and switched off the television.

  ‘Well,’ said Gary, ‘that’s set the apple-cart amongst the pigeons and no mistake. What do we do now?’

  ‘Now,’ said Adrian, ‘we wait.’

  II

  Adrian put down the cane and loosened the cravat. Gary sat down on the step and mopped his brow with a most preposterous handkerchief of bright vermilion silk. Jenny addressed them from the fire-escape.

  ‘I have very few notes to give,’ she said. ‘There’s an old theatrical saying, “Bad dress, good performance”; I’m sorry to have to tell you that this was an excellent dress. The mechanics of the show are all there. The greatest imponderable is the time it will take for the audience to follow Adrian into this yard. That’s something we’ll discover tonight. It’s all there: just pace and enjoy it. We’re all just waiting for the final director now – the audience. If you don’t mind standing here in the sun I’ll come amongst you now with individual notes.’

  Jenny had approached Tim Anderson for permission to mount a production of Peter Flowerbuck and his gratitude to her for the discovery of the manuscript had made it impossible for him to refuse.

  ‘Jenny, can I ask at this stage how you imagine presenting on stage what is, ultimately, not a play?’

  ‘Didn’t you once say yourself, Dr Anderson, that all the theatrical energy in Victorian Britain went not into drama but into the novel?’

  ‘That is something I did say, yes.’

  ‘The RSC is apparently planning a dramatisation of Nicholas Nickleby, surely Peter Flowerbuck is even more suited to the theatre? If we use the ADC we can take the audience outside with Peter as he goes to the Den. The yard at the side of the theatre is pretty much a Victorian slum already.’

  ‘I’m insanely excited.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Jenny, may I ask you, do you need any help with the preparation or finalisation of a playtext?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not writing it. Adrian Healey is.’

  ‘Healey? I wasn’t aware he’d been authorised to read the manuscript.’

  ‘Oh, he’s read it all right.’

  She climbed down the fire-escape now and approached Adrian and Gary with a sheaf of notes.

  ‘The Polterneck scenes are basically fine,’ she told Gary. ‘But for God’s sake learn that scene twelve speech properly.’

  ‘What happens in scene twelve?’

  ‘It’s where you buy Joe. Which reminds me, where’s Hugo?’

  ‘Here I am.’

  ‘I want to rehearse the Russell Square scene with you and Adrian. It’s still not right. Let’s see … I’ve got some more notes for the others. If you go and run through it on stage now I’ll send Bridget over and be with you in ten minutes.’

  Hugo and Adrian walked into the theatre together.

  ‘Nervous?’ said Adrian.

  ‘A bit. My mother’s coming. I don’t know what she’ll think.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘She’s an actress.’

  ‘Why did I never know that?’

  ‘Why should you have done?’

  ‘No reason, I suppose.’

  It would have been a difficult scene even if Hugo hadn’t been playing Joe. Adrian ran through it in his mind, like a Radio 3 announcer giving the synopsis of an opera.

  Flowerbuck, he intoned to himself, has taken the boy Joe Cotton back to his house in Russell Square, convinced that he is his sister’s son. Joe on arrival immediately tries to take off his clothes, unable to imagine that he would be expected to do anything else in a gentleman’s house. Peter and Mrs Twimp, his housekeeper, calm him down and give him a bath. Mrs Twimp, played by Bridget Arden, injects into the scene her own brand of malapropistic comedy as they try to question Joe on the details of his early childhood. His memory is very uncertain. He recalls a garden, a large house and a fair-haired sister but very little else. At this stage, and indeed on this stage, Adrian Healey, playing Flowerbuck, finds his memory to be uncertain too and often starts to forget his lines.

  After the bath Joe is taken to the dining room to eat. Or rather the dining room comes to them. It is that kind of production. Joe recognises in horror a portrait of Sir Christian Flowerbuck, Peter’s uncle.

  ‘That gentleman hurt me!’ he cries.

  It transpires that Sir Christian, Peter’s benefactor and godfather, whose baronetcy and money Peter is in line to inherit, had been the first man to violate Joe.

