The Liar

by Stephen Fry

  But suppose Trotter’s ghost watched him? Trotter would know everything by now. Would he forgive him?

  From now on, I conform.

  *

  He should have guessed that Tickford would give him and Cartwright a twin room at the hotel. The bill was being settled by the school, after all.

  Their room was at the end of a creaking corridor. Adrian opened the door and bowed Cartwright in.

  Manly, unconcerned and businesslike, he told himself. Two healthy English school chums sharing digs. Holmes and Watson, Bunny and Raffles. Nothing else.

  ‘So, Cartwright old boy – which bed do you fancy?’

  ‘I don’t mind really. This one’ll do fine.’

  ‘Okay. Bags the bathroom first, then.’

  Like all the English hotels Adrian had ever stayed in, this one was appallingly overheated. He undressed and slipped naked into bed while Cartwright brushed his teeth in the bathroom.

  Now then, Healey, he warned himself. You’re to behave. Understand?

  He switched out the light above his bed just as Cartwright came out, magnificently clad in sky-blue pyjamas of brushed cotton, swinging a sponge-bag from his wrist.

  ‘Night then, Cartwright.’

  ‘Night.’

  Adrian closed his eyes. He heard Cartwright shuffle off his slippers and get into bed.

  Don’t let him turn his light off. Make him pick up a book. Please, God, please.

  He strained his ears and caught the sound of a page turning.

  Thank you, God. You’re a treasure.

  During the next five minutes Adrian allowed his breathing naturally to deepen into a slow rhythm until any observer would swear that he was fast asleep.

  He then began to give the impression of a more troubled rest. He turned and gave a small moan. The eiderdown fell to the floor. He rolled over far to one side, causing the top sheet to come away. A minute later he turned the other way violently, kicking with his foot so that the sheet joined the eiderdown.

  He was now naked on the bed, breathing heavily and writhing. Cartwright’s light was still on but the pages had stopped turning.

  ‘Adrian?’

  It had been a light whisper, but Cartwright had definitely spoken.

  ‘Adrian …’ Adrian mumbled in return, half snoring the word as he turned to face Cartwright, mouth open, eyes closed.

  ‘Adrian, are you all right?’

  ‘No one left in the valley,’ said Adrian, flinging out a hand.

  He heard Cartwright’s bed creak.

  Here we go, he thought to himself, here we bloody well go!

  Cartwright’s feet padded across the room.

  He’s next to me, I can sense it!

  ‘I’ll eat them later … later,’ he moaned. He heard the rustle of a sheet and felt the eiderdown being pulled on top of him.

  He can’t just be going to tuck me up! He can’t be. I’ve got a stiffy like a milk-bottle. Is he flesh and blood or what? Oh well, here goes. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  He arched his body and thrashed his legs up and down.

  ‘Lucy?’ he called, quite loudly this time.

  Where he got the name Lucy from, he had no idea.

  ‘Lucy?’

  He swept out an arm and found Cartwright’s shoulder.

  ‘Lucy, is that you?’

  The eiderdown was slowly pulled away from him again. Suddenly he felt a warm hand between his thighs.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes.’

  Then soft hair brushing against his chest and a tongue licking his stomach.

  Hugo, he sighed to himself. Hugo! and out loud, ‘Oh Lucy – Lucy!’

  *

  He was awoken by the sound of a lavatory flushing. The eiderdown was on top of him and the sun was shining through a gap in the curtains.

  ‘Oh God. What have I done?’

  Cartwright came out of the bathroom.

  ‘Morning,’ he said brightly.

  ‘Hi,’ mumbled Adrian, ‘what the hell time is it?’

  ‘Seven thirty. Sleep all right?’

  ‘Jesus, like a log. And you?’

  ‘Not too badly. You talked a lot.’

  ‘Oh sorry,’ said Adrian. ‘I do that sometimes. I hope it didn’t keep you awake.’

  ‘You kept saying Lucy. Who’s Lucy?’

  ‘Really?’ Adrian frowned. ‘Well, I used to have a dog called Lucy …’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Cartwright. ‘I wondered.’

