The Liar

by Stephen Fry

  ‘What’s going wrong, sir?’

  ‘What’s going wrong is you’re not bowling properly. Line and length, darling, line and length.’

  For the next two hours the opening pair batted freely and fiercely, putting on a hundred and seventy-four, until one of the batsmen, the same man Rudder had clean bowled first ball of the morning, retired to let some of his friends enjoy the slaughter.

  Hugo’s merriment was unbearable over tea, for all the whiteness of his teeth and the sparkle in his eyes.

  ‘Well that’s a bit more like it,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to get worried this morning.’

  ‘Dear old friend of my youth,’ said Adrian, ‘I’m afraid you’ve discovered our principal weakness.’

  ‘What, you can’t bowl you mean?’

  ‘No, no. Sympathy. My boys were simply devastated by your glumness at lunch, so we decided to cheer you up by letting you have some batting practice. I take it you’re declaring over tea?’

  ‘You bet. Have you out of here, tail between your legs, by half past five.’

  ‘Is that a promise?’ said a voice behind them. It was Professor Trefusis.

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said Hugo.

  ‘What do you think, Mr Healey?’

  ‘Well let me see … two hundred and thirty-nine to make before seven. I think we can do it all right, if we don’t panic.’

  ‘Ellis isn’t tired, you know,’ said Hugo. ‘He can bowl for hours at a stretch.’

  ‘My boys were beginning to read him by the end,’ said Adrian. ‘We can do it.’

  ‘I have just placed a bet with my nephew Philip,’ said Trefusis. ‘Two hundred pounds on Chartham to win at odds of five to one against.’

  ‘What?’ said Adrian. ‘I mean … what?’

  ‘I liked your entrance papers, most amusing. I don’t see how you can fail.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hugo, as Trefusis ambled away, ‘what a bloody idiot.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Adrian, popping a sandwich into his mouth, ‘smart investment if you ask me. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to go and brief my platoon.’

  ‘Want a side bet?’ Hugo called out after him.

  *

  ‘Right,’ said Adrian to his team. ‘There’s a man out there who is so sure, based on the evidence of what he’s seen, that you can do it, that he has bet two hundred pounds that you will blow these bastards out of the water.’

  They were padding up in the pavilion, forlorn but brave, like Christians preparing for an away match against Lions.

  ‘But what do we do about Ellis, sir!’ said Hooper. ‘He’s impossible.’

  ‘That’s a trough of piss. You step up to him and you cart him all over the park, is what you do. Just don’t get pushed against your stumps. Aim for the close-in fielders, if you miss the ball you might manage to belt them with your bat on the follow-through.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit unsporting, sir?’

  ‘Arseholes. Whistle, hum, look unconcerned, look bored. When he’s ready to bowl, you step forward and say you’re not ready. Disturb his rhythm, demonstrate contempt. Don’t forget, I’m out there, and he’ll want to bowl from my end because of the slope.’

  ‘You won’t cheat will you, sir?’

  ‘Cheat? Good heavens. This is an amateur cricket match amongst leading prep schools, I’m an Englishman and a schoolmaster supposedly setting an example to his young charges. We are playing the most artistic and beautiful game man ever devised. Of course I’ll cunting well cheat. Now, give me my robe and put on my crown. I have immortal longings in me.’

  Out in the middle, little Ellis took the ball and flipped it from hand to hand with the disturbing competence of a born spinner of the ball.

  Adrian patted his head.

  ‘Good luck, little chap,’ he said. ‘Don’t get upset if they punish you a bit. It’s only a game, eh?’

  Ellis looked puzzled. ‘Yes, sir.’

  A sporting round of applause from the Narborough boys welcomed Chartham’s opening pair to the wicket.

  ‘Here they come now. They’re both rather savage hitters of the ball, I’m afraid. But if you don’t lose your head you should be able to cut it down to ten or so an over. A word of advice, though. Try and do something about disguising that googlie of yours a bit better … sticks out like a sore thumb.’

  Ellis tweaked the ball out of the side of his hand uncertainly.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘All right, here we go. Don’t be nervous.’

