The Liar (13 page)
Authors: Stephen Fry
‘I promise you this, Adrian. Whatever Trotter may have said to you, you
must
now tell me. Do you understand? You must!’
‘It’s a bit embarrassing, sir … couldn’t you ask him yourself?’
‘No, no. I want to hear from you.’
Adrian swallowed.
‘Well sir, I bumped into Trotter yesterday afternoon and he suddenly … he suddenly started crying and so I asked him what the matter was and he said he was very unhappy because he was … well he had a sort of …’
God this was hard.
‘… he was … well he said he was in love with someone … he, you know, had a pash on them.’
‘I see. Yes, of course. Yes I see. He thought he was in love with someone. Another boy, I suppose?’
‘That’s what he said, sir.’
‘Trotter was found in a barn in Brandiston Field this afternoon,’ he said, pushing a piece of paper across the desk. ‘This note was in his pocket.’
Adrian stared.
‘Sir?’
Tickford nodded sadly.
‘The stupid boy,’ he said. ‘The stupid boy hanged himself.’
Adrian looked at the note.
‘I’m very sorry but I couldn’t bear it any more,’ it read. ‘Healey knows why.’
‘His mother and father are on their way down from Harrogate,’ said Tickford. ‘What am I going to say?’
Adrian looked at him in panic.
‘Why, sir? Why would he kill himself?’
‘Tell me the name of the boy he was … he had this thing for, Adrian.’
‘Well, sir …’
‘I must know.’
‘It was Cartwright, sir. Hugo Cartwright.’
Two Savile Row suits, a Tommy Nutter and a Bennett, Tovey and Steele, faced each other over a table at Wiltons
.
‘
Good to see the Native back again,’ said the Bennett, Tovey and Steele. ‘I was beginning to think it extinct
.’
‘
Now you say that,’ said the Tommy Nutter suit, ‘but I’ve got rather a soft spot for the Pacific chaps myself. They’re sort of
wetter
somehow, don’t you think? Fleshlier if there is such a word
.’
The Bennet, Tovey and Steele did not agree. He considered it typical of the Tommy Nutter to have a loud taste in oysters
.
‘
This Montrachet’s a bit warm, isn’t it?
’
The Bennett, Tovey and Steele sighed. He had been brought up from his nanny’s knee to believe that white Burgundies should not be overchilled. They knew him at Wiltons and took great care to present his wines just so. The Tommy Nutter would resent a lecture, however. Men of his stamp were absurdly sensitive
.
‘
Still,’ said the other. ‘Who’s complaining? Now then. Let’s talk Mendax. GDS has had no joy, I’m sorry to say, with the Odysseus material. No joy at all
.’
‘
No decrypt whatsoever?
’
‘
Oh, they opened it up all right. It was an old twist-cypher. Pre-war. Absolute antique
.’
‘
That figures,’ grunted the Bennett, Tovey and Steele. ‘And what was inside?
’
‘
Names, addresses and telephone numbers. Load of harmless Osties. Lifted straight from the bloody Salzburg directory, would you believe?
’
‘
The old bastard
.’
‘
So the thing is,’ the Tommy Nutter twisted the stem of his wine-glass coyly, ‘did this Odysseus of yours bring the material out or did he leave it behind?
’
‘
He’s had nothing in the mail. We know that
.’
‘
Your friend on the inside still paying his way?
’
‘
Oh yes
.’
‘
Good, because he’s a greedy son of a bitch
.’
The Bennett, Tovey and Steele suit ignored this. It wasn’t as if the Tommy Nutter suit was paying for Telemachus. He thought he was, of course, and would probably never notice that it came directly out of the Bennett, Tovey and Steele’s pocket, never to be reclaimed from the fund. It was a purely private business, but Cabinet liaison had to believe there was honey in it for them. It would not do for them to find out that the Service was being used entirely for the Bennett, Tovey and Steele’s private ends
.
‘
I think the Mendax material is still over there,’ he said, ‘without the walls of Ilium
.’
‘
In Salzburg, you mean?’ asked the Tommy Nutter, whose grip on codenames was weak at the best of times
.
