The Liar

by Stephen Fry

  ‘Yes fine … I must have slipped on the ice.’

  Using Justin, his umbrella, as a walking-stick, he hobbled down Trinity Street, ruthlessly mocking himself.

  ‘Adrian, you’re an arse. In a world of arses, you are the arsiest by a mile. Stop being an arse at once, or I’ll never talk to you again. So there.’

  ‘Is there a problem, sir?’

  ‘Oh sorry, no … I was just … humming to myself.’

  He hadn’t realised he’d been talking out loud. The Trinity porter stared at him suspiciously, so as Adrian limped into Great Court, he broke into more definite and deliberate song to prove his point.

  ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ he fluted. ‘How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you find a word that means Maria? A flibbertigibbet, a will o’the wisp, a clown.’

  Hugo’s rooms were in the corner tower. The same tower where Lord Byron had kept his bear, arousing the wrath of the college authorities, who had told him sniffily that the keeping of domestic animals in rooms was strictly forbidden. Byron had assured them that it was far from a domestic animal. It was an untamed bear, as wild and savage as could be, and they had been reluctantly obliged to let him keep it.

  ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?’

  Hugo opened the door.

  ‘I brought a jar of anchovy paste, half a dozen potato farls and a packet of my own special blend of Formosan Oolong and Orange Pekoe,’ said Adrian, ‘but I was set upon by a gang of footpads outside Caius and they stole it all.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Hugo. ‘I’ve got some wine.’

  Which was about all he seemed to have. He poured out two mugfuls.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Adrian, sipping appreciatively. ‘I wonder how they got the cat to sit on the bottle.’

  ‘It’s cheap, that’s the main thing.’

  Adrian looked round the room. From the quantity of empty bottles about the place he supposed that cheapness must indeed have been the deciding factor in Hugo’s wine-buying policy. The place was very meanly appointed; apart from the usual college tables and chairs, the only things of interest that met Adrian’s inquisitive scrutiny were a photograph of Hugo’s actress mother on the table, a Peter Flowerbuck poster on the wall which showed Adrian in a tall hat leading Hugo away from a snarling Gary, a handful of Penguin classics, a guitar, some LPs and a record-player.

  ‘So anyway Hugo, my old penny bun. How is everything?’

  ‘Everything,’ said Hugo, ‘is terrible.’

  It didn’t look it. Drink never shows in the faces of the young. Hugo’s eye was bright, his complexion fine and his figure trim.

  ‘Work is it?’

  ‘No, no. I’ve just been thinking a lot lately.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re here for, I suppose.’

  Hugo filled up his mug with more wine.

  ‘I just want to see if I’ve got you straight. You seduce me in my first year at school and then ignore me completely until you make up a lie about Pigs Trotter having been in love with me … Julian Rundell told me the truth about that, by the way. Then you seduce me again by pretending to be asleep. Years later, after having cheated my prep school out of a cricket victory, you tell me that you weren’t really asleep that night, which I didn’t in fact know, even though I said I did. Then what happens? Oh yes, you write a fake Dickens novel describing a character who looks like me and just happens to make love to someone who looks like you while that person just happens to be asleep. I think that’s everything. You see, all I want to know is … what have I done?’

  ‘Hugo, I know it seems …’

  ‘It worries me, you see. I must have done something terrible to you without knowing it and I’d like it all to stop now, please.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Adrian.

  It was so hard to connect this man with Cartwright. If Hugo had taught at another prep school and gone to another university, the memory of him wouldn’t be muddied by a sight like this alien Hugo who trembled and wept into his wine. It was another person of course, molecularly every part of the old Cartwright must have been replaced dozens of times since he had been the most beautiful person who ever walked the earth. And the old Adrian who had loved him was not the same as the Adrian who beheld him now. It was like the philosopher’s axe. After a few years the philosopher replaces the head, later he replaces the shaft. Then the head wears out and he replaces it again, next the shaft again. Can he go on calling it the same axe? Why should this new Adrian be responsible for the sins of the old?

  ‘It’s so easy to explain, Hugo. Easy and very hard. Just one word covers it all.’

