The Liar

by Stephen Fry

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘I cannot tell how long. Years, I suspect. I first began to take real notice fifteen or twenty years ago. But it is getting worse. More and more brilliant students are being diverted from work that could be of real benefit to mankind and their country. They are being battery farmed. Young Christopher Daly is just one of thousands.’

  ‘My God!’ said Adrian. ‘You know who’s behind this? We’ve got to stop them!’

  ‘It’s a conspiracy of industrialists, of certain highly placed economists and of members of governments of all political colours,’ said Trefusis.

  ‘But how can we prevent it? And what has it got to do with Salzburg?’

  Trefusis looked across at Adrian, his eyes filled with grave concern. Suddenly he burst out laughing. Shaking his head from side to side, he snorted and struck the steering wheel. ‘Oh Adrian, I am cruel! I’m wicked, naughty, dreadful and digraceful. Please forgive me.’

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You silly, silly boy. What I have just described is the way the world works! It’s not a conspiracy. It is called Modern Western Civilisation.’

  ‘W-what do you mean?’

  ‘Of course the best brains are lured into industry, advertising, journalism and the rest of it. Of course universities are adapting to the demands of commerce. It’s regrettable and there’s little we can do about it. But I think only a Marxist would call it an international conspiracy.’

  ‘But you said an organisation … you told me that a specific organisation had offered that boy Christopher a scholarship.’

  ‘The state, Adrian. A state scholarship. And the state will hope in return that he goes into something productive once he has obtained his degree. He will be incented by money, recruitment drives and the general thrust and tenor of the times. That is all.’

  Adrian fumed in silence for a while.

  ‘And this has nothing to do with what we’re going to Salzburg for?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘You are impossible, you know that?’

  ‘Improbable perhaps, but not impossible. Besides, whilst what I described may not be a conscious intrigue, it is happening nonetheless and is vexatious in the extreme.’

  ‘So you’re still not going to tell me what we are in actual fact doing here?’

  ‘All in actual good time,’ said Trefusis. ‘Now the Cardinal is getting thirsty; if memory has not fully quit her throne I believe there should be an amenable garage and routier in about eighty kilometres or so. In the meantime, we can tell each other the story of our lives.’

  ‘All right,’ said Adrian. ‘You first. Tell me about Bletchley.’

  ‘Little to tell. It was set up as a wartime decrypting station and filled up with mainly Cambridge personnel.’

  ‘Why Cambridge?’

  ‘The closest university town. At first they recruited philologists and linguists like myself.’

  ‘This was when?’

  ‘Nineteen-forty. Round about the time of the Battle of Britain.’

  ‘And you were how old?’

  ‘Tush and bibble! Is this then to be an interrogation? I was twenty-two.’

  ‘Right. Just wondered.’

  ‘Young and fizzing at the brim with ideals and theories about language. Now, who else was there with me? Dozens of girls who filed and clerked away with great brilliance and flair. The chess master Harry Golombek was on the team of course, and H.F.O. Alexander, also a magnificently dashing player. It was all rather cosy and fun at first, wrestling with enemy cyphers that had been intercepted all over Europe and Africa. It soon became clear, however, that the Enigma encryption device that German Naval Intelligence was using would need mathematicians to crack it. Acquaintanceship with the decryption techniques of the last war, the ability to do The Times crossword while shaving and a mastery of Russian verbs of motion were not enough any more. So they brought in Alan Turing, of whom you may have heard.’

  Adrian had not.

  ‘No? What a pity. Brilliant man. Quite brilliant, but very sad. Killed himself later. Many credit him with the invention of the digital computer. I can’t quite remember how it came about. There was some pure mathematical problem which had faced the world of numbers for fifty years, I think, and he had solved it as a young man by positing the existence of a number-crunching machine. It was never his intention to build such a thing, it was merely hypothesised as a model to help solve an abstract difficulty. But unlike many mathematicians he relished the physical application of numbers. His hut in Bletchley was soon filled with rows and rows of valves. You remember valves? Tubes they call them in America. Little vacuum bulbs that glowed orange.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Adrian. ‘It used to take televisions ages to warm up.’