  The scene ends at night with Joe creeping from his room and slipping into Peter’s bed. He knows no other form of companionship or love.

  Peter awakes next morning, horrified to realise that he has lain with the boy who he is now more sure than ever is his nephew.

  Adrian had had nothing to do with the casting of Hugo, at least as far as anyone knew. Jenny had bounced into his rooms one afternoon, full of excitement.

  ‘I’ve just seen a perfect Joe Cotton! We don’t need to get a real boy after all.’

  ‘Who is this child?’

  ‘He’s not a child, he’s a Trinity first year, but on stage he’ll look fourteen or fifteen easily. And, Adrian, he’s exactly as you … hum … as Dickens describes Joe. Same hair, same blue eyes, everything. Even the same walk, though I don’t know if from the same cause. He came to see me this morning, it was rather embarrassing, he thought I was expecting him. Bridget must have arranged it without telling me. His name’s Hugo Cartwright.’

  ‘Really?’ said Adrian. ‘Hugo Cartwright, eh?’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘If it’s the one I’m thinking of, we were in the same House at school.’

  Gary opened his mouth to speak, but he met Adrian’s eye and subsided.

  ‘I dimly remember him,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s ideal casting for Joe?’

  ‘Well in many ways I suppose he is, yes. Fairly ideal.’

  If Hugo was unnerved by correspondences between a hundred-and-twenty-year-old Victorian manuscript and an incident from his own and Adrian’s life he made no mention of the fact. But there was no doubt that his acting in the scene was awkward and formal.

  ‘This is your home now, Joe. Mrs Twimp is to be your mother.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How should you like Mrs Twimp as a mother?’

  ‘Does she want to join us, sir?’

  ‘Join us, Joe? Join us in what?’

  ‘In the bed, sir.’

  ‘Bless me, Mr Flowerbuck, the lad is so manured to a life of shame, that’s the fact of it, that he can’t conceive no other!’

  ‘There is no necessity for you to sleep with anyone but yourself and your Saviour, Joe. In peace and innocence.’

  ‘No, sir, no indeed! Mr Polterneck and Mrs Polterneck and Uncle Polterneck must have their boymoney. I am their gold sovereign, sir.’

  ‘Keep your clothes on, Joe, I beg of you!’

  ‘Lord love the poor child, Mr Flowerbuck. Look at the condition of him! He should be washed and given fresh arraignments.’

  ‘You’re right, Mrs Twimp. Bring a bath and a robe.’

  ‘I shall return percipiently.’

  Jenny called across from the stalls.

  ‘What do you think your feelings towards Joe are here?’

  Adrian shaded his eyes across the lights.

  ‘Well revulsion, I’d’ve thought. Horror, pity, indignation … you know. All that.’

  ‘Good, yes. But what about desire?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘You see, I think it’s implicit that Peter is sexually attracted to Joe from the first.’

  ‘Well I really don’t …’

  ‘I feel Dickens makes it very clear.’

  ‘But he’s his nephew! I don’t think Dickens had any such thought in Dickens’s head, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think we can be so sure.’

  ‘Oh can’t we?’

  ‘Look at Joe now. He’s standing in front of you, half naked. I think we should sense a
sense of … we should sense a sense of … of … some kind of latent, repressed desire.’

  ‘Right-ho. One sense of latent, repressed desire coming up. Do you want a side-order of self-disgust too, or hold on that?’

  ‘Adrian, we go up in three hours, please don’t start fucking about.’

  ‘Okay. Fine.’

  ‘Now, Hugo, what about you?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘What’s your attitude to Adrian, do you think?’

  ‘Well he’s just another man, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know how to love him,’ sang Adrian. ‘What to do, how to move him. He’s a man, he’s just a man and I’ve had so many men before, in very many ways. He’s just one more.’

  ‘I think Adrian’s right there,’ said Jenny. ‘Despite being a quarter-tone flat. Imagine all the peculiar things you’ve had to do for your customers. Being bathed and clothed probably doesn’t seem that new or different. You’ve been trained to please: your complaisance is the complaisance of a whore, your smile is the smile of a whore. I think you can afford a touch more assuredness. At the moment you’re rather stiff.’

