Stephen Fry - The Liar

Adrian wasn't sure if he could interpret it. He stared ahead of him, perplexed. Did the President want him, as a friend of Donald's, to speak up? Was he warning Adrian not to let his feelings get the better of him? What? He returned the look with a questioning lift of his own eyebrows.

In reply the President gave a 'yackety-yack' gesture with his hand.

Clinton-Lacey's Boltonian sense of humour was notorious but surely he meant something more than 'Oh, that Menzies, he does go on, doesn't he?'

Adrian decided it must be a demand for him to do some filibustering. He swallowed nervously. He was only an undergraduate after all and these were not the sixties. The days of genuine student representation on the boards of governors of the colleges were long gone. It was understood that he was a constitutional hiccough that it would have been embarrassing to cure. He was there to listen, not to comment.

However.

'Don't you think, Dr Menzies,' he began, not daring to look up, 'that the word "criminal" is a bit strong?'

Menzies rounded on him.

'Forgive me, Mr Healey, you are the English student. I am just a lawyer. What on earth would I know about the word criminal? In my profession, out of ignorance no doubt, we use the word to describe someone who has broken the law. I am sure you could entertain us with an essay on the word's origin that would prove conclusively that a criminal is some kind of medieval crossbow. For my purposes however, in law, the man is a criminal.'

'Now, gentlemen . . .'

'Dr Menzies' clumsy sarcasm aside,' said Adrian, 'I have to say that I know full well what criminal means and it is a perfectly ordinary English word, not a legal term, and I resent it being used of Donald. It makes him sound like a professional. One crime doesn't make a criminal. It would be like calling Dr Menzies a lawyer just because thirty years ago he practised briefly at the Bar.'

'I have every right in the world, Mr President,' shrilled Menzies, 'to call myself a lawyer. I believe my reputation in the legal field has done nothing but reflect credit on this institution '

'Perhaps it wouldn't be unfitting if I said something here,' said Tim Anderson. His book on Jean-Luc Godard had recently been exceptionally well reviewed by his wife in Granta magazine and he was in a less solemn mood than usual.

'I think it would be immensely unfitting,' snapped Menzies.

'Well that's a not uninteresting point, certainly,' said Anderson, 'but I was thinking more that I don't know many people who couldn't express doubt about the strategies that the authorities adopt in situations not a million miles dissimilar to this one and I just don't think that's something we shouldn't be unafraid to shirk addressing or confronting. That's all.'

'I have just been told by a student that I have no right to call myself a lawyer, Master,' said Menzies. 'I await an apology.'

'Dr Menzies is an academic,' said Adrian. 'He is a teacher. I'd have thought that that was quite enough of a profession for one man. I maintain that he is not a lawyer. Law just happens to be the subject he teaches.'

'I am not absolutely sure that I see the relevance of this,' said the President and something in the tone of his voice made Adrian look at him again. He was rolling an eye in the direction of the corner of the room.

The cameras!

Since the beginning of this, Adrian's third and final year, St Matthew's had put up with a television crew on the premises. Their technique, that of becoming part of the furniture, was working so well that they had become appallingly easy to ignore. They had lived up to the name of fly-on-the-wall and only the odd irritating buzz reminded the college of their existence.

It was clear that the President did not want Adrian to forget them. He could not possibly allow anything of the Trefusis Affair to be seen on national television. Adrian's duty lay clear ahead of him. He had to find a way of doing or saying something that would make the film of the meeting, or this part of it, unsuitable for family viewing.

He took a deep breath.

'I'm sorry, Master,' he said, snapping a pencil, 'but the point is that I won't sit here and hear my friend insulted, not if the accuser is the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Procurator Pissing Fiscal and the Witchfinder Fucking General all rolled into one.'

A splutter of incredulity from a middle-aged Orientalist met this unusual outburst.

'Donald has been called a criminal,' Adrian went on, warming to his theme. 'If I run down the street to catch a bus, does that make me an athlete? If you yodel in the bath, Master, does that make you a singer? Dr Menzies has a tongue like a supermarket pricing-gun.'

'Twisting my words won't help.'

'Untwisting them might.'

'Well untwist these words, then,' said Menzies, forcing his copy of the newspaper under Adrian's nose.

'What the yellow rubbery fuck do you think you're up to now?' said Adrian, pushing the newspaper away. 'If I want to blow my nose, I'll use a frigging snot-rag.'

'Healey, have you run mad?' hissed Corder, a theologian, sitting next to Adrian.

'Stick it up your heretical arse.'

'Well!'

'Explain it to you later,' said Adrian in an undertone.

'Oh, it's a game!'

'Sh!'

'Splendid!' whispered Corder, and then sang out, 'Oh, do come on, Garth, get a sodding move on.'

'Well,' said Menzies. 'I have no idea what childish motive you have for hurling abuse at me, Mr Healey. Perhaps you think it is funny. At the risk of being told that I have no sense of humour I am quite prepared to suggest that even an undergraduate audience would remain unmoved by the spectacle of a student insulting one more than twice his age. As for Dr Corder, I can only assume that the man is drunk.'

'Piss off, you fat tit,' said Corder primly.

'Mr President, are they to be allowed to continue in this fashion?'

'Dr Corder, Mr Healey, let Dr Menzies have his say, please,' said the President.

'Right you fucking are, Mr President,' said Adrian, standing up and immediately sitting down again. He had noticed that the microphone boom was only a few inches higher than his head. If he kept standing up he had a notion it would appear in shot and spoil the footage.

'You have the floor, farty,' said Corder.

'I think I'd better say for my own part,' said Tim Anderson, 'that notwithstanding '

'Thank you,' said Menzies.

Adrian burped loudly and felt with his feet for the TV cabling which ran under the table.

'Now, for those of you have not seen it,' Menzies continued, fishing his spectacles out of his jacket pocket, 'there is an article in this evening's local paper which is of exceptional interest to this college. I shall read it to you.

'"Professor Donald Trefusis,'" he intoned, in that awful declamatory chant reserved by politicians for public readings of I Corinthians 13, '"holder of the Regius Chair in Philology and Senior Tutor of St Matthew's College, appeared at Cambridge magistrate's court this morning charged with gross indecency . . ."'

Menzies broke off. While he had been speaking a large electric lamp in the corner of the room had begun to totter on its base. It creaked on its stand, unable to make up its mind whether to crash to the ground or return to an upright position. By the time a technician had noticed and started to run across to save it, it had decided on the floor. It was the noise of the ten kilowatt bulb exploding that had interrupted Menzie's flow.

'Oh dear,' said Adrian, standing up, distraught. 'I think my feet may inadvertently have become tangled up in your cables for a moment. I'm so sorry . . .'

The BBC director smiled at him through clenched teeth.

'If Mr Healey can manage to sit still for just three minutes,' Menzies continued, 'I shall resume . . .'