The Liar

The Liar

The Liar

STEPHEN FRY

Copyright © 1991 Stephen Fry

Published by

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fry, Stephen, 1957-

The liar / Stephen Fry.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-56947-012-1

I. Title.

PR6056.R88L5 1993

823' .914—dc2 0 92-4040-7

CIP

The author and publishers are grateful to the

following for permission to use copyright material:

Shakespeare and Tragedy. © John Bayley

quoted by kind permission of Routledge Ltd

"Maria" (Richard Rogers / Oscar Hammerstein II)

© 1959, Williamson Music International, USA

Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London wc2h oea

'Puppy Love' composed by Paul Anka

and reproduced by kind permission of M.A.M. Music Publishing Ltd

'I Don't Know How to Love Him' by Tim Rice

reproduced by kind permission of MCA Music Ltd

Manufactured in the

United States

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

To

(insert full name here)

Contents

One

I

II

III

Two

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Three

I

II

III

IV

Four

I

II

III

IV

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

I

II

Nine

I

II

III

Ten

Eleven

I

II

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Acknowledgements

Not one word of the following is true

A Fame T-shirt stopped outside the house where Mozart was bom. He looked up at the building and his eyes shone. He stood quite still, gazing upwards and glowing with adoration as a party of Bleached Denims and Fluorescent Bermuda Shorts pushed past him and went in. Then he shook his head, dug into his hip pocket and moved forwards. A thin high voice behind him caused him to stop mid-stride.

''Have you ever contemplated, Adrian, the phenomenon of springs?''

'Coils, you mean?'

'Not coils, Adrian, no. Coils not. Think springs of water. Think wells and spas and sources. Well-springs in the widest and loveliest sense. Jerusalem, for instance, is a spring of religiosity. One small town in the desert, but the source of the world's three most powerful faiths. It is the capital of Judaism, the scene of Christ's crucifixion and the place from which Mohammed ascended into heaven. Religion seems to bubble from its sands.'

The Fame T-shirt smiled to himself and walked into the building.

A Tweed Jacket and a Blue Button-down Shirt of Oxford Cotton stopped in front of the steps. Now it was their turn to stare reverently upwards as the tide of human traffic streamed past them along the Getreidegasse.

'Take Salzburg. By no means the chief city of Austria, but a Jerusalem to any music lover. Haydn, Schubert and . . . oh dear me yes, here we are . . . and Mozart.'

'There's a theory that special lines criss-cross the earth and that where they coincide strange things happen,' said the Oxford Cotton Button-down Shirt. 'Ley-lines, I think they call them.'

'You'll think I'm grinding my axe,' said the Jacket, 'but I should say that it is the German language that is responsible.'

'Shall we go up?'

'By all means.' The pair moved into the interior shadows of the house.

You see,' continued the Tweed, 'all the qualities of ironic abstraction that the language could not articulate found expression in their music. '

'I had never thought of Haydn as ironic.'

'It is of course quite possible that my theory is hopelessly wrong. Pay the nice Frdulein, Adrian.'

In a second-storey chamber where little Wolfgang had romped, whose walls he had covered with precocious arithmetic and whose rafters he had made tremble with infant minuets, the Fame T-shirt examined the display cases.

The ivory and tortoise-shell combs that once had smoothed the ruffled ringlets of the young genius appeared not to interest the T-shirt at all, nor the letters and laundry-lists, nor the child-size violins and violas. His attention was entirely taken up by the models of stage designs which were set into the wall in glass boxes all round the room.

One box in particular seemed to fascinate him. He stared at it with intensity and suspicion as if half expecting the little papier mâché figures inside to burst through the glass and punch him on the nose. He appeared to be oblivious of the group of Bleached Denims and Acid-coloured Shorts that pressed around him, laughing and joking in a language he didn't understand.

The model that so particularly engrossed him was of a banqueting hall in which stood a dining table heaped high with food. Two little men had been placed by the table, one crouched in terror, the other standing with hand on hip, in an attitude of cavalier contempt. Both figures looked upstage at the model of a white statue which pointed down at them with the accusing finger of an Italian traffic policeman or wartime recruiting poster.

The Tweed Jacket and the Blue Button-down had just entered the room.

'You start at that end, Adrian, and well meet in the middle. '

The Jacket watched the Oxford Cotton move to the other end of the room and then approached the cabinet, whose glass was still being misted by the intense scrutiny of the Fame T-shirt.

'Don Giovanni,' said the Tweed coming up behind him, 'a cenar teco m'invitasti, e son venuto. Don Giovanni, you invited me to dinner, and here I am.'

The T-shirt still stared into the glass. "Non si pasce di cibo mortale, Chi si pasce di cibo celeste,' he whispered. 'He who dines on heavenly food has no need of mortal sustenance.'

'I believe you have something for me,' said the Tweed.

'Goldener Hirsch, name of Emburey. Small package.'

'Emburey? Middlesex and England? I had no idea you were interested in cricket.'

'I get it out from a newspaper. It looked a very English name.'

'And so it is. Goodbye.'

The Tweed moved on and joined the Blue Shirt, who had fallen into conversation with a Frenchwoman.

'I was telling this lady,' said the Shirt, 'that I thought the design for The Magic Flute over there was by David Hockney.'

'Certainly so,' said the Tweed. 'Hockney seems to me to paint in two styles. Wild and natural or cold and clinical. I seem to remember remarking that there are two kinds of Hockney. Field Hockney and Ice Hockney.'

'Please?'

'It's a joke,' explained the Blue Shirt.

'Ah.'

The Tweed was examining an exhibit.

'This figure here must be the Queen of the Night, surely.'

'She is a character altogether of the most extraordinary, I believe,' said the Frenchwoman. 'Her music - my God, how but that it is divine. I am myself singer and to play the Queen is the dearest dream of my bosom.'

'It's certainly one hell of a part,' said the Oxford Cotton. 'Pretty difficult I'd have thought. What's that incredibly high note she has to reach? It's a top C, isn't it?'

The Frenchwoman's answer to this question startled not just the Blue Button-down Shirt and his companion, but the whole room. For she stared at the Blue Shirt, her eyes round with fright, opened her mouth wide and let go a piercing soprano note of a purity and passion that she was never to repeat in the whole of her subsequent, and distinguished, operatic career.

'Good lord,' said the Tweed, 'is it really that high? As I remember it'

'Donald!' said the Button-down Shirt. 'Look!'

The Tweed Jacket turned and saw the cause of the scream and the cause of other, less technically proficient, screams that were starting up everywhere.

In the middle of the room stood a man in a Fame T-shirt, twitching and leaping like a puppet.

It was not the crudity of such a dance in such a place that had set everyone off, it was the sight and sound of the blood that creamed and frothed from his throat. The man seemed, as he hopped and stamped about, to be trying to stem the flow by squeezing at his neck with both hands, but the very pressure of the blood as it pumped outwards made such a task impossible.

Time stands still at such moments.

Those who retold the scene afterwards to friends, to psychiatrists, to priests, to the press, all spoke of the noise. To some it was a rattling gargle, to others a bubbling croak: the old man in the tweed jacket and his young companion agreed that they could never hear again the sound of a cappuccino machine without being forced to think of that awful death wheeze.

All remembered the staggering quantity of the blood, the force of it pushing through the man's fingers. All remembered the chorus of bass voices upraised in panic as helping hands braved the red shower and leapt forward to ease the jerking figure to the floor. All recalled how nothing could staunch the ferocious jetting of the fountain that gushed from the mans neck and quenched the words Tm Going to Live For Ever' on his T-shirt with a dark stain. All remarked on how long it seemed to take him to die.

But only one of them remembered seeing an enormously fat man with a small head and lank hair leave the room, letting a knife leap from his hand like a live fish as he went.

Only one man saw that, and he kept it to himself. He grabbed his companions hand and led him from the room.

'Come, Adrian. I think we should be otherwhere.'

One

I

Adrian checked the orchid at his buttonhole, inspected the spats at his feet, gave the lavender gloves a twitch, smoothed down his waistcoat, tucked the ebony Malacca-cane under his arm, swallowed twice and pushed wide the changing-room door.

'Ah, my dears,' he cried. 'Congratulations! Congratulations to you all! A triumph, an absolute triumph!'

'Well, what the fuck's he wearing now?' they snorted from the steamy end of the room.

'You're an arse and an idiot, Healey.'

Burkiss threw a flannel onto the shiny top hat. Adrian reached up and took it between forefinger and thumb.

'If there is the slightest possibility, Burkiss, that this flannel has absorbed any of the juices that leak from within you, that it has mopped up a single droplet of your revolting pubescent greases, that it has tickled and frotted even one of the hideously mired corners of your disgusting body then I shall have a spasm. I'm sorry but I shall.'

In spite of himself, Cartwright smiled. He moved further along the bench and turned his back, but he smiled.

'Now, girls,' continued Healey, 'you're very high-spirited and that's as it should be but I won't have you getting out of hand. I just looked in to applaud a simply marvellous show and to tell you that you are certainly the loveliest chorus in town and that I intend to stand you all dinner at the Embassy one by one over the course of what I know will be a long and successful run.'

'I mean, what kind of coat is that?'

'It is called an astrakhan and I am sure you agree that it is absolutely the ratherest thing. You will observe it fits my sumptuous frame as snugly as if it were made for me . . . just as you do, you delicious Hopkinson.'

'Oh shut up.'

'Your whole body goes quite pink when you are flattered, like a small pig, it is utterly, utterly fetching.'

Adrian saw Cartwright turn away and face his locker, a locker to which Adrian had the key. The boy seemed now to be concentrating on pulling on his socks. Adrian took half a second to take a mental snapshot of the scrummy toes and heavenly ankle being sheathed by those lucky, lucky socks, a snapshot he could develop and pore over later with all the others that he had pasted into the private album of his memory.

Cartwright wondered why Healey sometimes stared at him like that. He could sense it when he did, even when he couldn't see, he could feel those cool eyes surveying him with pity and contempt for a younger boy who didn't have so sharp a tongue, so acid a wit as almighty Healey. But there were others dumber than he was, why should Healey single him out for special treatment?

Setting a spatted foot on the bench that ran down the middle of the changing-room with elegant disdain, Adrian began to flip through a pile of Y-fronts and rugger shorts with his cane.

'I was particularly taken,' he said, 'with that number in the first act when you and the girls from Marlborough stood in a line and jumped up at that funny leather ball. It was too utterly utter for words. Lord how I laughed when you let the Marlborough chorus run off with it . . . dear me, this belongs to someone who doesn't appear to know how to wipe his bottom. Is there a name-tape? Madison, you really should pay more attention to your personal hygiene, you know. Two sheets of lavatory paper is all it takes. One to wipe and one to polish. Oh, how you skipped after that Marlborough pack, you blissful creatures! But they wouldn't give you the ball, would they? They kept banging it on the ground and kicking it over your lovely goalpost.'

'It was the referee,' said Gooderson. 'He had it in for us.'

'Well whatever, Gooderson darling, the fact is that after this wonderful matinee performance there is no doubt that you are all going to become simply the toast of the town. Certain unscrupulous men may call upon you here in your dressing-room. They will lavish you with flowers, with compliments, with phials of Hungary water and methuselahs of the costliest champagne. You must be wary of such men, my hearts, they are not to be trusted.'

'What, what will they do to us?'

'They will take the tender flower of your innocence, Jarvis, and they will bruise it.'

'Will it hurt?'

'Not if it is prepared beforehand. If you come to my study this evening I will ready you for the process with a soothing unguent of my own invention. Wear something green, you should always wear green, Jarvis.'

'Ooh, can I come top?' said Rundell, who was by way of being the Tart of the House.

'And me!' squeaked Harman.

'All are welcome.'

The voice of Robert Bennett-Jones bellowed from the showers. 'Just shut up and get bloody dressed.'

'You're invited too, R.B.-J., didn't I make that clear?'

Bennett-Jones, hairy and squat, came out of the shower and stumped up to Adrian.

Cartwright dropped his rugger shirt into the laundry bin and left the changing-room, trailing his duffle-bag along the ground. As the doors flapped behind him he heard Bennett-Jones's harsh baritone.

'You are disgusting, Healey, you know that?'

He should stay to hear Healey's magnificent put-down, but what was the point? They said that when Healey arrived he had got the highest ever marks in a scholarship entrance. Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was so clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed.

'It's memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mother of the Muses ... at least that's what thingummy said.'

'Who?'

'You know, what's his name, Greek poet chap. Wrote the Theogony . . . what was he called? Begins with an "H"'

'Homer?'

'No, dear. Not Homer, the other one. No, it's gone. Anyway. Memory, that's the key.'

Cartwright went into the House library and took down the first volume of the Chamber's Encyclopaedia. He had still only got as far as Bismarck.

In the changing-room, Bennett Jones snarled into Adrian's face.

'Just plain fucking disgusting.'

The others, some of whom had been peacocking about the room, stroking their towels round their napes like boas, staggered to guilty halts.

'You're a fucking queer and you're turning the whole House into fucking queers.'

'Queer am I?' said Adrian. 'They called Oscar Wilde a queer, they called Michelangelo a queer, they called Tchaikovsky a - '

'And they were queers,' said Sargent, another prefect.

'Well, yes, there is that,' conceded Adrian, 'my argument rather falls down there I grant you, but what I say is this, my door is always open to you, R.B.-J., and to you as well, Sargent, naturally, and if either of you has any problems in coming to terms with your sexuality you mustn't hesitate to visit me and talk about it.'

'Oh for God's sake '

'We can thrash it out together. Personally I think it's your habit of dressing up in shorts and prancing about on a field and this bizarre obsession with putting your arms round the other members of the scrum and forcing your head between the bottoms of the back row that is at the root of this insane fixation. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.'

'Let's fucking throw him out,' said Sargent, advancing.

'Now I warn you,' said Adrian, 'if either of you touches me . . .'

'Yes?' sneered Bennett-Jones. 'What'll you do?'

'I shall sustain a massive erection, that's what, and I shan't be answerable for the consequences. Some kind of ejaculation is almost bound to ensue and if either of you were to become pregnant I should never forgive myself.'

This was just enough to bring the others down onto his side and have the prefects laughed into retreat.

'Well, my lovelies, I shall have to leave you now. I am promised to the Princes Despina this evening. A little baccarat after supper is my guess. She means to win back the Kurzenauer Emeralds. Jarvis, you have a stiffy, this is most unpleasant, someone throw some cold water over him. Goonight, Lou. Goonight, May. Goonight. Ta ta. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.'

English boarding schools have much to recommend them. If boys are going to be adolescent, and science has failed to come up with a way of stopping them, then much better to herd them together and let them get on with it in private. Six hundred suits of skin oozing with pustules, six hundred scalps weeping oil, twelve hundred armpits shooting out hair, twelve hundred inner thighs exploding with fungus and six hundred minds filling themselves with suicidal drivel: the world is best protected from this.

For the good of society, therefore, Adrian Healey, like many Healeys before him, had been sent to a prep school at the age of seven, had proceeded to his public school at twelve and now, fifteen years old, he stood trembling with pubertal confusion on the brink of life. There was little to admire. The ravages of puberty had attacked his mind more than his skin, which was some kind of a blessing. From time to time a large, yellow-crowned spot would pop from his forehead, or a blackhead worm its way from the sweaty shelter of the side of his nose, but generally the complexion was good enough not to betray the hormonal crisis and mental havoc that boiled within and the eyes were wide and sensual enough for him to be thought attractive. Too smart at exam passing to be kept out of the Sixth Form, too disrespectful and dishonourable to be a prefect, he had read and absorbed more than he could understand, so he lived by pastiche and pretence.

His constipation, furred tongue and foul-smelling feet were no more than conventional school attributes, passed down from generation to generation, like slang and sadism. Adrian might have been unorthodox, but he was not so blind to the proper decencies as to cultivate smooth-flowing bowels or healthy feet. His good nature prevented him from discovering the pleasures of bullying and his cowardice allowed him to ignore it in others.

The great advantage of English public school life lies of course in the quality of tutelage it provides. Adrian had received a decent and broad English education in the area of his loins. Not all the credit for this could go to his schoolmasters, although a few of them had not been afraid to give practical guidance and instruction of a kind which would gladden the heart of those who believe that the modern teacher is slipshod in his approach to the Whole Boy. Mostly he had been given space to make his own way and learn his own lessons of the flesh. He had quickly happened upon the truth which many lonely contemporaries would never discover, the truth that everybody, simply everybody, was panting for it and could, with patience, be shown that they were panting for it. So Adrian grabbed what was to hand and had the time of his life genitally - focusing exclusively on his own gender of course, for this was 1973 and girls had not yet been invented.

His love life, however, was less happy. Earlier that afternoon he had worshipped at his altar in a private welter of misery that his public swagger never hinted at.

It had been upstairs, in the Long Dorm. The room was empty, the floorboards squeaking more faintly than usual beneath his tread. Cartwright's cubicle had its curtain drawn. The distant moan of whistles and cheers on the Upper Games Field and the nearer bang of a downstairs door slamming shut had unsettled him. They were over-familiar, with a bogus, echoing quality, a staginess that put him on his guard. The whole school knew he was here. They knew he liked to creep about the House alone. They were watching, he was convinced of it. The background shouts of rugger and hockey weren't real, they were part of a taped soundtrack played to deceive him. He was walking into a trap. It had always been a trap. No one had ever believed in him. They signed him off games and let him think that he had the House to himself. But they knew, they had always known. Tom, Bullock, Hey don-Bay ley, even Cart-wright. Especially Cartwright. They watched and they waited. They all knew and they all bided their time until the moment they had chosen for his exposure and disgrace.

Let them watch, let them know. Here was Cartwright's bed and under the pillow, here, yes, here the pyjamas. Soft brushed cotton, like Cartwright's soft brushed hair and a smell, a smell that was Cartwright to the last molecule. There was even a single gold hair shining on the collar, and there, just down there, a new aroma, an aroma, an essence that rippled outwards from the centre of the whole Cartwrightness of Cartwright.

For Adrian other people did not exist except as extras, as bit-players in the film of his life. No one but he had noted the splendour and agony of existence, no one else was truly or fully alive. He alone gasped at dew trapped in cobwebs, at spring buds squeaking into life. Afternoon light bouncing like a yo-yo in a stream of spittle dropping from a cow's lips, the slum-wallpaper peel of bark on birches, the mash of wet leaves pulped into pavements, they grew and burst only in him. Only he knew what it was to love.

Haaaaaaah ... if they really were watching then now was the time to pull back the curtain and jeer, now was the time to howl contempt.

But nothing. No yells, no sneers, no sound at all to burst the swollen calm of the afternoon.

Adrian trembled as he stood and did himself up. It was an illusion. Of course it was an illusion. No one watched, no one judged, no one pointed or whispered. Who were they, after all? Low-browed, scarlet-naped rugger-buggers with no more grace and vision than a jockstrap.

Sighing, he had moved to his own cubicle and laid out the astrakhan coat and top hat.

If you can't join them, he thought, beat them.

He had fallen in love with Hugo Alexander Timothy Cartwright the moment he laid eyes on him, when, as one of a string of five new arrivals, the boy had trickled into evening hall the first night of Adrian's second year.

Hey don-Bay ley nudged him.

'What do you reckon, Healey? Lush, or what?'

For once Adrian had remained silent. Something was terribly wrong.

It had taken him two painful terms to identify the symptoms. He looked them up in all the major textbooks. There was no doubt about it. All the authorities concurred: Shakespeare, Tennyson, Ovid, Keats, Georgette Heyer, Milton, they were of one opinion. It was love. The Big One.