  ‘What word? No word could explain it. Not a whole Bible of words.’

  ‘It’s a common enough word, but it might mean something different to you than it does to me. Language is a bastard. So let’s invent a new word. “Libb” will do. I libbed you. That’s all there is to it. I was in libb with you. My libb for you informed my every waking and sleeping hour for … for God knows how many years. Nothing has ever been as powerful as that libb. It was the guiding force of my life, it haunted me then and haunts me still.’

  ‘You were in love with me?’

  ‘Well now, that’s your word. Libb has a great deal in common with love, I admit. But love is supposed to be creative, not destructive, and as you have found out, my libb turned out to be very harmful indeed.’

  Hugo gripped the rim of his mug and stared into his wine.

  ‘Why can’t you …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I mean … everything you do … that bloody magazine, the being asleep, the cricket match, that Dickens novel … everything you do is … is … I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Duplicitous? Covert? Underhand? Sly? Devious? Evasive?’

  ‘All of those things. Why have you never come out and said anything or done anything in the open?’

  ‘I’m fucked if I know, Hugo. I’m seriously fucked if I know. Perhaps because I’m a coward. Perhaps because I don’t exist except in borrowed clothes. I used to think everyone but me was a fraud. It’s simple logic to realise that, except to a madman, the opposite must have been the truth.’

  ‘Hell’s bells, Adrian. Have you any idea how much I admired you? Any idea at all? Your talent? You used to come into the changing-room sometimes dressed as Oscar Wilde or Noël Coward or whoever and stride up and down like a prince. You used to make me feel so small. All the things you can do. My mother thinks I’m a bore. I used to wish I could be you. I fantasised being you. I would lie awake at night imagining what it would be like to have your tall body and your smile, your wit and words. And of course I loved you. I didn’t libb you or lobb you or lubb you or labb you, I loved you.’

  ‘Oh lord,’ sighed Adrian. ‘If I find a way of expressing adequately now what I am thinking and feeling you will take it to be a piece of verbal dexterity and the latest in a long line of verbal malversations. You see! I can’t even say “deceit”. I have to say “verbal malversations”. Everyone’s honest but me. So perhaps I should just whine and moan wordlessly.’

  Adrian opened the window and howled into Great Court like a demented muezzin, taking the performance so far as to produce real tears. When he turned to face back into the room Hugo was laughing.

  ‘What they call keening, I believe,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Well, there’s always the cliché,’ Hugo said, extending his hand. ‘We can be just good friends now.’

  ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’

  ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’

  ‘We’ll always have Paris.’

  ‘We’ll always have Paris.’

  Adrian raised his mug of wine. ‘Here’s death to the past.’

  ‘Death to the past.’

  A Tweed, a Shapeless Green Needlecord Jacket and an Eau de Nil Chanel Suit sat in conference in the Savile Club Sand Pit.

  ‘I’m very much afraid that someone in St Matthew’s is not to be
trusted.’

  ‘Garth, you think?’ asked the Shapeless Green Needlecord.

  ‘Garth is much as he was in your day, Humphrey. Maddening, sour, truculent and asper. Not a natural player, I feel. Not a concealer. It is also very unlikely that he would have been introduced at this late stage.’

  ‘Have you heard from Bela?’ the Chanel Suit wanted to know.

  ‘Not a whisper. He knows that the Budapest network have him under the tightest possible surveillance. Pearce is playing for very high stakes this time.’

  ‘Don’t I know it!’ said the Eau de Nil Suit. ‘My bag burst in the middle of Waitrose’s yesterday.’

  The others giggled like schoolchildren.

  ‘Oh dear me,’ said the Tweed. ‘However did you explain it?’

  ‘I didn’t. I just fled, leaving my shopping behind. I don’t know if I can ever show my face in there again.’

  They drank tea in companionable silence.

  ‘Who then?’ asked the Needlecord suddenly. ‘If not Garth?’

  The Tweed made a suggestion.

  ‘Donald, no!’ protested the Eau de Nil Suit.

  The Tweed shrugged apologetically.

