Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

I turned slightly in the dock and caught my mother’s eyes which were bright with tears. What was I going to do now, I wondered?

And for how long was I going to ask myself what I was going to do, as if I were someone else, a stranger observing myself with curiosity and puzzlement.

The long drive back to Norfolk was friendly and unstrained. I don’t know what either of my parents thought would happen next. I think they only knew for certain that there was nothing that they could make happen. My mother, always more optimistic, believed, I am certain, that things could only get better.

I fell into my sister’s arms. She had been furious with me, furious for the grief I had caused Mother and furious for the atmosphere that had dwelt at Booton while I was away, but she hugged me and forgave me and wept. Roger, crisply short-back-and-sided shook his head with a smile and said that I was a clot.

The first thing I had to do was await the visit of the local probation officer appointed to take over my case. His name was Boyce and he had a snowy white beard. I had to visit him initially once a week, I think, and chat. He encouraged me to write while I was thinking what to do, so I wrote a strange updating of the old Greek myth of Theseus and Procrustes. I will not even begin to lower my hands into the steaming pile of psychological implications lying there, but just leave it at that. I gave it to Boyce to read and he passed it back professing himself completely unable to make head or tail of it. Reading it now, nor can I.

More urgently, I had discovered that Norwich City College was having its final enrolment day. They offered a one year course of A levels in most of the major subjects. I rushed to join the queue and found myself in the office of a twinkly little man who was head of arts admissions.

‘I would like to apply to do English, French and History of Art A levels,’ I said.

He shook his head sorrowfully as he read my application form. Next to the question, Attainments? I had written ‘Prep-school sub-prefect and 3rd XI scorer’.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that English and History of Art are both full up. If you had come on the first day of enrolment…’

The first day of enrolment had been the day of my sentencing.

‘I must tell you this,’ I said, more urgency and concentration and power in my voice than had ever been there before. ‘If you admit me on to those courses I will get A grades in each subject. I will take S levels in all subjects and get Grade Ones. I will take Cambridge Entrance…'

‘We don’t do Cambridge Entrance here…’

‘Nevertheless,’ I said. ‘I will go to the library, take out past papers and, if I have to, take a job in the evening to be able to pay one of your staff to invigilate while I sit the Cambridge Entrance. I will be given a place to read English at Queens’ College. If you take me on, this is what will happen.’

He looked at me with his blue twinkly eyes.

I looked back. My entire destiny was in the hands of this man. What had he had for breakfast? What were his views on failed public school boys screaming for the assistance of state-funded City Colleges? Did he have children? Were they difficult or good? Had he been to Cambridge or did he loathe Oxbridge and everything it stood for?

His blue unreadable eyes just twinkled back, as inscrutable and potent as a Siamese cat’s.

‘I must be mad,’ he said, scribbling his signature on my form with a sigh. ‘Take that to the office next door. Term starts on Monday. I’ll be taking you for Chaucer.’

I WAS DOWN IN THE basement rooms of Norwich’s Bohemian hang-out, Just John’s Delicatique. On what dark night of the soul the word Delicatique was born no one knew and John refused to say, but his coffee shop was the place in Norwich to talk art, music and politics.

I had not been able that morning to bear the suspense any more of waiting for the postman and news from Cambridge. The promised A levels and S levels had been achieved in the summer, that glorious summer of ‘76, and the following November, alone but for a single invigilator in a huge hall at City College, I had sat the Cambridge Entrance exam. After two weeks of scaring the postman off his bike, I told my mother that I had had enough.

‘I can’t take this any more. I’m going into Norwich. If there’s anything in the post, feel free to open it. I’ll be at Just John’s at lunchtime.’

The post in Booton didn’t arrive until at least ten in the morning and the only bus into Norwich left the corner of the lane at seven-forty on the dot, so the choice was Postman or Norwich.

It was good to be back in Just John’s. The usual crowd were there: Jem, impossibly, Byronically handsome worshipper of Blake and Jim Morrison; Nicky, Rugby School expulsee and amiable conversationalist, Greg and Jonathan, two twinkly and amusing brothers and the small gang of other café society regulars. We sat, drank coffee, nibbled carrot-cake and sipped at communally paid for shared glasses of frighteningly expensive Urquell Pilsner, talking of this, that and everything in between.

‘You look nervous,’ said Greg.

He pointed out that every twenty seconds I had been looking at my watch and that my right leg had been bouncing up and on down on the ball of its foot – a mannerism Hugh Laurie to this day constantly upbraids me for. He used to believe that I did it to put him off when we played chess together at Cambridge (see photograph): in fact I am never aware that I do it. Hugh’s way of putting me off was to checkmate me, which is a great deal less sporting.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just that… no, there can’t be anything. It’s ten past one. If there was a letter my mother would have called straight away.

Just then Just John himself appeared halfway down the stairs: ‘Stephen!’ he yelled across the buzz of frothy talk and frothing cappuccino. ‘Telephone for you!’

I jumped to my feet and streaked towards him, sending my chair backwards on to the floor.

Somehow I managed to overtake John on the narrow stairway and I leaped for the dangling receiver.

‘Mother! Did a letter come?’

‘No, darling. No letter.’

‘Oh…’

Bless her, but damn her too, why did she have to call if there was no letter? She must have known my heart had been in my throat all morning. She wants me to buy some bloody salami or something…

‘No letter at all, I’m afraid,’ she said again. ‘Just a telegram.’

‘A what?’

‘A telegram.’

Who on earth could be sending me telegrams? Christ, maybe it had something to do with the court case. A new charge? A discrepancy in my statement. It was a whole year ago now, but these things could happen.

‘I’ll read it to you,’ said my mother, and then in her best and clearest for-foreigners-and-the-deaf voice, she enunciated: ‘Congratulations stop Awarded Scholarship Queens’ College stop Senior Tutor.’

‘Read that again! Read that again!’

‘Oh darling…’ she said with a sniff. ‘I’m so proud. I’m so proud!’

What did Paul Pennyfeather do? What did W. H. Auden do? It was the only thing to do.

I emerged from London’s Green Park tube station two days later and strolled past the Ritz Hotel. Perhaps I should go in and say hello to Ron, tell him how useful his beloved Reitlinger had been in preparing me for the History of Art paper. Maybe later. My appointment was for eleven o’clock and it would not do to be even a second late. I passed Albany Court and peeped up, thinking of Jack and Ernest, Raffles and Bunny.

Turning left into Sackville Street I searched the doorways until I saw the brass plaque I had been looking for: