Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

‘So… just kiln time then, are you?’

‘Tsserh!’ That is really the best way I can render his polite giggle at my dreadful pun.

I swung round in my seat to look at him.

I was right. He was in distress. I suppose I had sensed it because the way he had asked ‘What are you doing?’ had set up some chime in me, had reminded me of the way I would ask my mother precisely the same question when I knew perfectly well what she was doing but wanted her to stop because I had a grievance to air.

‘You all right, old crocus?’ P. G. Wodehouse was seeping deep into my language.

‘Oh it’s nothing…’

There was a fierce disconsolacy in his expression. I have described him to you as beautiful, which is a senseless description, a space that you will have to fill for yourself with your own picture of beauty; also I have told you he was below the average in height. There was a hint, no more than that, of stockiness about him, a solidity that prevented, despite such overwhelming beauty of countenance and body, any suggestion of the porcelain, any pretty delicacy that might desex and sanitise. It was enough to turn sensuousness into sensuality, but not enough to detract from his liquid grace. It was even more marked, this grounded solidity now, I noticed, as he defiantly attempted not to look unhappy.

‘How long have you got to wait before the dinner’s-ready bell goes in your oven?’ I asked.

‘Oh, about forty minutes. Why?.’

‘Let’s go for a walk then. All this typing is no good for my back.’

‘Okay.’

He waited while I squared the typed sheets, switched off the typewriter, threw on its silvery dust cover and perched a scribbled note next to it: ‘Leave alone or die bloodily.’

This was the era when military greatcoats were the innest thing to wear. I had a WW2 American Air Force coat that was the envy of the world, Matthew an RAF equivalent: he had also, perhaps on account of his older brother, managed to get one of the old school scarves, striped in knitted wool like a Roy of the Rovers football scarf, unlike the scratchy new college-style black and red that I wore. With his wrapped warmly about his neck he looked so divine and vulnerable I wanted to scream.

It was a cold night and just beginning to snow.

‘Yippee, no games tomorrow by the looks of it,’ I said.

‘You really hate sport, don’t you?’ said Matthew, vapour steaming from the hot mystery of his mouth and throat.

‘I don’t mind watching it, but “Is this the man who has lost his soul?”’ I misquoted: ‘The flannelled fool at the wicket and the muddied oaf at the goal.’ I had just read Cuthbert Worsley’s autobiography and it had sent me into quite a spin.

‘Is that what you think of me as then? A muddy oaf?’

‘I wouldn’t have said so,’ I said, a little surprised. ‘I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not sure I think of you as anything, really.’

‘Oh.’

We walked on in silence, while I tried to work out where this was leading.

‘You don’t…‘ he blurted in some confusion,’… you don’t like me then?’

‘Well of course I like you, you daft onion. I’m not in the habit of going for walks with people I dislike.’

‘In spite of the fact that I’m a flannelled fool and a muddy oaf?’

‘I’ll let you into a secret, Matteo. The reason I hate games so much, and don’t you dare tell anyone this, is simple… I’m no bloody good at them.’

‘Oh,’ he said again. Then. ‘Why do you like me then?’

‘Christ, Osborne,’ I said, getting a bit senior in my panic at the direction all this seemed to be going in, ‘I like most people. You seem harmless. You’re polite and most importantly of all, you laugh at my bloody jokes. You fishing for compliments here or what?’

‘No, no. I’m sorry. It’s just that. Well. It was something someone said to me.’

Oh fuck here we go, I thought. His brother has been warning him off. Some jealous son of a bitch has been whispering. The game is up.

‘Who said what to you?’ I asked, trying to smother the swallowing nervousness I felt.

‘It doesn’t really matter who it was. Just someone m my House. I was sweeping the corridor, you know, and he started…, he started trying stuff.’

‘He made an advance you mean?’ I said. Advance? Well what other word could I have used?

Matthew nodded, looked away and out it all came in a hot, indignant tumble. ‘I told him to leave me alone and he called me a tart. He said that everyone could see the way I played up to certain pollies and to people like Fry who I was always hanging around with. He said I was a prettyboy pricktease.’

In my head, even as I winced at hearing such words from him, I rapidly ran through a list of possible names that might fit the picture of this bungling, asinine, spiteful brute from Redwood’s and at the same time just as rapidly selecting, from a whole suite of possible reactions, the right stance for me to take on this choked and miserable confession: outrage, indignity, tired man-of-the-world cynicism, fatherly admonition, comradely sympathy… I considered them all and settled on a kind of mixture.

I shuddered, half at the cold, half at the horror of it all. ‘This place!’ I said. ‘This fucking place… thing is, Matteo, it’s a hothouse. You wouldn’t think so with the snow falling all around us, but it is. We live under glass. Distorting glass. Everything is rumour, counter-rumour, guesswork, gossip, envy, interference, frustration, all that. The secret of survival in a place like this is to be simple.’

‘Simple?’ It was hard to tell whether the clear swollen globes of moisture that glistened at the end of his lashes were melted snowflakes or tears.

‘In a way simple. Rely on friendship.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘If you’ve got a good friend, you’ve never really got any reason to worry. You’ve always got someone to talk to, someone who’ll understand you.’

‘Like you and Woody, you mean?’

It wasn’t what I meant, of course. It was far from what I meant.

‘Yes. Like me and Woody,’ I said. ‘I could tell Jo anything and I know he’d see it in its right proportion. That’s the trick in a place like this, proportion. Who would you say is your best friend?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t know,’ he said, almost sulkily. ‘You see, thing is, I know, because my brother told me…’

‘Know what?’

‘You know, that I’m… you know, pretty.’ He got rid of the word as if its presence had been souring his mouth like a bad olive.

Pretty! God I hated that word. Pretty boy, pretty boy… only a lumpen, half -witted heterosexual would think Matthew pretty. He was beautiful, like the feet of the Lord on the hills, he was beautiful. Like the river, like the snow that was falling now more thickly than ever, like nothing on earth, like everything on earth he was beautiful. And some roaring hairy-pizzled Minotaur had dared to grab at him and call him a prettyboy pricktease. Even his own brother had used that word.

‘Pretty?’ I said, as if the idea had never struck me before. ‘Well you’re exceptionally good-looking, I suppose. You’ve got regular features, unlike me with my big bent nose and my arms ten foot long. But pretty isn’t a word I would have used. Morgan is pretty, I would say.’

Morgan was a Fircroft new boy, on whom many eyes had fallen.

‘Thomas Morgan?’ said Matthew in surprise. ‘Oh.’ Was there just a touch here, the merest hint of wounded vanity in his reaction or was that my imagination?

‘If you go in for that sort of thing, that is,’ I added hastily. ‘Personally, as I say, friendship is my credo.’