The Liar [calibre]

'He ... he made me cry, sir, and I was too embarrassed to come in blubbing, so I went and hid in the music-room until I felt better.'

This was all terribly unfair on poor old Biffen, whom Adrian rather adored for his snowy hair and perpetual air of benign astonishment. And 'blubbing' . . . Blubbing went out with 'decent' and 'ripping'. Mind you, not a bad new language to start up. 1920s schoolboy slang could be due for a revival.

'Oh dear. But I'm sure the Chaplain must have had good reason to be . . . that is, Dr Meddlar wouldn't speak sharply to you without cause.'

'Well I admit I was cheeky to him, sir. But you know what he's like.'

'He is, I am sure, a scrupulously fair man.'

'Yes, sir. I - I wouldn't want you to think that I've been lying to you, sir. I'm sure Dr Meddlar will tell you his side of the story if you ask him.'

'I won't do that. I know whether a boy is telling me the truth or not.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Did he hell. They never bloody did.

'I don't want to lecture you, Healey, and I don't want to keep you from your morning break, but you must face the fact that many members of staff are beginning to lose their patience. Perhaps you feel they don't understand you?'

'I think the problem is that they do understand me, sir.'

'Yes. You see that is exactly the kind of remark that is guaranteed to put certain masters' backs up, isn't it? Sophistication is not an admired quality. Not only at school. Nobody likes it anywhere. In England at any rate.'

'Sir.'

'You're the cleverest boy in my French set. You know that perfectly well. But you've never worked. That makes you the stupidest boy in the school.'

Parable of the talents next, what was the betting?

'What are your university thoughts?'

'Oh, well sir . . . you know. After "A" levels I think I'll've had it with education, really. And it will probably have had it with me.'

'I see. Tell me, what do you do on Friday afternoons, Healey? I take it you're not in the Cadet Force.'

'Threw me out, sir. It was an outrage.'

'Yes, I'm sure it was. So it's Pioneering, is it?'

'Yes, sir. There's a little old lady I visit.'

'Well,' said Biffen filling his briefcase with exercise books, 'there's a little old lady and a little old man in the Morley Road you might also find time to visit one day. My wife and I always give tea on Fridays, you'd be most welcome.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'You don't have to let us know in advance. We shall expect you when we see you. Off you go then.'

'Thank you, Mr Biffen, thank you very much.'

Adrian instinctively offered his hand which Biffen took with tremendous firmness, looking him straight in the eye.

'I'm not Mr Chips, you know. I'm perfectly well aware that you feel sorry for me. It's bad enough from the staff, but I won't take pity from you. I won't.'

'No sir,' said Adrian, 'I wasn't . . .'

'Good.'

III

Tom and Adrian and Pigs Trotter, an occasional hanger-on, were walking into town. From time to time tracksuited boys ran past them, with all the deadly, purpose and humourless concentration of those who enjoyed Games. Juniors twittered along, running sticks against palings and whispering. Adrian thought it worth while trying out his new slang.

'I say, you fellows, here's a rum go! Old Biffo was jolly odd this morning. He gave me a lot of pi-jaw about slacking and then invited me to tea. No rotting! He did really.'

'I expect he fancies you,' said Tom.

'That's beastly talk, Thompson. Jolly well take it back or expect a good scragging.'

They walked on for a bit, Adrian practising new phrases and Pigs Trotter lumbering behind laughing so indiscriminately that Adrian soon tired of the game.

'Anyway,' he said. 'Tell me about your parents, Tom.'

'What do you want to know?'

'Well, you never talk about them.'

'Nothing to say about my folks,' Thompson said. 'Dad works for British Steel, Mum is next in line for Mayor. Two sisters, both mad, and a brother who's coming here next term.'

'What about you, Healey?' said Pigs Trotter. 'What do your parents do?'

'Parent,' said Adrian. 'The mother is no more.'

Trotter was upset.

'Oh God,' he said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't realise . . .'

'No, that's fine. Car crash. When I was twelve.'

'That's . . . that's awful.'

'If we go to Gladys Winkworth, I'll tell you the whole story.'

The church in the town was perched on a hill and in the cemetery - which people of shattering wit like Sampson never tired of calling 'the dead centre of town' - there was an old wooden bench on which was a plaque which said 'Gladys Winkworth'. Nothing else. The assumption was that it had been erected by a doting widower as a lasting memorial to his dead wife. Tom thought she was actually buried under it. Adrian believed it was simply the bench's proper name and he stuck to that belief.

From Gladys, the Upper, Middle and Lower Games Fields, the science block, the sports hall, the theatre, the Old School Room, libraries, chapel, Hall and Art School were all visible. You felt like a general observing a battle.

The day was cold and the breath steamed from their mouths and nostrils as they climbed through the graveyard.

'Alas, regardless of their fate the little victims play,' said Adrian. 'The quick and the young play peep-bo behind the marking stones of the cold and the dead.'

Tom and Adrian sat down and waited for Pigs Trotter to catch up.

'It's not a nice story, the story of my mother,' said Adrian as Trotter finally crashed down beside them, 'but I'll tell it if you promise to keep it to yourselves. Only Pa Tickford knows. My father told him when I arrived here.'

Trotter nodded breathlessly. 'I won't tell a soul, Healey. Honest.'

Adrian looked at Tom who nodded gravely.

'Very well then,' said Adrian. 'One evening about three years ago . . . almost exactly three years ago in fact, I was sitting at home watching television. It was A Man Called Ironside, I remember. My father is a Professor of Biochemistry at Bristol University and he often works late. My mother had been in the kitchen since three in the afternoon drinking vodka from a teacup. At ten o'clock she smashed the cup onto the floor and cried out so I could hear her in the sitting room.'

Trotter shifted uncomfortably.

'Look,' he said. 'You don't have to tell us this, you know.'

'No, no, I want to. She had been, as I say, drinking all afternoon and she suddenly howled, "Ten o'clock! It's ten o'fucking clock! Why doesn't he come? Why in God's name doesn't he come?" Something along those lines.

'I went into the kitchen and looked at her face all swollen, her tear-stained and mascara-blotched cheeks and her trembling lip and I remember thinking, "She's like Shelley Winters but without the talent." Don't know why a thought like that should come to me, but it did. I turned back to the telly - couldn't bear to look at her like that - and said, "He's working, Mother. You know he's working."

'"Working?" She shrieked her stinking breath right into my face. "Working! Oh that's very good. Screwing that cunt of a lab assistant is what he's doing. The little bitch. I've seen her . . . with her stupid white coat and her stupid white teeth. Little bitch whore!"

Tom and Trotter both stared at Adrian in disbelief as he screeched out the words, but his eyes were closed and he didn't seem to be aware of them.

'She really could scream, my mother. I thought her voice would fracture with the violence of it, but in fact it was my own which cracked. "You should go to bed, Mother," I said.

'"Bed! He's the one who's in fucking bed," she giggled, and she pulled at the bottle and the last of the vodka just dribbled down her mouth and mixed with the tears that ran down the folds of her fat face. She burped and tried to jam the bottle into the waste-hole of the waste-disposal thing, the thingummy.'