  ‘That’s right. Well Alan had thousands of them all linked together in some impossibly complicated fashion. Got them from the Post Office.’

  ‘The Post Office?’

  ‘Yes, the GPO had been experimenting in electronics before the war and they seemed to be the only people who really knew about it. The clever thing about the Enigma machine was that, although it was purely mechanical, it changed daily and the number of permutations was so grotesquely huge that the old techniques of decryption wouldn’t work. Alan cracked it quite brilliantly. But that was only the first stage of course. He still needed to know the code before he could read the cypher.’

  ‘What’s the difference between a cypher and a code then?’

  ‘Well, that is readily explained,’ said Trefusis. ‘Imagine a system in which a number refers to a letter of the alphabet. A equals one, B equals two, C equals three and so on, thus “Adrian” would be “One – four – eighteen – nine – one – fourteen”, you understand?’

  ‘Right …’

  ‘That is a very basic form of cypher and a message written in it could be cracked by anyone of the meanest intelligence in seconds. But suppose that between us we two had personally prearranged that a word … “Biscuits”, for example, was going to mean “nineteen-hundred hours”, and that another word, for instance “Desmond”, should signify “The Café Florian in St Mark’s Square, Venice”.’

  ‘Got you …’

  ‘I would then only have to signal to you: “Please send me some biscuits today, love Desmond,” and you would know that I wanted to meet you at seven o’clock that evening at Florian’s. That is a code and would be impossible to crack unless someone overheard us arranging it, or one of us was foolish enough to commit it to paper.’

  ‘I see,’ said Adrian. ‘Then why not only use codes if they’re uncrackable?’

  ‘Unfortunately in wartime one needs to signal an enormous amount of unpredictable and detailed information. The receiver couldn’t be expected to memorise thousands of different code words, and to write them down would be insecure. So it became practice to mix the two systems. A complicated cypher would be used which could only be cracked if one knew a key word, a code, which would change daily. That is how Enigma operated. So even when Enigma had been solved we needed Intelligence to help provide us with clues so that we could crack the daily code. That is where I came in, and of course, your old friend Humphrey Biffen.’

  ‘Humphrey Biffen?’

  ‘I believe he taught you French once.’

  ‘Good Lord! Did Biffo work at Bletchley too?’

  ‘Oh indeed. And Helen Sorrel-Cameron whom he later married. Guessing the daily key words was very much our speciality.’

  ‘But however did you manage?’

  ‘Well now, the Germans were so very confident that Enigma was uncrackable that they became remarkably sloppy about the assignation of the daily key. Intelligence furnished us with the names of operators and cypher clerks in German Naval Intelligence and Humphrey and I would make guesses. We used to keep immensely detailed files on each clerk: their likes, their loves, their families, mistresses, lovers, pets, tastes in music and food … oh, everything. Each day we would try out differe
nt ideas, the name of that particular operator’s dog, their favourite kind of pastry, their maiden surname, that sort of thing. We usually got there in the end.’

  ‘But the Germans must have discovered that you had cracked it, surely?’

  ‘Well that’s the peculiarity of this kind of work. Our job was simply to furnish Military Intelligence with everything we decrypted. They would then, as a rule, fail to act upon it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they could on no account let the enemy know that they were reading their most secret transmissions. It is generally believed, for instance, that Churchill had prior warning of the impending Luftwaffe raid on Coventry but neglected to tell the army and air force for fear of extra defences in the area revealing to the Germans that it had been known about in advance. This is not strictly true, but it demonstrates the principle. Some believe, of course, that Admiral Kanaris, the head of German Naval Intelligence, was perfectly well aware that we were reading Enigma all along, but that he was so pro-British and distressed at the behaviour of the Führer that he simply let it happen.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Adrian. ‘God I wish I could have been around at a time like that.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Trefusis. ‘I think you might have been bored.’

