The Stars' Tennis Balls

by Stephen Fry

  And I came up and started to write this and . . . ah. I’ve gone into the first person. I have said ‘I’.

  Never mind, all this will be past history soon. Watch out, I am about to join them. I am on my way in. And there’s nothing they can do to stop me. I’m smarter than they are and braver and better too. I am prepared for every paper and they will not be able to refuse me.

  But I must be prepared for the wider scholarship. The scholarship that counts. The scholarship of life, if I may be so sententious. I shall add my mother’s maiden name of Barson. Why not? They have been doing it for years. I shall be Barson-Garland. It has a ring, I think. Damn it, I could triple-barrel myself. Barson-Barson-Garland, how would that be? A little too much, I think. But Barson-Garland I like. It palliates the Ashley, makes it almost tolerable.

  But firstly, there must come the accent. When I arrive, the accent will be in place and they will never know. I have my exercises all written out:

  Don’t say good, say gid.

  Don’t say post, say paste

  Don’t say real, say rail

  Don’t say go, say gay

  Don’t say –

  The outer door to the biology room banged and Ned looked up to see the top of Ashley’s head in the window of the inner door. He slammed the diary shut, pushed it hurriedly back into the bag and hunched himself quickly over his Advanced Cell Biology, both fists pressed hard against his cheeks, hair flopping down like a thick silk curtain.

  He was in this attitude of intense study when Barson-Garland resumed his place next to him. Ned looked up and smiled. He hoped that the pressure from his fists would explain any heightened flush.

  ‘What was all that about?’ he whispered.

  ‘Nothing of great interest,’ said Barson-Garland. ‘The headmaster wants me to make the Speech Day Oration.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Ash! That’s completely brilliant.’

  ‘It’s nothing . . . nothing.’

  Barson-Garland had rhymed the first ‘nothing’ with ‘frothing’ and then quickly corrected himself. Ned tried hard to look as if he hadn’t noticed. Half an hour ago he wouldn’t have noticed. His hand moved to Ashley’s shoulder in a sudden surge of warmth and friendship.

  ‘Bloody proud of you, Ash. Always knew you were a genius.’

  Dr Sewell’s high croak intruded. ‘If you have absorbed all that information and have nothing better to do than gossip, Maddstone, then no doubt you will be able to come forward to the blackboard and label this chloroplast for me.’

  ‘Righto, sir.’ Ned sighed cheerfully and sent Barson-Garland a rueful smile over his shoulder as he went up.

  Barson-Garland was not smiling. He was staring at a dried, pressed four-leaf clover on Ned Maddstone’s stool. The same four-leafed clover that had lain undisturbed between the pages of his private journal for three years.

  A heavy knock came on the door of Rufus Cade’s study. After twenty seconds of oath and panic, Cade hurled himself into his armchair, gave a frenzied look about the room and, satisfied that all was clear, shouted a ‘Come in!’ that he hoped mingled relaxedness with boredom.

  The sardonic face of Ashley Barson-Garland appeared around the door.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘None other.’ Ashley sat himself down and watched with amused disdain as Cade thrust half his body out of the window and spat mints from his mouth like a passenger heaving over the side of a ferry.

  ‘A charming lavender fragrance seems to be pervading the room,’ said Ashley, picking up an aerosol room spray from the desk and inspecting it with benevolent amusement.

  Cade, still leaning over the sill, had started to scrabble at the flower-bed beneath his window. ‘You might have said it was you.’

  ‘And deny myself the pleasure of this pantomime?’

  ‘Very fucking funny . . .’ Cade straightened himself up holding a battered but expertly rolled joint, from which he began gently to flick away fragments of leaf-mould.

  Ashley watched with pleasure. ‘So delicate. Like an archaeologist brushing soil from a freshly unearthed Etruscan vase.’

  ‘I’ve got a bottle of Gordon’s too,’ said Cade. ‘Maddstone paid back the five quid he owed me, would you believe?’

  ‘Yes I would believe. I happened to see his proud daddy slipping him a tenner just before the match this afternoon.’

  Cade took a Zippo from his pocket. ‘What, reward for being made Head Pig next term?’

