The Liar [calibre]

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.