  ‘What a howling shit.’

  ‘Well, perhaps his insertion into play may turn out to be rather a useful development.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘He’s plasticine.’

  ‘Outdated you mean?’

  ‘Not Pleistocene, Humphrey. Plasticine. We had all considered him as a possible player for the future, had we not? We know what a shifty little soul he is. Much better to have him as an enemy than as a friend. This is all turning out to be much more fun and much more complex than I had anticipated. The plot thickens like finest Devon cream.’

  ‘If Pearce is going to play dirty like this, Donald, shouldn’t we do the same?’

  ‘Humphrey’s right, you know,’ said the Chanel Suit. ‘Why don’t I ask Nancy and Simon if they can’t lend a hand?’

  ‘Tug of loyalties?’ the Tweed wondered. ‘I mean Simon works for Pearce, after all.’

  ‘I like to hope,’ said the Eau de Nil Chanel Suit, ‘that Simon’s real loyalties go deeper than that.’

  ‘Very well then. Recruit them and familiarise them with the ground rules. Stefan is due in England soon. He will have news from and of Bela. You know, this is all highly satisfactory.’

  ‘It’s not going to get out of control is it?’ asked the Needlecord. ‘I’m not sure I like the introduction of killing. Pearce cannot bear to be beaten, you know.’

  ‘No more can I,’ said the Tweed. ‘And I won’t be.’

  5

  ‘YOU WERE HIS best friend,’ Mrs Trotter said. ‘He talked about you a great deal, how clever and amusing you were. He was very fond of you.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Trotter,’ said Adrian, ‘I was very fond of him. We all were.’

  ‘I do hope you and … and the other boy … Cartwright … can come to the funeral.’

  She looked just like Pigs when she cried.

  That evening the whole House was already in a slightly hysterical state by the time Tickford broke the news officially at House Compline.

  ‘Some of you, I don’t know … may know,’ he said, ‘… may have heard, I don’t know, that there has been a tragedy here. Paul Trotter took his own life this afternoon. We have no idea why. We don’t know. We just don’t know. We can’t know.’

  Fifty pairs of eyes swivelled towards Adrian, wondering. Why had he been sent for first? Why had he been shut up with Tickford and Pigs’s parents for so long?

  Cartwright had not yet been spoken to. He knew nothing and his eyes turned towards Adrian too, large and full of awe.

  ‘I’m afraid he must have been very unhappy,’ continued Tickford, apparently to the ceiling. ‘Very unhappy, I don’t know why. But we shall say a prayer for him and commend his soul to God. Almighty Father …’

  Adrian felt a thigh being pressed against his as he knelt to pray. It was Rundell.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw him,’ whispered Rundell. ‘Yesterday afternoon in the cemetery, he went up and sat next to you!’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Refresh him with your Mercy, cleanse him with your Love …’

  ‘And then you came down together and he was crying.’

  ‘That has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘In the name of your Son who died that all might have eternal life …’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Amen.’

  *

  Tom asked no questions and Adrian couldn’t bring himself to tell him anything.

  Biffo had sent a note the next morning. ‘What terribly upsetting news, terribly upsetting. Helen and I were so distressed. I taught Trotter last year; such a delightful boy. I do hope you feel free to come and talk to me about it. If you would like to, of course. Helen and I would be delighted if you could make more of our Friday afternoon visits this term. With every sympathy at this dreadful time. Humphrey Biffen.’

  Tom and Adrian were playing cribbage during the afternoon when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Avanti!’

  It was Cartwright, looking frightened.

  ‘Can I have a word with you, Healey?’

  Tom saw the expression on Cartwright’s face and reached for a book and a pair of sunglasses.

  ‘I’d better grow.’

  ‘Thanks, Thompson.’ Cartwright stood looking at the floor and waited for Tom to close the door behind him.

  ‘Sit down do,’ said Adrian.

  ‘I’ve just been to see Tickford,’ said Cartwright, either not hearing or not heeding the invitation.

  ‘Oh, ah?’

  ‘He said Trotter had some sort of … a kind of crush on me. And that you told him that.’