Cartwright of the sapphire eyes and golden hair, Cartwright of the Limbs and Lips: he was Petrarch's Laura, Milton's Lycidas, Catullus's Lesbia, Tennyson's Hallam, Shakespeare's fair boy and dark lady, the moon's Endymion. Cartwright was Garbo's salary, the National Gallery, he was cellophane: he was the tender trap, the blank unholy surprise of it all and the bright golden haze on the meadow: he was honey-honey, sugar-sugar, chirpy chirpy cheep-cheep and his baby-love: the voice of the turtle could be heard in the land, there were angels dining at the Ritz and a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

Adrian had managed to coax Cartwright into an amusing half-hour in the House lavs two terms previously, but he had never doubted he could get the trousers down: that wasn't it. He wanted something more from him than the few spasms of pleasure that the limited activities of rubbing and licking and heaving and pushing could offer.

He wasn't sure what the thing was that he yearned for, but one thing he did know. It was less acceptable to love, to ache for eternal companionship, than it was to bounce and slurp and gasp behind the fives courts. Love was Adrian's guilty secret, sex his public pride.

He closed the changing-room door and fanned himself with the lavender gloves. It had been a close thing. Too close. The greater the lengths he went to to be liked, the more enemies he gathered on the way. If he fell, Bennett-Jones and others would be there to kick him.. One thing was for certain, the Queer Pose was running dry and a new one was going to have to be dreamt up or there would be Trouble.

A gang of fags was mobbing about by the noticeboards. They fell silent as he approached. He patted one of them on the head.

'Pretty children,' he sighed, digging into his waistcoat pocket and pulling out a handful of change. 'Tonight you shall eat.'

Scattering the coins at their feet, he moved on.

Mad, he said to himself as he approached his study door. I think I must be mad.

Tom was there, in a yoga position, biting his toe-nails and listening to Aqualung. Adrian sank into a chair and removed his hat.

'Tom,' he said, 'you are looking at a crushed violet, a spent egg, a squeezed tube.'

'I'm looking at a git,' said Tom. 'What's with the coat?'

'You're right,' said Adrian, 'I am stupid today. And every day. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Horrid, horrid, horrid. Morbid, morbid, morbid. Torrid, torpid, turbid. Everying in my life ends in id. Get it?'

'Get what?'

'Id. It's Freud. You know.'

'Oh. Right. Yeah. Id.'

'Idealistic idiot, idiosyncratic idler. Everything begins in id as well.'

'Everything begins with "I", you mean. Which is ego,' said Tom, placing an ankle behind his ear, 'not id.'

'Well of course it's very easy to be clever. If you could just help me out of this coat, I'm beginning to sweat.'

'Sorry,' said Tom. 'I'm stuck.'

'Are you serious?'

'No.'

Adrian fought his way out of his costume and into his uniform while Tom reverted to a half-lotus and recounted his day.

'Went into town and bought a couple of LPs this afternoon.'

'Don't tell me,' said Adrian, 'let me guess . . . Parsifal and Lark Ascending}'

'Atom Heart Mother and Salty Dog.'

'Close.'

Tom lit a cigarette.

'You know what pisses me off about this place?'

'The cuisine? The distressingly plain uniforms?'

'I bumped into Rosengard in the High Street and he asked me why I wasn't watching the match. I mean what?'

'You should've asked him why he wasn't.'

'I said I was just on my way.'

'Rebel.'

'I like to keep my nose clean.'

'Well, " I'm just on my way" isn't a very stylish handkerchief, is it? You could have said that the match was too exciting and that your nervous system simply couldn't bear any more suspense.'

'Well I didn't. I came back here, had a wank and finished that book.'

'The Naked Lunch?'

'Yeah.'

'What did you reckon?'

'Crap.'

'You're just saying that because you didn't understand it,' said Adrian.

'I'm just saying that because I did understand it,' said Tom. 'Any road up, we'd better start making some toast. I invited Bullock and Sampson over.'

'Oh, what?'

'We owe them a study tea.'

'You know I hate intellectuals.'

'You mean you hate people who are cleverer than you are.'

'Yes. I suppose that's why I like you so much, Tom.'

Tom gave him a pained, constipated stare.

'I'll boil the kettle,' he said.

Cartwright looked up from the Chamber's Encyclopaedia and mouthed, 'Otto Von Bismarck born in . . . in 1815, the year of Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna. Founder of modern Germany . . .'

In his line of sight were hundreds of books, the only one of which he could remember reading was To Kill a Mockingbird in the company of the rest of his fifth form at prep school. Such a great many books and yet this was still only the House library. The School library had thousands and thousands more and university libraries . . . Time was so short and his memory so feeble. What was it Healey had said? Memory is the mother of the Muses.

Cartwright levered Malthus to Nantucket from off the shelf and looked up Muses. There were nine of them and they were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. If Healey was right then Mnemosyne must mean memory.

Of course! The English word 'mnemonic', something that reminds you of something. Mnemonic must be derived from Mnemosyne. Or the other way around. Cartwright made a note in his rough-book.

According to the encyclopaedia, most of what was known of the Muses came down from the writings of Hesiod, particularly this Theogony. That must have been the poet Healey was referring to, Hesiod. But how did Healey know all that? He never seemed to be reading, at least no more than anyone else. Cartwright would never catch up with him. It just wasn't bloody fair.

He wrote down the names of the Muses and returned with a sigh to Bismarck. One day he would get right to the end, to zythum. Not that he needed to. He had peeped ahead and seen that it was a kind of ancient Egyptian beer, much recommended by Diodorus Siculus - whoever he was.

Everyone had been rather surprised the day Adrian announced that he was going to share a study with Tom.

'Thompson?' Heydon-Bayley had shrieked. 'But he's a complete dildo, surely?'

'I like him,' said Adrian, 'he's unusual.'

'Graceless, you mean. Wooden.'

Certainly there was nothing obviously appetising about Tom's appearance or manner, and he remained one of the few boys of his year with whom Adrian had never made the beast with two backs, or rather with whom he had never made the beast with one back and an interestingly shaped middle, but over the last year, more people had come to see that there was something arresting about Tom. He wasn't clever, but he worked hard and had set himself to read a great deal, in order, Adrian assumed, to acquire some of Adrian's dash and sparkle. Tom always went his own way with his own ideas. He managed to get away with the longest hair in the House and the most public nicotine habit in the school, somehow without ever drawing attention to himself. It was as if he grew his hair long and smoked cigarettes because he liked to, not because he liked being seen to. This was dangerously subversive.

Freda, the German undermatron, once discovered him sunbathing nude in the spinney.

'Thompson,' she had cried in outrage, 'you cannot be lying about naked!'

'Sorry, Matron, you're right,' Tom murmured, and he had reached out a hand arid put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses. 'Don't know what I was thinking of.'

Adrian felt that it was he who had brought Tom into notice and popularity, that Tom was his own special creation. The silent spotty gink of the first year had been transformed into someone admired and imitated and Adrian wasn't sure how much he liked it.

He liked Tom all right. He was the only person he had ever spoken to about his love for Cartwright and Tom had the decency not to be interested or sympathetic enough to quench the pure holy flame of Adrian's passion with sympathy or advice. Sampson and Bullock he could do without, however. Especially Sampson, who was too much of a grammar-school-type swot ever to be quite the thing. Not an ideal tea-companion at all.

Tea was a very special institution, revolving as it did around the ceremony and worship of Toast. In a place where alcohol, tobacco and drugs were forbidden, it was essential that something should take their place as a powerful and public totem of virility and cool. Toast, for reasons lost in time, was the substance chosen. Its name was dropped on every possible occasion, usually pronounced, in awful public school accents, 'taste'.

'I was just having some toast, when Burton and Hopwood came round . . .'

'Harman's not a bad fag actually. He makes really majorly good toast . . .'

'Yeah, you should come round to my study, maybe, we'll get some toast going . . .'

'God, I can hardly move. I've just completely overdone it on the toast . . .'

Adrian had been looking forward to toasting up with Tom in private and talking about Cartwright.

'Oh, Christ,' he said, clearing a space on his desk for the teapot. 'Oh, Christly Christ.'

'Problem?'

'I shall know no peace other than being kissed by him,' moaned Adrian.

'That a fact?'

'It is a fact, and I'll tell you what else is a fact. It's a fact that he is wearing his blue Shetland turtle-neck today. Even as we speak his body is moving inside it. Warm and quick. It's more than flesh and blood can stand.'

'Have a cold shower, then,' said Tom.

Adrian banged down the teapot and grabbed Tom by the shoulder.

'Cold shower?' he shouted. 'Jessica Christ, man, I'm talking about love! You know what it does to me? It shrinks my stomach, doesn't it, Tom? It pickles my guts, yeah. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent, supremely competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michelangelo, moulding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers - all three of them. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not the school any longer - it's the Nile, Tom, the Nile - and down it floats the barge of Cleopatra.'

'Not bad,' said Tom, 'not bad at all. Your own?'

'Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. But he could have been talking about Cartwright.'

'But he was talking about alcohol,' said Tom, 'which should tell you a lot.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning shut up and get buttering.'

'I shall put the Liebestod on the stereo, that's what I shall do, you horrid beastly man,' said Adrian, 'and still my beating heart with concord of sweet sounds. But quick, man! - I hear a hansom drawing up outside! And here, Watson, unless I am very much mistaken, is our client now upon the stair. Come in!'

Sampson appeared at the doorway, blinking through his spectacles, followed by Bullock who tossed a jar at Tom.

'Hi. I brought some lemon curd.'

'Lemon curd!' said Adrian. 'And what was I saying only this minute, Tom?' "If only we had some lemon curd for our guests." You're a mind-reader, Bollocks.'

'Some toast over there,' said Tom.

'Thanks, Thompson,' said Sampson, helping himself. 'Good-erson tells me you were not unadjacent to mobbing up R.B.-J. and Sargent in the changing-rooms, Healey.'

'Dame Rumour outstrides me yet again.'

Not unadjacent? Jesus...

Bullock slapped Tom on the back.

'Hey, Tommo!' he said. 'I see you've got Atom Heart Mother at last. What do you reckon? Far outsville or far insville?'

While Tom and Bullock talked about Pink Floyd, Sampson told Adrian why he thought Mahler was in actual fact wilder, in the sense of more controlled, than any rock group.

'That's an interesting point,' said Adrian, 'in the sense of not being interesting at all.'

When the tea and toast were finished, Bullock stood up and cleared his throat.

'I think I should announce my plan now, Sam.'

'Definitely,' said Sampson.

'What ho!' said Adrian, getting up to shut the door. 'Treasons, stratagems and spoils.'

'It's like this,' said Bullock. 'My brother, I don't know if you know, is at Radley, on account of my parents thinking it a bad idea to have us both at the same school.'

'On account of your being twins?' said Adrian.

'Right, on account of my mother OD-ing on fertility drugs. Any old way, he wrote to me last week telling me about an incredible bitch of a row blazing there on account of someone having been and gone and produced an unofficial magazine called Raddled, full of obscene libellous Oz-like filth. And what I thought, what Sammy and I thought, was - why not?'

'Why not what?' said Tom.

'Why not do the same thing here?'

'You mean an underground magazine?'

'Yup.'

Tom opened and shut his mouth. Sampson smirked.

'Jesus suffering fuck,' said Adrian. 'It's not half a thought.'

'Face it, it's a wow.'

'These guys,' said Tom, 'the ones who put out this magazine at Radley. What happened to them?'

Sampson polished his spectacles with the end of his tie.

'Ah, now this is why we must proceed with great circumspection. They were both, hum, "put out" themselves. "Booted out" I believe is the technical phrase.'

'That means it's got to be a secret,' said Bullock. 'We write it in the holidays. You send me the material, typed onto stencils. I get it duplicated on my dad's office Gestetner, bring it back at the beginning of next term, we find a way of distributing it secretly round all the Houses.'

'All a bit Colditz, isn't it?' said Tom.

'No, no!' said Adrian. 'Don't you listen to Thompson, he's an old cynicky-boots. I'm in, Bollocks. I'm in for definite. What sort of material do you want?'

'Oh you know,' said Bullock, 'seditious, anti-public school. That kind of thing. Something to shake them up a bit.'

'I'm planning a sort of fabliau comparing this place with a fascist state,' said Sampson, 'sort of Animal Farm meets Arturo Ui. . .'

'Stop it, Sammy, I'm wet at the very thought,' said Adrian. He looked across at Tom.

'What do you reckon?'

'Yeah, why not? Sounds a laugh.'

'And remember,' said Bullock, 'not a word to anyone.'

'Our lips are sealed,' said Adrian. Lips. Sealed. Dangerous Words. Not five minutes could pass without him thinking of Cartwright.

Bullock took a tobacco tin out of his pocket and looked around the room.

'Now,' he said, 'if someone would close the curtains and light a joss-stick, I have here for your delight some twenty-four-carat black Nepalese cannabis resin which should be smoked immediately on account of it being seriously good shit.'

II

Adrian threw himself along the corridor towards Biffen's form-room. Dr Meddlar, one of the school chaplains, stopped him.

'Late, Healey.'

'Really, sir? So am I.'

Meddlar took him by the shoulders. 'You're riding for a fall, Healey, you know that? There are hedges and ditches ahead and you are on course for an almighty cropper.'

'Sir.'

'And I shall be cheering and laughing as you tumble,' said Meddlar, his spectacles flashing.

'That's just the warm-hearted Christian in you, sir.'

'Listen to me!' spat Meddlar. 'You think you're very clever, don't you? Well let me tell you that this school has no room for creatures like you.'

'Why are you saying this to me, sir?'

'Because if you don't learn to live with others, if you don't conform, your life is going to be one long miserable hell.'

'Will that give you satisfaction, sir? Will that please you?'

Meddlar stared at him and gave a hollow little laugh. 'What , gives you the right to talk to me like that, boy? What on earth do you think gives you the right?'

Adrian was furious to find that there were tears springing to his eyes. 'God gives me the right, sir, because God loves me. And God won't let me be judged by a f-f-fascist - hypocrite -bastard like you!' He squirmed away from Meddlar's grasp and ran on down the corridor. 'Bastard,' he tried to shout, but the words choked in his throat. 'Fucking bloody bastard.'

Meddlar laughed after him. 'You're evil, Healey, quite evil.'

Adrian ran on and out into the quad. Everyone was in morning school. The colonnade was empty, the Old School Room, the library, the headmaster's house, the Founder's lawn, all deserted. This again was Adrian's home, an empty world. He imagined the whole school with noses pressed up against their form-room windows staring out at him as he ran through the West Quad. Prefects with walkie-talkies striding down the corridor, 'This is Blue Seven. Subject proceeding along past the Cavendish library towards the Music School. Over.'

'Blue Seven this is Meddlar. Interview went according to plan, subject now unstable and in tears. Red Three will continue surveillance in the Music School. Over and out.'

Either they've got a life and I'm imaginary, thought Adrian, or I've got a life and they're imaginary.

He'd read all the books, he knew he was really the same as anyone else. But who else had snakes wrestling in their stomachs like this? Who was running beside him with the same desperation? Who else would remember this moment and every moment like it to the last day of their lives? No one. They were all at their desks thinking of rugger and lunch. He was different and alone.

The ground floor of the Music School was filled with little practice-rooms. As Adrian stumbled along the passageway he could hear lessons in progress. A cello pushed a protesting Saint-Saens swan along the water. A trumpet further along farted out 'Thine be the glory'. And there, third from the end, Adrian saw through the glass panel, was Cartwright, making quite a decent fist of a Beethoven minuet.

Fate was always doing this. There were six hundred boys in the school and although Adrian went out of his way to intercept Cartwright and to engineer apparently accidental meetings - he had learnt his time table off by heart - he was sure that he bumped into him by genuine chance more often than was natural.

Cartwright appeared to be alone in the practice-room. Adrian pushed open the door and went in.

'Hi,' he said, 'don't stop, it's good.'

'Oh, it's terrible really,' said Cartwright, 'I can't get the left hand working smoothly.'

'That's not what I've heard,' said Adrian and immediately wanted to bite off his tongue.

Here he was, alone in a room with Cartwright, whose hair was even now leaping with light from the sunshine that poured in through the window, Cartwright whom he loved with his whole life and being and all he could find to say was 'That's not what I've heard.' Jesus, what was the matter with him? He might just as well have put on an Eric Morecambe voice, shouted 'There's no answer to that' and slapped Cartwright's cheeks.

'Um, official lesson?' he said.

'Well, I've got my Grade Three exam in half an hour, so this is a practice. It lets me off double maths at least.'

'Lucky you.'

Lucky you? Oh, pure Oscar Wilde.

'Well, I'd better let you get on with it then, hadn't I?'

Great, Adrian, brilliant. Magisterial. 'I'd better let you get on with it then, hadn't I?' Change one syllable and the whole delicate epigram collapses.

'Right,' said Cartwright and turned back to his music.

'Cheerio, then. G'luck!'

'Bye.'

Adrian closed the door.

Oh God, Oh Godly God.

He wound a fraught trail back to the form-rooms. Thank God it was only Biffen.

'You're extraordinarily late, Healey.'

'Well, sir,' said Adrian, sitting at his desk, 'the way I look at it, better extraordinarily late than extraordinarily never.'

'Perhaps you'd like to tell me what kept you?'

'Not really, sir.'

Something of a gasp ran round the form-room. This was going it a big strong, even for Healey.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Well, not in front of the whole form, sir. It's rather personal.'

'Oh I see. I see,' said Biffen. 'Well, in that case, you had better tell me afterwards.'

'Sir.'

Nothing like getting a schoolmaster's curiosity glands juicing.

Adrian looked out of the window.

'Oh to be in Cartwright, now that March is here.'

Any minute now, some lucky examiner was going to be watching a lovely little frown furrow Cartwright's brow as he skipped through his minuet. Watching the woollen sleeve of his winter jacket ride up his arms.

'Whenas in wool my Cartwright goes, Then, then methinks how sweetly flows, That liquefaction of his clothes.'

He became aware of Biffen's voice knocking at the door of his dreams.

'Can you give us an example, Healey?'

'Er, example, sir?'

'Yes, of a subjunctive following a superlative.'

'A superlative, you say, sir?'

'Yes.'

'A subjunctive following a superlative?'

'Yes, yes.'

'Um . . . how about "legargon leplus beau queje connaisse"}''

'Er . . . the finest boy that I know? Yes that meets the case.'

'Finest, sir? I meant the most beautiful.'

Damn, he was supposed to be phasing out the queer pose. Well, at least it got a laugh.

'Thank you, Healey, that will do. Be quiet, the rest of you, he really doesn't need any encouragement.'

Oh but I do, thought Adrian, I need all the encouragement going.

The lesson moved on, Biffen leaving him alone to daydream.

At the end of the forty minutes he reacted to the bell as fast as he could, streaking to the doorway from the back of the form- room and trying to lose himself in the crowd, but Biffen called him back.

'Aren't you forgetting something, Healey?'

'Sir?'

'You owe me an explanation for your unpunctuality, I think.'

Adrian approached the dais.

'Oh yes, sir. The thing is, sir, I was going to be late anyway - only a bit, but I bumped into Dr Meddlar.'

'He kept you for twenty minutes?'

'Yes, sir - or rather no, sir. He was very rude to me. He upset me, sir.'

'Rude to you? The Chaplain was rude to you?'

'I'm sure that's not how he would put it, sir.' Adrian had a shot at his pure but troubled expression. It was particularly effective when looking up at someone, as he was now. It was loosely based on Dominic Guard's Leo in the film of The Go-Between. A sort of baffled honesty.

'He ... he made me cry, sir, and I was too embarrassed to come in blubbing, so I went and hid in the music-room until I felt better.'

This was all terribly unfair on poor old Biffen, whom Adrian rather adored for his snowy hair and perpetual air of benign astonishment. And 'blubbing' . . . Blubbing went out with 'decent' and 'ripping'. Mind you, not a bad new language to start up. 1920s schoolboy slang could be due for a revival.

'Oh dear. But I'm sure the Chaplain must have had good reason to be . . . that is, Dr Meddlar wouldn't speak sharply to you without cause.'

'Well I admit I was cheeky to him, sir. But you know what he's like.'

'He is, I am sure, a scrupulously fair man.'

'Yes, sir. I - I wouldn't want you to think that I've been lying to you, sir. I'm sure Dr Meddlar will tell you his side of the story if you ask him.'

'I won't do that. I know whether a boy is telling me the truth or not.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Did he hell. They never bloody did.

'I don't want to lecture you, Healey, and I don't want to keep you from your morning break, but you must face the fact that many members of staff are beginning to lose their patience. Perhaps you feel they don't understand you?'

'I think the problem is that they do understand me, sir.'

'Yes. You see that is exactly the kind of remark that is guaranteed to put certain masters' backs up, isn't it? Sophistication is not an admired quality. Not only at school. Nobody likes it anywhere. In England at any rate.'

'Sir.'

'You're the cleverest boy in my French set. You know that perfectly well. But you've never worked. That makes you the stupidest boy in the school.'

Parable of the talents next, what was the betting?

'What are your university thoughts?'

'Oh, well sir . . . you know. After "A" levels I think I'll've had it with education, really. And it will probably have had it with me.'

'I see. Tell me, what do you do on Friday afternoons, Healey? I take it you're not in the Cadet Force.'

'Threw me out, sir. It was an outrage.'

'Yes, I'm sure it was. So it's Pioneering, is it?'

'Yes, sir. There's a little old lady I visit.'

'Well,' said Biffen filling his briefcase with exercise books, 'there's a little old lady and a little old man in the Morley Road you might also find time to visit one day. My wife and I always give tea on Fridays, you'd be most welcome.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'You don't have to let us know in advance. We shall expect you when we see you. Off you go then.'

'Thank you, Mr Biffen, thank you very much.'

Adrian instinctively offered his hand which Biffen took with tremendous firmness, looking him straight in the eye.

'I'm not Mr Chips, you know. I'm perfectly well aware that you feel sorry for me. It's bad enough from the staff, but I won't take pity from you. I won't.'

'No sir,' said Adrian, 'I wasn't . . .'

'Good.'

III

Tom and Adrian and Pigs Trotter, an occasional hanger-on, were walking into town. From time to time tracksuited boys ran past them, with all the deadly, purpose and humourless concentration of those who enjoyed Games. Juniors twittered along, running sticks against palings and whispering. Adrian thought it worth while trying out his new slang.

'I say, you fellows, here's a rum go! Old Biffo was jolly odd this morning. He gave me a lot of pi-jaw about slacking and then invited me to tea. No rotting! He did really.'

'I expect he fancies you,' said Tom.

'That's beastly talk, Thompson. Jolly well take it back or expect a good scragging.'

They walked on for a bit, Adrian practising new phrases and Pigs Trotter lumbering behind laughing so indiscriminately that Adrian soon tired of the game.

'Anyway,' he said. 'Tell me about your parents, Tom.'

'What do you want to know?'

'Well, you never talk about them.'

'Nothing to say about my folks,' Thompson said. 'Dad works for British Steel, Mum is next in line for Mayor. Two sisters, both mad, and a brother who's coming here next term.'

'What about you, Healey?' said Pigs Trotter. 'What do your parents do?'

'Parent,' said Adrian. 'The mother is no more.'

Trotter was upset.

'Oh God,' he said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't realise . . .'

'No, that's fine. Car crash. When I was twelve.'

'That's . . . that's awful.'

'If we go to Gladys Winkworth, I'll tell you the whole story.'

The church in the town was perched on a hill and in the cemetery - which people of shattering wit like Sampson never tired of calling 'the dead centre of town' - there was an old wooden bench on which was a plaque which said 'Gladys Winkworth'. Nothing else. The assumption was that it had been erected by a doting widower as a lasting memorial to his dead wife. Tom thought she was actually buried under it. Adrian believed it was simply the bench's proper name and he stuck to that belief.

From Gladys, the Upper, Middle and Lower Games Fields, the science block, the sports hall, the theatre, the Old School Room, libraries, chapel, Hall and Art School were all visible. You felt like a general observing a battle.

The day was cold and the breath steamed from their mouths and nostrils as they climbed through the graveyard.

'Alas, regardless of their fate the little victims play,' said Adrian. 'The quick and the young play peep-bo behind the marking stones of the cold and the dead.'

Tom and Adrian sat down and waited for Pigs Trotter to catch up.

'It's not a nice story, the story of my mother,' said Adrian as Trotter finally crashed down beside them, 'but I'll tell it if you promise to keep it to yourselves. Only Pa Tickford knows. My father told him when I arrived here.'

Trotter nodded breathlessly. 'I won't tell a soul, Healey. Honest.'

Adrian looked at Tom who nodded gravely.

'Very well then,' said Adrian. 'One evening about three years ago . . . almost exactly three years ago in fact, I was sitting at home watching television. It was A Man Called Ironside, I remember. My father is a Professor of Biochemistry at Bristol University and he often works late. My mother had been in the kitchen since three in the afternoon drinking vodka from a teacup. At ten o'clock she smashed the cup onto the floor and cried out so I could hear her in the sitting room.'

Trotter shifted uncomfortably.

'Look,' he said. 'You don't have to tell us this, you know.'

'No, no, I want to. She had been, as I say, drinking all afternoon and she suddenly howled, "Ten o'clock! It's ten o'fucking clock! Why doesn't he come? Why in God's name doesn't he come?" Something along those lines.

'I went into the kitchen and looked at her face all swollen, her tear-stained and mascara-blotched cheeks and her trembling lip and I remember thinking, "She's like Shelley Winters but without the talent." Don't know why a thought like that should come to me, but it did. I turned back to the telly - couldn't bear to look at her like that - and said, "He's working, Mother. You know he's working."

'"Working?" She shrieked her stinking breath right into my face. "Working! Oh that's very good. Screwing that cunt of a lab assistant is what he's doing. The little bitch. I've seen her . . . with her stupid white coat and her stupid white teeth. Little bitch whore!"

Tom and Trotter both stared at Adrian in disbelief as he screeched out the words, but his eyes were closed and he didn't seem to be aware of them.

'She really could scream, my mother. I thought her voice would fracture with the violence of it, but in fact it was my own which cracked. "You should go to bed, Mother," I said.

'"Bed! He's the one who's in fucking bed," she giggled, and she pulled at the bottle and the last of the vodka just dribbled down her mouth and mixed with the tears that ran down the folds of her fat face. She burped and tried to jam the bottle into the waste-hole of the waste-disposal thing, the thingummy.'

'Garburator,' said Pigs Trotter. 'I think they're called Garburators.'

'Garburator, that's it. She tried to jam the bottle down the Garburator.

'"I'm going to catch them at their little game" she chanted -she put on a kind of sing-song voice whenever she was pissed, it was one of the signs that she was really gone - "That's what I'm going to do. Where are the keys?"

'"Mother, you can't drive!" I said. "Just wait, he'll be back soon. You see."

'"Where are the keys? Where are the fucking car keys?"

'Well, I knew exactly where they were. In the hall, on the table, and I ran for them and stuffed them into my mouth. God knows why. That really got her going.

'"Come here you little bastard, give me those keys!"

'I said, "Mother, you can't drive like this, just leave it, will you?"

'And then . . . then she picked up a vase from off the table and flung it at me. Broke on the side of my head and sent me flying against the foot of the stairs where I tripped and fell. See that scar, just there?'

Adrian parted his hair and showed Trotter and Tom a small white scar.

'Five stitches. Anyway, there was blood all running down my face and she was shaking me and slapping my face, left and right, left and right.

'"Will you give me those fucking keys?" she kept screaming, shaking me on every syllable. I sprawled there, I was crying I don't mind telling you, really wailing. "Please, Mother, you can't go out, you can't. Please!"'

Adrian stopped and looked around.

'Dare we risk a cigarette, do you think?'

Tom lit three at once.

'Go on!' said Pigs Trotter. 'What happened then?'

'Well,' said Adrian inhaling deeply, 'what Mother hadn't seen was that the moment the vase hit me, the car keys had shot out of me like a clay-pigeon from a trap. She thought I still had them in my mouth so she started to try and wrench it open, you know, like a vet trying to give a pill to a dog.

'"So the little bugger's swallowed them has he?" she said.

'I shouted back, "Yes, I've swallowed them! I've swallowed them and you can't get them back! So ... so just forget it." But like a pratt of a heroine in a Hammer horror film I couldn't help looking round for them myself, so of course she followed my eyes, crawled across the hallway and swooped on them. Then she was off. I kept shouting at her to come back. I heard the scrunch on the gravel as she drove away and then - again like some git in a film - I fainted.'

'Christ,' said Pigs Trotter.

'She killed a family of four as well as herself,' said Adrian. 'My father, who had never had an unfaithful thought in his life, has still not really recovered. She was a bitch, my mother. A real bitch.'

'Yes,' said Tom. 'Thing is, Ade, you may have forgotten, but I met your mother last term. Tall woman with a wide smile.'

'Fuck,' said Adrian. 'So you did. Oh well, it was a good try anyway.' He stood and flicked his cigarette behind a gravestone.

Trotter stared at him.

'You mean,' he said. 'You mean that you made that up?'

"Fraid so,' said Adrian.

'All of it?'

'Well my father's a professor, that bit's true.'

'You fucking shitbag,' said Trotter, tears filling his eyes. 'You fucking shitbag!' He stumbled away, choking with tears. Adrian watched him go with surprise.

'What's the matter with Pigs? He must have known it was a lie as soon as I began.'

'Oh nothing,' said Tom, turning his large brown eyes on Adrian. 'His mother and two brothers were killed in a car crash three years ago, that's all.'

'Oh no! No! You're kidding!'

'Yes I am, actually.'

An MCC Tie sat down next to a Powder Blue Safari suit at a window table in the Cafe Bazaar. White Shirts with Black Waistcoats hurried to and fro, the change jingling in their leather pouches.

'Herr Ober,' called the MCC Tie.

'Mein Herr?'

'Zwei Kaffee mit Schlag, bitte. Und Sachertorte. Zweimal.'

The waiter executed a trim Austrian bow and departed.

The Powder Blue Safari Suit mopped his brow.

'No exchange was made,' he said.

Well now,' said the MCC Tie. 'Odysseus will certainly have got hold of the documents and will be preparing to take them out of Salzburg. He must be followed and relieved of them.'

'If the Trojans are prepared to kill Patrochlus in broad daylight . . .'

They won't dare harm Odysseus.'

'He has a companion, you know. A young Englishman.'

The MCC Tie smiled.

'I'm fully aware of it. How shall we style him?''

Telemachus?''

'Quite right. Telemachus. Remind me to tell you all about Telemachus.'

'You know him?'

'Intimately. I think we will find that it won't be necessary to inflict harm upon either Odysseus or Telemachus. Just so long as we can lay our hands on Mendax.'

'They are leaving tomorrow.'

Are they now? What kind of chariot are they riding?'

'Odysseus has a red Wolseley.'

Typical. Quite typical.'

The MCC Tie looked across at the Safari Suit with an expression of affectionate contempt.

'I don't suppose, Hermes, that you possess such a thing as a short-wave wireless?''

'A report to make?'

'Don't be foolish. BBC World Service. The West Indies are playing England at Old Trajford today.'

'Playing? Playing what?'

'Cricket, you arse of a man. Cricket.'

Two

I

'The periphrastic "do" was a superfluous tense-carrier,' said Adrian. 'Semantically empty yet widely used. The major theories of the origin of the periphrastic "do" are three: One) It was derived from the influence of the corresponding use of "faire" in French. Two) It developed out of the Old English causative "do". Three) It derived from semantic development of the full factitive verb "do". An examination of these three theories should tell us much about alternative approaches to diachronic syntax and generative grammar.'

He looked across to the sofa. Trefusis was lying on his back, an overflowing ashtray on his chest, lightweight earphones around his neck and a square of mauve silk over his face, through which he managed to smoke. If it weren't for the rise and fall of the ashtray and the clouds of smoke weaving through the silk, Adrian might have thought him dead. He hoped not, this was a good essay he was reading out and he had taken a lot of trouble over it.

Friends had warned against the Philology option.

'You'll get Craddock, who's useless,' they said. 'Trefusis only teaches research students and a few select undergraduates. Do the American paper like everyone else.'

But Trefusis had consented to see him.

'The Early Middle English periphrastic "do" could occur after modals and "have" + past participle. It was essentially a second position non-modal operator mutually exclusive with "be" + past participle and incompatible with a passive format. As late as eighteen-eighteen some grammarians wrote that it was a standard alternate to the simple form, but others denounced its use in any but empathic, interrogative and negative sentences. By the mid-eighteenth century it was obsolete.'

Adrian looked up from his sheaf of papers. A brown stain was forming in Trefusis's handkerchief, as the silk filtered the smoke.

'Um . . . that's it . . .'

Silence from the sofa. Far away all the bells of Cambridge began to chime the hour.

'Professor Trefusis?'

He couldn't have slept through an essay of that quality, surely? Adrian cleared his throat and tried again, more loudly.

'Professor Trefusis?'

From under the handkerchief came a sigh.

'So.'

Adrian wiped the palms of his hands on his knees.

'Was it all right?' he asked.

'Well constructed, well researched, well supported, well argued . . .'

'Oh. Thank you.'

'Original, concise, thoughtful, perceptive, incisive, illuminating, cogent, lucid, compelling, charmingly read . . .'

'Er-good.'

'I should imagine,' said Trefusis, 'that it must have taken you almost an hour to copy out.'

'Sorry?'

'Come, come, Mr Healey. You've already insulted your own intelligence'

'Oh.'

'Val Kirstlin, Neue Philologische Abteilung, July 1973, "The Origin and Nature of the Periphrastic Verb 'Do' in Middle and Early Modern English". Am I right?'

Adrian shifted uncomfortably. It was hard enough to know what Trefusis was thinking when his face was unveiled; with a handkerchief over him he was as unreadable as a doctor's prescription.

'Look, I'm terribly sorry,' he said. 'The thing is . . .'

'Please don't apologise. Had you bothered to do any work of your own I should have been obliged to sit through it just the same, and I can assure you that I had much rather listen to a good essay than a mediocre one.'

Adrian couldn't think of an adequate reply to this.

'You have a fine brain. A really excellent brain, Mr Healey.'

'Thank you.'

'A fine brain, but a dreadful mind. I have a fine brain and a fine mind. Likewise Russell. Leavis, a good mind, practically no brain at all. Shall we continue like this, I wonder?'

'Like what?'

'This fortnightly exhibition of stolen goods. It all seems rather pointless. I don't find the pose of careless youth charming and engaging any more than you find the pose of careworn age fascinating and eccentric, I should imagine. Perhaps I should let you play the year away. I have no doubt that you will do very well in your final tests. Honesty, diligence and industry are wholly superfluous qualities in one such as you, as you have clearly grasped.'

'Well, it's just that I've been so . . .'

Trefusis pulled the handkerchief from his face and looked at Adrian.

'But of course you have! Frantically busy. Fran-tic-ally.'

Trefusis helped himself to another cigarette from a packet that lay on top of a tower of books next to the sofa and tapped it against his thumb-nail.

'My first meeting with you only confirmed what I first suspected. You are a fraud, a charlatan and a shyster. My favourite kind of person, in fact.'

'What makes you so sure?'

'I am a student of language, Mr Healey. You write with fluency and conviction, you talk with authority and control. A complex idea here, an abstract proposition there, you juggle with them, play with them, seduce them. There is no movement from doubt to comprehension, no breaking down, no questioning, no excitement. You try to persuade others, never yourself. You recognise patterns, but you rearrange them where you should analyse them. In short, you do not think. You have never thought. You have never said to me anything that you believe to be true, only things which sound true and perhaps even ought to be true: things that, for the moment, are in character with whatever persona you have adopted for the afternoon. You cheat, you short-cut, you lie. It's too wonderful.'

'With respect, Professor . . .'

'Pigswill! You don't respect me. You fear me, are irritated by me, envy me . . . you everything me, but you do not respect me. And why should you? I am hardly respectable.'

'What I mean is, am I so different from anyone else? Doesn't everyone think the way I think? Doesn't everyone just rearrange patterns? Ideas can't be created or destroyed, surely.'

'Yes!' Trefusis clapped his hands with delight. 'Yes, yes, yes! But who else knows that they are doing that and nothing else? You know, you have always known. That is why you are a liar. Others try their best, when they speak they mean it. You never mean it. You extend this duplicity to your morals. You use and misuse people and ideas because you do not believe they exist. Just patterns for you to play with. You're a hound of hell and you know it.'

'So,' said Adrian, 'what's to become of me then?'

'Ah, well. I could ask you not to bother me any more. Let you get on with your boring little life while I get on with mine. Or I could write a note to your tutor. He would send you down from the university. Either course would deprive me of the income, however nugatory, that I receive for supervising you. What to do? What to do? Pour yourself a glass of Madeira, there's Sercial or Bual on the side. Hum! It's all so difficult.'

Adrian stood and picked his way across the room.

Trefusis's quarters could be described in one word.

Books.

Books and books and books. And then, just when an observer might be lured into thinking that that must be it, more books.

Barely a square inch of wood or wall or floor was visible. Walking was only allowed by pathways cut between the piles of books. Treading these pathways with books waist-high either side was like negotiating a maze. Trefusis called the room his 'librarinth'. Areas where seating was possible were like lagoons in a coral strand of books.

Adrian supposed that any man who could speak twenty-three languages and read forty was likely to collect a few improving volumes along the way. Trefusis himself was highly dismissive of them.

'Waste of trees,' he had once said. 'Stupid, ugly, clumsy, heavy things. The sooner technology comes up with a reliable alternative the better.' '

Early in the term he had flung a book at Adrian's head in irritation at some crass comment. Adrian had caught it and been shocked to see that it was a first edition of Les Fleurs du Mai.

'Books are not holy relics,' Trefusis had said. 'Words may be my religion, but when it comes to worship, I am very low church. The temples and the graven images are of no interest to me. The superstitious mammetry of a bourgeois obsession for books is severely annoying. Think how many children are put off reading by prissy little people ticking them off whenever they turn a page carelessly. The world is so fond of saying that books should be "treated with respect". But when are we told that words should be treated with respect? From our earliest years we are taught to revere only the outward and visible. Ghastly literary types maundering on about books as "objects". Yes, that does happen to be a first edition. A present from Noel Annan, as a matter of fact. But I assure you that a foul yellow livre de poche would have been just as useful to me. Not that I fail to appreciate Noel's generosity. A book is a piece of technology. If people wish to amass them and pay high prices for this one or that, well and good. But they can't pretend that it is any higher or more intelligent a calling than collecting snuff-boxes or bubble-gum cards. I may read a book, I may use it as an ashtray, a paperweight, a doorstop or even as a missile to throw at silly young men who make fatuous remarks. So. Think again.' And Adrian had thought again.

Now he found his way back to the small clearing where Trefusis lay on his sofa blowing smoke-rings at the ceiling.

'Your very good health,' said Adrian sipping his Madeira.

Trefusis beamed at him.