  Frowde and Colville, the openers, had certainly taken the game-plan literally. They surveyed the field with lofty disdain and smiled faint patronising smiles at the short leg and silly point crowded around them, nicely blending admiration for their physical courage and doubt for their mental capacity. They were welcome to stand there and be cut in two, but they had been warned.

  ‘Play!’ said Adrian.

  Ellis stepped forward. Frowde at the other end threw up a hand and bent to do up his shoe-laces.

  ‘Sorry!’ he called. ‘Won’t be a sec.’

  Ellis turned back to his mark and waited.

  ‘All right, Frowde?’ said Adrian.

  ‘Fine thank you, sir. Just don’t want to get tangled up when I start running.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Adrian dropped his arm. ‘Play!!’ he boomed.

  Ellis bowled a full toss which Frowde hooked straight over the boundary. The short leg fielder glared at Ellis: the ball had nearly decapitated him.

  Adrian signalled a four to the scorer.

  ‘It was a six,’ said Hugo at square leg.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It was a six!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure! It went clean over.’

  ‘Well if you’re sure,’ said Adrian, signalling a six. ‘I didn’t want to give ourselves two extra runs. That was a six, scorer!’ he yelled, just as Ellis next to him was catching the return from deep mid-wicket. The blast in his ear made him drop the ball. Adrian picked it up for him.

  ‘Try and get them to bounce on the ground first,’ he said helpfully. ‘That way it’s harder for the batsman to hit quite so far.’

  Ellis’s second was a long hop square-cut for four.

  ‘You see?’ said Adrian. ‘That’s two fewer already.’

  The next was on a good length and driven straight to close extra cover.

  ‘There might be a couple here,’ shouted Frowde to his partner.

  ‘Genius,’ thought Adrian, as they ran one run after the extra cover fielder fumbled the ball in his amazement at the possibility that anyone was going to run at all.

  Ellis was made of stout stuff. His next ball was an excellent leg-break that nearly had Colville stumped.

  Adrian stepped forward and patted the pitch.

  ‘You must watch your feet after you’ve bowled,’ he said to him. ‘You’re not allowed to run on in the area between the two wickets. It kicks up rough stuff and helps the bowler at the other end.’

  Little Ellis was aghast at the possibility that Adrian might think he had been trying to cheat.

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean …’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t, my dear fellow. That was just a warning, that’s all. I’m sure it won’t happen again.’

  Ellis knocked the next ball from so wide of the stumps that it glanced straight across Colville for four byes.

  He was taken off after three more catastrophic overs and retired to long on, blinking back tears and fending off the jeers of his home supporters on the boundary.

  Cricket, thought Adrian. It’s so character-building.

  After the collapse of Ellis the outcome was never really in doubt. The fast man at the other end was competent but soon exhausted. Weirder and wilder alternatives were tried, boys who dropped slow balls from a great height, boys with violent actions like windmills that produced gentle long hops, boys who bowled balls that bounced twice before reaching the middle of the pitch
, but to no avail. The openers put on a stand of a hundred and twelve and the fourth-wicket partnership of Rice and Hooper scored the final runs as Narborough church clock struck six.

  Adrian watched it all with raised eyebrows and an impartial smile. Hugo boiled and seethed and glared, glancing miserably from time to time at the stony figure of his headmaster who sat perched on a shooting-stick next to Professor Trefusis.

  ‘An instructive match,’ said Adrian as he and Hugo pulled up the stumps. ‘I thought we were in real trouble at one stage.’

  ‘I can’t understand what the hell went wrong with Ellis,’ said Hugo. ‘I really thought he was the most gifted cricketer in the school. An England prospect even.’

  ‘He’s young yet. Temperament is the problem there, I fancy. I tried to calm him down and encourage him to get on with his natural game, but he was a bit overawed. Don’t give up on him, he’s learnt a lot today.’

  ‘He’ll learn a bloody sight more after I’m through with him.’

  The Narborough team, hot and limp with exertion and defeat, saw them off in the driveway. Hugo stood with them, sipping at a can of beer.

  ‘Three cheers for Chartham Park,’ called Malthouse, their captain, raising his arm with an attempt at casual gallantry. ‘Hip-ip.’

