The Liar [calibre]

'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.