  ‘Works every time,’ Adrian said to himself, turning over and going back to sleep.

  It was a small funeral. A small funeral for a small life. Trotter’s parents were pleased to see Adrian again and were polite to Cartwright, but they couldn’t entirely disguise their distaste for him. His beauty, pale in a dark suit, was an affront to the memory of their pudgy and ordinary son.

  After the ceremony they drove to the Trotters’ farmhouse five miles outside Harrogate. One of Pigs Trotter’s sisters gave Adrian a photograph of himself. It showed him lying on his stomach watching a cricket match. Adrian tried hard but couldn’t remember Pigs Trotter taking it. No one commented on the fact that Trotter kept no photographs of Cartwright.

  Mr Trotter asked Adrian if he would come and stay in the summer holidays.

  ‘You ever sheared sheep before?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You’ll enjoy it.’

  Tickford took the wheel for the homeward journey. Adrian was allowed in the front next to him. They didn’t want to risk him being sick again.

  ‘A sorry business,’ said Tickford.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Tickford gestured over his shoulder towards Cartwright, who was leaning against Ma Tickford and snoring gently.

  ‘I hope you haven’t told anyone,’ he said.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You must get on with the term now, Adrian. It has not started well. That disgusting magazine and now this … all in the first week. There’s a bad spirit abroad, I wonder if I can look to you to help combat it?’

  ‘Well, sir …’

  ‘This may be just the jolt you need to start taking yourself seriously at last. Boys like you have a profound influence. Whether it is used for good or evil can make the difference between a happy and an unhappy school.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Tickford patted Adrian’s knee.

  ‘I have a feeling that I can rely on you,’ he said.

  ‘You can, sir,’ said Adrian. ‘I promise.’

  *

  It was four o’clock when they got back. Adrian returned to his study to find it empty. Tom was obviously having tea somewhere else.

  He couldn’t be bothered to track him down, so he made toast on his own and started on some overdue Latin prep. If he was going to turn over a new leaf then there was no time like the present. Then he would write back to Biffo. Attend all his Friday afternoons. Read more. Think more.

  He had hardly begun before there came a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in!’

  It was Bennett-Jones.

  ‘Really, R.B.-J. Flattered as I am by your fawning attentions I must ask you to find another playmate. I am a busy man. Virgil calls to me from across the centuries.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Bennett-Jones with a nasty leer. ‘Well it just so happens that Mr Tickford calls to you from across his study, an’all.’

  ‘Dear me! Five minutes’ separation and already he pines for me. Perhaps he wants my advice on demoting some of the prefecture. Well, I am always happy to look in on dear Jeremy. Lead the way, young man, lead the way.’

  Tickford was standing behind his desk, his face deathly white.

  ‘This book,’ he said, holding up a paperback, ‘does it belong to you?’

  Oh Christ … oh Jesus Christ …

  It was Adrian’s copy of The Naked Lunch.

  ‘I … I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘It was found in your study. It has your name written in it. No other boy in the school has a copy in th
eir study. On the instructions of the headmaster the prefects checked this morning. Now, answer me again. Is this your book?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Just tell me one thing, Healey. Did you write the magazine alone or were there others?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Answer me!’ shouted Tickford, slamming the book down onto the desk.

  ‘Alone, sir.’

  There was a pause. Tickford stared at Adrian, breathing heavily from his nostrils like a cornered bull.

  Oh cuntly cunt. He’s going to hit me. He’s out of control.

  ‘Go to your study,’ said Tickford at last. ‘Stay there until your parents come for you. No one is to see you or talk to you.’

  ‘Sir, I –’

  ‘Now get out of my sight, you poisonous little shit.’

  A Peaked Cap, waving a sheet of typescript, hurried into the Customs office where a Dark Grey Suit was watching television.

  ‘Comrade Captain,’ he said. ‘I have the inventory of the delegation’s luggage.’

  ‘You can cut out the Comrade crap for a start,’ said the Dark Grey Suit, taking the proffered sheet.

  ‘Szabó’s articles are itemised at the top, sir.’