  ‘Well, that’s what Trotter told me.’

  ‘But I didn’t even know him!’

  Adrian shrugged.

  ‘I’m sorry, Cartwright, but you know what this place is like.’

  Cartwright sat down in Tom’s chair and stared out of the window.

  ‘Oh hell’s bells. It’ll be all over the school.’

  ‘Of course it won’t be,’ said Adrian. ‘Tickford won’t tell anyone. I certainly won’t tell anyone. I mean, I haven’t even told Thompson and I tell him everything.’

  ‘But Tick says I’ve got to go to the funeral. What will people think of that?’

  ‘Well …’ said Adrian, thinking fast. ‘I’m going to the funeral too. I’ll put it around that your parents are friends of Trotter’s parents.’

  ‘I suppose that’ll do,’ said Cartwright, ‘but why did you have to tell Tick in the first place?’

  ‘It was suicide! He left a note. It said “Healey will explain” or something like that. What else could I do but tell the truth?’

  Cartwright looked up at him.

  ‘Did Pigs, did Trotter say … did he tell you how long he’d had this, this thing for me?’

  ‘Since you came to the school apparently.’

  Cartwright dropped his head and stared at the floor. When he looked up again there were tears in his eyes. He looked angry. Angry and to Adrian more beautiful than ever.

  ‘Why did he tell you?’ he cried. ‘Why couldn’t he have told me? And what did he have to go and kill himself for?’

  Adrian felt taken aback by the anger in Cartwright’s voice.

  ‘Well, I suppose he was scared in case … in case you rejected him or something. I don’t know how these things work.’

  ‘More scared of me rejecting him than he was of killing himself?’

  Adrian nodded.

  ‘So now I’m going to have to wake up every morning for the rest of my life knowing that I’m responsible for someone’s suicide.’

  The tears splashed down his face. Adrian leant forward and held his shoulder.

  ‘You must never think of it like that, Hugo. You mustn’t!’ he said.

  He had never called him Hugo before and he hadn�
��t touched him since their brief how-do-you-do in the House lavs, which was before Adrian had known he was in love.

  ‘I’m as responsible as you are, really,’ Adrian said. ‘More responsible, if anything.’

  Cartwright stared in surprise.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ said Adrian, ‘I could have advised Trotter to tell you, couldn’t I? I could have told him not to bottle it up.’

  ‘But you weren’t to know what was going to happen.’

  ‘And nor were you, Hugo. Now come on, dry your eyes, or people will really know something is wrong. We’ll go to the funeral and then in a couple of weeks we’ll have forgotten all about it.’

  ‘Thanks, Healey. I’m sorry to be so …’

  ‘Adrian. And there’s nothing to be sorry about.’

  *

  Between that day and the day they travelled up to Harrogate they hadn’t exchanged a word. Adrian had seen him mobbing around with his friends as if nothing had happened. The House did its best to forget the whole embarrassment. Trotter was thought of with the kind of contempt and revulsion young Englishmen of the right type reserve for the sick, the mad, the poor and the old.

  The funeral was set for ten in the morning, so Tickford had decided that they should travel up the evening before and spend the night in a hotel. For the whole duration of the journey Cartwright stared out of the window.

  He’s beginning to resent Trotter’s posthumous power over him, Adrian thought.

  The Tickfords didn’t speak much either. This was a duty they did not relish. Adrian, never a tidy traveller, twice had to ask Ma Tickford, who was driving, to stop the car so that he could be sick.

  He couldn’t imagine why he had dropped Cartwright in it the way he had. A kind of revenge he supposed. But revenge for what? And on whom? A revenge on the ghost of Trotter or on the living, breathing Cartwright?

  He wasn’t Woody Nightshade, he was Deadly Nightshade. Everybody who had anything to do with him was lethally poisoned.

  But they don’t exist, he kept repeating to himself as they rattled up the A1. Other people don’t exist. Trotter isn’t really dead because he was never really alive. It’s all just a clever way of testing me. There’s no one in these cars and lorries driving south. There can’t be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn’t room. There can’t be.