Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

For Evans the event was merely a distraction from nets or from whatever else he had on his mind and I could see that he led me without either relish or sympathy, only with careless disinterest. I trailed behind him like a wet spaniel wondering furiously what it was that Cromie could know.

We reached the outside of his study too early for any excuse to have come to my head, nor had I had time to rehearse fully in my mind the stout and stolid style of blank innocence that would come to me when Cromie confronted me with my crime, the hot indignation of my denial, the hooting outrage that would possess me the moment he accused me of… of what?

‘Enter!’

Evans had rapped on the door. I stood there, legs braced.

‘That means “come in”,’ said Evans, swinging the door open for me.

Cromie was not at his desk. He was sitting in one of his two leather armchairs, reading. The first thing I looked for, with the quickest darting glance, was any sign that the secret drawer to the desk was open. It was not.

‘Thank you, Evans. Very prompt.’

‘Sir.’

Evans vanished with another turn on his heel. He went on in later life to Harrow, playing cricket for the school and shining in the cadet force, where his ability to turn smartly on his heel won him, I have no doubt, the Sword of Honour and the admiration of all.

I lingered in the threshold. There was a jaunty gleam in Cromie’s exceptionally blue eyes, and a crisp upturn to his russet moustache that puzzled and frightened me.

For all I know Cromie’s eyes are brown and his moustache was green: I hope he will forgive any inaccuracy. I believe he is a wise enough man to know that false memory can be more accurate than recorded fact.

‘Come in, Fry, come in!’ he cried with the affable assertiveness of an archdeacon inviting a curate in for a friendly talk on Pelagianism.

‘How kind, sir,’ I said, ever pert.

‘Sit,’ said Cromie, indicating the other armchair, the armchair whose seat and cushions, up until this moment, I had only ever seen from upside-down, while bent over one shining leather arm preparing to receive the cane.

I sat in some bewilderment.

I was too far away from leaving the school to be ready to receive the famous Leaver’s Talk about which the school whispered fiercely at the end of each term, the Leaver’s Talk which told everyone what they already knew about Vaginas and Babies and Testicles and Urges and Some Other Boys.

I stared at the carpet hopelessly confused.

After what seemed an age, Cromie put down whatever it was that he was reading and twinkled across at me.

‘Fry,’ he said, slapping a cavalry-twilled knee. ‘I am going to make a prediction.’

‘Sir?’

‘You are going to go far.’

‘Am I, sir?’

‘Believe me, yes. You are going to go very, very far.

Whether to the Palace of Westminster or to

Wormwood Scrubs I can’t quite tell. Probably both, if

I know my Fry.’ He rubbed the knee he had already slapped in the manner of an older man, a man whose arthritis or war wound might be playing merry hell, but was none the less a companionable reminder of better days. ‘Do you know why you will go far, Fry?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You’ll go far because you have the most colossal nerve.’

‘Have I, sir?’

‘For colossal nerve, for sheer, ruddy cheek, I have never met anyone to match you.’

All this said so easily, so chummily so – there was no escaping the word, mad as it seemed – so admiringly.

‘Fry has a problem,’ Cromie went on, seeming now to be addressing the bookcase. ‘He has a parcel he wishes to send, but, drat and curse it, he has no stamp. So what does he do? He goes into Sir’s study, cool as you please, sees a heap of letters and packages waiting to be stamped, puts his own on top of the pile and leaves. “Old Dealey will take the whole lot out to the post office and mine will be stamped along with the rest of them,” he thinks to himself. How was he to know that Sir might come along before Dealey had taken them away and recognise the highly individual handwriting of the most impudent scoundrel this school has ever had the honour to house?’

God, God, God … the joke shop order … the pennies stuck together. I had clean forgotten.

In all the excitement of discovering those sweets I must have laid the package down on the desk when fiddling with the secret drawer.

Great heavens almighty.

‘Such cavalier insolence deserves a reward, Fry,’ said Cromie. ‘Your reward is that Dealey has duly taken your parcel to Uley along with the others and it will be sent to its destination at the school’s expense and with my compliments.’

He rubbed his chin and chuckled.

Maybe Jesus Christ and Granddaddy did not judge and punish. Maybe they loved me.

I knew what was expected of me in return and gave Cromie the full repertoire: the ruefully apologetic stretching of the lips, the bashfully sheepish grin, the awkwardly embarrassed shifting in my seat.

‘Well, you know, sir. I just thought…

‘I know very well, sir, what you just thought,’ said Cromie, smiling back as he stood. He looked about him. ‘This must be the first time you’ve been inside this room without leaving it with a sore backside. Well, count yourself lucky. Use some of that colossal nerve to better account in future.’

It was true that the only times I had been in that study in Cromie’s company had been to receive two or three of the best. The last time had been for a visit to the village shop. Thee strokes, with a promise of double that amount next time.

I stood up now, and squeezed my eyes tight in horror as I heard the rustle of paper bags in my trouser pockets. This would be no time for illegal sweets to tumble from me like coins from a one-armed bandit.

‘It’s all right, there’s no need to look so frightened. Off you go.

‘Thank you very much and I’m sorry, sir.’

‘Go and sin no more, that’s all I ask. Go and sin no bloody more.'

Sitting under a cedar of Lebanon half an hour later, stuffing foam shrimp after foam shrimp into my mouth, I mused on fate. Maybe I was brave, in a certain sort of way. It took courage to be deceitful and dishonest and conniving and wicked. More courage than it took to toe the line.

The late summer light was lovely on the lawns and lake, there were more fruit salads and a bag of flying saucers left in my blazer pocket.

‘F-r-r-r-ry!’

When the name was called with such rolling menace, it could only mean Pollock, Pollock the head boy with raven black hair and a sadistic hatred of all things Fry the Younger.

He came round from behind the tree and had snatched the bag from out of my hand before I knew what was happening.

‘So we’ve been to the village shop again, have we?’

‘No!’ I said, indignantly, ‘we have not.’

‘Don’t bother lying. Shrimps, milk bottles, flying saucers and blackjacks. Do you think I’m an idiot?’

‘Yes I do Pollock. I do think you’re an idiot. I haven’t been to the village shop.’

He struck me across the face. ‘Don’t be cheeky, you little creep. Empty your pockets.’

Because of that fall at Chesham Prep my nose has always been immensely sensitive to the slightest percussion. The least strike will cause tears to spring up. In those days the tears were added to by the humiliating realisation that they looked like real tears.

‘Oh for God’s sake, stop blubbing and empty your pockets.’

There is nothing like a false accusation to cause even more tears.

‘How many times do I have to tell you,’ I howled. ‘I haven’t been to the village shop!’