  ‘Such, I would imagine, is the case. Reward too for being captain of cricket and for breaking the school batting record. For being winsome and good and sweet and kind. For being –’

  ‘You don’t like him, do you?’ Cade drew in a huge lungful of smoke and offered the joint to Ashley.

  ‘Thank you. It is my belief that you don’t like him either, Rufus.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, you’re right. I don’t.’

  ‘Nothing to do with the fact that he didn’t select you for the first eleven?’

  ‘Fuck that,’ said Cade. ‘Couldn’t give a toss about that. He’s just . . . he’s a prick, that’s all. Thinks he’s God almighty. Arrogant.’

  ‘So few would agree with you there. I fancy it is the general view of the school that our Nedlet is unflaggingly and endearingly modest.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. He doesn’t fool me. He acts like he’s got everything.’

  ‘Which he has.’

  ‘Apart from money,’ said Cade with relish. ‘His father is dirt poor.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ashley, quietly. ‘Dirt poor.’

  ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that,’ Cade added with tactless haste. ‘I didn’t mean to say . . . I mean, money isn’t . . . you know . . .’

  ‘Isn’t everything? I often wonder about that.’ Ashley spoke clearly and coolly, as he always did when angry, which was often. Anger fed him and clothed him and he owed it much. Cade’s clumsiness had pricked him hard, but he used the rage to let his mind fly. ‘Shall we formulate it this way? Money is to Everything, as an Aeroplane is to Australia. The aeroplane isn’t Australia, but it remains the only practical way we know of reaching it. So perhaps, metonymically, the aeroplane is Australia after all.’

  ‘Gin then?’

  ‘Why not?’ From vexation to amusement, at speed. Ashley found it very hard to stay angry with a species as low down the evolutionary ladder as a Cade.

  ‘Your oration was . . . it was amazing,’ Cade said, handing Ashley a bottle and a glass tumbler. Ashley noticed that the bottle was half empty while Cade already appeared to be more than half full.

  ‘You liked it?’

  ‘Well it was in Latin, wasn’t it? But, yeah. Sounded good.’

  ‘We aim to please.’

  ‘Want to stick some music on?’

  ‘Some music?’ Ashley scrutinised Cade’s proudly filed stack of records with a fastidious and entirely self-conscious disgust. ‘But you don’t appear to have any. I mean what, for example, is a Honky Château? A castle filled with geese? A claret that makes you vomit?’

  ‘Elton John. It’s years old. You must have heard of it – shit!’

  A gentle, loose-knuckled knock on the door brought Cade bolt upright. Before he had time to embark once more upon his Colditz routine, Ned Maddstone had entered the room.

  ‘Oh gosh, sorry. Didn’t mean to . . . Hey, for goodness’ sake, don’t worry. I’m not . . . I mean bloody hell, it’s almost the end of term. Carry on please. I just . . .’

  ‘Come in, Ned, we’re just, you know, having a bit of a celebration,’ said Cade, standing up.

  ‘Wow, that’s really kind, but actually . . . well, I’m going off to have dinner with my father. He’s staying at the George. Thought you might be here, B-G, and I wondered if you wanted to come along? Er, both of you. Obviously. You know, last night of term and everything.’

  Ashley smiled to himself at the awkward inclusion of Rufus.

  ‘That’s really kind,’ Rufus was saying, ‘but you know. I’m a bit hammered actually. Do
n’t think I’d be much use. Probably embarrass you, as a matter of fact.’

  Ned turned anxiously to Ashley. ‘Unless you’re doing anything else, Ash?’

  ‘I should be honoured, Ned. Truly honoured. Will you let me go upstairs and change into something a little more vespertine?’ He pointed mournfully at his speech day garb. ‘You go on ahead. I shall join you at the George if I may.’

  ‘Great. Great. That’s great,’ said Ned grinning happily. ‘Okay then. And Rufus, till August, then?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You are coming on Paddy’s school trip?’

  ‘Oh. Yeah,’ said Cade. ‘Sure. Absolutely.’

  ‘I’ll see you in Oban, then. Can’t wait. Right. Okay then. Good.’

  There was a silence in Cade’s study after Ned had backed himself out of the room. As if the sun had been blotted out, thought Ashley with great bitterness.

