Stephen Fry - The Liar

Tickford was standing behind his desk, his face deathly white.

'This book,' he said, holding up a paperback, 'does it belong to you?'

Oh Christ... oh Jesus Christ . . .

It was Adrian's copy of The Naked Lunch.

'I... I don't know, sir.'

'It was found in your study. It has your name written in it. No other boy in the school has a copy in their study. On the instructions of the headmaster the prefects checked this morning. Now, answer me again. Is this your book?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Just tell me one thing, Healey. Did you write the magazine alone or were there others?'

'I–'

'Answer me!' shouted Tickford, slamming the book down onto the desk.

'Alone, sir.'

There was a pause. Tickford stared at Adrian, breathing heavily from his nostrils like a cornered bull.

Oh cuntly cunt. He's going to hit me. He's out of control.

'Go to your study,' said Tickford at last. 'Stay there until your parents come for you. No one is to see you or talk to you.'

'Sir, I–'

'Now get out of my sight, you poisonous little shit.'

A Peaked Cap, waving a sheet of typescript, hurried into the Customs office where a Dark Grey Suit was watching television.

'Comrade Captain,' he said. 7 have the inventory of the delegation's luggage.'

'You can cut out the Comrade crap for a start,' said the Dark Grey Suit, taking the proffered sheet.

'Szabo's articles are itemised at the top, sir.'

'I can read.'

The Dark Grey Suit scanned the list.

'And you searched the rest of the team just as thoroughly?'

'Just as thoroughly Com– Captain Molgar, sir.'

'The chess books have been checked?'

'They have all been checked and replaced with identical copies in case of . . .'the Peaked Cap gestured hopefully. He had no idea what the original chess books might have contained. 'In case of. . . microdots?'he whispered.

The Dark Grey Suit snorted contemptuously.

'This radio in Ribli's luggage?'

'A perfectly ordinary radio, Captain. Comrade Ribli has taken it abroad many times. He is not under suspicion also?'

The Dark Grey Suit ignored the question.

'Csom's suitcase seems to be very heavy.'

'It is an old case. Leather.'

'Have it X-rayed.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Yes, Captain.'

'Yes, Captain.'

'That's better.'

The Peaked Cap coughed.

'Captain, sir, why do you let this Szabo out of the country if he is . . .?'

'If he is what?'

'I-I don't quite know, sir.'

'Szabo is one of the most talented young grandmasters in the world. The next Portisch. All this checking is simply a routine test of your efficiency, nothing more. You understand?'

Yes, Captain.''

'Yes, Comrade Captain.'

'Yes, Comrade Captain.'

The Dark Grey Suit hummed to himself. He did not know what they were looking for either. But the British had been paying him a great deal for many years and now that they suddenly wanted him to work for his money he supposed he had no business complaining. This was not dangerous work, after all. He was doing no more than his usual duty and if the authorities discovered his unusual interest in Szabo they would be more likely to reward him for his zeal than shoot him for his treachery.

He had hoiked out Szabo's file that morning to see if there was anything there to justify this sudden British directive. There was nothing there: Stefan Szabo, a perfectly blameless citizen, grandson of a Hungarian hero and a great chess hope.

The solution came to the Dark Grey Suit in a blinding flash. Stefan Szabo was planning, sometime during the tournament in Hastings, to defect. The British needed to check that he was an honest defector, that he was not bringing any equipment out with him that would suggest a darker purpose.

But why should a successful chess-player need to defect? They made plenty of money, which they were allowed to keep, they were granted unlimited travel abroad, foreign bank accounts. Hungary was not Russia or Czechoslovakia, for God's sake. The Dark Grey Suit, who had betrayed his country for years, felt a stab of resentment and anger against this young traitor.

'Little shit,' he thought to himself. 'What's wrong with Hungary that he needs to run away to England?'

Six

Just as Adrian was getting thoroughly bored, the President started to wind up the meeting.

'Now,' he said, 'it's getting rather late. If there is no further business, I would like to - '

Garth Menzies rose to his feet and smiled the smile of the just.

'There is one thing, Master.'

'Can't it wait?'

'No, sir. I don't believe it can.'

'Oh, very well then.'

Adrian cursed inwardly. They all knew the subject Menzies was going to raise and Menzies knew that they knew. They had been given the chance to raise it themselves but they hadn't. So be it. Very well. Other men might shrink from their duty, but not Garth Menzies.

He barked his throat clear.

'I am amazed, Mr President, absolutely amazed that this meeting can contemplate adjournment without first discussing the Trefusis Affair.'

A dozen heads looked sharply down at their agenda papers. A dozen pairs of buttocks clenched tightly together.

He had said it. The man had said it. Such a want of delicacy. Such wounding impropriety.

At the far end of the table a mathematician specialising in fluid dynamics and the seduction of first year Newnham girls blew his nose in a hurt manner.

Those parts of Adrian that weren't already looking sharply down or clenching tightly together contrived to quiver with disfavour.

How incredibly like Garth to bring up the one subject that everyone else in the room had been so elegantly avoiding. How childish the rhetoric with which he claimed to be amazed at that avoidance.

'I find myself wondering,' said Menzies, 'how we feel about having a criminal amongst us?'

'Now, really Garth–'

'Oh yes, Master, a criminal.'

Menzies, tall and thin, face as white, shiny and bold Roman as the cover page of the quarterly journal of civil law it was his pride to edit, had placed his left thumb along the lapel of his coat and now he stooped forwards from the waist, waving in his right hand, in what he hoped was a brandish, a copy of the Cambridge Evening News.

Adrian found himself chilled by the sight of a grown man trying so transparently to strike the forensic pose of a glamorous barrister. No matter how he aged, and there was not now one dark hair on his head, Menzies could never look any grander than a smart-arsed sixth-former. A smart-arsed grammar-school sixth-former, Adrian thought. He cut a dreadful sort of Enoch Powell figure. A kind of adolescent Malvolio, all elbows and shiny temples. Adrian found Menzies as tiresome as his archetypes; unspeakable to behold, dangerous to discount.

Menzies resented his widespread popularity because he felt it sprang from illogical and irrelevant factors like his breath, his voice, his sniffs, his gait, his clothes, his whole atmosphere. For that reason he devoted himself with all the dismal diligence of the dull to giving the world more legitimate grounds for dislike. That, at least, was Adrian's interpretation. Donald always claimed to like the man.

If Donald had been present to witness him now, newspaper in hand and destruction in mind, Adrian was sure he would have altered his opinion.

President Clinton-Lacey, at the head of the table, looked down at his agenda and shaded his eyes. From under his hand he waggled a covert eyebrow at Adrian like a schoolboy sharing a joke under a desk-lid. But there was an urgency and seriousness in the look which told Adrian that he was being given some kind of signal.