'Don't be pert,' he said, 'it isn't at all becoming.'

'No, Professor.'

There followed a silence in which Adrian eagerly joined.

He had stood in many studies in his day, tracing arabesques on the carpet with his foot, while angry men had described his shortcomings and settled his future. Trefusis was not angry. Indeed he was rather cheerful. It was perfectly apparent that he couldn't care less whether Adrian lived or died.

'As your Senior Tutor, I am your moral guardian,' he said at last. 'A moral guardian yearns for an immoral ward and the Lord has provided. I shall strike a bargain with you, that's what I shall do. I am going to leave you in uninterrupted peace for the rest of the year on one condition. I want you to set to work on producing something that will surprise me. You tell me that ideas cannot be created. Perhaps, but they can be discovered. I have a peculiar horror of the cliché - there! the phrase "I have a peculiar horror" is just such a revolting expression as most maddens me - and I think you owe it to yourself, to descend to an even more nauseating phrase, to devote your energies to forging something new in the dark smithy of your fine brain. I haven't produced anything original myself in years, most of my colleagues have lived from the nappy onwards without any thought at all making the short journey across their minds, leave alone a fresh one. But if you can furnish me with a piece of work that contains even the seed of novelty, the ghost of a shred of a scintilla of a germ of a suspicion of an iota of a shadow of a particle of something, interesting and provoking, something that will amuse and astonish, then I think you will have repaid me for being forced to listen to you regurgitating the ideas of others and you will have done a proper service to yourself into the bargain. Do we have a deal?'

'I don't quite understand.'

'Perfectly simple! Any subject, any period. It can be a three-volume disquisition or a single phrase on a scrap of paper. I look forward to hearing from you before the end of term. That is all.'

Trefusis fitted the earphones over his ears and groped under the sofa for a cassette.

'Right,' said Adrian. 'Er . . .'

But Trefusis had put the handkerchief back over his face and settled back to the sound of Elvis Costello.

Adrian set down his empty glass and poked out his tongue at the reclining figure. Trefusis's hand came up and jabbed an American single-fingered salute.

Oh well, thought Adrian as he walked across Hawthorn Tree Court on his way to the porter's lodge. An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

At the lodge he cleared his pigeon-hole. The largest object there was a jiffy-bag stuck with a hand-made label saying 'Toast by Post'. He opened it and a miniature serving of marmalade, two slices of soggy toast and a note fell out. He smiled: more flattering attentions from Hunt the Thimble, a relic from his days at Chartham Park a year ago. He had thought then that life at Cambridge was going to be so simple.

The note was written in an Old English Gothic which must have taken Hunt the Thimble hours to master.

'He took the bread and when he had given thanks, he toasted it and gave it to Mr Healey saying, Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you: eat this in remembrance of me. Likewise after supper he took the sachet of Marmalade and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, scoff ye all of this; for this is my Marmalade of the New Testament, which is spread for you: do this as oft as ye shall taste it, in remembrance of me. Amen.'

Adrian smiled again. How old would Hunt the Thimble be now? Twelve or thirteen probably.

There was a letter from Uncle David.

'Hope you're enjoying life. How's the college doing in the Cuppers this year? Had a chance to inspect the Blues XI? Enclosed a little something. I know how mess bills can mount up...'

Mess bills? The man must be getting senile. Still, three hundred quid was surprising and useful.

'. . . I shall be in Cambridge next weekend, staying at the Garden House. I want you to visit me on Saturday night at eight. I have a proposition to put to you. Much love, Uncle David.'

The pigeon-hole was also stuffed with circulars and handbills.

'A tea-party will be held on Scholar's Lawn, St John's College, to protest at American support for the regime in El Salvador.'

'The Mummers present Artaud's The Cenci in a new translation by Bridget Arden. Incest! Violence! A play for our times in the Trinity Lecture Theatre.'

'Sir Ian Gilmour will talk to the Cambridge Tory Reform Group about his book Inside Right. Christ's College. Admission Free.'

'Dr Anderson will give a lecture to the Herrick Society entitled The Punk Ethic As Radical Outside. Non-members £i. 50.'

After a judicious binning of these and other leaflets, Adrian was left with Uncle David's cheque, the toast, a bill from Heffer's bookshop and a Barclaycard statement, both of which he opened as he walked back to his rooms.

He was astounded to discover that he owed Heffers £112 and Barclaycard £206. With the exception of one or two novels, all the books itemised on the Heffer's bill were on art history. A Thames and Hudson edition of Masaccio alone had cost £40.

Adrian frowned. The titles were very familiar, but he knew that he hadn't bought them.

He quickened his pace across the Sonnet Bridge and into the President's Court, only to charge straight into a shrivelled old don in a gown. With a cry of 'Whoops!' the man, whom he recognised as the mathematician Adrian Williams, fell sprawling on the ground, sending books and papers flying over the grass.

'Dr Williams!' Adrian helped him up. 'I am sorry . . .'

'Oh hello, Adrian,' said Williams, taking his hand and springing up to his feet. 'I'm afraid neither of us was looking where we were going. We Adrians are notoriously abstracted, are we not?'

They skipped about the lawn collecting Williams's papers.

'Do you know,' said Williams, 'I tried one of those packet soups yesterday. "Knorr" it was called, K-N-O-R-R, a very strange name indeed, but Lord, it was delicious. Chicken Noodle. Have you ever tried it?'

'Er, I don't think so,' said Adrian picking up the last of the books and handing it to Williams.

'Oh you should, you really should! Miraculous. You have a paper packet no larger than . . . well let me see . . . what is it no larger than?'

'A paperback?' said Adrian shuffling from foot to foot. Once cornered by Williams, it was very hard to get away.

'Not really a paperback, it's squarer than that. I should say no larger than a single-play record. Of course in area that probably is the same size as a paperback, but a different shape, you see.'

'Great,' said Adrian. 'Well I must be . . .'

'And inside is the most unprepossessing heap of powder you can imagine. The dried constituents of the soup. Little lumps of chicken and small hard noodles. Very unusual.'

'I must try it,' said Adrian. 'Anyway . . .'

'You empty the packet into a pan, add two pints of water and heat it up.'

'Right, well, I think I'll go to the Rat Man now and buy some,' said Adrian, walking backwards.

'No, the Rat Man doesn't sell it!' Williams said. 'I had a word with him about it this morning and he said he might get it in next week. Give it a trial period, see if there's a demand.

Sainsbury's in Sidney Street has a very large supply, however.'

Adrian had nearly reached the corner of the court."

'Sainsbury's?' he called, looking at his watch. 'Right. I should just be in time.'

'I had the happy notion of adding an egg,' Williams shouted back. 'It poaches in the soup. Not unlike an Italian stracciatella. Singularly toothsome. Oh, you'll discover that Sainsbury's display a vegetable soup on the same shelf, also made by Knorr. It's quite hard to tell the two packets apart, but be sure to get the Chicken Noodle . . .'

Adrian rounded the corner and streaked for his rooms. He could hear Williams's voice cheerily exhorting him not to let it boil, as this was certain to impair the flavour.

Perhaps that's what Trefusis meant about not lying. Williams wasn't raving about his bloody soup in order to be respected or admired, he genuinely meant to impart a sincerely felt enthusiasm. Adrian knew he could never be guilty of any such unfiltered openness but he was damned if he was going to be judged because of it.

Gary was listening to Abba's Greatest Hits and leafing through a book on Miro when Adrian came in.

'Hello, darlin',' he said. 'I've just boiled the kettle.'

Adrian went up to the stereo, took off the record and frisbee'd it out of the open window. Gary watched it skim across the Court.

'What's up with you, then?'

Adrian took the Heffers and Barclaycard bills from his pocket and spread them out on Gary's book.

'You are aware that theft, obtaining goods and monies by false pretences and forgery are all serious offences?' he said.

'I'll pay you back.'

Adrian went to his desk and opened a drawer. His Heffers card and Visa card were missing.

'I mean, you might at least have told me.'

'I wouldn't have thought of being so vulgar.'

'Well I don't want to be vulgar either, but you now owe me a grand total of . . .' Adrian leafed through his notebook, 'six hundred and eighteen pounds and sixty-three pence.'

'I said I'd pay you back, didn't I?'

'I'm busy wondering how.'

'You can afford to wait. You should be glad to do a member of the working classes a favour.'

'And you should have too much pride to allow me . . . oh for God's sake!'

The sound of Abba singing 'Dancing Queen' had started up in a room the other side of the court. Adrian slammed the window shut.

'That'll teach you to throw things out of the window,' said Gary.

'It'll teach me not to throw things out of the window.'

'Suppose I pay you back in portraits?'

Adrian looked round the room. The walls were covered with dozens of different portraits of himself. Oils, water-colours, gouaches, grisailles, pen and ink, chalk, silverpoint, charcoal, pastels, airbrushed acrylics, crayons and even Bic biro drawings, ranging in style from neo-plasticist to photorealist.

He had been given no choice in the matter of sharing rooms. Gary and he were drawn out of the tombola together, so together they were. The bondage trousers, henna'ed hair and virtual canteen of cutlery that hung from his ears told the world that Gary was a punk, the only one in St Matthew's and as such as fascinating and horrifying an addition to the college as the modern Stafford Court on the other side of the river. Gary was reading Modern and Medieval Languages, but intended to change to History of Art in his second year: meanwhile he expressed his devotion to Adrian - real or pretended, Adrian never knew which - by treating him as an idiot older brother from another world. He had never met a public school boy before coming to Cambridge and hadn't really believed that they existed. He had been more shocked by Adrian than Adrian had been by him.

'And you really used to have fagging and that?'

'Yes. It's on the way out now I believe, but when I was there you had to fag.'

'I can't bleeding believe it! Did you wear a boater?'

'When appropriate.'

'And striped trousers?'

'In the Sixth Form.'

'Fuck me!' Gary had wriggled with delight.

'I'm hardly the only one, you know. There are dozens here from my school alone, hundreds from Eton and Harrow and Winchester.'

'Yeah,' said Gary, 'but it's less than seven per cent of the population, isn't it? People like me never usually meet people like you except in a Crown Court, when you're wearing a wig.'

'This is nineteen-seventy-nine, Gary, people like you are forming the Thatcher cabinet.'

Adrian had told him about life at school, about the magazine, about Pigs Trotter's death. He had even told him about Cartwright.

Gary had immediately done a drawing of Adrian as he imagined him in a blazer and cricket whites, dawdling in front of a Gothic doorway, while capped and gowned beaks flitted in the background like crows. Adrian had bought it on the spot for ten pounds. Since then he had subsidised Gary's cannabis and vodka by buying at least three works of art a week. But he didn't now think he could take even one more view of himself, in any medium, from any angle, and he said so.

'Well then,' said Gary, 'you're going to have to wait for me to pay you back till the end of the year.'

'Yes, I suppose I am,' said Adrian. 'Oh coitus!'

'Oh come on, you can afford it.'

'No, it's not that. It's work.'

'Work? I thought this was supposed to be a university.'

'Yes, well, it's rapidly turning into a technical college,' said Adrian, falling into an armchair.

'Didn't Trefusis go for your essay then?'

'No, he loved it, that's the problem,' said Adrian. 'It was too good. He was very impressed. So now he wants me to do something major. Something startling and original.'

'Original? In philology?'

'No, any subject. I should be flattered really, I suppose.'

Honestly, what was the point? He could tell the truth to Gary, surely? He was lying as a matter of course. Was it pride? Fear? He closed his eyes. Trefusis was right. Right but ludicrously wrong.

Why wasn't he happy? Jenny loved him. Gary loved him. His mother sent him money. Uncle David sent him money. It was the May Term of his first year, the weather was fine and he had no examinations. Everything unpleasant was behind him. Cambridge was his. He had now made up his mind to stay here after Finals and become a don. All you had to do was memorise enough good essays and repeat them in three-hour bursts. Trefusis wasn't an examiner, thank God.

He hung Jeremy, his blazer, on Anthony, the peg.

'Let's have some toast,' he said. 'Hunt the Thimble has provided.'

II

'We come now gentlemen,' said President Clinton-Lacey, 'to the matter of JRFs and Bye-Fellowships. I wonder if- '

Garth Menzies, a Professor of Civil Law, coughed through a cloud of dense smoke which poured into his face from the pipe of Munroe, the Bursar.

'Excuse me, Mr President,' he said, 'I understood we had agreed to a no-smoking rule at Fellows' meetings?'

'Well, that is certainly true, yes. Admiral Munroe, I wonder if you would mind . . . ?'

Munroe banged his pipe down on the table and gave Menzies a look charged with deepest venom. Menzies smiled and transferred a sweet from one side of his mouth to the other.

'Thank you,' said Clinton-Lacey. 'Now. JRFs and Bye-Fellowships. As this body is well aware, there has been '

Munroe sniffed the air loudly.

'Excuse me, Mr President,' he said. 'Am I alone in detecting a nauseating smell of spearmint in this room?'

'Er. . .?'

'It really is most disagreeable. I wonder where it could be coming from?'

Menzies angrily took the mint from his mouth and dropped it into the ashtray in front of him. Munroe smiled beatifically.

'Thank you,' said Clinton-Lacey. 'Fellows, we have a problem in retaining our present levels of postgraduates. There is a large number of Junior Research Fellows and Bye-Fellows that benefits from our grants and disbursements as you know. You will be far from unaware of the nature of the economic weather system that blows towards us from Westminster.'

Admiral Munroe ostentatiously pushed the ashtray into the centre of the table, as if the smell of mint still offended him.

Alex Corder, a theologian down the end of the table, barked a rather harsh laugh.

'Barbarians,' he said. 'They're all barbarians.'

'The government,' said Clinton-Lacey, 'the justice of whose doctrines we are not assembled here to discourse upon, has certainly struck an attitude towards the universities which must give us cause for alarm.'

'The Prime Minister is a scientist,' said Corder.

Garth Menzies raised his eyebrows. 'I'm sure no one would accuse the Prime Minister of academic partiality.'

'Why ever not?'.said Munroe.

'Well, whatever her possible bias,' said Clinton-Lacey, 'there is a feeling in government that the Arts side, oversubscribed by candidates for entrance as it already is, must be, er, honed, and extra encouragement given to the disciplines which can more productively . . .ah! Professor Trefusis!'

Trefusis stood in the doorway, a cigarette dangling from his lips, peering vaguely as if unsure whether this was the right room or the right meeting. The sight of Menzies' disapproving glare seemed to reassure him; he entered and slid down into the empty seat next to Admiral Munroe.

'Well, Donald, I am sorry that you seem to have been delayed again,' said Clinton-Lacey.

Trefusis was silent.

'Nothing serious I hope?'

Trefusis smiled affably around the room.

'Nothing serious I hope?' repeated the President.

Trefusis became aware that he was being addressed, opened his jacket, switched off the Walkman that was attached to his belt and slipped off his earphones.

'I'm sorry, Master, did you speak?'

'Well yes ... we were discussing the fall-off in resources for the Arts.'

'The Arts?'

'That's right. Now Menzies coughed and pushed the ashtray towards Trefusis.

'Thank you, Garth,' said Trefusis, flicking the ash from his cigarette and taking another puff. 'Most thoughtful.'

The President persevered.

'We will not have enough money to create any more Junior Research Fellows in the Arts for at least two years.'

'Oh, how sad,' said Trefusis.

'You are not concerned for your department?'

'My department? My department is English, Master.'

'Well precisely.'

'What has English to do with "the Arts", whatever they may be? I deal in an exact science, philology. My colleagues deal with an exact science, the analysis of literature.'

'Oh poppycock,' said Menzies.

'No, if anything it's hard shit,' said Trefusis.

'Really, Donald!' said the President. 'I am sure there is no need . . .'

'Professor Trefusis,' said Menzies, 'this is a minuted meeting of adults, if you feel you can't preserve the decencies of debate then perhaps you should leave.'

'My dear old Garth,' said Trefusis, 'I can only say that you started it. The English language is an arsenal of weapons; if you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or not they are loaded you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time. "Poppycock" means "soft shit" -from the Dutch, I need scarcely remind you, pappe kak.'

Menzies purpled and fell silent.

'Well, be that all as it may, Donald,' said the President, 'the subject was resourcing. Whatever our views on the rights and wrongs of government policy, the fiscal reality is such that . . .'

'The reality,' said Trefusis, offering cigarettes around the table, 'as we all know, is that more and more young people are begging to be admitted to this college in this university to read English. Our English department receives a higher number of applicants for each available place than any other department in any other university in the country. If the rules of the market place, which I understand to be sacred to the gabies, guffoons and flubberhaddocks in office, are to apply, then surely we should be entitled to more fellowships, not fewer.'

'The feeling, Donald,' said the President, 'is that English graduates cannot offer an expertise of benefit to the country. The fruits of research in botany or genetics or even my own subject, economics, are recognised as having a palpable value to the world . . .'

'Hear, hear,' said Menzies.

'Poppycock,' said Munroe, accepting a box of matches from Trefusis.

'But you and your colleagues,' said the President, ignoring both interruptions, 'are seen more and more as an intolerable burden on the tax-payer. There is nothing for you to discover of interest, nothing you can offer your undergraduates that fits them usefully into industry or profitable enterprise. You know that those are not my views. Around this table we have rehearsed many times the arguments and counter-arguments and I do not propose to do so again. I can only tell you that the monies will not be available this year.'

'Mr President,' said a don at the end of the table, 'I would like you to register my view that this is an absolute disgrace. This Philistinism will do nothing but impoverish our country. I hope you will minute my utter disgust.'

'Well,' said Trefusis, 'that should make Sir Keith Joseph and his friends shake in their boots, shouldn't it? No, no. The time has come for action. With the Fellows' approval I can train a hand-picked company of crack undergraduates and be in Whitehall before June.'

'This pose of embittered and embattled artist,' said Menzies, 'is unseemly and out of date. Society can no longer afford its jesters and is weary of being hit over the head with empty pigs' bladders. The world is bored of the piffling excesses of the Arts, of its arrogance and irrelevance to the real world. Your fat could do with trimming.'

'You're right of course,' said Trefusis, 'I see that now. We need lawyers. Wave upon wave of them.'

'Well of course it's very easy to mock . . .'

'It's certainly easy to mock some things,' agreed Trefusis. 'Oddly enough though I've never found it easy to mock anything of value. Only things that are tawdry and fatuous - perhaps it's just me.'

III

'Sp you see my little honeypot baby-squeeze,' said Adrian, 'I have to come up with some bloody piece of research or I may be out on my rather divinely shaped ear.'

'Well it's about time you did some work,' said Jenny, biting his nipple.

'That's a horrid thing to say. Now go a bit lower down and get those lips working, it's my turn to come and I have to be off to the University Library.'

Jenny sat up.

'That reminds me,' she said. 'Mary and I have written a letter to all the Senior Tutors in Cambridge.'

'Good God,' said Adrian, pulling her head down again, 'this is no time to babble of schoolgirl crushes.'

'No listen,' she said popping up. 'It's the pornography.'

'What?'

'You know I've been going to Tim Anderson's lectures on Derrida and Sexual Difference?'

'Look, if your mouth's busy you could at least use your hands. There's some baby oil under the bed.'

'Well, he showed us some pornography last week. Boxfuls of it. From the University Library. It's a copyright library, you see, so they get a copy of everything published. Everything.'

'What, you mean . . . everything?'

'Everything. Centuries of pornography up to the present day. The cellars are packed with tons of the most degrading and disgusting . . . I'm talking about amputees, children, appliances, things you could never even imagine.'

'You don't know what I could imagine.'

'I went to have a look at some of it. All I needed was Helen Greenman's signature. Told her it was to do with Tim Anderson's lectures. Well I mean, this stuff shouldn't be at Cambridge. It has no possible academic justification. It's degrading to women and should be burnt.'

'And degrading to animals and children and appliances, I shouldn't wonder.'

'Adrian, it's not funny. I think the UL dignifies this shit by storing it. So Mary and I are trying to get it banned.'

'What sort of things did you see exactly?'

'Well you have to view it in a private room . . .'

'Describe it to me . . . and use your left hand. That's it. A bit faster. Yes! Oh yes indeed. Now, what did you see?'

'Well there was one where this woman took a pork-pie . . .'

IV

'That's the posish, Gary,' said Adrian when he had walked back from Newnham to St Matthew's. 'It's all there, a whole index expurgatorius waiting to be drooled over. And this is what the librarian needs to be shown.'

He handed him a small piece of paper on which was written:

'I authorise access to Jennifer de Woolf, an undergraduate of this college, to the following titles of Special Research Material . . .'

Underneath were listed titles of books and magazines and at the bottom was the signature, 'Helen Greenman, Senior Tutor, Newnham College'.

Gary's mouth fell open.

'Elsa and the Bull, Young Nuns, Concentration Camp Action . . . you're joking . . . My Hot Little Daughter, Hung, Young and Handsome, Tampon Tina, Fist Fuck Faggots, Clingfilm Fantasies. Clingfilm'? Bleeding Christ.' '

Adrian was rifling in the drawer of his desk.

'Too good to be missed I think you'll agree. Where are we . . . ah, yes.' He took a piece of writing-paper from his drawer. 'Now then, Gary, my old chum, my old mate, my old mucker. Do you want to knock off say . . . fifty quid from your debt? Of course you do. I want you to examine this letter, paying particular attention to the signature at the bottom.'

Gary took it.

'Dear Mr Healey, Dr Pittaway tells me that you are in need of instruction for the Philology option in the English Tripos. I have not forgotten your expertise as an umpire when we met at Chartham Park last summer and remember you as an alert young person bright with capability and promise. I would therefore be most happy to offer you what help I may. My rooms are in Hawthorn Tree Court, A3. I shall expect you at ten o'clock on Wednesday the 4th unless I hear otherwise. Please be sure to bring your mind with you. Donald Trefusis.'

'What about it?' said Gary.

'You can forge my signature, which is delicate and elegant. This scrawl can't be beyond you?'

'You dirty fucker.'

'Well quite.'

V

Adrian walked through Clare College towards the University Library. The impertinence of the building, as it launched upwards like a rocket, had always annoyed him. Compared to the feminine domed grace of Oxford's Bodleian or London's British Museum, it was hardly a thing of beauty. It strained up like a swollen phallus, trying to penetrate the clouds. The same principle as a Gothic spire, Adrian supposed. But the union of the library and the heavens would be a very secular Word-made-Flesh indeed.

He went inside and made his way up to the catalogue room. He flipped through the card indices, scribbling down hopeful titles. Everywhere grey-faced research graduates and desperate third year students with books under their arms and private worlds of scholarship in their eyes hurried back and forth. He spotted Germaine Greer clutching a pile of very old books and Stephen Hawking, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, steering his motor-driven chair into the next room.

Do I really have a place here? Adrian wondered. All this work? This sweat? No short cuts, no cheating, no copying out, no grafting? Of course I do. A physicist doesn't work any harder than I do. He just copies out God's ideas. And he usually gets them wrong.

Gary watched Trefusis leave his rooms, briefcase in hand, trailing a cloud of smoke. He waited until five minutes after he had crossed the Sonnet Bridge before climbing the stairs to the first floor.

The latch of the outer oak door surrendered easily to Adrian's Barclay card, as Adrian had said it would. Gary turned on the lights and surveyed the Manhattan of books before him.

It's got to be in here somewhere, he said to himself. I suppose I'll just have to wait for it to reveal itself.

Adrian went to the desk in the reading-room and waited to be noticed. It was very tempting to slap the counter and shout 'Shop!' He managed a polite cough instead.

'Sir?'

Librarians always seemed to treat Adrian with as much apathy and contempt as was possible without being openly rude. He would sometimes ask any one of the UL staff for a book written in, say, a rare dialect of Winnebago Indian, just for the hell of it, and they would hand it over with wrinkled noses and an air of superior scorn, as if they'd read it years ago and had long got over the stage where such obvious and juvenile nonsense could possibly be of the remotest interest to them. Had they somehow seen through him or was their contempt for undergraduates universal? The specimen who had come forward now seemed more than usually spotty and aloof. Adrian favoured him with an amiable smile.

'I'd like,' he said in ringing tones, 'A Fulsome Pair of Funbags and Fleshy Dimpled Botts please, and Davina's Fun with Donkeys if it's not already out... oh and Wheelchair Fellatio I think . . .'

The librarian pushed his spectacles up his nose.

'What?'

'And Brownies and Cubs on Camp, Fido Laps it Up, Drink My Piss, Bitch and A Crocodile of Choirboys. I believe that's all. Oh, The Diary of a Maryanne, too. That's a Victorian one. Here's an authorisation slip for you.'

Adrian flourished a piece of paper.

The librarian swallowed as he read it.

Tut-tut, thought Adrian. Showing Concern And Confusion. Infraction of Rule One of the Librarian's Guild. He'll be drummed out if he's not careful.

'Whose signature is this please?'

'Oh, Donald Trefusis,' said Adrian. 'He's my Senior Tutor.'

'One moment.'

The librarian moved away and showed the paper to an older man in the background.

It was like trying to get a large cheque cashed, the same whispered conferences and sly glances. Adrian turned and took a leisurely look around the room. Dozens of faces immediately buried themselves back in their work. Other dozens stared at him. He smiled benignly.

'Excuse me, Mr . . . Mr Healey, is it?'

The older librarian had approached the counter.

'Yes?'

'May I ask for what purpose you wish to look at these . . . er . . . publications?'

'Research. I'm doing a dissertation on "Manifestations of Erotic Deviancy In . . .'"

'Quite so. This appears to be Professor Trefusis's signature. However I think I should ring him up if you don't mind. Just to make sure.'

Adrian waved a casual hand.

'Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't want to be bothered about this, would he?'

'These authorisations are not usual for undergraduates, Mr Healey.'

'Adrian.'

'I would be much happier.'

Adrian swallowed.

'Well of course, if you think it's necessary. I can give you his number in college if you like. It's - '

The librarian scented triumph.

'No, no, sir. We can find it ourselves, I'm sure.'

Gary managed to track down the telephone under an ottoman. He answered it on the fifth ring.

'Yes?' he panted. 'Trefusis here, I was just taking a crap, what is it? . . . Who? ... Speak up man . . . Healey? . . . "Manifestations of Erotic Desire . . ."? Yes, Is there some problem? . . . Of course it's my signature ... I see. A little trust would not go amiss, you know. You're running a library, not a weapons depository, this bureaucracy is . . . No doubt, but that's what the guards at Buchenwald said . . . Very well, very well. You catch me in a bad mood this morning, take no notice . . . All right. Goodbye then.'

'That appears to be fine, Mr Healey. You appreciate that we had to make sure?'

'Of course, of course.'

The librarian gulped.

'These will take some time to . . . er . . . locate, sir. If you'd like to come back in half an hour? We'll provide a private reading-room for you.'

'Thank you,' said Adrian. 'Most kind.'

He bounced springily along the corridor on his way down to the tea-room.

I can fool all of the people all of the time, he thought.

A man walked past him.

'Morning, Mr Healey.'

'Morning, Professor Trefusis,' said Adrian.

Trefusis! Adrian skidded to a halt. He was heading for the reading-room! Not even Trefusis could answer his telephone at St Matthew's and be in the UL at the same time.

He tried to shout after him but could manage only a hoarse whisper.

'Professor! . . . Professor!'

Trefusis had reached the door. He turned in surprise.

'Yes?'

Adrian ran up to him.

'Before you go in, sir, I wondered if I could have a word?'

'Very well. What is it?'

'Can I buy you a bun in the tea-room?'

'What?'

'Well, I wondered . . . are you going in for a book or to do some work?'

'To do some work as it happens.'

'Oh, I shouldn't if I were you.'

Trefusis smiled.

'You've tried it and find it a disagreeable pursuit? I'm afraid in my case it has to be done. Someone, after all, has to write articles for future undergraduates to copy out.'

He put his hand to the finger-plate of the door.

Adrian only just managed to stop himself from tugging at his sleeve.

'Full. Not a reading table to be had. That's why I wanted to speak to you. Wondered if you could show me a good place to work.'

'Well, I find the ninth-floor reading-room is generally free from distraction. You might try there. However I am bound to say that I would feel a little bothered working in the same room as you. I'll go and see if there are any private rooms free on this floor, I think.'

He pushed against the door. Adrian practically screamed.

'No that's all right, sir! You go to the ninth floor. I've just remembered, I've got to go anyway. Got a . . . meeting.'

Trefusis came away from the door, amused.

'Very well. I am greatly looking forward to your masterwork, you know. People think our subject is airy-fairy, namby-pamby, arty, not to put too fine a point on it, farty. But as you are no doubt discovering, it is grind and toil from Beowulf to Blooms-bury. Grind, grind, grind. Toil, toil, toil. I like the Kickers. Good morning.'

Adrian looked down at his shoes. They were indeed smart.

'Thank you, Professor. And your brogues are a riot.'

With breathless relief he watched Trefusis disappear round the corner towards the lifts.

Adrian got back to St Matthew's to find that Gary had pushed all the furniture back to the walls and cleared the floor, which was covered with a vast sheet onto which he was drawing in charcoals.

'How'd it go?'

'Fabulous. Like a breeze. Did you put a handkerchief in your mouth?'

'Nah! If there's one thing Trefusis sounds like, it's a man with no handkerchief in his mouth. I just went up two octaves and sounded pissed off.'

Adrian scrutinised Gary's activities.

'So. Second question. What are you doing to my room?'

'Our room.'

'Our room, that I furnish and pay for?'

'This is a cartoon.'

'A cartoon.'

'In the original sense.'

'So the original sense of cartoon is "total fucking mess" is it?'

'The original sense of cartoon is a sheet of material onto which you draw the outlines of your fresco.'

Adrian picked his way through the debris and poured himself a glass of wine from a half-empty bottle on the mantelpiece. A half-empty bottle of the college's best white burgundy, he noted.

'Fresco?'

'Yeah. When I've designed it, I simply hang the sheet over the wall, prick the outline onto the wet plaster and get to work as quickly as possible before . . .'

'What wet plaster would that be?'

Gary pointed to a blank space of wall.

'I thought there. We just rip off the old plasterwork, bit of bonding on the laths, and Bob's your uncle.'

'Bob is not my uncle. I have never had an uncle called Bob. I never intend to have an uncle called Bob. If being Bob's nephew involves destroying a five-hundred-year-old . . .'

'Six hundred years actually. It's going to be a representation of Britain in the late seventies. Thatcher, Foot, CND marches, unemployment. Everything. I paint it, then we cover it with wood panelling. That's the expensive bit. The panelling will have to be hinged, see? In a hundred years' time this room will be priceless.'

'It's already priceless. Couldn't we leave it as it is? Henry James had tea here. Isherwood made love to a choral scholar in that very bedroom. A friend of Thomas Hardy's committed suicide here. Marlowe and Kydd danced a galliard on these exact floorboards.'

'And Adrian Healey commissioned Gary Collins's first fresco here. History is an on-going process.'

'And what's our bedder going to say?'

'It'll brighten her day. Better than picking up the manky Y-fronts of the economists opposite.'

'Fuck you, Gary. Why do you always make me sound so prissy and middle-class?'

'Bollocks.'

Adrian looked round the room and tried to fight down his bourgeois panic.

'So, hinged panelling, you say?'

'Shouldn't cost too much if that's what you're worrying about. I picked up this builder who's working on the site of Robinson College. He reckons he can get me some good stuff for under five hundred and he'll do all the rendering and plastering for free if I let him fuck me.'

'Not exactly in the great tradition is it? I mean, I don't think that Pope Julius and Michelangelo came to a similar kind of arrangement about the Sistine Chapel. Not unless I'm very much mistaken.'

'Don't bet on it. Anyway, someone's got to fuck me, haven't they?' Gary pointed out. 'Since you won't I've got to look elsewhere. Makes good sense.'

'Suddenly the whole logic becomes clear. But what about work? I'm supposed to be working this term, don't forget.'

Gary got to his feet and stretched.

'Bugger that, that's what I say. How was the porn?'

'Incredible. You've never in all your life seen anything like it.'

'Naughty pictures?'

'I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to look a labrador in the face again. But, ruined as my faith in humankind may be, I have to say that we of the twentieth century are a pretty normal bunch compared to the Victorians.'

'Victorian porn?'

'Certainly.'

'What did they do} I've often wondered. Did they have dicks and fannies and the rest of it?'

'Well of course they did, you silly child. And the zestier volumes indicate that they had a great deal more. There's a - '

Adrian broke off. He had suddenly given himself an idea. He looked at Gary's cartoon.

Why not? It was wild, it was dishonest, it was disgraceful, but it could be done. It would mean work. A hell of a lot of work, but work of the right kind. Why not?'

'Gary,' he said. 'I suddenly find myself at life's crossroads. I can feel it. One road points to madness and pleasure, the other to sanity and success. Which way do I turn?'

'You tell me, matey.'

'Let me put it this way. Do you want to pay off all your debt in one, plus the five hundred for wooden panelling? I've got a job for you.'

'Okay.'

'That's my boy.'

Trefusis approached the counter of the reading-room. The young librarian looked at him in surprise.

'Professor Trefusis!'

'Good morning! How wags the world with you today?'

'I'm very fit thank you, sir.'

'I wonder if you can help me?'

'That's what I'm here for, Professor.'

Trefusis leant forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially, not an easy task for him. Among his many gifts he had never been able to count speaking in hushed tones.

'Oblige the whim of a man old and mad before his time,' he said, quietly enough for only the first twelve rows of desks behind him to catch every word, 'and tell me if there is any reason why I shouldn't have come in here an hour ago?'

'Pardon?'

'Why should I not have come into this room an hour ago? Was something afoot?'

The librarian stared. A man who services academics is used to all forms of mental derangement and behavioural aberration. Trefusis had always struck him as blithely and refreshingly free from nervous disorder. But, as the saying had it, old professors never die, they merely lose their faculties.

'Well apart from the fact that an hour ago you couldn't have been here . . .'he said.

'I couldn't?'

'Well not while you were at St Matthew's talking to Mr Leyland on the telephone.'

'I was talking to Mr Leyland on the telephone?' said Trefusis. 'Of course I was! Dear me, my memory . . . Leyland rang me up, didn't he? On the telephone, as I recall. That's right, it was the telephone, I remember distinctly, because I spoke to him through it. He rang me up, on the telephone, to talk to me about. . . about. . . what was it now?'

'To check your authorisation for that undergraduate to read those . . . those Reserved Publications.'

'Mr Healey that would have been?'

'Yes. It was all right, wasn't it? I mean, you did confirm . . .'

'Oh yes. Quite all right, quite all right. I was merely . . . humour me once more and let me have a copy of the titles Mr Healey wanted to see, would you, dear boy?'

VI

'Bust me, Sir!' said Mr Polterneck. 'Bust me if I haven't just the little warmint for your most partic'lar requirements just now a-curling up in innocent slumber in the back room. You can bounce me from here to Cheapside if that ain't the truest truth that ever a man gave utterance of. Mrs Polterneck knows it to be so, my Uncle Polterneck knows it to be so and any man as is acquainted with me could never be conwinced to the contrary of it, not if you boiled him and baked him and twisted him on the rack for another opinion.'

'I am assured of your good faith in this matter?' asked Peter.

'Lord, Mr Flowerbuck. I'm in the way of weeping that you might have doubt of it! My good faith in this matter is the one sure fact you may most particular be assured of! My good faith is a flag, Mr Flowerbuck. It is a tower, Sir, a Monument. My good faith is not made of air, Mr Flowerbuck, it is an object such as you might touch and look upwards on with wonder and may you whip me until I bleed if that ain't so.'

'Then I suppose we might do business?'

'Now then, Sir,' said Mr Polterneck, producing a most preposterous handkerchief of bright vermilion silk with which he mopped his brow. 'He's a most especial warmint, is Joe Cotton. Most particular especial. To a gentleman like yourself as I can tell is most discerning in the nature of young warmints, he is a nonparelly. I could sonnet you sonnets, Mr Flowerbuck, about the gold of his tresses and the fair smoothness of his young skin. I could ballad you ballads, Sir, on the theme of the fair round softness of his rump and the garden of paradise that awaits a man within. I've a stable of young colts, Sir, as I can say the like would not be found in any district of the City, nor without the City too, and Master Cotton, Sir, is my Prize. If that ain't recommendation enough you can hang me by the neck right now, Sir, from old Uncle Polterneck's lintel, and have done with me for a lying rascal.'

It was all Peter could do to restrain himself from taking Polterneck fully at his word. The fear of what foul gases might ooze from the creature's lungs as he did so and what contamination he would suffer in the handling of him kept his vengeful fury at bay quite as much as the reflection that he must proceed as levelly as he might with the business in hand.

'I suppose you can tell me nothing of his provenance?' he asked indifferently.

'As to his provenance, Sir, I'm in the way of thinking, and Mrs Polterneck is the same, and Uncle Polterneck is hardly of a different persuasion, that he was sent down from Heaven, Sir. Sent down from Heaven itself to put bread in the mouths of my kinfolk and give pleasure and boon to gentlemen such as yourself, Sir. That is my opinion of his provenance and the man ain't been given birth to who could shake me out of it. You never seen such beauty in a lad, Sir. And how he's all compliance and skill in the Art he has been called to! A wonder to see him set to work, Sir. They say a young sister was sent down with him.'

'A girl? His twin, perhaps?'

'Well, now that you are in the line of remarking on the matter, I did hear mention as how the girl was his twin, Sir! A golden beauty of like complexion, for those that admires the same in the gentle sex. Where she might be, I have no knowledge, nor interest neither. Young cock-chicks is my game, Sir, the hen-birds is too devilish tickerly a proposition for a peaceable gentleman like myself. Bust me if they don't start a-breeding and a-parting with chicks of their own afore they've paid their way and how,' wheezed Mr Polterneck, 'is a man of business to procure the blessing of prosperity for his hearth when his stock is all a-laid up and a-breeding?'

'So you have no knowledge of this sister's whereabouts?'

'As to Whereabouts, whereabouts is different to provenance, Sir. Whereabouts is Mystery, and ask Mrs Polterneck and Uncle Polterneck if I don't deal in nothing but certainty. The whereabouts of Miss Judith is in doubt, the whereabouts of Master Joe is in the back room. If you are needful of a pretty little lady . . .'

'No, ho. Your Joe will do.'

'Indeed, Sir, as I hope he will do.'

'As for price?'

'Ah now, Mr Flowerbuck,' said Polterneck, wagging a greasy finger. 'Seeing as we're agreed on the warmint's celestial provenance, I can't have my proper say in the affair of Fees. If he was my own I'd say a crown, and Mrs Polterneck and Uncle Polterneck would cry that I was a-cheating myself cruel and I would shake my head sorrowful and raise the fee another crown to please 'em! I should happily settle at that price, though Mrs P. and Uncle P. would complain I was cheating myself still. I was born generous and: I can't help it and won't give apology to no man for it. But for all I can cheat myself, Mr Flowerbuck, I can't be cheating Heaven! It wouldn't be right, Sir. I could rob myself with a will an it pleased my gentlemen, for my customers is all to me, but I can't go robbing the Angels, Mr Flowerbuck, I can't. It ain't in me to do so. A full sovereign for the evening, back again by six next morning.'

