The Liar (19 page)

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

‘Piss off, you fat tit,’ said Corder primly.

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

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

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

‘You have the floor, farty,’ said Corder.

‘I think I’d better say for my own part,’ said Tim Anderson, ‘that notwithstanding –’

‘Thank you,’ said Menzies.

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

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

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

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

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

The BBC director smiled at him through clenched teeth.

‘If Mr Healey can manage to sit still for just three minutes,’ Menzies continued, ‘I shall resume …’

‘You had got as far as gross indecency,’ said Adrian.

‘Thank you. “… charged with gross indecency. The Professor had been arrested in the Parker’s Piece men’s toilet at three o’clock the previous night. A youth, described as in his late teens, escaped after a struggle with police. The Professor (66) pleaded guilty. The President of St Matthew’s College was unavailable for comment this morning. Donald Trefusis, who is well known for his articles and broadcasts, told the
Evening News
that life was very extraordinary.”’

‘Yes, well thank you, Garth,’ said the President, ‘I think we’re all pretty much aware of the details of this morning’s court-room drama. I suppose you think something should be done about it?’

‘Done?’ said Menzies. ‘Of course something should be done!’

Adrian stood up.

‘Hoover, Wrigleys, Magicote, Benson and Hedges, Sellotape, Persil, Shake and Vac, Nestlé’s Milky Bar,’ he said and sat down again. He had a vague idea that brand names couldn’t be mentioned on the BBC.

‘Thank you, Adrian,’ said the President, ‘that will do.’

‘Yes sir, Mr President, sir!’ said Adrian.

Tim Anderson spoke.

‘I don’t think I’d be wrong in detecting –’

‘If an undergraduate were compromised in this fashion,’ said Menzies, ‘we would have no hesitation in sending him down. Professor Trefusis is a member of the college just like any student. I submit that under the college ordinance of 1273 and subsequent statutes of 1791 and 1902 we are duty bound to take disciplinary action against any Fellow who brings the good name of the college into disrepute. I move that this meeting of the Fellows immediately invite Professor Trefusis to relinquish the post of Senior Tutor and furthermore I move that they insist he withdraw from any active teaching post in this college for one year. At the very least.’

‘Nice subjunctives,’ murmured Adrian.

‘Now steady on, Garth,’ said the President. ‘I’m sure we’re all as shocked as you are by Donald’s … Donald’s … well, his behaviour. But remember where we are. This is Cambridge. We have a tradition of buggery here.’

‘Bottomy is everywhere, you know,’ the ninety-year-old treble of Emeritus Professor Adrian Williams sang out. ‘Wittgenstein was a bottomist, they tell me. I read the other day that Morgan Forster, you remember Morgan? Next door, at King’s. Wrote
A Passage to India
and
Howards End
. Wore slippers into Hall once. I read that
he
was a bottomite too. Extraordinary! I think everyone is now. Simply everyone.’

A red-faced statistician thumped the table angrily.

‘Not I, sir, not I!’ he thundered.

‘I don’t think we should be unafraid not to discuss the gay dialectic as an energy and the homophobic constraints that endorse its marginalisation as a functionally reactive discourse,’ said Tim Anderson.

The cameraman in the corner tilted his camera from one end of the table to the other, quite unable to decide on whom to concentrate his lens.

‘If I can speak,’ said Adrian.

He had just unwrapped a packet of cigarettes and now scrunched up the cellophane so loudly that the microphone boom, which had just reached him, swung away like a startled giraffe and struck Menzies on the head.

A production assistant with a clipboard giggled and was rewarded with a look of foul contempt from the President.

Menzies was not to be put off.

‘The fact is this, Master. There are laws. Homosexual acts are only permitted amongst consenting adults in private.’

‘Are you allowed in law, Dr Menzies,’ asked Adrian, ‘to defecate in public?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘How would I be charged if I did?’

‘Gross indecency, beyond question, the case of the Earl of Oxford –’

‘Exactly. But would I be arrested for taking a crap in a public lavatory?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘So a public lavatory is, in law, a private place?’

‘You’re twisting words again, Healey.’

‘But again, the words are already twisted. Either a municipal bog is a private place or it isn’t. If it is a private place in which to shit, how is it not a private place in which to fellate?’

‘Oh, it was fellatio, was it?’ the President seemed surprised.

‘Well, whatever.’

‘Who was doing it to whom, I wonder?’

Menzies’ hold on his temper was weakening.

‘Either the law is the law or it is not! If it is your intention to campaign for a change in that law, Healey, very good luck to you. The fact remains that Professor Trefusis has brought into disrepute the good name of this college.’

‘You never liked him did you?’ Adrian couldn’t help saying. ‘Well, here’s your chance. He’s down. Kick him good and hard.’

‘Mr President,’ said Menzies, ‘I have proposed a motion to the Fellows. That Donald Trefusis be stripped of his Senior Tutorship and suspended from the college for a full year. I demand it to be put to the question.’

‘Mr President,’ said Adrian, ‘surely Dr Menzies can’t have forgotten that a motion cannot be voted on unless saving that it howmay shall as thus
nem con, ne plus ultra
before these presents, as witness the hand thereunto, be seconded?’

‘Er … quite right,’ said the President. ‘I think. Do we have a seconder?’

Silence.

‘I ask again. Do we have a seconder for Dr Menzies’ proposal that Donald Trefusis be relieved of his college duties for the period of one year?’

Silence.

Menzies’ chalk-white cheeks were lit with the pinprick of crimson which, for him, passed for a manly blush.

‘Madness, absolute madness! The college will live to regret it.’

‘Thank you, Dr Menzies,’ said the President.

He turned to the film crew.

‘That is the end of the meeting. I’ll ask you to go now, as we have one or two private college matters to discuss which cannot possibly be of relevance to your film.’

The crew silently gathered their equipment. The director glared at Adrian as he left the room. The female assistant with the clipboard winked.

‘I’m in there,’ Adrian thought to himself.

‘Now then,’ said the President, when the last of the crew had gone. ‘I’m sorry to keep you all, but I received a letter from Professor Trefusis this morning and I think you had better hear it.’

He took a letter from his inside pocket.

‘“Henry,”’ he read. ‘“By the time you read this I am very much afraid that my improvidence will already have been made known to you. I feel I must first offer the profoundest of apologies for the embarrassment I have caused to you and the college.

‘“I will not burden you with reasons, excuses, denials or explanations. I have no doubt in my mind however that it would be a sensible thing for me to ask you if I might take advantage of my right to a sabbatical year. I had intended to ask this of you in any case, as my book on the Great Fricative Shift impels me to visit Europe for research materials. May I therefore take this opportunity to beg your permission to leave Cambridge immediately a sentence, which I am assured will at worst take the form of nothing more inconvenient than a small fine and at best a reprimand from the bench, has been passed upon me?

‘“Perhaps you will be so kind as to let me know of your decision in this matter as soon as possible, Henry, for there are many arrangements to be made. Meanwhile, in all contrition I remain, Your good friend Donald.”’

‘Well,’ said Menzies at last, ‘how ironic. It seems that Professor Trefusis can be credited, in some regards at least, with more decency than the rest of the fellowship.’

‘Up your crack, you fat runt,’ said Corder.

‘The game’s over now, Alex,’ said Adrian. ‘The film crew has gone.’

‘I know,’ said Corder, stuffing his briefcase with detritus from the meeting. ‘That was for real.’

7

CROSSING THE RIVER
by way of the Sonnet Bridge on a direct course from the President’s Lodge to Donald Trefusis’s room in Hawthorn Tree Court, Adrian slapped each stone ball that marched along that noble structure’s span in frustration. He had hated that meeting, hated the relish with which Garth Menzies had read out the article in the
Cambridge Evening News
, hated the bubbling looks of salacious amusement on the faces of the BBC crew. All of them laughing at Trefusis.

Hell and hot shit, he said to himself, Donald of all people.

The Tea Room Trade they called it in America; in English, Cottaging. Putting yourself up for quick sex in a public loo.

‘Bad news, Adrian,’ the President had said that morning. ‘Donald has gone and popped up in the guise of a lavatory cowboy. He tells me he’s due in court at ten thirty. The
Evening News
is sure to cover it. And tomorrow the nationals. What the hell are we going to do?’

Adrian remembered the times he had sprawled on Donald’s chesterfield of a summer evening, hot from a game of cricket. Or the weeks they had shared hotel rooms in Venice and Florence and Salzburg during last year’s long vacation. The man had never so much as touched Adrian’s shoulder. But then why on earth should he have? There were plenty of lanky, languid undergraduates in the University more appetising than Adrian. Anyway, maybe Donald’s tastes were more Orton than Auden. Perhaps it was only anonymous rough trade that lit his fire. Live and let live, of course: but better he should paw Adrian than kneel before some greasy truck driver to whom the name Levi Strauss meant nothing but jeans and, by blowing him, blow a reputation, a career and a way of life.

It was Adrian’s last summer, but whenever he crossed the bridge, no matter how occupied he might be, he could never prevent himself from looking across at the Backs, the green train of lawn and willow that swept along the river behind the colleges. With a late afternoon mist descending on the Cam, the absurd beauty of the place depressed him deeply. Depressed him because he caught himself failing to react properly to it. There had been a time when that blend of natural and human perfection would have caused him to writhe with pleasure. But now human affairs and the responsibilities of friendship had claimed that part of him that was capable of feeling and there was nothing left over for nature or the abstract.