The Liar [calibre]

'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.