  That he, Ashley Barson-Garland, should be patronised by this brainless, floppy-haired, goody-two-shoed, squeaky-clean, doe-eyed, prefect-perfect, juicy-fruity piece of –

  He saw it, of course, Ashley saw it quite clearly in Ned’s eyes. The sorrowful apology. The friendly sympathy. Ned was too stupid to know that he knew. If anyone else, anyone else in the school had read his diary, they would have teased him, mobbed him to hell, spread it all over the school. Ashley wasn’t popular, he was fully aware of that. He wasn’t one of them. He sounded right, but he wasn’t one of them. He sounded too right. These cretinous sons of upper-class broodmares and high-pedigreed stallions, they were loutish and graceless, entirely undeserving of the privilege accorded them. He, Ashley Barson-Garland, stood apart because he wasn’t enough of an oik. Such splendid irony. But, since it was Ned who had stolen a look into his diary, Ashley’s secrets were safe.

  Yet, no secret is ever safe when another has possession of it, Ashley told himself. It was intolerable to imagine his life, any part of his life, having a separate existence inside another person’s head.

  His mind considered the possibility that he had left his bag open beside Ned deliberately. When the message had come that the Headmaster wanted to see him, why had he not taken the bag with him? He was certain that he had never been so lax with his diary before. In the first place he almost never carried it around the school. It was always safely locked up inside the desk in his study. It must be noted too that Biology was the only lesson he took in which he sat next to Ned. Did he therefore want Ned to read it? Ashley shook himself out of this spurious cul-de-sac. Cheap psychological guesswork would get him nowhere. More to the point was this question: which pages had Maddstone read? Ned being Ned, Ashley reasoned, he would have started at the beginning. It was impossible that he had got very far. Speed-reading was not one of his accomplishments.

  What would Ned have done next? Prayed probably. Ashley wanted to snort at the very idea of it. Yes, Ned would have gone to the chapel, fallen to his knees and prayed for guidance. And what manner of guidance would have been offered by Ned’s shining auburn-haired shampoo-commercial Christ? ‘Go thou and hold Ashley to you as a brother. My son Ashley is frightened and filled with self-hatred. Go thou then and may the kindness and love of God shine upon his countenance and make him whole.’

  Sympathy. Ashley’s whole body tightened. He wanted to bite Ned’s throat open. Wanted to pull the veins and nerves out with his teeth and spit them over the floor. No, that was wrong. That wasn’t it at all. He didn’t want that. That was a scenario that only ended in Ned’s martyrdom. Ashley wanted something far more perfect. He was feeling a new anger that he had some difficulty in identifying at first. It was hatred.

  Cade had finished up the gin. ‘You’re not really going to have dinner with his parents are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Going? Certainly I am going,’ said Ashley sweetly.

  ‘Don’t think he wanted to invite me,’ said Cade. ‘Cunt.’ He banged a fist into the arm of his chair, sending up a puff of dust. ‘I mean, what the fuck did I stand up for? Like he’s a master or something. He acts so fucking straight. What a typocritical turd.’

  ‘Typocritical?’ said Ashley. ‘I like that. Typocritical. You surprise me sometimes, Rufus.’

  ‘Another toke?’ Cade proffered a half inch of joint. ‘I meant hypocritical.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You may think you did, but your brain knew better. You can’t have failed to read The Psychopathology of Everyday Speech, surely?’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Cade.

  Ashley rose. ‘Well, I had better be going up to change. What a joy to get out of this confining nonsense.’

  This was a lie. Ashley rarely felt more joy than when dressed in the Sunday uniform of striped trousers, tailcoat and top hat.

  ‘Arsehole,’ said Cade. ‘Fucking fucking arsehole.’

  ‘Why thank you, dear.’

  ‘No, not you. Maddstone. Who the fuck does he think he is?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Ashley, leaving. ‘Sweet dreams.’

  ‘Mind you,’ Rufus Cade rumbled to himself, leaning back in his armchair as the door closed. ‘You’re an arsehole too, Ashley Bastard-Garland. Let’s face it, we’re all arseholes. Ow!’ He had burnt his bottom lip on the last thin quarter inch of joint. ‘All arseholes, except Ned fucking Maddstone. Which makes him,’ he reasoned to himself, ‘the biggest arsehole of all.’

