The Liar [calibre]

'Garburator,' said Pigs Trotter. 'I think they're called Garburators.'

'Garburator, that's it. She tried to jam the bottle down the Garburator.

'"I'm going to catch them at their little game" she chanted -she put on a kind of sing-song voice whenever she was pissed, it was one of the signs that she was really gone - "That's what I'm going to do. Where are the keys?"

'"Mother, you can't drive!" I said. "Just wait, he'll be back soon. You see."

'"Where are the keys? Where are the fucking car keys?"

'Well, I knew exactly where they were. In the hall, on the table, and I ran for them and stuffed them into my mouth. God knows why. That really got her going.

'"Come here you little bastard, give me those keys!"

'I said, "Mother, you can't drive like this, just leave it, will you?"

'And then . . . then she picked up a vase from off the table and flung it at me. Broke on the side of my head and sent me flying against the foot of the stairs where I tripped and fell. See that scar, just there?'

Adrian parted his hair and showed Trotter and Tom a small white scar.

'Five stitches. Anyway, there was blood all running down my face and she was shaking me and slapping my face, left and right, left and right.

'"Will you give me those fucking keys?" she kept screaming, shaking me on every syllable. I sprawled there, I was crying I don't mind telling you, really wailing. "Please, Mother, you can't go out, you can't. Please!"'

Adrian stopped and looked around.

'Dare we risk a cigarette, do you think?'

Tom lit three at once.

'Go on!' said Pigs Trotter. 'What happened then?'

'Well,' said Adrian inhaling deeply, 'what Mother hadn't seen was that the moment the vase hit me, the car keys had shot out of me like a clay-pigeon from a trap. She thought I still had them in my mouth so she started to try and wrench it open, you know, like a vet trying to give a pill to a dog.

'"So the little bugger's swallowed them has he?" she said.

'I shouted back, "Yes, I've swallowed them! I've swallowed them and you can't get them back! So ... so just forget it." But like a pratt of a heroine in a Hammer horror film I couldn't help looking round for them myself, so of course she followed my eyes, crawled across the hallway and swooped on them. Then she was off. I kept shouting at her to come back. I heard the scrunch on the gravel as she drove away and then - again like some git in a film - I fainted.'

'Christ,' said Pigs Trotter.

'She killed a family of four as well as herself,' said Adrian. 'My father, who had never had an unfaithful thought in his life, has still not really recovered. She was a bitch, my mother. A real bitch.'

'Yes,' said Tom. 'Thing is, Ade, you may have forgotten, but I met your mother last term. Tall woman with a wide smile.'

'Fuck,' said Adrian. 'So you did. Oh well, it was a good try anyway.' He stood and flicked his cigarette behind a gravestone.

Trotter stared at him.

'You mean,' he said. 'You mean that you made that up?'

"Fraid so,' said Adrian.

'All of it?'

'Well my father's a professor, that bit's true.'

'You fucking shitbag,' said Trotter, tears filling his eyes. 'You fucking shitbag!' He stumbled away, choking with tears. Adrian watched him go with surprise.

'What's the matter with Pigs? He must have known it was a lie as soon as I began.'

'Oh nothing,' said Tom, turning his large brown eyes on Adrian. 'His mother and two brothers were killed in a car crash three years ago, that's all.'

'Oh no! No! You're kidding!'

'Yes I am, actually.'

An MCC Tie sat down next to a Powder Blue Safari suit at a window table in the Cafe Bazaar. White Shirts with Black Waistcoats hurried to and fro, the change jingling in their leather pouches.

'Herr Ober,' called the MCC Tie.

'Mein Herr?'

'Zwei Kaffee mit Schlag, bitte. Und Sachertorte. Zweimal.'

The waiter executed a trim Austrian bow and departed.

The Powder Blue Safari Suit mopped his brow.

'No exchange was made,' he said.

Well now,' said the MCC Tie. 'Odysseus will certainly have got hold of the documents and will be preparing to take them out of Salzburg. He must be followed and relieved of them.'

'If the Trojans are prepared to kill Patrochlus in broad daylight . . .'

They won't dare harm Odysseus.'

'He has a companion, you know. A young Englishman.'

The MCC Tie smiled.

'I'm fully aware of it. How shall we style him?''

Telemachus?''

'Quite right. Telemachus. Remind me to tell you all about Telemachus.'

'You know him?'

'Intimately. I think we will find that it won't be necessary to inflict harm upon either Odysseus or Telemachus. Just so long as we can lay our hands on Mendax.'

'They are leaving tomorrow.'

Are they now? What kind of chariot are they riding?'

'Odysseus has a red Wolseley.'

Typical. Quite typical.'

The MCC Tie looked across at the Safari Suit with an expression of affectionate contempt.

'I don't suppose, Hermes, that you possess such a thing as a short-wave wireless?''

'A report to make?'

'Don't be foolish. BBC World Service. The West Indies are playing England at Old Trajford today.'

'Playing? Playing what?'

'Cricket, you arse of a man. Cricket.'

Two

I

'The periphrastic "do" was a superfluous tense-carrier,' said Adrian. 'Semantically empty yet widely used. The major theories of the origin of the periphrastic "do" are three: One) It was derived from the influence of the corresponding use of "faire" in French. Two) It developed out of the Old English causative "do". Three) It derived from semantic development of the full factitive verb "do". An examination of these three theories should tell us much about alternative approaches to diachronic syntax and generative grammar.'

He looked across to the sofa. Trefusis was lying on his back, an overflowing ashtray on his chest, lightweight earphones around his neck and a square of mauve silk over his face, through which he managed to smoke. If it weren't for the rise and fall of the ashtray and the clouds of smoke weaving through the silk, Adrian might have thought him dead. He hoped not, this was a good essay he was reading out and he had taken a lot of trouble over it.

Friends had warned against the Philology option.

'You'll get Craddock, who's useless,' they said. 'Trefusis only teaches research students and a few select undergraduates. Do the American paper like everyone else.'

But Trefusis had consented to see him.

'The Early Middle English periphrastic "do" could occur after modals and "have" + past participle. It was essentially a second position non-modal operator mutually exclusive with "be" + past participle and incompatible with a passive format. As late as eighteen-eighteen some grammarians wrote that it was a standard alternate to the simple form, but others denounced its use in any but empathic, interrogative and negative sentences. By the mid-eighteenth century it was obsolete.'

Adrian looked up from his sheaf of papers. A brown stain was forming in Trefusis's handkerchief, as the silk filtered the smoke.

'Um . . . that's it . . .'

Silence from the sofa. Far away all the bells of Cambridge began to chime the hour.