Peter forbore once more to put a period to the rottenest life in the rottenest den in the rottenest borough in the rottenest city in all the rotten world. He pressed a coin into Polterneck's hand.

'Bring the boy to me!' he whispered.

Polterneck clapped his hands.

'Flinter!'

In the shadows at the back of the room a figure rose from out the straw. It was the figure of a boy, no older in appearance than fourteen years, although in a city where children of six have the eyes and gait of old men, indeed the same life of experience to look back upon, and where youths of twenty are so kept back in growth by filth and hunger that they retain the aspect of frail infants, it was impossible for Peter to determine the true age of this specimen. But that was never his concern, for his eyes were ever fixed upon the face. Or upon the part where the face ought by rights to have been. For it was not a face he fixed his gaze upon. A face, my Lords and Ladies and fine gentlemen, has eyes, does it not? A face must boast ears, a mouth, some arrangement of all the features that sniff and see and hear and taste before it can lay claim to that title. That they sniff the stench of villainy, see the deepest shame, hear the most degraded blasphemies and taste aught but the bitterest sorrows - that is never the face's affair! The face presents these organs each set in their place to look at what they will and listen where they please. What countenance deserves the name therefore -my lords who look upon gold plate, my ladies who breathe fine perfumes, my friends who taste plump mutton and hear the sweet harmony of a loving voice - what face can be called a face which has not a nose set upon it? What term might we invent to describe a face whose nose is all ate up? A face with a hole in its middle where a nose should have stood - be it a nose pinched and long, swollen and bulbous, or Roman and aloof, be it any kind of nose plain or pretty - a face, I say, with a black nullity where nostrils and bridge should be presenting themselves for admiration or disgust, that is no face but the face of Shame, no countenance but the countenance of Want. It is the visage of Sin and Lust, the aspect of Need and Despair but not - I beg the favour of your believing me - not, an hundred times never, the face of a human child.

'Flinter! Fetch down young Joe for the gentleman. And Flinter! don't you never dream of touching no part of him neither, or bust me if you don't find your head a suddenly lacking of two ears also!'

Polterneck turned to Peter with an indulgent smile, for all the world as if to say 'Bless my buttons if I don't lavish more care on my young lads than they deserve!' He must then have caught sight of the expression of revulsion and horror on Peter's face, for he hastened to whisper an explanation.

'The pox, Mr Flowerbuck! The pox is a sore trial in my line of working. He was a good worker was Master Flinter and nor I don't have the heart to dismiss him now the pox has taken away his smeller.'

'I should imagine,' said Peter, 'that . . .'

'Slow down, for God's sake,' said Gary. 'My fucking wrist is about to drop off.'

Adrian stopped pacing the room.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I was getting carried away. What do you reckon so far?'

'Not sure about "bulbous".'

'You're right. I'll check it tomorrow.'

'It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm about to run out of ink. I'm going to crash.'

'Finish the chapter?'

'In the morning.'

In a service-station car-park off the Stuttgart - Karlsruhe Autobahn, a Tweed Jacket and a dark Blue Marks & Spencer's Leisure Shirt were licking their wounds.

'I just can't believe it,' the Leisure Shirt was saying. 'I mean out of nowhere and for what?'

'Perhaps they fancy themselves as latter day highway robbers,' offered the Tweed.

'Well that greasy one in a safari suit wasn't exactly my idea of a Dick Turpin.'

'No,' said the Tweed. He looked at the Leisure Shirt, who had turned away and started kicking a tree stump.

'Why did I have to go and suggest what is obviously the most secluded bloody service-station on the whole sodding Autobahn?

'I blame myself, Adrian, I should have parked nearer the main building, I do hope you are all right?'

Well they didn't take my passport or wallet, at least. In fact as far as I can see they didn't take anything.'

'Notquite true.'

The Tweed gestured forlornly towards the back seat of the Wolseley.

'My briefcase, I regret to say.'

'Oh. Anything in it?'

'Some papers.'

'Phew. Lucky escape then, I suppose. Shall we call the police?'

Three

I

At the front of the tractor, fed from its power-take-off, was a picker. A conveyor belt ran along the side and disgorged the potatoes onto a rolling rack. Adrian and Lucy's job was to 'dress' them, to pull out the rotten, green or squashed potatoes as they trundled on their way to Tony, who stood at the end of the line, bagging the survivors. Every twenty or thirty minutes they would stop and unload a dozen full sacks into a pile in the middle of the field.

It was revolting work. The rotten and the good looked alike, so Lucy and Adrian had to pick up and examine each potato that jigged and bounced along in front of them. The bad ones burst under the slightest pressure, exploding in a squelch of stinking mucus. When it rained, mud sprayed up from the wheels and spattered their faces and clothes; when it was dry, clouds of dust choked them and matted their hair. The endless clanking, grinding, whining roar could have been the soundtrack for one of those Hieronymous Bosch visions of Hell, Adrian thought, where the moaning damned stand with their hands over their ears while demons frolic gleefully around them, probing their intimate parts with forks.

But in hell the inmates would at least try to strike up conversations with each other, hard as it might be to make themselves heard above the rumble of the treadmills and the roar of the furnaces. Lucy and Tony, brother and sister, never said a word to Adrian beyond a "Ning' when he turned up, freezing, at dawn and a "Nernight, then' at dusk when, stiff as a statue, he mounted his bicycle to pound wearily home to bath and bed.

Lucy just stared at the potatoes. Tony just stared at his bagging apparatus. Sometimes Adrian caught them staring at each other, in a manner which reminded him of the joke definition of a Cotswold virgin: an ugly girl under twelve who can run faster than her brother.

Lucy was no beauty, but if the looks she exchanged with Tony were anything to go by, Adrian guessed that she was no sprinter either.

The fact that he was expected to work at all in the Easter holidays had come as a blow. He was quite used to being told to find a job for the summer: waiting on tables at the Cider With Rosie restaurant, folding bolts of baize at the wool factory, treadling the cardboard-box machine at the ICI plant in Dur-sley, picking currants at Uley, feeding the birds at the Wildfowl Trust in Slimbridge.

'But Easter!' he had moaned into his cereal, the first morning of the holidays. 'No, Mother, no!'

'You're fifteen, darling! Most boys of your age like the idea of some kind of light work. Father thinks it's a good idea.'

'I know he does, but I've already got work to do. My school project.' Adrian was thinking of the article he had promised Bullock he would write for the school underground magazine.

'He doesn't want you wasting your time loafing around indoors.'

'That's pretty rich coming from him. He spends the whole bloody year cooped up in his sodding laboratory.'

'That's not fair, Ade. You know it isn't.'

'I've never had to get a job in the Easter hols before.'

His mother poured herself a fourth cup of tea.

'Won't you try it for me, darling? See how it goes?'

'Well it just means I'll have to write my essay over the Easter weekend, doesn't it? Or am I expected to pick bloody potatoes all through the most important sacred festival in the whole bloody Christian bloody calendar as well?'

'Of course not, darling. I'm sure you'll enjoy working for Mr Sutcliffe, he's a very nice man. And Father will be so pleased.'

She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. But Adrian wasn't going to take it gracefully. He stood up and washed his bowl under the tap.

'Don't bother, darling. Betsy will do that.'

'It's a bloody swizz. I mean, it's cricket next term. I've got to get some practice in.'

'Well I'm sure you'll get nice and fit at the farm, dear.'

'That's not the same as practising is it?'

'Don't whine, Ade. It's a very ugly sound. And I must say I'm not sure I know where this sudden enthusiasm for sports comes from, dear. Mr Mountford said in your report that you failed to attend a single rugby game or a single PE lesson last term.'

'Cricket's different,' said Adrian. 'I mean, you send me off to school for most of the year and then as soon as I come back you can't wait to get rid of me. I just hope you won't both be surprised if I lock you in an old people's home when you're old and smelly.'

'Darling! Don't be horrid.'

'And I'll only come and visit you to give you work to do. Shirts to iron and socks to darn.'

'Ade, that's an awful thing to say!'

'And only then will you know what it's like to be unloved by your own flesh and blood!' said Adrian, drying his hands. 'And don't giggle woman, because it isn't funny!'

'No darling, of course it isn't,' his mother said with her hand over her mouth.

'Oh I give up,' he had said and put a tea-towel on her head. 'I bloody give up.'

Human spirit, or lack of it, is such that, foul as the work was, Adrian found himself so lulled by the routine that sometimes the hours would pass like minutes. He tried hard to concentrate on composing in his head his contribution for the magazine. But he was always being distracted by other thoughts. He found himself playing a drama in which he cast himself as God and the potatoes as humans. This one he hurled into outer darkness, that one he sent to be garnered home.

'Well done, thou good and faithful spud, you may go to your reward.' ,

'Sinner! Corrupted one. I pluck thee out, I pluck thee out. Look, with a spot I damn thee.'

He wasn't sure if it was better to be a rotten potato or a healthy one, whether he would rather be safely bunched up in a warm bag with the goody-goodies or be thrown over the side and ploughed back into the soil. One thing was certain, either of those fates was preferable to being God.

The green potatoes were especially interesting. Donald Sut-cliffe, the farmer, had explained them to him one lunchtime.

'Spuds have to grow underground, see. If they poke up through the soil and catch the rays of the sun you'll get photosynthesis and that gives you chlorophyll which'll turn them green. A green potato is a relative of Woody Nightshade. Not as poisonous, but he won't do you any good.'

This immediately made Adrian think that he was a green potato and Cartwright was the sun.

I have been kissed by the light and transformed, he thought. I am dangerous and God has rejected me.

He was always doing that these days. Everything he saw became a symbol of his own existence, from a rabbit caught in headlights to raindrops racing down a window-pane. Perhaps it was a sign that he was going to become a poet or a philosopher: the kind of person who, when he stood On the sea-shore, didn't see waves breaking on a beach, but saw the surge of human will or the rhythms of copulation, who didn't hear the sound of the tide but heard the eroding roar of time and the last moaning sigh of humanity fizzing into nothingness. But perhaps it was a sign, he also thought, that he was turning into a pretentious wanker.

On the last working day before Easter, Maundy Thursday, the four of them had been loading bags onto the trailer in thickening twilight when Adrian caught sight of a gathering of huge birds, as black as priests, pecking at rotten potatoes at the further end of the field.

'Look at the size of those crows!' he had cried.

'Boy,' said Mr Sutcliffe, tugging at a sack, 'when you see a load of crows together, them's rooks. And when you see a rook on its own, that's a fucking crow.'

'Oh,' said Adrian. 'Right. But supposing a rook gets lost or wanders off by itself. What would you call that?'

Mr Sutcliffe roared with laughter.

'Well I don't know about you, lad, but I'd call it a crook!'

II

'A SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL'

or

'The Education of an English Gentleman'

by

Woody Nightshade

The Daisy Chain Club is exclusive. Exclusive because you can only join if you sleep in a junior dormitory, one without cubicles. It isn't hard to become a member. Membership is enforced. If one person refuses, the club cannot meet.

The rules are simply learnt. After lights out you stretch out your right hand until it finds your neighbour's membrum virile. The same is being done to you by the boy on your left. At a given signal from the President of the club (always the Prefect whose duty it is to have to sleep in a junior dormitory), it's all hands to the pumps and last one home's on the bathroom-cleaning roster for a week.

It's a calm, civilised and amiable club, The Daisy Chain. There are ones like it in every house in the school and in every public school in the land. An acquaintance from Ampleforth tells me of the Hot Cupboard Society, another from Rugby of the Milkshake Club, whose name speaks for itself. A Wykhamist friend told me of a pursuit at Winchester called the Biscuit Game. The players stand around in a circle tossing off onto a Wholemeal Digestive. The last one to spit his stuff on the biscuit eats it. A new kind of cream filling well in advance of anything McVitie's have got round to thinking of. Packed with potassium and vitamins, too.

From time to time news of these little entertainments leaks out. A careless word from Bletchley-Titherton to his older sister, a letter home from a young Savonarola and the whistle is "blown. There follow tears, recriminations and hasty expulsions.

This is strange. Let's face it boys, most of our fathers went, if not to this school, at least to others like it. Most of the staff too. Milk-Shake Clubs and their like are as old as the chapel steps.

But this is England, where the only crime is to he Pound Out.

'My dear old fellow, we all know what goes on hut it really doesn't do to shout about it. Upsets the apple-cart, muddies the water, what?'

I can't help thinking of the House of Commons. Six hundred or so men, most of them public school. They pronounce daily on the moral evils of the world, hut just think my dears, just think of the things they have done and continue to do to their bodies and the bodies of others.

We are being groomed for power. In twenty years' time we will see fellow members of The Daisy Chain Club on television talking about oil prices, giving the Church's viewpoint on the IRA, presenting Blue Peter, closing down factories, handing down severe sentences from the bench.

Or will we?

The world is changing. We grow our hair long, we take drugs. How many people reading this have not smoked cannabis on school premises? We are not very interested in power, we are very interested in putting the world right.

Now that is really intolerable. No my-dear-old-fellowing for that kind of crime.

The Daisy Chain Club may provoke tears, recriminations, hasty expulsions and even hastier cover-ups and laughings-off. But long hair, pot and real rebellion, they provoke anger, hatred and madness. When young people shag each other off in the dorms they are engaging in a charming old custom, a time-honoured ritual: the only reason that there are expulsions is that the tradition is hard to explain to tearful mothers and snide newspapers. But when boys say that they would rather be drummers than barristers, gardeners than businessmen, poets than soldiers, that they don't think much of examinations and authority and marriage, that when they are of age they intend to remake the world to fit them, not remake themselves to fit the world, then there is Trouble.

Someone once said that Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man and Communism is the exact reverse. I expect most of us agree with that. I don't know any schoolboy Communists, but I do know hundreds of schoolboy revolutionaries.

In the 60s the ideal was to overthrow by force. I don't know if you've seen the film 'If...' I doubt it, every year the cinema club tries to show it and every year Headman forbids it. The film ends with a band of schoolboys turning into guerillas and assassinating parents and staff. People said that although it was set in a school it was supposed to be a metaphor for real life. Well I don't know about you, but for me school is real life. And probably will be for years. I have no interest in shooting any of the masters dead of course (well, no more than two or three, tops), but I have a lot of interest in challenging their authority. Not wresting it from them, necessarily, but challenging it. Asking where it comes from, how it is earned. If we are told that it is earnt on the basis of age and strength alone, then we know what kind of world we are living in and I hope we will know what to do about it. We are always being asked to show respect. Well, we can show respect with the best of them, what we find it hard to do is to feel respect.

Our generation, the 70s Generation, is calling for a social revolution, not a pol -

'Adrian!'

'Oh, bollocks!'

'We're ready to go now, darling.'

'Go? Go where?' shouted Adrian.

'To church, of course.'

'But you said I didn't have to!'

'What?'

Adrian came out of his room and looked down into the hall. His mother and father were standing by the door swathed in their dominical best.

'I'm in the middle of my school project. You said I didn't have to go to church.'

His father snorted.

'Don't be ridiculous! Of course you do.'

'But I was working . . .'

'You'll put on a tie and come down now!'

III

'You're a fucking maniac,' said Tom. '

'You're a fucking maniac,' said Adrian.

'We're all fucking maniacs,' said Bullock.

They were in Bullock and Sampson's study leafing through copies of Bollocks!

The trunk they sat on felt to them like a powder keg. It contained seven hundred copies ready for. distribution.

'Come on kids,' Bullock had said when Adrian had suggested the title at the end of the previous term, 'BUM is much better. Bullock's Underground Magazine. Bollocks is my nickname for God's sake. Everyone will know I had something to do with it.'

'That's the whole idea, my little love-noodle,' Adrian had replied. 'No one is going to believe that Brainy Bollocks himself would be so stupid as to name a subversive underground magazine after himself.'

So Bollocks! it was. There was no artwork because only Sampson and Tom had much skill at drawing and their styles were too readily identifiable.

The magazine they now looked through was a simple fifteen pages of gestetnered typescript on green paper. No handwriting, no illustrations or distinguishing characteristics of any kind. It could have been done by any person or persons in any House in the school. Bullock had had no trouble typing and reproducing the stencils in total secrecy at home.

After many crossings-out and changes of direction, Adrian's piece had been sent off to Bullock's address in Highgate the Tuesday after Easter: reading it back now he found it rather tame and half-hearted next to the libretto of a rock opera on school life that Bullock had contributed and Tom's frankly hairy analysis of the heroin counter-culture in The Naked Lunch. Sampson's allegory of red and grey squirrels was simply incomprehensible.

'Now,' said Tom, 'we face the problemette of distribution.'

'More of a problemola than a problemette,' said Bullock.

'A problerama, even,' said Sampson.

'I'd go so far as to call it a problemellaroni,' said Bullock.

'It's a real cunt,' said Tom, 'no question.'

'I don't know though,' said Adrian, 'we've all been on cube calls, haven't we? We should know how to break into the Houses.'

'I've never been on one actually,' said Sampson.

'Well, I've been on plenty,' said Adrian. 'In fact, I believe I hold the House record.'

Discipline is a sensitive subject in public schools; the flogging of offenders, the toasting of small boys in front of fires, the forcing of uncomfortable objects up their bottoms, the hanging of them upside down by their ankles, all these cruel and unusual forms of punishment had died out at Adrian's school by the time he arrived. Headman sometimes flicked a cane, masters gave lines, detentions or remissions of privilege and prefects gave cube calls, but imaginative violence and cunning torture were things of the past. It had been three years since a boy had been emptied upside down in a lavatory or had his dick slammed in a desk. With this kind of leniency and liberalism in sentencing in bur premier educational establishments, many thought that it was no wonder the country was going to the dogs.

When the cube call, whose violence was bureaucratic rather than physical, had been invented, no one could say. A single cube call was a small slip of paper given by a prefect to an offender. It contained the name of another prefect, always from another House. A double cube call contained two names of two different prefects, again from two different Houses. Adrian was the only boy in living memory who had been given a sextuple cube call.

The recipient of the call had to get up early, change into games clothes, run to the House of the first prefect on the list, enter the prefect's cubicle, wake him up and get him to sign next to his name. Then on to the next prefect on the list, who was usually in a House right at the other end of the town. When all the signatures had been collected, it was back to his own House and into uniform in time for breakfast at ten to eight. So that offenders couldn't cheat by going round in the most convenient geographical order, or by getting up before seven o'clock, the official start time, the prefects on the list had to put down the exact time at which they were woken up next to their signatures.

Adrian detested cube calls, though a psychologist might have tried to persuade him otherwise, considering how far out of his way to collect them he seemed to go. He thought it an illogical form of punishment, as irritating for the prefects who were shaken from their slumbers as for the offenders.

The system was open to massive abuse. Prefects could settle scores with colleagues they disliked by sending them cube callers every day for a week. Tit-for-tat cube call wars between prefects could go on like this for whole terms. In Adrian's House, Sargent had once had a feud with a prefect in Dashwood House called Purdy. On every day of one horrendous week Adrian had collected single cube calls from Sargent for absurd minor offences: whistling in his study during prep; having his hands in his pockets while watching a match; failing to cap a retired schoolmaster who had been walking down the High Street and whom Adrian had never even had pointed out to him before as a cappable entity. On each of Sargent's cube calls that particular week Purely's had been the name listed. On the fifth day Adrian had sidled apologetically into Purdy's cube to find it empty.