  Trefusis peered at the landscape and the road-signs. ‘Still another fifty or so kilometres before our service station. Now it’s your turn. What has happened in your young life? Plenty, I make no doubt.’

  ‘Oh not so much,’ said Adrian. ‘I was arrested for the possession of cocaine once.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I had been living with an actor after a few months of being a rent-boy.’

  ‘A rent-boy?’ said Trefusis. ‘How enterprising! And possession of cocaine? Were you imprisoned?’

  ‘Well first I should tell you how I was expelled from school. That should take us twenty kilometres. Then I’ll tell you what happened after that.’

  9

  I

  HE HAD STARED at the first paper for the whole three hours, unable to write a thing. One of the girls came up to him afterwards.

  ‘I saw you, Adrian Healey! Couldn’t you answer any of the questions, then?’

  Two years in this stupid college that called its pupils ‘students’ and its lessons ‘lectures’. How had he stood it? He should never have given way.

  ‘I think it’s the right thing, darling. It’ll give you so much more independence than a school. Father agrees. You can get the bus in to Gloucester and be home with me every night. And then after you’ve got the “A” levels, you can sit the Cambridge entrance. Everyone says it’s an awfully good college. The Fawcetts’ boy – David is it? – he went there after he was … after he left Harrow, so I’m sure it’s all right.’

  ‘What you mean is, it’s the only place for miles around that’ll take boys that’ve been expelled.’

  ‘Darling, that’s not …’

  ‘Anyway, I don’t want “A” levels and I don’t want to go to Cambridge.’

  ‘Ade, of course you do! Just think how you’d regret it if you missed the opportunity.’

  He had missed the opportunity, and the lectures. Instead there had been the ABC cinema and the Star Café, where he played pin-ball and three-card brag.

  Discuss Lawrence’s use of external landscape in relation to the internal drama of Sons and Lovers.

  Only connect … How are the Schlegels and Wilcoxes connected in Howards End?

  Compare and contrast the different uses of landscape and nature in the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.

  Suddenly his plausible wit was of no use to him. Suddenly the world was dull and sticky and unkind. His future was behind him and he had nothing to look forward to but the past.

  Goodbye Gloucester, goodbye Stroud. He was at least following a literary example. When Laurie Lee had walked out on his midsummer’s morning he had had a guitar and the blessings of his family to accompany him. Adrian had a paperback copy of Anouilh’s Antigone, which he had intended to read at lunchtime as some kind of feeble preparation for the afternoon’s French literature paper, and fifteen pounds from his mother’s handbag.

  In the end he got a lift from a lorry driver who was going all the way to Stanmore.

  ‘I can drop you somewhere on the North Circular, if you like.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  North Circular … North Circular. It was some kind of road, wasn’t it?

  ‘Er … is the North Circular anywhere near Highgate?’

  ‘You can catch a bus from Golder’s Green pretty quick.’

  Bollocks lived in Highgate. He might be able to cadge a couple of nights there while he sorted himself out.

  ‘I’m Jack, by the way,’ said the driver.

  ‘Er … Bullock, Hugo Bullock.’

  ‘Bullock? That’s a funny one.’

  ‘I once met a girl called Jane Heffer. We should’ve got married.’

  ‘Yeah? What went wrong?’

  ‘No, I mean her being called Heffer. It’s the female of bullock.’

  ‘Oh right, right.’

  They drove on in silence. Adrian offered Jack a cigarette.

  ‘No thanks, mate. Trying to give ‘em up. Don’t do you any good in this game.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘So, what, you running away then, are you?’

  ‘Running away?’

  ‘Yeah. How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘Get away!’

  ‘Well, I will be.’

