Stephen Fry - The Liar

'Unfortunately in wartime one needs to signal an enormous amount of unpredictable and detailed information. The receiver couldn't be expected to memorise thousands of different code words, and to write them down would be insecure. So it became practice to mix the two systems. A complicated cypher would be used which could only be cracked if one knew a key word, a code, which would change daily. That is how Enigma operated. So even when Enigma had been solved we needed Intelligence to help provide us with clues so that we could crack the daily code. That is where I came in, and of course, your old friend Humphrey Biffen.'

'Humphrey Biffen?'

'I believe he taught you French once.'

'Good Lord! Did Biffo work at Bletchley too?'

'Oh indeed. And Helen Sorrel-Cameron whom he later married. Guessing the daily key words was very much our speciality.'

'But however did you manage?'

'Well now, the Germans were so very confident that Enigma was uncrackable that they became remarkably sloppy about the assignation of the daily key. Intelligence furnished us with the names of operators and cypher clerks in German Naval Intelligence and Humphrey and I would make guesses. We used to keep immensely detailed files on each clerk: their likes, their loves, their families, mistresses, lovers, pets, tastes in music and food . . . oh, everything. Each day we would try out different ideas, the name of that particular operator's dog, their favourite kind of pastry, their maiden surname, that sort of thing. We usually got there in the end.'

'But the Germans must have discovered that you had cracked it, surely?'

'Well that's the peculiarity of this kind of work. Our job was simply to furnish Military Intelligence with everything we decrypted. They would then, as a rule, fail to act upon it.'

'Why?'

'Because they could on no account let the enemy know that they were reading their most secret transmissions. It is generally believed, for instance, that Churchill had prior warning of the impending Luftwaffe raid on Coventry but neglected to tell the army and air force for fear of extra defences in the area revealing to the Germans that it had been known about in advance. This is not strictly true, but it demonstrates the principle. Some believe, of course, that Admiral Kanaris, the head of German Naval Intelligence, was perfectly well aware that we were reading Enigma all along, but that he was so pro-British and distressed at the behaviour of the Fuhrer that he simply let it happen.'

'Fascinating,' said Adrian. 'God I wish I could have been around at a time like that.'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Trefusis. 'I think you might have been bored.'

Trefusis peered at the landscape and the road-signs. 'Still another fifty or so kilometres before our service station. Now it's your turn. What has happened in your young life? Plenty, I make no doubt.'

'Oh not so much,' said Adrian. 'I was arrested for the possession of cocaine once.'

'Really?'

'Yes. I had been living with an actor after a few months of being a rent-boy.'

'A rent-boy?' said Trefusis. 'How enterprising! And possession of cocaine? Were you imprisoned?'

'Well first I should tell you how I was expelled from school. That should take us twenty kilometres. Then I'll tell you what happened after that.'

Nine

I

He had stared at the first paper for the whole three hours, unable to write a thing. One of the girls came up to him afterwards.

'I saw you, Adrian Healey! Couldn't you answer any of the questions, then?'

Two years in this stupid college that called its pupils 'students' and its lessons 'lectures'. How had he stood it? He should never have given way.

'I think it's the right thing, darling. It'll give you so much more independence than a school. Father agrees. You can get the bus in to Gloucester and be home with me every night. And then after you've got the "A" levels, you can sit the Cambridge entrance. Everyone says it's an awfully good college. The Fawcetts' boy – David is it? – he went there after he was . . .after he left Harrow, so I'm sure it's all right.'

'What you mean is, it's the only place for miles around that'll take boys that've been expelled.'

'Darling, that's not . . .'

'Anyway, I don't want "A" levels and I don't want to go to Cambridge.'

'Ade, of course you do! Just think how you'd regret it if you missed the opportunity.'

He had missed the opportunity, and the lectures. Instead there had been the ABC cinema and the Star Cafe, where he played pin-ball and three-card brag.

Discuss Lawrence's use of external landscape in relation to the internal drama of Sons and Lovers.

Only connect . . . How are the Schlegels and Wilcoxes connected in Howards End?

Compare and contrast the different uses of landscape and nature in the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.

Suddenly his plausible wit was of no use to him. Suddenly the world was dull and sticky and unkind. His future was behind him and he had nothing to look forward to but the past.

Goodbye Gloucester, goodbye Stroud. He was at least following a literary example. When Laurie Lee had walked out on his midsummer's morning he had had a guitar and the blessings of his family to accompany him. Adrian had a paperback copy of Anouilh's Antigone, which he had intended to read at lunchtime as some kind of feeble preparation for the afternoon's French literature paper, and fifteen pounds from his mother's handbag.

In the end he got a lift from a lorry driver who was going all the way to Stanmore.

'I can drop you somewhere on the North Circular, if you like.'

Thanks.'

North Circular ... North Circular. It was some kind of road, wasn't it?

'Er . . . is the North Circular anywhere near Highgate?'

'You can catch a bus from Golder's Green pretty quick.'

Bollocks lived in Highgate. He might be able to cadge a couple of nights there while he sorted himself out.

'I'm Jack, by the way,' said the driver.

'Er . . . Bullock, Hugo Bullock.'

'Bullock? That's a funny one.'

'I once met a girl called Jane Heffer. We should've got married.'

'Yeah? What went wrong?'

'No, I mean her being called Heffer. It's the female of bullock.'

'Oh right, right.'

They drove on in silence. Adrian offered Jack a cigarette.

'No thanks, mate. Trying to give 'em up. Don't do you any good in this game.'

'No, I suppose not.'

'So, what, you running away then, are you?'

'Running away?'

'Yeah. How old are you?'

'Eighteen.'

'Get away!'

'Well, I will be.'

Bullock's mother stood in the doorway and eyed him suspiciously. He supposed his hair was rather long.

'I'm a friend of William's. From school.'

'He's in Australia. It's his year off before going to Oxford.'

'Oh yes, of course. I just . . . wondered, you know. Not to worry. Happened to be passing.'

'I'll tell him you called if he rings. Are you staying in London?'

'Yes, in Piccadilly.'

'Piccadilly?'

What was wrong with that?

'Well, you know, more just off.'

The pin-ball machines in Piccadilly had more sensitive tilt mechanisms than those he was used to in Gloucester, and he wasn't getting many replays. At this rate he wouldn't be able to afford to carry on for more than an hour.

A man in a blue suit came down behind him and put down a fifty-pence piece.

'It's yours,' said Adrian, smacking the flipper buttons in frustration as his last silver ball rolled out of play. 'That was my last. I just can't seem to get the hang of the bloody thing.'

'No, no, no,' said the man in the blue suit, 'the fifty is for you. Have another go.'

Adrian turned in surprise.

'Well, that's awfully kind . . . are you sure?'