'The bird had flown, my old love,' he had tried to explain to Sargent when returning his unsigned chit. 'But I did abstract Purdy's sponge-bag from his bedside, just to prove that I was in his cube.'

That afternoon Sargent and Purdy had fought each other on the Upper. After that Adrian was left alone.

Of course prefects could do each other favours as well.

'Oh Hancock, there's a not-half scrummy scrum-half in your Colts Fifteen, what's his name?'

'What, Yelland you mean?'

'That's the one. Rather fabulous. You . . . er . . . couldn't find your way clear to sending him over one morning, could you? As a little cubie?'

'Oh all right. If you'll send me Finlay.'

'Done.'

Adrian as a new boy had been startled to find, on his first ever cube call, that the prefect whose signature he needed slept naked with only one sheet to cover him and was extremely hard to wake up.

'Excuse me, Hollis, Hollis!' he had squeaked desperately in his ear.

But Hollis had just groaned in his sleep, rolled an arm over him and pulled him into his bed.

The only really enjoyable part of the cube call for Adrian was the burglary. Officially all the Houses were locked until seven, which was supposed to make it pointless to set off early on a cube call and take the thing at a leisurely pace. But there were larder, kitchen and changing-room windows that could be prised open and latches that could yield to a flexible sheet of mica. Once inside all you had to do was creep up to the dorm, tiptoe into the target prefect's cube, adjust his alarm clock and wake him. That way you could start the call at half past five or six and save yourself all the flap and hurry of trying to complete it in forty minutes.

'Yup,' Adrian told Bullock. 'Don't you worry your pretty little head about it. I reckon I know a way into every House.'

Two days later the whole school awoke to Bollocks!

From three in the morning until half past six, Tom, Adrian, Bullock and Sampson, working from maps and instructions drawn up by Adrian, had invaded the Houses and left copies in studies, common rooms, libraries and in piles at the foot of staircases. They had seen no one and been seen by no one. They had come down to breakfast in their House as apparently amazed and excited by the appearance of the magazine as everyone else.

In school, before morning chapel, they joined the knots of people under the noticeboards in the colonnade, twittering about its contents and trying to guess who the authors were.

He had been wrong to worry that the sophistication of the others' contributions would outshine his. His brand of salacious populism was far more interesting to the school than the recondite pedantry of Bullock and Sampson, and much less aggressive than Tom's style of Open Field Beat. The most feverish speculation of the day centred around the identity of Woody Nightshade. Everywhere Adrian went he heard snatches of his article being quoted.

'Hey there, Marchant. Fancy a quick round of the Biscuit Game?'

'They can chop off your hair, my children, but they can't chop off your spirit. We are winning and they know it.'

'A school isn't an ante-room for real life, it is real life.'

'Passive resistance!'

'Let's set our own syllabus. Fail their exams, pass our own.'

The school had never known anything like this. At the eleven o'clock break on the morning of its appearance there was no other topic of conversation in the Butteries.

'Go on, admit it, Healey,' Heydon-Bayley said to Adrian, his mouth full of cream-slice, 'it was you wasn't it? That's what everyone's saying.'

'That's odd, someone told me it was you,' said Adrian.

He found it achingly frustrating not to be able to crow about his part in it. Bullock, Sampson and Tom revelled in the anonymity, but Adrian longed for applause and recognition. Even jeering and hissing would have been something. He wondered if Cartwright had read his article. What would he think of it? What would he think of the author of it?

He watched very closely to see how people reacted when accused of being a contributor. He was always trying to improve his mastery of the delicate art of lying and the spectacle of people telling the truth under pressure repaid close study.

He noticed that people said things like:

'Yeah, it was me actually.'

'Piss off, Aitcheson! Everyone knows it was you.'

'Oh God! How did you find out? Do you think Headman knows?'

Adrian memorised all the replies and reproduced them as faithfully as he could.

And then the authorities had struck back.

Adrian's Housemaster, Tickford, rose to his feet after lunch that same day, as did the other eleven Housemasters in the other eleven Houses.

'All copies of this magazine will be collected from studies by the prefects before Games this afternoon and destroyed. Anyone found in possession of a copy after three o'clock will be severely punished.'

Adrian had never seen Tickford look so furious. He wondered if he could possibly have guessed that Bollocks! had originated in his House.

He and Tom had handed their two copies in cheerfully.

'There you go, Hauptmann Bennett-Jones,' said Adrian, 'we have also an edition of The Trial, by the notorious Jew, Kafka. Berlin would appreciate it, I am thinking, if this too was added to the bonfire. Also the works of that decadent lesbian Bolshevik, Jane Austen.'

'You'd better watch it, Healey. You're on the list. If you had anything to do with this piece of shit then you are in trouble.'

'Thank you, Sargent. You needn't take up any more of our valuable time. I'm sure you have many calls of a similar nature to make in the neighbourhood.'

But for all the sensational impact of the magazine, Adrian felt somehow a sense of anti-climax. His article would never make a shred of difference to anything. He hadn't exactly expected open warfare in the form-rooms, but it was depressing to realise that if he and Bullock and the others were exposed tomorrow they would be expelled, talked about for a while and then completely forgotten. Boys were cowardly and conventional. That's why the system worked, he supposed.

He sensed too that if he came across the article in later life, as a twenty-year-old, he would shudder with embarrassment at the pretension of it. But why should his future self sneer at what he was now? It was terrible to know that time would lead him to betray everything he now believed in.

What I am now is right, he told himself. I will never see things as clearly again, I will never understand everything as fully as I do at this minute.

The world would never change if people got sucked into it.

He tried to explain his feelings to Tom, but Tom was not in communicative mood.

'Seems to me there's only one way to change the world,' said Tom.

'And what's that?' asked Adrian.

'Change yourself.'

'Oh, that's bollocks!'

'And Bollocks! tells the truth.'

He went to the library and read up his symptoms in more detail. Cyril Connolly, Robin Maugham, T.C. Worsley, Robert Graves, Simon Raven: they had all had their Cartwrights. And the novels! Dozens of them. Lord Dismiss Us, The Loom of Youth, The Fourth of June, Sandel, Les Amities Particulieres, The Hill. . .

He was one of a long line of mimsy and embittered middle-class sensitives who disguised their feeble and decadent lust as something spiritual and Socratic.

And why not? If it meant he had to end his days on some Mediterranean island writing lyric prose for Faber and Faber and literary criticism for the New Statesman, running through successions of houseboys and 'secretaries', getting sloshed on Fernet Branca and having to pay off the Chief of Police every six months, then so be it. Better than driving to the office in the rain.

In a temper, he took out a large Bible, opened it at random and wrote 'Irony' down the margin in red biro. In the fly-leaf he scribbled anagrams of his name. Air and an arid nadir, a drain, a radian.

He decided to go and see Gladys. She would understand.

On his way he was ambushed from behind a gravestone by Rundell.

'Ha, ha! It's Woody Nightshade!'

'You took the words right out of my mouth, Tarty. Only you would know about something as disgusting as the Biscuit Game.'

'Takes one to know one.'

Adriam mimed taking out a notebook.

'"Takes one to know one," I must write that down. It might come in useful if I ever enter a competition to come up with the Most Witless Remark in the English Language.'

'Well I beg yours.'

'You can't have it.'

Rundell beckoned with a curled finger. 'New wheeze,' he said. 'Come here.'

Adrian approached cautiously.

'What foul thing is this?'

'No, I'm serious. Come here.'

He pointed to his trouser pocket. 'Put your hand in there.'

'Well frankly . . . even from you, Tarty, that's a bit . . .'

Rundell stamped his foot.

'This is serious! I've had a brilliant idea. Feel in there.'

Adrian hesitated.

'Go on!

Adrian dipped his hand in the pocket.

Rundell giggled.

'You see! I've cut the pockets out. And no undies. Isn't that brilliant?'

'You tarty great tart . . .'

'Keep going now you've started, for God's sake.'

*

Adrian reached Gladys and sat down with a thump. Down below, Rundell blew an extravagant kiss and skipped off to replenish his strength before trying the game on someone else.

Why can't I be satisfied with Tarty? Adrain asked himself, wiping his fingers on a handkerchief. He's sexy. He's fun. I can do things with him I wouldn't dream of doing with Cartwright. Oh hell, here comes someone else.

'Friend or foe?'

Pigs Trotter lumbered into view.

'Friend!' he panted.

'La! You are quite done up, my lord. Come and sit this one out with me.'

Trotter sat down while Adrian fanned himself with a dock-leaf.

'I always think the cotillion too fatiguing for the summer months. Persons of consequence should avoid it. When I have danced a cotillion, I know for a fact that I look plain beyond example. The minuet is, I believe, the only dance for gentlemen of rank and tone. You agree with me there, my lord, I make no doubt? I think it was Horry Walpole who remarked, "In this life one should try everything once except incest and country dancing." It is an excellent rule, as I remarked to my mother in bed last night. Perhaps you will do me the honour of accompanying me to the card room later? A game of Deep Bassett is promised and I mean to take my lord Darrow for five hundred guineas.'

'Healey,' said Trotter. 'I'm not saying you did and I'm not saying you didn't, I don't really care. But Woody Nightshade . . .'

'Woody Nightshade,' said Adrian. 'Solatium dulcamara, the common wayside bitter-sweet: They seek him here, they seek him there, Those masters seek him everywhere.Isn't he nimble, isn't he neat, That demmed elusive bitter-sweet.

'A poor thing, but mine own.'

'You've read his article, I suppose?' said Pigs Trotter.

'I may have glanced through it a few times in an idle hour,' said Adrian. 'Why do you ask?'

'Well ... '

There was a catch in Trotter's throat. Adrian looked at him in alarm. Tears were starting up in his piggy eyes.

Oh hell. Other people's tears were more than Adrian could cope with. Did you put an arm round them? Did you pretend not to notice? He tried the friendly, cajoling approach.

'Hey, hey, hey! What's the matter?'

'I'm sorry, Healey. I'm really sorry b-but . . .'

'You can tell me. What is it?'

Trotter shook his head miserably and sniffed.

'Here look,' said Adrian, 'there's a handkerchief. Oh . . . no, second thoughts this one's not so clean. But I have got a cigarette. Blow your nose on that.'

'No thanks, Healey.'

'I'll have it then.'

He eyed Trotter nervously. It was cheating to let your emotions out like this. And what was a lump like Pigs doing with emotions anyway? He had found a handkerchief of his own and was blowing his nose with a horrible mucous squelch. Adrian lit his cigarette and tried to sound casual.

'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.

Biffen lived in rather a grand house in its own grounds on the edge of town.

'Hello, sir,' said Adrian. 'It's a Friday, so I thought . . .'

'Healey! How splendid. Come in, come in.'

'I've brought some lemon curd, sir.'

There were about six boys already in the sitting room, talking to Biffen's wife, Lady Helen. Biffen had married her at Cambridge and then taken her back to his old school when he joined as a junior master. They had been here ever since, objects of great pity to the school: an Earl's daughter tied to a no-hope, slow-lane pedagogue.

'I know you!' boomed Lady Helen from the sofa. 'You are Healey from Tickford's House. You were Mosca in the School Play.'

'Healey is in my Lower Sixth French set,' said Biffen.

'And he mobs you appallingly, Humphrey dear. I know.'

'Er, I've brought some lemon curd,' said Adrian.

'How kind. Now, who do you know here?'

Adrian looked round the room.

'Um . . .'

'You'll certainly know Hugo. He's in your House. Go and sit next to him, and get him to stop spoiling my dog.'

Adrian hadn't noticed Cartwright sitting at a window seat, apart from the main group, tossing bits of cake at a spaniel.

'Hi,' he said, sitting down next to him.

'Hi,' said Cartwright.

'Did you pass your exam then?'

'Sorry?'

'Your Grade Three piano. You remember. Last term.'

'Oh, that. Yes thanks.'

'Great.'

More immortal dialogue from the Noel Coward of the seventies.

'So,' said Adrian, 'do you come here ... er ... is this something you've been to many times?'

'Most Fridays,' said Cartwright. 'I've never seen you here before.'

'No, well. . . I've not been invited before.'

'Right.'

'So . . . er . . . what happens exactly?'

'Well, you know, it's just a tea-party, really.'

And so it had proved. Biffen had instigated a book game in which everyone had to own up to books they'd never read. Biffen and Lady Helen called out titles of classic novels and plays and if you hadn't read them you had to put your hand up. Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, Animal Farm, Madame Bovary, 1984., Lucky Jim, Sons and Lovers, Othello, Oliver Twist, Decline and Fall, Howards End, Hamlet, Anna Karenina, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the list of unread books that they managed to compile had made them all giggle. They had agreed that by the end of term the list would have to be much more obscure. The only two books that had been read by everyone present were Lord of the Flies and Catch 22 which, Biffen remarked, said much about English teaching at prep schools. It was all a transparent, and to Adrian rather wet, device to get everyone to read more, but it worked.

Adrian, despite the gentility of it all, had rather enjoyed himself and was fired with an enthusiasm for outreading everyone on the Russians, who always sounded the most impressive and impenetrable.

'I mean,' he said to Cartwright as they walked back to Tickford's, 'this place can really get you down. It's not a bad idea to have a sanctuary like that to go to, is it?'

'He's going to be my tutor next year when I'm in the Sixth Form,' said Cartwright. 'I want to go to Cambridge and he's the best at getting you through Oxbridge Entrance apparently.'

'Really? I want to go to Cambridge too!' said Adrian. 'Which college?'

'Trinity, I think.'

'God, me too! My father was there!'

Adrian's father in fact had been to Oxford.

'But Biffo thinks I should apply to St Matthew's. He has a friend there he was in the war with, a Professor Trefusis, supposed to be very good. Anyway, we'd better get a move on. Don't forget we're gated. It's nearly five already.'

'Oh shit,' said Adrian, as they broke into a run.

'Did you read the magazine, then?' he asked as they jogged up the hill to Tickford's.

'Yes,' said Cartwright.

And that was that.

'It was practically a conversation, Tom!'

'Great,' said Tom. 'Thing is . . .'

'It's all settled. He'll join me at Cambridge in my second year. After we've graduated we'll fly to Los Angeles or Amsterdam to get married - you can there, you know. Then we'll set up house in the country. I'll write poetry, Hugo will play the piano and look beautiful. We'll have two cats called Spasm and Clitoris. And a spaniel. Hugo likes spaniels. A spaniel called Biffen.'

Tom was unimpressed.

'Sargent was in here ten minutes ago,' he said.

'Oh pissly piss. What was he after?'

Tickford wants to see you in his study straight away.'

'What for?'

'Dunno.'

'It can't be . . . does he want to see you as well? Or Sammy or Bollocks?'

Tom shook his head.

'He's got nothing on me,' said Adrian. 'He can't have.'

'Stout denial,' said Tom. 'It works every time.'

'Exactly. Brazen it out.'

'But I tell you,' warned Tom, 'there's definitely something up. Sargent looked scared.'

'Rubbish,' said Adrian, 'he hasn't the imagination.'

'Shit-scared,' said Tom.

The Housemaster's study was through the Hall. Adrian was surprised to see all the Prefects standing about in a cluster near the door that connected the boys' side of the House to Mr and Mrs Tickford's living quarters. They stared at him as he went through. They didn't jeer or look hostile. They looked . . . they looked shit-scared.

Adrian knocked on Tickford's door.

'Come in!'

Adrian swallowed nervously and entered.

Tickford was sitting behind his desk, fiddling with a letter-opener.

Like a psychopath toying with a dagger, thought Adrian.

The window was at Tickford's back, darkening his face too much for Adrian to be able to read his expression.

'Adrian, thank you for coming to see me,' he said. 'Sit down, please sit down.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Oh dear ... oh dear.'

'Sir?'

'I don't suppose you have any idea why I have sent for you?'

Adrian shook his head, a picture of round-eyed innocence.

'No, I should imagine not. No. I hope word has not got out.'

Tickford took off his glasses and breathed anxiously on the lenses.

'I have to ask you now, Adrian ... oh dear . . . it's all very . . .'

He replaced the glasses and stood up. Adrian could see his face clearly now, but still he couldn't read it.

'Yes, sir?'

'I'm going to have to ask you about your relationship with Paul Trotter.'

So that was it!

The moron had gone and blabbed to someone. The Chaplain probably. And vicious Dr Meddlar would have been only too keen to repeat it to Tickford.

'I don't know what you mean, sir.'

'It's a very simple question, Adrian. It really is. I'm asking you about your relationship with Paul Trotter.'

'Well, I haven't really . . . really got one, sir. I mean, we're sort of friends. He hangs around with me and Thompson sometimes. But I don't know him very well.'

'And that's it?'

'Well yes, sir.'

'It is terribly important that you tell me the truth. Terribly important.'

A boy can always tell when a master is lying, Adrian thought to himself. And Tickford isn't lying. It is very important.

'Well, there is one thing, sir.'

'Yes?'

'I really don't know that I should repeat this to you, sir. I mean Trotter did tell me something in confidence . . .'

Tickford leant forward and took Adrian's hand by the wrist.

'I promise you this, Adrian. Whatever Trotter may have said to you, you must now tell me. Do you understand? You must!'

'It's a bit embarrassing, sir ... couldn't you ask him yourself?'

'No, no. I want to hear from you.'

Adrian swallowed.

'Well sir, I bumped into Trotter yesterday afternoon and he suddenly ... he suddenly started crying and so I asked him what the matter was and he said he was very unhappy because he was . . . well he had a sort of . . .'

God this was hard.

'. . . he was . . . well he said he was in love with someone ... he, you know, had a pash on them.'

'I see. Yes, of course. Yes I see. He thought he was in love with someone. Another boy, I suppose?'

'That's what he said, sir.'

'Trotter was found in a barn in Brandiston Field this afternoon,' he said, pushing a piece of paper across the desk. 'This note was in his pocket.'

Adrian stared.

'Sir?'

Tickford nodded sadly.

'The stupid boy,' he said. 'The stupid boy hanged himself.'

Adrian looked at the note.

'I'm very sorry but I couldn't bear it any more,' it read. 'Healey knows why.'

'His mother and father are on their way down from Harro-gate,' said Tickford. 'What am I going to say?'

Adrian looked at him in panic.

'Why, sir? Why would he kill himself?'

'Tell me the name of the boy he was ... he had this thing for, Adrian.'

'Well, sir . . .'

'I must know.'

'It was Cartwright, sir. Hugo Cartwright.'

Two Savile Row suits, a Tommy Nutter and a Bennett, Tovey and Steele, faced each other over a table at Wiltons.

'Good to see the Native back again,' said the Bennett, Tovey and Steele. 7 was beginning to think it extinct.'

'Now you say that,' said the Tommy Nutter suit, 'but I've got rather a soft spot for the Pacific chaps myself. They're sort of wetter somehow, don't you think? Fleshlier if there is such a word.'

The Bennet, Tovey and Steele did not agree. He considered it typical of the Tommy Nutter to have a loud taste in oysters.

'This Montrachet's a bit warm, isn't it?'

The Bennett, Tovey and Steele sighed. He had been brought up from his nanny's knee to believe that white Burgundies should not be overchilled. They knew him at Wiltons and took great care to present his wines just so. The Tommy Nutter would resent a lecture, however. Men of his stamp were absurdly sensitive.

'Still,' said the other. 'Who's complaining? Now then. Let's talk Mendax. GDS has had no joy, I'm sorry to say, with the Odysseus material. No joy at all.'

'No decrypt whatsoever?'

'Oh, they opened it up all right. It was an old twist-cypher. Prewar. Absolute antique.'

'That figures,' grunted the Bennett, Tovey and Steele. 'And what was inside?'