  ‘I can read.’

  The Dark Grey Suit scanned the list.

  ‘And you searched the rest of the team just as thoroughly?’

  ‘Just as thoroughly Com– Captain Molgar, sir.’

  ‘The chess books have been checked?’

  ‘They have all been checked and replaced with identical copies in case of …’ the Peaked Cap gestured hopefully. He had no idea what the original chess books might have contained. ‘In case of … microdots?’ he whispered.

  The Dark Grey Suit snorted contemptuously.

  ‘This radio in Ribli’s luggage?’

  ‘A perfectly ordinary radio, Captain. Comrade Ribli has taken it abroad many times. He is not under suspicion also?’

  The Dark Grey Suit ignored the question.

  ‘Csom’s suitcase seems to be very heavy.’

  ‘It is an old case. Leather.’

  ‘Have it X-rayed.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  The Peaked Cap coughed.

  ‘Captain, sir, why do you let this Szabó out of the country if he is …?’

  ‘If he is what?’

  ‘I-I don’t quite know, sir.’

  ‘Szabó is one of the most talented young grandmasters in the world. The next Portisch. All this checking is simply a routine test of your efficiency, nothing more. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘Yes, Comrade Captain.’

  ‘Yes, Comrade Captain.’

  The Dark Grey Suit hummed to himself. He did not know what they were looking for either. But the British had been paying him a great deal for many years and now that they suddenly wanted him to work for his money he supposed he had no business complaining. This was not dangerous work, after all. He was doing no more than his usual duty and if the authorities discovered his unusual interest in Szabó they would be more likely to reward him for his zeal than shoot him for his treachery.

  He had hoiked out Szabó’s file that morning to see if there was anything there to justify this sudden British directive. There was nothing there: Stefan Szabó, a perfectly blameless citizen, grandson of a Hungarian hero and a great chess hope.

  The solution came to the Dark Grey Suit in a blinding flash. Stefan Szabó was planning, sometime during the tournament in Hastings, to defect. The British needed to check that he was an honest defector, that he was not bringing any equipment out with him that would suggest a darker purpose.

  But why should a successful chess-player need to defect? They made plenty of money, which they were allowed to keep, they were granted unlimited travel abroad, foreign bank accounts. Hungary was not Russia or Czechoslovakia, for God’s sake. The Dark Grey Suit, who had betrayed his country for years, felt a stab of resentment and anger against this young traitor.

  ‘Little shit,’ he thought to himself. ‘What’s wrong with Hungary that he needs to run away to England?’

  6

  JUST AS ADRIAN was getting thoroughly bored, the President started to wind up the meeting.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it’s getting rather late. If there is no further business, I would like to –’

  Garth Menzies rose to his feet and smiled the smile of the just.

  ‘There is one thing, Master.’

  ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘No, sir. I don’t believe it can.’

  ‘Oh, very well then.’

  Adrian cursed inwardly. They all knew the subject Menzies was going to raise and Menzies knew that they knew. They had been given the chance to raise it themselves but they hadn’t. So be it. Very well. Other men might shrink from their duty, but not Garth Menzies.

  He barked his throat clear.

  ‘I am amazed, Mr President, absolutely amazed that this meeting can contemplate adjournment without first discussing the Trefusis Affair.’

  A dozen heads looked sharply down at their agenda papers. A dozen pairs of buttocks clenched tightly together.

  He had said it. The man had said it. Such a want of delicacy. Such wounding impropriety.

  At the far end of the table a mathematician specialising in fluid dynamics and the seduction of first year Newnham girls blew his nose in a hurt manner.

  Those parts of Adrian that weren’t already looking sharply down or clenching tightly together contrived to quiver with disfavour.

  How incredibly like Garth to bring up the one subject that everyone else in the room had been so elegantly avoiding. How childish the rhetoric with which he claimed to be amazed at that avoidance.

  ‘I find myself wondering,’ said Menzies, ‘how we feel about having a criminal amongst us?’

  ‘Now, really Garth –’

  ‘Oh yes, Master, a criminal.’

