The Liar (6 page)

‘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 Mal
.

‘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 Noël 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 Noël’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 hand-bills.

‘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 £1.50.’

After a judicious binning of these and other leaflets, Adrian was left with Uncle David’s cheque, the toast, a bill from Heffers 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 Heffers 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 Miró 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.