'Names, addresses and telephone numbers. Load of harmless Osties.Lifted straight from the bloody Salzburg directory, would you believe?'

'The old bastard.'

'So the thing is,' the Tommy Nutter twisted the stem of his wineglass coyly, 'did this Odysseus of yours bring the material out or did he leave it behind?'

'He's had nothing in the mail. We know that.'

Your friend on the inside still paying his way?'

'Oh yes.'

'Good, because he's a greedy son of a bitch.'

The Bennett, Tovey and Steele suit ignored this. It wasn't as if the Tommy Nutter suit was paying for Telemachus. He thought he was, of course, and would probably never notice that it came directly out of the Bennett, Tovey and Steele's pocket, never to be reclaimedfrom the fund. It was a purely private business, but Cabinet liaison had to believe there was honey in it for them. It would not do for them to find out that the Service was being used entirely for the Bennett, Tovey and Steele's private ends.

'I think the Mendax material is still over there,' he said, 'without the walls of Ilium.'

'In Salzburg, you mean?' asked the Tommy Nutter, whose grip on codenames was weak at the best of times.

'That's right. In Salzburg.'

'This is all very much your own pigeon, you know. You are the only one who believes in Mendax. I am reminded of the operation you ran in seventy-six, also against Odysseus. What did that game come to?'

The Bennett, Tovey and Steele shot the Tommy Nutter a suspicious glare.

'What do you mean game?' he said. 'Why do you say game*"

'Keep your hair on, old man. I just meant that you seem to have a bit of a maggot in your head on the subject of Trefusis. Some of us are wondering why. That's all.'

'You'll find out yet. Listen. The point is this. I never said I did believe in Mendax. But if it doesn't exist why should the Trojans and Odysseus want us to believe that it does? That's worth pursuing surely?'

'Humph,' said the Tommy Nutter. 'It has at least been a cheap operation so far, that I will grant you. But we haven't a shred of proof that Szabo - what's he called again?'

'Helen.'

'We haven't a shred of evidence to suggest that Helen is anything other than a loyal servant of his state. The Trojans have just given him a medal for God's sake.'

'All the more reason to suspect Odysseus.'

'Why "Helen " by the way? Odd codename for a man.'

The Bennett, Tovey and Steele suit was not going to give the Tommy Nutter a free lesson in Homeric mythology. Where did the man go to school? The tie was no indication. Beaconsfield Conservatives or something equally foul, probably. Hadley Wood Golf Club. Carshalton Rotarians. Yuk.

'It seemed to make sense at the time,' he said.

'Oh ah,' the Tommy Nutter pressed a crumb into the table cloth. 'So tell me about these grandchildren.'

'Stefan is a chess-player. He's coming over here to play in a couple of months. They'll keep him on a long leash I shouldn't wonder.'

'And you want me to allocate resourcing?'

'I'd quite like some money made available, if that's what you mean. Grade Two surveillance should, do it.'

'I have to interface, as they say, with the Treasury tomorrow. Cabinet next week. Oh, look, you're not going to smoke are you?'

Christ! thought the Bennett, Tovey and Steele. Roll on the next Labour government.

Four

I

Tim Anderson considered the question with great care.

'I don't believe that the comparison with Oliver Twist, seductive and engaging as I would be the last to deny it being, is as valid as a first glance might allow.'

'But surely, Dr Anderson, the similarities are very clear. What we have here is a secret workhouse birth, we have a gang of boys set to work by the character Polterneck, we have the character of Peter Flowerbuck, who traces his own family connection with the Cotton twins, not unlike Mr Brownlow's quest in Oliver Twist, we have Flinter, who like Nancy is an agent of revenge. The parallels are surely most striking?'

Gary poured some more Meursault for Jenny and Adrian, never at any time taking his eyes off the screen.

'I am not going to consider failing to grant you the presence of narrative echoes,' Tim Anderson replied, 'but I would certainly find myself presented with personal difficulties if asked to deny that this is the mature Dickens of Little Dorrit and Bleak House. I'm sensing a fuller picture of a connected world here than we are allowed in Twist. I'm sensing a deeper anger, I find myself responding to a more complete symphonic vision. The chapter which describes the flood, the scene depicting the bursting of the Thames's banks and the sweeping away of the Den is a more proleptic and organic event than the reader has been confronted with in earlier novels. I would be laying myself open to a charge of being mistaken if I attempted to resist the argument that the character of Flinter is a development of both Nancy and the Artful Dodger which we can't be afraid to recognise takes us into a more terrified Dickens, a more, if you like, Kafkaesque Dickens.'

The interviewer nodded.

'I understand that the University has already sold the film and television rights of Peter Flowerbuck?'

'That is not substantially incorrect.'

'Are you worried that to do this before the manuscript has been officially authenticated might lay you open to future embarrassment, should it prove to be a fake?'

'As you know, we have taken on a number of new research fellows at St Matthew's who are working extensively on the text to determine its authenticity-level. They will be running linguistic particles and image-clusters through a computer program which is as reliable as any chemical test.'

'Authorial fingerprinting?'

'Authorial is the term often used, fingerprinting, that is far from wrong.'

'And how confident are you that this is genuine Dickens?'

'Let me turn that question round and say that I am not confident that it isn't Dickens.'

'Let me turn that answer round and say "bullshit",' said Adrian.

'Hush!' said Jenny.

'Well, I mean. Symphonic visions.'

'I don't think it insignificant,' Anderson continued, 'that at a time when English departments at my university and hundreds of others are being threatened with cuts, a discovery of pure scholarship like this should attract such attention and validate so completely what has quite properly been perceived as the beleaguered discipline of English studies.'

'It's a very lucrative discovery, certainly. How in fact was it made?'

'I was alerted to the existence of the text by a student of mine from Newnham College. She had been participating in my seminars on Derrida and Sexual Difference and had been pursuing a number of independent lines of enquiry into the Victorian Deviant Ethic. She found the papers in the St Matthew's College Library hidden amongst old copies of Corn-hill magazine..'

'Did she realise what she had stumbled across?'

'She was not unaware of its potential lack of insignificance.'

'I understand that a philologist from your own department, and indeed college, Donald Trefusis, has expressed doubts as to the genuineness of the find?'

'I believe that I think it of immense value to express doubts. It is because of the Professor's repeated queries that we have been granted the necessary funding to research the manuscript.'

'Dr Anderson, many people like myself, who have read Peter Flowerbuck have been struck by the candour and detail with which sexual activity and the nature of Victorian child-prostitution is described. Do you think Dickens ever intended to publish?'

'We are currently trawling all biographical source materials for some clue as to the answer to that highly legitimate question. Perhaps I can turn it round, however, and ask, "Would he not have destroyed the manuscript if he never wanted it read?" Yeah?'

'I see.'

'I cannot deny myself the right to believe that he left it to be found. We therefore owe it to him to publish now.'

'It is not of course a completed work. What you have is only a fragment.'

'There is truth in that remark.'

'Do you think there is a chance of discovering the rest of the manuscript?'

'If it exists we are not doubtful of locating the residue.'

'Dr Anderson, thank you very much indeed. The three currently extant chapters of Peter Flowerbuck, edited and annotated by Tim Anderson, will be available from the Cambridge University Press in October, priced fourteen pounds ninety-five. The BBC serialisation, currently in production, with an ending by Malcolm Bradbury, is due to reach our screens sometime in the spring of nineteen-eighty-one.'

Jenny got up and switched off the television.

'Well,' said Gary, 'that's set the apple-cart amongst the pigeons and no mistake. What do we do now?'

'Now,' said Adrian, 'we wait.' ,

II

Adrian put down the cane and loosened the cravat. Gary sat down on the step and mopped his brow with a most preposterous handkerchief of bright vermilion silk. Jenny addressed them from the fire-escape.

'I have very few notes to give,' she said. 'There's an old theatrical saying, "Bad dress, good performance"; I'm sorry to have to tell you that this was an excellent dress. The mechanics of the show are all there. The greatest imponderable is the time it will take for the audience to follow Adrian into this yard. That's something we'll discover tonight. It's all there: just pace and enjoy it. We're all just waiting for the final director now -the audience. If you don't mind standing here in the sun I'll come amongst you now with individual notes.'

Jenny had approached Tim Anderson for permission to mount a production of Peter Flowerbuck and his gratitude to her for the discovery of the manuscript had made it impossible for him to refuse.

'Jenny, can I ask at this stage how you imagine presenting on stage what is, ultimately, not a play?'

'Didn't you once say yourself, Dr Anderson, that all the theatrical energy in Victorian Britain went not into drama but into the novel?'

'That is something I did say, yes.'

'The RSC is apparently planning a dramatisation of Nicholas Nickleby, surely Peter Flowerbuck is even more suited to the theatre? If we use the ADC we can take the audience outside with Peter as he goes to the Den. The yard at the side of the theatre is pretty much a Victorian slum already.'

'I'm insanely excited.'

'Good.'

'Jenny, may I ask you, do you need any help with the preparation or finalisation of a play text?'

'Oh, I'm not writing it. Adrian Healey is.'

'Healey? I wasn't aware he'd been authorised to read the manuscript.'

'Oh, he's read it all right.'

She climbed down the fire-escape now and approached Adrian and Gary with a sheaf of notes.

'The Polterneck scenes are basically fine,' she told Gary. 'But for God's sake learn that scene twelve speech properly.'

'What happens in scene twelve?'

'It's where you buy Joe. Which reminds me, where's Hugo?'

'Here I am.'

'I want to rehearse the Russell Square scene with you and Adrian. It's still not right. Let's see . . . I've got some more notes for the others. If you go and run through it on stage now I'll send Bridget over and be with you in ten minutes.'

Hugo and Adrian walked into the theatre together.

'Nervous?'said Adrian.

'A bit. My mother's coming. I don't know what she'll think.'

'Your mother?'

'She's an actress.'

'Why did I never know that?'

'Why should you have done?'

'No reason, I suppose.'

It would have been a difficult scene even if Hugo hadn't been playing Joe. Adrian ran through it in his mind, like a Radio 3 announcer giving the synopsis of an opera.

Flowerbuck, he intoned to himself, has taken the boy Joe Cotton back to his house in Russell Square, convinced that he is his sister's son. Joe on arrival immediately tries to take off his clothes, unable to imagine that he would be expected to do anything else in a gentleman's house. Peter and Mrs Twimp, his housekeeper, calm him down and give him a bath. Mrs Twimp, played by Bridget Arden, injects into the scene her own brand of malapropistic comedy as they try to question Joe on the details of his early childhood. His memory is very uncertain. He recalls a garden, a large house and a fair-haired sister but very little else. At this stage, and indeed on this stage, Adrian Healey, playing Flowerbuck, finds his memory to be uncertain too and often starts to forget his lines.

After the bath Joe is taken to the dining room to eat. Or rather the dining room comes to them. It is that kind of production. Joe recognises in horror a portrait of Sir Christian Flowerbuck, Peter's uncle.

'That gentleman hurt me!' he cries.

It transpires that Sir Christian, Peter's benefactor and godfather, whose baronetcy and money Peter is in line to inherit, had been the first man to violate Joe.

The scene ends at night with Joe creeping from his room and slipping into Peter's bed. He knows no other form of companionship or love.

Peter awakes next morning, horrified to realise that he has lain with the boy who he is now more sure than ever is his nephew.

Adrian had had nothing to do with the casting of Hugo, at least as far as anyone knew. Jenny had bounced into his rooms one afternoon, full of excitement.

'I've just seen a perfect Joe Cotton! We don't need to get a real boy after all.'

'Who is this child?'

'He's not a child, he's a Trinity first year, but on stage he'll look fourteen or fifteen easily. And, Adrian, he's exactly as you . . . hum ... as Dickens describes Joe. Same hair, same blue eyes, everything. Even the same walk, though I don't know if from the same cause. He came to see me this morning, it was rather embarrassing, he thought I was expecting him. Bridget must have arranged it without telling me. His name's Hugo Cartwright.'

'Really?' said Adrian. 'Hugo Cartwright, eh?'

'Do you know him?'

'If it's the one I'm thinking of, we were in the same House at school.'

Gary opened his mouth to speak, but he met Adrian's eye and subsided.

'I dimly remember him,' said Adrian.

'Don't you think he's ideal casting for Joe?'

'Well in many ways I suppose he is, yes. Fairly ideal.'

If Hugo was unnerved by correspondences between a hundred-and-twenty-year-old Victorian manuscript and an incident from his own and Adrian's life he made no mention of the fact. But there was no doubt that his acting in the scene was awkward and formal.

'This is your home now, Joe. Mrs Twimp is to be your mother.'

'Yes, sir.'

'How should you like Mrs Twimp as a mother?'

'Does she want to join us, sir?'

'Join us, Joe? Join us in what?'

'In the bed, sir.'

'Bless me, Mr Flowerbuck, the lad is so manured to a life of shame, that's the fact of it, that he can't conceive no other!'

'There is no necessity for you to sleep with anyone but yourself and your Saviour, Joe. In peace and innocence.'

'No, Sir, no indeed! Mr Polterneck and Mrs Polterneck and Uncle Polterneck must have their boy-money. I am their gold sovereign, Sir.'

'Keep your clothes on, Joe, I beg of you!'

'Lord love the poor child, Mr Flowerbuck. Look at the condition of him! He should be washed and given fresh arraignments.'

'You're right, Mrs Twimp. Bring a bath and a robe.'

'I shall return percipiently.'

Jenny called across from the stalls.

'What do you think your feelings towards Joe are here?'

Adrian shaded his eyes across the lights.

'Well revulsion, I'd've thought. Horror, pity, indignation . . .you know. All that.'

'Good, yes. But what about desire?'

'Um... '

'You see, I think it's implicit that Peter is sexually attracted to Joe from the first.'

'Well I really don't. . .'

'I feel Dickens makes it very clear.'

'But he's his nephew! I don't think Dickens had any such thought in Dickenss head, do you?'

'I don't think we can be so sure.'

'Oh can't we?'

'Look at Joe now. He's standing in front of you, half naked. I think we should sense a sense of ... we should sense a sense of ... of... some kind of latent, repressed desire.'

'Right-ho. One sense of latent, repressed desire coming up. Do you want a side-order of self-disgust too, or hold on that?'

'Adrian, we go up in three hours, please don't start fucking about.'

'Okay. Fine.'

'Now, Hugo, what about you?'

'Well... '

'What's your attitude to Adrian, do you think?'

'Well he's just another man, isn't he?'

'I don't know how to love him,' sang Adrian. 'What to do, how to move him. He's a man, he's just a man and I've had so many men before, in very many ways. He's just one more.'

'I think Adrian's right there,' said Jenny. 'Despite being a quarter-tone flat. Imagine all the peculiar things you've had to do for your customers. Being bathed and clothed probably doesn't seem that new or different. You've been trained to please: your complaisance is the complaisance of a whore, your smile is the smile of a whore. I think you can afford a touch more assuredness. At the moment you're rather stiff.'

'He's only flesh and blood,' said Adrian. 'Look at who he's standing next to.'

'Adrian, please!'

'Sorry, Miss.'

Mrs Twimp entered with the breakfast tray.

—Sir, the lad can't be found . . . ooh!'

She started in surprise at the sight of Joe's head nestling on the sleeping Flowerbuck's bare chest.

—Sir! Sir!

—Oh . . . good morning, Mrs Twimp...

—Bless me! I never saw such licence! Mr Flowerbuck, Sir, I cannot credit the account of my eyes. That you should stand exposed as an amuser of children, nought but a correcter of youth, a pedestal! A vile producer, a libertarian! That I should gaze upon such naked immortality, such disillusion.

—Calm yourself, Mrs Twimp. The child crept in at night when I was asleep. I had not the first idea that he was with me until just now.

—Sir! I beg your pardon . . . but the sight of him. I could only jump to one confusion.

—Leave us, Mrs Twimp.

—Shall you try to arouse him, sir? I think he should be aroused directly.

Adrian could feel Hugo's body tense at the laugh from the audience that greeted this line.

—I will wake him and send him down to you, Mrs Twimp.

—I shall draw some water for his absolutions.

She exited to a warm round of applause.

Adrian sat up and stared in front of him.

—Oh Lord! What have I done? What in God's name have I done?

—Good morning, sir.

—Ah Joe, Joe! Why did you come to me last night?

—You are my saviour, sir. Mrs Twimp bade me remember it most carefully. And you told me I should sleep only with my saviour.

—Child, I meant . . .

—Did I do wrong, sir? Did I not please you?

—I dreamt... I know not what I dreamt. Say I was asleep, Joe. Say I slept all night.

—You were very gentle to me, sir.

—No! No! No!

In the blackout and in the thunder of applause that marked the end of the act, they lay there while the bed was trundled into the wings where Jenny stood jumping up and down with excitement.

'Wonderful!' she said. 'Listen to that! The Grauniad is out there and the Financial Times.,

'The Financial Times?' said Adrian. 'Is Tim Anderson thinking of starting a Flower buck limited company?

'Their drama critic'

'I didn't know they had one. Who the hell reads drama criticism in the Financial Times?'

'Everyone will if it's a good notice, because I'll have it blown up and put outside the theatre.'

'How long's the interval?' asked Hugo.

No one at the party was going to deny that it had been the finest production in the history of Cambridge drama, that Hugo and Gary in particular were bound for West End glory in weeks, that Adrian had done a fine job in translating Dickens to the stage and that he must write a new play for Jenny to direct the moment she joined the National, which appointment must be only days away.

'My dear Healey!' a hand was placed on Adrian's shoulder. He turned to see the smiling face of Donald Trefusis.

'Hello, Professor. Did you enjoy it?'

'Triumphant, Adrian. Absolutely triumphant. A most creditable piece of adaptation.'

'Will it do as my piece of original work?'

Trefusis looked puzzled.

'You know, the task you set me earlier this term?'

'Adapting someone's novel? Will that do as your piece of original work? You must have misunderstood me.'

Adrian was slightly drunk and, although he had planned this moment a hundred times in his head, it was always in Trefusis's rooms and without 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' playing in the background.

'Well, Professor, no. That's not what I mean,' he cleared his throat., 'I mean will Peter Flowerbuck the novel count as my original piece of work?'

'Oh certainly, certainly. By all means. I thought for a moment that you were . . .'

Bridget Arden, the voluptuous actress who had played Mrs Twimp with such éclat, came up and kissed Adrian on the mouth. ' . -

'Julian's rolling a joint in the downstairs dressing-room, Adey. Come and join us.'

'Ha! Very good! Rolling a joint! That's a great one! Love it . . . er, she's just . . . you know,' explained Adrian, as they watched her falling downstairs.

'Of course she is, my dear fellow! No, I was saying. I thought for a moment you expected that I would take just the adapting of your novel as a satisfactory task. I accept the writing of it, gladly. A splendid conception. It exceeded my most optimistic expectations.'

'You mean you know?'

'Aside from the three hundred and forty-seven anachronisms that Dr Anderson and his team will uncover in time, I had the good fortune to be in your rooms one afternoon. How I could have mistaken D staircase for A, I have no idea. I am not usually so inattentive. But before I realised my error, I had stumbled across the manuscript.'

'You stumbled across a bundle of papers wrapped in a blanket hidden on top of a bookcase?'

'I am quite a stumbler when the mood is on me. I stumbled for Cambridge as an undergraduate.'

'I bet you did.'

'Absurdly remiss of me, I know. Not solely an affliction of the elderly however. I believe your friend Gary Collins once accidentally stumbled into my rooms in just the same way. In his case, I understand he even stumbled across a telephone before he noticed where he was. These confusions are not so rare as one might imagine.'