  Menzies, tall and thin, face as white, shiny and bold Roman as the cover page of the quarterly journal of civil law it was his pride to edit, had placed his left thumb along the lapel of his coat and now he stooped forwards from the waist, waving in his right hand, in what he hoped was a brandish, a copy of the Cambridge Evening News.

  Adrian found himself chilled by the sight of a grown man trying so transparently to strike the forensic pose of a glamorous barrister. No matter how he aged, and there was not now one dark hair on his head, Menzies could never look any grander than a smart-arsed sixth-former. A smart-arsed grammar-school sixth-former, Adrian thought. He cut a dreadful sort of Enoch Powell figure. A kind of adolescent Malvolio, all elbows and shiny temples. Adrian found Menzies as tiresome as his archetypes; unspeakable to behold, dangerous to discount.

  Menzies resented his widespread popularity because he felt it sprang from illogical and irrelevant factors like his breath, his voice, his sniffs, his gait, his clothes, his whole atmosphere. For that reason he devoted himself with all the dismal diligence of the dull to giving the world more legitimate grounds for dislike. That, at least, was Adrian’s interpretation. Donald always claimed to like the man.

  If Donald had been present to witness him now, newspaper in hand and destruction in mind, Adrian was sure he would have altered his opinion.

  President Clinton-Lacey, at the head of the table, looked down at his agenda and shaded his eyes. From under his hand he waggled a covert eyebrow at Adrian like a schoolboy sharing a joke under a desk-lid. But there was an urgency and seriousness in the look which told Adrian that he was being given some kind of signal.

  Adrian wasn’t sure if he could interpret it. He stared ahead of him, perplexed. Did the President want him, as a friend of Donald’s, to speak up? Was he warning Adrian not to let his feelings get the better of him? What? He returned the look with a questioning lift of his own eyebrows.

  In reply the President gave a ‘yackety-yack’ gesture w
ith his hand.

  Clinton-Lacey’s Boltonian sense of humour was notorious but surely he meant something more than ‘Oh, that Menzies, he does go on, doesn’t he?’

  Adrian decided it must be a demand for him to do some filibustering. He swallowed nervously. He was only an undergraduate after all and these were not the sixties. The days of genuine student representation on the boards of governors of the colleges were long gone. It was understood that he was a constitutional hiccough that it would have been embarrassing to cure. He was there to listen, not to comment.

  However.

  ‘Don’t you think, Dr Menzies,’ he began, not daring to look up, ‘that the word “criminal” is a bit strong?’

  Menzies rounded on him.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Healey, you are the English student. I am just a lawyer. What on earth would I know about the word criminal? In my profession, out of ignorance no doubt, we use the word to describe someone who has broken the law. I am sure you could entertain us with an essay on the word’s origin that would prove conclusively that a criminal is some kind of medieval crossbow. For my purposes however, in law, the man is a criminal.’

  ‘Now, gentlemen …’

  ‘Dr Menzies’ clumsy sarcasm aside,’ said Adrian, ‘I have to say that I know full well what criminal means and it is a perfectly ordinary English word, not a legal term, and I resent it being used of Donald. It makes him sound like a professional. One crime doesn’t make a criminal. It would be like calling Dr Menzies a lawyer just because thirty years ago he practised briefly at the Bar.’

  ‘I have every right in the world, Mr President,’ shrilled Menzies, ‘to call myself a lawyer. I believe my reputation in the legal field has done nothing but reflect credit on this institution –’

  ‘Perhaps it wouldn’t be unfitting if I said something here,’ said Tim Anderson. His book on Jean-Luc Godard had recently been exceptionally well reviewed by his wife in Granta magazine and he was in a less solemn mood than usual.

  ‘I think it would be immensely unfitting,’ snapped Menzies.

  ‘Well that’s a not uninteresting point, certainly,’ said Anderson, ‘but I was thinking more that I don’t know many people who couldn’t express doubt about the strategies that the authorities adopt in situations not a million miles dissimilar to this one and I just don’t think that’s something we shouldn’t be unafraid to shirk addressing or confronting. That’s all.’