Stephen Fry - The Liar

'So what's troubling you, Trot? Is it something in the article?'

'It's nothing. It's just that bit where he starts talking about . , .'

Trotter drew a copy of Bollocks! from his pocket. It was already folded open on the second page of Adrian's article.

Adrian looked at him in surprise.

'I wouldn't get caught with this if I were you.'

'It's all right, I'm going to throw it away. I've copied it all out by hand anyway.'

Trotter dabbed a finger down on a paragraph.

'There,' he said, 'read that bit.'

'"And they call it puppy-love,'" Adrian read, '"well I'll guess they'll never know how the young heart really feels." The words of Donny Osmond, philosopher and wit, strike home as ever. How can they punish us and grind us down when we are capable of feelings strong enough to burst the world open? Either they know what we go through when we are in love, in which case their callousness in not warning us and helping us through it is inexcusable, or they have never felt what we feel and we have every right to call them dead. Love shrinks your stomach. It pickles your guts. But what does it do to your mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly, you're above the ordinary . . .'

Adrian looked across at Pigs Trotter who was rocking forwards and tightly gripping his handkerchief as if it were the safety-bar of a roller-coaster.

'It's a misquotation from The Lost Weekend that bit, I think,' said Adrian. 'Ray Milland talking about alcohol. So. You . . . er . . . you're in love then?'

Trotter nodded.

'Um . . . anyone . . . anyone I'd know? You don't have to say if you don't want to.' Adrian was maddened by the huskiness in his throat.

Trotter nodded again.

'It. . . must be pretty tough.'

'I don't mind telling you who it is,' said Trotter.

I'll kill him if it's Cartwright, Adrian thought to himself. I'll kill the fat bastard.

'Who is it then?' he asked, as lightly as he could.

Trotter stared at him.

'You of course,' he said and burst into tears.

They walked slowly back towards the House. Adrian wanted desperately to run away and leave Pigs Trotter to welter in the salt bath of his fatuous misery, but he couldn't.

He didn't know how to react. He didn't know the form. He supposed that he owed Trotter something. The object of love should feel honoured or flattered, responsible in some way. Instead he felt insulted, degraded and revolted. More than that, he felt put upon.

Trotter?

Pigs can fly. This one could, anyway.

It isn't the same, he kept saying to himself. It isn't the same as me and Cartwright. It can't be. Jesus, if I were to declare my love to Cartwright and he felt a tenth as pissed off as I do now ...

'It's all right, you know,' said Pigs Trotter, 'I know you don't feel the same way about me.'

Feel the same way about me? Christ.

'Well,' said Adrian, 'the thing is, you know, I mean it's a phase, isn't it?'

How could he say that? How could he say that?

'It doesn't make it any better though,' said Trotter.

'Right,' said Adrian.

'Don't worry. I won't bother you. I won't tag onto you and Tom any more. I'm sure it'll be all right.'

Well there you are. If he could be so sure that it would be 'all right' then how could it be love? Adrian knew that it would never be 'all right' with him and Cartwright.

Trotter's wasn't the Real Thing, it was just Pepsi.

They were nearing the House. Pigs Trotter dried his eyes on the sleeve of his blazer.

'I'm very sorry,' said Adrian, 'I wish . . .'

'That's okay, Healey,' said Trotter. 'But I ought to tell you that I have read The Scarlet Pimpernel, you know.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, in the book, everyone wanted to know who the Scarlet Pimpernel was and so Percy Blakeney made up that rhyme: the one you just did a version of: "They seek him here, they seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere . . .'"

'Yes?' What on earth was he on about?

'The thing is,' said Trotter, 'that it was Percy Blakeney himself who was the Scarlet Pimpernel all the time, wasn't it? The one who made up the rhyme. That's all.'

IV

Adrian managed to get into Chapel early next morning, so that he could sit behind Cartwright and ponder the beauty of the back of his head, the set of his shoulders and the perfection of his buttocks as they tightened when he leant forward to pray.

It was a strange thing about beauty, the way that it trans- formed everything in and around a person. Cartwright's blazer was outstandingly the most beautiful blazer in Chapel, but it came from Gorringe's like everyone else's. The backs of his ears, peeping through the soft golden tangle of his hair, were skin and capillary and fleshy tissue like any ears, but nobody else's ears set fire to Adrian's blood and flooded his stomach with hot lead.

The hymn was 'Jerusalem the Golden'. Adrian as usual fitted his own words.

'O Cartwright you are golden, With milk and honey blest. Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice opprest. I know well, O I know well, What lovely joys are there, What radiancy of glory, What light beyond compare.'

Tom, next to him, heard and gave a nudge. Adrian obediently returned to the text, but lapsed again into his own version for the final verse.

'O sweet and blessed Cartwright, Shall I ever see thy face? O sweet and blessed Cartwright, Shall I ever win thy grace? Exult O golden Cartwright! The Lord shall play my part: Mine only, mine for ever, Thou shalt be, arid thou art.'

Six hundred hymn-books were shelved and six hundred bodies rustled down onto their seats. At the east end, Headman's heels rang out on the stone floor as he stepped forward for Notices, hitching up the shoulder of his gown.

'Boys have been seen using a short cut from the Upper to Alperton Road. You are cordially reminded that this path goes through Brandiston Field, which is private property and out of bounds. The sermon on Sunday will be given by Rex Anderson, Suffragan Bishop of Kampala. The Bateman Medal for Greek Prose has been won by W.E.St. J. Hooper, Rosengard's House. That is all.'

He turned as if to go, then checked himself and turned back.

'Oh, there is one more thing. It has come to my notice that a more than usually juvenile magazine of some description has been circulating about the school. Until the authors of this nonsense have come forward there will be no exeats, no club activities and all boys will be confined to their Houses in free time. Nothing else.'

'It's a fucking outrage,' said Adrian as they streamed out of the Chapel into the sunshine. 'And so pathetic, so completely pathetic. "A juvenile magazine of some description!" As if he hasn't read it a hundred times and trembled with fury as he read it!'

'He just wants to make it sound as if it isn't such a big deal,' said Tom.

'Does he really think we're going to fall for that? He's scared, he's bloody scared.'

Hey don-Bay ley came up.

'Gated for the rest of term! The bastard!'

'It's just a feeble attempt to try and get the school to turn against the magazine and do his detective work for him,' said Bullock. 'It won't work. Whoever's responsible is too clever.'

Adrian was once more at a loose end that afternoon. It was a Corps day so there was no cricket and he didn't dare climb up to Gladys Winkworth in case he bumped into Trotter again. Officially he should be visiting his old lady and doing odd jobs for her, but she had died of hypothermia the previous term and he hadn't been supplied with a replacement yet. He had just decided to go down to the School Gramophone Library and practise conducting to records, a favourite legal pastime, when he remembered he had a standing invitation to tea from Biffen the French master.