  ‘He’s only flesh and blood,’ said Adrian. ‘Look at who he’s standing next to.’

  ‘Adrian, please!’

  ‘Sorry, Miss.’

  *

  Mrs Twimp entered with the breakfast tray.

  —Sir, the lad can’t be found … ooh!

  She started in surprise at the sight of Joe’s head nestling on the sleeping Flowerbuck’s bare chest.

  —Sir! Sir!

  —Oh … good morning, Mrs Twimp …

  —Bless me! I never saw such licence! Mr Flowerbuck, Sir, I cannot credit the account of my eyes. That you should stand exposed as an amuser of children, nought but a correcter of youth, a pedestal! A vile producer, a libertarian! That I should gaze upon such naked immortality, such disillusion.

  —Calm yourself, Mrs Twimp. The child crept in at night when I was asleep. I had not the first idea that he was with me until just now.

  —Sir! I beg your pardon … but the sight of him. I could only jump to one confusion.

  —Leave us, Mrs Twimp.

  —Shall you try to arouse him, Sir? I think he should be aroused directly.

  Adrian could feel Hugo’s body tense at the laugh from the audience that greeted this line.

  —I will wake him and send him down to you, Mrs Twimp.

  —I shall draw some water for his absolutions.

  She exited to a warm round of applause.

  Adrian sat up and stared in front of him.

  —Oh Lord! What have I done? What in God’s name have I done?

  —Good morning, Sir.

  —Ah Joe, Joe! Why did you come to me last night?

  —You are my saviour, Sir. Mrs Twimp bade me remember it most carefully. And you told me I should sleep only with my saviour.

  —Child, I meant …

  —Did I do wrong, Sir? Did I not please you?

  —I dreamt … I know not what I dreamt. Say I was asleep, Joe. Say I slept all night.

  —You were very gentle to me, sir.

  —No! No! No!

  In the blackout and in the thunder of applause that marked the end of the act, they lay there while the bed was trundled into the wings where Jenny stood jumping up and down with excitement.

  ‘Wonderful!’ she said. ‘Listen to that! The Grauniad is out there and the Financial Times.’

  ‘The Financial Times?’ said Adrian. ‘Is Tim Anderson thinking of starting a Flowerbuck limited company?’

  ‘Their drama critic.’

  ‘I didn’t know they had one. Who the hell reads drama criticism in the Financial Times?’

  ‘Everyone will if it’s a good notice, because I’ll have it blown up and put outside the theatre.’

  ‘How long’s the interval?’ asked Hugo.

  *

  No one at the party was going to deny that it had been the finest production in the history of Cambridge drama, that Hugo and Gary in particular were bound for West End glory in weeks, that Adrian had done a fine job in translating Dickens to the stage and that he must write a new play for Jenny to direct the moment she joined the National, which appointment must be only days away.

  ‘My dear Healey!’ a hand was placed on Adrian’s shoulder. He turned to see the smiling face of Donald Trefusis.

  ‘Hello, Professor. Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Triumphant, Adrian. Absolutely triumphant. A most creditable piece of adaptation.’

  ‘Will it do as my piece of original work?’

  Trefusis looked puzzled.

  ‘You know, the task you set me earlier this term?’

  ‘Adapting someone’s novel? Will that do as your piece of original work? You must have misunderstood me.’

  Adrian was slightly drunk and, although he had planned this moment a hundred times in his head, it was always in Trefusis’s rooms and without ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’ playing in the background.

  ‘Well, Professor, no. That’s not what I mean,’ he cleared his throat. ‘I mean will Peter Flowerbuck the novel count as my original piece of work?’

  ‘Oh certainly, certainly. By all means. I thought for a moment that you were …’

  Bridget Arden, the voluptuous actress who had played Mrs Twimp with such éclat, came up and kissed Adrian on the mouth.

  ‘Julian’s rolling a joint in the downstairs dressing-room, Adey. Come and join us.’

  ‘Ha! Very good! Rolling a joint! That’s a great one! Love it … er, she’s just … you know,’ explained Adrian, as they watched her falling downstairs.

  ‘Of course she is, my dear fellow! No, I was saying. I thought for a moment you expected that I would take just the adapting of your novel as a satisfactory task. I accept the writing of it, gladly. A splendid conception. It exceeded my most optimistic expectations.’

  ‘You mean you know?’

  ‘Aside from the three hundred and forty-seven anachronisms that Dr Anderson and his team will uncover in time, I had the good fortune to be in your rooms one afternoon. How I could have mistaken D staircase for A, I have no idea. I am not usually so inattentive. But before I realised my error, I had stumbled across the manuscript.’

  ‘You stumbled across a bundle of papers wrapped in a blanket hidden on top of a bookcase?’

  ‘I am quite a stumbler when the mood is on me. I stumbled for Cambridge as an undergraduate.’

  ‘I bet you did.’

  ‘Absurdly remiss of me, I know. Not solely an affliction of the elderly, however. I believe your friend Gary Collins once accidentally stumbled into my rooms in just the same way. In his case, I understand he even stumbled across a telephone before he noticed where he was. These confusions are not so rare as one might imagine.’

  ‘Oh God. But if you’ve known all along, why haven’t you …’

  ‘Blown the whistle? I have my reasons and your manuscript serves them perfectly. The English department at St Matthew’s has never had so many research fellows or been flooded with so many grants. The Dickens Society of Chicago alone … but that is of no interest to you. I am sincerely delighted. This is the second time you have failed to disappoint me. It’s so hard to find a good crook these days. You’re a treasure, Adrian, a real treasure. One thing I am unclear on, though. Why did you hit upon the happy idea of having the manuscript discovered in St Matthew’s and not in the University Library?’

  ‘Well, I wanted it to be college property. I assumed then that you would be the one to publicise it.’

  ‘And I would be the one with egg on my face when the truth came out? I suspected as much. You are too splendid. I know we shall become friends.’

  ‘No I didn’t exactly mean …’

  ‘You have done your college a great service. I will leave now, to allow space for carnival, riot, drugs and carnal frenzy to develop. Silenus and his leering wrinkles are not required when youth is sporting. Oh look, there is that man from Narborough, t
he one you routed on the cricket field the first time ever we met. Excellent performance, my dear Cartwright! I am not ashamed to say that I wept openly.’

  Hugo nodded vaguely and came up to Adrian, flushed and swaying, a bottle in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  ‘Look where he comes,’ said Adrian, ‘the Allegory of Dissipation and Ruin.’

  Hugo burped happily and gestured at Trefusis who was saying his farewells to Jenny.

  ‘I know that old fart from somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘You are talking about the old fart that I love. That old fart is a genius. That old fart won a thousand pounds by backing Chartham Park against Narborough Hall. You must remember the cricket match.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right. You cheated.’

  ‘Cheated?’

  ‘Donald Trefusis. Philip Slattery’s uncle. Friend of old Biffo Biffen’s from school. I don’t forget anything, me. Mnemosyne was, let us not forget it, the mother of the Muses.’

  Adrian looked at him in surprise. ‘Well, quite.’

  ‘At least according to Hesiod. So what is the old fart that you love doing here?’

  ‘He’s the ADC treasurer.’

  Jenny came up with Gary.

  ‘For God’s sake stop drinking, Hugo. You’ll look forty tomorrow instead of fourteen if you carry on at this rate.’

  ‘A man who has just exposed himself to four hundred people, including his mother, has every right to drink.’

  ‘God yes, I forgot the famous Helen Lewis was in,’ said Adrian. ‘How did she like it?’

  ‘She was highly complimentary about everyone except me.’

  ‘She didn’t like you?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘She just didn’t mention me, that’s all.’

  Jenny consoled him with the thought that it was probably professional jealousy. Adrian beckoned to Gary, who was pogo-ing with a lighting technician.

  ‘Trefusis knows all,’ he said. ‘The bugger burglarised our rooms. But it’s all all right.’

  ‘What does Trefusis know?’ said Hugo, who had overheard.