  Pete and Hillary were wearing the insufferably smug look they always assumed when they had made love the previous night. Portia tried to cancel out its atmosphere by moving around the kitchen with extra noise and impatience, banging drawers so loudly that the cutlery inside resonated and jingled like a gamalan. Fierce Tuscan sunlight streamed through the window and lit the big central table where Pete was slitting large batons of bread.

  ‘This morning,’ he said, ‘we shall feast on prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella. There’s cherry jam, there’s apricot jam and Hills is brewing up some coffee.’

  ‘We have feasted on exactly the same things every morning since we got here,’ said Portia sitting herself down with a glass of orange juice.

  ‘I know. Isn’t it wonderful? Hills and I were up early this morning and we went into the village for fresh bread. Smell that. Go on. No, go on.’

  ‘Pete!’ Portia pushed the proffered loaf away.

  ‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning . . .’

  Portia looked at her father. He wore an unbuttoned batique shirt, an elephant hair bracelet, wooden sandals and, she saw with a shudder, tight maroon swimming trunks that emphasised every bulge and curve of his genitals.

  ‘For God’s sake –’ she began, but was interrupted by the sleepy, shuffling entrance of her cousin.

  ‘Aha!’ said Pete cheerfully. ‘It’s awake. It’s awake and needs feeding.’

  ‘Well hi there!’ said Hillary who had developed the strange habit of going slightly American whenever she spoke to Gordon. This also drove Portia mad.

  ‘So what’s up?’ Gordon said, moving a shopping bag from the seat next to Portia and sitting down.

  ‘Well now,’ said Hillary brightly, as she set down a coffee jug between them, ‘Pete and I were thinking of maybe checking out the palio.’

  ‘It’s been and gone, Hillary,’ said Portia with the exasperated air of one addressing a child. ‘We met that family who’d seen it last week, remember? A rider fell off his horse right in front of them and there was a bone sticking out of his leg. Even you can’t have forgotten that.’

  ‘Ah, but there’s more than one palio in Italy, precious,’ said Pete. ‘Lucca has its very own palio this evening. Not as spectacular or dangerous as Siena, but rather fun they tell me.’

  ‘Lucca?’ said Gordon through a mouthful of bread. ‘Where’s Lucca?’

  ‘Not too far,’ Pete replied, pouring coffee into a large bowl to which he added hot milk. Fragments of skin floated to the top. Looking at them made Portia want to retch. ‘I wanted to go there anyway. It’s the olive oil capital of the world, they say. You can watch it being pressed. I th
ought we might swim and read this morning, then make our way slowly there, driving by the local roads and lunching somewhere in the hills. How’s that for a plan?’ Skin from the coffee clung to his moustache. Portia had never felt so ashamed of him. How Hillary could suffer such a thing on top of her had always been something of a puzzle. Now that she knew there was such a man as Ned in the world, it took on the qualities of an eternal cosmic mystery.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Gordon. ‘Sound good to you, Porsh?’

  ‘Completely.’

  Portia stopped herself from shrugging moodily. She didn’t mind behaving like a spoiled adolescent in front of her parents, but in front of Gordon she preferred to look more sophisticated. What she really wanted to say was, ‘So we’re going to arrive at Lucca in time to find all the shops and cafés shut, are we? And as usual we’re going to have to wander around a completely empty and deserted town for five hours until everyone else has woken from their siestas. That’s a great plan, Pete.’

  Instead she contented herself with remarking, ‘Arnolfini was from Lucca.’

  ‘How’s that?’ said Gordon.

  ‘There’s a painting by van Eyck,’ said Portia, ‘called The Arnolfini Marriage. Arnolfini, the man in the painting, was from Lucca. He was a merchant.’

  ‘Yeah? How d’you know something like that?’

  ‘I don’t know, I must have read it somewhere.’

  ‘I never studied art history.’

  Portia realised that saying ‘Neither did I, you don’t have to “study” something to know about it,’ would sound arrogant, so once again, she curbed her tongue. Really, she was becoming insufferably intolerant these days. And she liked Gordon. She liked his quiet acceptance of the terrible things that had happened to him. He seemed to like her too and it is very easy, she thought, to like someone who likes you. That wasn’t vanity, that was practical common sense.