  ‘Ray!’ murmured Narborough.

  ‘Hip-ip!’

  ‘Ray!’

  ‘Hip-ip.’

  ‘Ray.’

  ‘Three cheers for Narborough Hall,’ shouted a flushed and triumphant Hooper, punching the air. ‘Hip-Hip!’

  ‘Hooray!’ bellowed Chartham.

  ‘Hip-Hip-Hip!’

  ‘Hooray!’

  ‘Hip-Hip-Hip-Hip!’

  ‘HOORAY!’

  ‘Goodbye then, Hugo. See you for the return match.’

  ‘We’ll pulverise you.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  A madness suddenly possessed Adrian. With a pounding heart he leant forward and whispered in Hugo’s ear.

  ‘I was awake, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That night in Harrogate. I was awake all the time.’

  Hugo looked annoyed.

  ‘I know you bloody were. Do you think I’m an idiot?’

  Adrian stared open-mouthed and then burst out laughing.

  ‘You total … you complete … you …’

  Trefusis stepped forward.

  ‘Well, young man, you’ve earned me a thousand pounds. Here’s two hundred, my original stake.’

  ‘Oh really,’ said Adrian. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Of course you could,’ he pushed a bundle of notes at him. ‘Tremendous display.’

  ‘Yes, they’re not a bad bunch, are they?’ Adrian looked on affectionately as his team climbed into the minibus.

  ‘No, no, no. You!’

  ‘Professor?’

  ‘I knew that the man who wrote those artfully disguised second-hand essays, who disgorged such specious and ill-thought-out nonsense with such persuasive and brilliant flair wouldn’t let me down. You’ve clearly a genius for deceit and chicanery. I look forward to seeing you next term.’

  10

  ‘WELL!’ SAID TREFUSIS when Adrian had finished. ‘Did I really say that? “A genius for deceit and chicanery”? Did I really? And we had only just been introduced. How rude.’

  ‘I didn’t take it so.’

  ‘Well of course not.’

  Trefusis groped about with his right hand in the driver’s side glove compartment until he found a figgy oatcake, which he inspected carefully, blowing off a piece of fluff before popping it into his mouth. ‘My goodness, Adrian,’ he mumbled through the crumbs, ‘that was all so much more than I had bargained for. Tell me …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The girl who was the Matron at Chartham …’

  ‘Clare? What about her?’

  ‘Did you really …? I mean the lard and the football pump and the jam and the urine and so … and so on … you really did …?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Adrian. ‘Isn’t that usual?’

  ‘Well now, usual. Usual isn’t the word I’d’ve …’ Trefusis wound down the window distractedly.

  ‘Well anyway,’ said Adrian, ‘there it all is.’

  ‘Young people sometimes give me the impression that I have never lived at all.’

  ‘Surely you must have had experiences of a similar nature?’

  ‘Oddly, no. Of a similar nature? No. It is profoundly strange I know, but I have not.’

  ‘Well apart from …’

  ‘Apart from what, dear boy?’

  ‘Apart from, you know … that night in the lavs in Cambridge.’

  ‘I beg your pardon? Oh … oh yes, of course. Apart from that, obviously.’ Trefusis nodded contentedly. ‘Now, unless I am more hugely mistaken than God, our service-station should be just around the corner. Ah! here we are. Petrol and lemon tea, I think. The car could do with a fill up and we could do with a fillip, hee-ho.’

  Adrian, as the car swung off the road, marvelled, like many an English traveller before him, at the trimness and appealing order of continental service-stations. Euro-colours might be a little too bright and primary, but better this luminous cleanliness than the drab squalor of British motorway stops. How could they afford to have all the litter swept up and the paintwork so freshly maintained? Everything neat, from the little hanging-baskets of geraniums to the merry pantiled roofs that offered shaded parking to hot and weary travellers … a metallic gleam suddenly caught Adrian’s eye. He gaped in astonishment.

  Down the end of the same row into which Trefusis was inexpertly manoeuvring the Wolseley was parked a green BMW with British licence plates and a Hoverspeed ‘GB’ sticker.