  Bullock’s mother stood in the doorway and eyed him suspiciously. He supposed his hair was rather long.

  ‘I’m a friend of William’s. From school.’

  ‘He’s in Australia. It’s his year off before going to Oxford.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. I just … wondered, you know. Not to worry. Happened to be passing.’

  ‘I’ll tell him you called if he rings. Are you staying in London?’

  ‘Yes, in Piccadilly.’

  ‘Piccadilly?’

  What was wrong with that?

  ‘Well, you know, more just off.’

  The pin-ball machines in Piccadilly had more sensitive tilt mechanisms than those he was used to in Gloucester, and he wasn’t getting many replays. At this rate he wouldn’t be able to afford to carry on for more than an hour.

  A man in a blue suit came down behind him and put down a fifty-pence piece.

  ‘It’s yours,’ said Adrian, smacking the flipper buttons in frustration as his last silver ball rolled out of play. ‘That was my last. I just can’t seem to get the hang of the bloody thing.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said the man in the blue suit, ‘the fifty is for you. Have another go.’

  Adrian turned in surprise.

  ‘Well, that’s awfully kind … are you sure?’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  The fifty was soon used up.

  ‘Come and have a drink,’ said the man. ‘I know a bar just round the corner.’

  They left the chimes and buzzes and intense, haunted concentration of the amusement arcade and walked up Old Compton Street and into a small pub in a side street. The barman didn’t question Adrian’s age, which was an unusual relief.

  ‘Haven’t seen you before. Always good to meet a new face. Yes, indeed.’

  ‘I’d’ve thought everyone was a stranger in London,’ said Adrian. ‘I mean, it’s mostly tourists round here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the man. ‘You’d be surprised. It’s a village really.’

  ‘Do you often play pin-ball?’

  ‘Me? No. Got an office up the Charing Cross Road. I just like to look in most evenings on my way home. Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I thought you were a girl at first with your hair and … everything.’

  Adrian blushed. He didn’t like to be reminded how long beard growth was in coming.

  ‘No offence. I like it … it suits you.
’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Yes indeed. Yes indeedy-do.’

  Adrian made a note, somewhere in the back of his mind, to get a haircut the next day.

  ‘You sound a bit public school to me. Am I right?’

  Adrian nodded.

  ‘Harrow,’ he said. He thought it a safe bet.

  ‘Harrow, you say? Harrow! Dear me, I think you’re going to be a bit of a hit. Yes indeed. You got anywhere to stay?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘You can put up with me, if you like. It’s just a small flat in Brewer Street, but it’s local.’

  ‘It’s terribly kind of you … I’m looking for a job, you see.’

  That’s how simple it had been. One day a lazy student, the next a busy prostitute.

  ‘Thing is, Hugo,’ said Don, ‘soon as I clapped eyes on you I thought, “That’s not rent, that’s the real thing.” I’ve been around the Dilly for fifteen years and I can spot ’em, indeedy-dumplings, I can. Now I’m sorry to say that I won’t fancy you next week. Unplucked chicken is my speciality and I’ll be bored stiff with you Thursday. Bored limp, more like. Hur, hur! But you cut your hair a bit – not too much – keep your Harrovian accent fit and you’ll be clearing two ton a week. Yes indeed.’

  ‘Two ton?’

  ‘Two hundred, sunshine.’

  ‘But what do I have to do?’

  And Don told him. There were two principal amusement arcades, there was the Meat Rack, which was an iron pedestrian grille outside Playland, the more active of the arcades, and there was the Piccadilly Underground itself.

  ‘But you want to watch that. Crawling with the law.’

  Don wasn’t a pimp. He worked at a perfectly respectable music publishing house in Denmark Street. Adrian paid him thirty pounds a week which covered his own accommodation and the use of the flat for tricks during the day. At night it was up to the tricks to provide the venue.

  ‘Just don’t start chewing gum, shooting horse or looking streetwise, that’s all.’