  ‘Donald, look! It’s them.’

  ‘I should hope so too. I was most specific as to time.’

  ‘You were what?’

  ‘And don’t forget, dearest lad, that the verb “to be” takes a nominative complement.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said “it’s them”. What you meant of course was, “it’s they”.’ Trefusis pulled up the handbrake and opened the door. ‘But that’s unbearable pedantry. Who, in their right mind, says “it’s they”? No one. Well? Are you going to sit in the car or are you going to come along with me and hear me practise my Luxembourgeois?’

  *

  They took their trays of tea and buns to a table near the window. The couple from the BMW was sitting in a non-smoking section at the other end of the dining area.

  ‘It won’t do to talk to them,’ said Trefusis. ‘But it’s good to know they are there.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Their names are Nancy and Simon Hesketh-Harvey and they have been kindly provided by an old friend of mine.’

  ‘They’re on our side then?’

  Trefusis didn’t answer. He bobbed his teabag up and down in its glass and thought for a moment.

  ‘After the war,’ he said at length, ‘Humphrey Biffen, Helen Sorrel-Cameron, a mathematician called Bela Szabó and I had an idea.’

  ‘At last,’ said Adrian. ‘The truth.’

  ‘You shall judge. We had all of us worked together on Enigma and become increasingly interested, in our own ways, in the possibilities of language and machines. Bela knew very well that the path to what is now called computing had been opened up in Britain and America and that digital machines would one day be capable of linguistic programming. Turing’s work at Bletchley had shown that the old Höllerin-based punched-card systems would soon be a thing of the past. Algorithmic, low-level mathematical languages would be followed by higher level modular intelligent languages giving rise, ultimately, to heuristic machines.’

  ‘Heuristic?’

  ‘Capable of learning by mistakes, of operating, like human beings, through trial and error. My interest in all this was not mathematical, nor especially social. I was not frightened of machines becoming cleverer than human beings, nor of their in some way “taking over”. I was howeve
r very interested in the development of new languages.’

  ‘On account of your having learnt all the existing ones and being in danger of growing bored?’

  ‘You exaggerate charmingly. Bela returned to Hungary after the war, Humphrey married Lady Helen, as you know, and became a schoolmaster. I stayed on at Cambridge. But we continued to work, where possible, on our idea for a perfect high level language that could be spoken by both machines and human beings. The dream, you see, was to invent an international language, like Esperanto, that would also serve as a lingua franca between man and machine.’

  ‘But surely the ideal solution would be to teach a machine to speak English?’

  ‘Well I’m very much afraid that this is what will happen. We had no way of predicting the arrival of the microprocessor, or perhaps I should say, we lacked the imagination to predict its arrival. The cost of computing has been reduced by a factor of a million in ten years. It is simply astonishing. This means that you can now buy for one pound processing ability that would have cost you a million pounds in nineteen-seventy-one.’

  ‘But isn’t that good?’

  ‘Marvellous, simply marvellous. But of no use to me. There are now dozens of languages at work in computing. Cobol, Forth, C, Lisp, Superlisp, Fortran, BASIC, Pascal, Logo, simply scores of the wretched things. We have a new Babel. This will sort itself out as soon as computing power comes still further down in price. Before the end of the century we shall have computers that recognise existing human languages.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no problem. None at all. We spent thirty years mining what turned out to be a barren seam, that’s all. Nothing wrong with that. That’s academe-biz, as they say. I tell you this to give you the background of my relationship with Szabó. We stayed in touch, do you see? He in Budapest, I in Cambridge.’

  Adrian said that he saw.

  ‘Two years ago Szabó made a curious discovery. He had shifted the focus of his attentions over the years from pure mathematics to electronics, acoustic engineering and any number of invigorating related fields. Hungary is very good about that sort of thing. That coloured cube that everyone is playing with at the moment is Hungarian, of course. I suspect that it is the advantage of speaking a language understood by so few that has turned the Magyars into such experts in numbers and shapes and dimensions. There is even a Hungarian mathematician at the moment who is close to achieving what was once thought to be the impossible. He is on the brink of squaring the circle. Or is it circling the square? Whichever.’