‘
That’s right. In Salzburg
.’
‘
This is all very much your own pigeon, you know. You are the only one who believes in Mendax. I am reminded of the operation you ran in seventy-six, also against Odysseus. What did that game come to?
’
The Bennett, Tovey and Steele shot the Tommy Nutter a suspicious glare
.
‘
What do you mean
game?’
he said. ‘Why do you say
game?’
‘
Keep your hair on, old man. I just meant that you seem to have a bit of a maggot in your head on the subject of Trefusis. Some of us are wondering why. That’s all
.’
‘
You’ll find out yet. Listen. The point is this. I never said I did believe in Mendax. But if it doesn’t exist why should the Trojans and Odysseus want us to believe that it does? That’s worth pursuing surely?
’
‘
Humph,’ said the Tommy Nutter. ‘It has at least been a cheap operation so far, that I will grant you. But we haven’t a shred of proof that Szabó – what’s he called again?
’
‘
Helen
.’
‘
We haven’t a shred of evidence to suggest that Helen is anything other than a loyal servant of his state. The Trojans have just given him a medal for God’s sake
.’
‘
All the more reason to suspect Odysseus
.’
‘
Why “Helen” by the way? Odd codename for a man
.’
The Bennett, Tovey and Steele suit was not going to give the Tommy Nutter a free lesson in Homeric mythology. Where
did
the man go to school? The tie was no indication. Beaconsfield Conservatives or something equally foul, probably. Hadley Wood Golf Club. Carshalton Rotarians. Yuk
.
‘
It seemed to make sense at the time,’ he said
.
‘
Oh ah,’ the Tommy Nutter pressed a crumb into the table cloth. ‘So tell me about these grandchildren
.’
‘
Stefan is a chess-player. He’s coming over here to play in a couple of months. They’ll keep him on a long leash I shouldn’t wonder
.’
‘
And you want me to allocate resourcing?
’
‘
I’d quite like some money made available, if that’s what you mean. Grade Two surveillance should do it
.’
‘
I have to interface, as they say, with the Treasury tomorrow. Cabinet next week. Oh, look, you’re not going to smoke are you?
’
Christ!
thought the Bennett, Tovey and Steele. Roll on the next Labour government
.
4
I
TIM ANDERSON CONSIDERED
the question with great care.
‘I don’t believe that the comparison with
Oliver Twist
, seductive and engaging as I would be the last to deny it being, is as valid as a first glance might allow.’
‘But surely, Dr Anderson, the similarities
are
very clear. What we have here is a secret workhouse birth, we have a gang of boys set to work by the character Polterneck, we have the character of Peter Flowerbuck, who traces his own family connection with the Cotton twins, not unlike Mr Brownlow’s quest in
Oliver Twist
, we have Flinter, who like Nancy is an agent of revenge. The parallels are surely most striking?’
Gary poured some more Meursault for Jenny and Adrian, never at any time taking his eyes off the screen.
‘I am not going to consider failing to grant you the presence of narrative echoes,’ Tim Anderson replied, ‘but I would certainly find myself presented with personal difficulties if asked to deny that this is the mature Dickens of
Little Dorrit
and
Bleak House
. I’m sensing a fuller picture of a connected world here than we are allowed in
Twist
. I’m sensing a deeper anger, I find myself responding to a more complete symphonic vision. The chapter which describes the flood, the scene depicting the bursting of the Thames’s banks and the sweeping away of the Den is a more proleptic and organic event than the reader has been confronted with in earlier novels. I would be laying myself open to a charge of being mistaken if I attempted to resist the argument that the character of Flinter is a development of both Nancy and the Artful Dodger which we can’t be afraid to recognise takes us into a more terrified Dickens, a more, if you like, Kafkaesque Dickens.’
The interviewer nodded.
‘I understand that the University has already sold the film and television rights of
Peter Flowerbuck?
’
‘That is not substantially incorrect.’
‘Are you worried that to do this before the manuscript has been officially authenticated might lay you open to future embarrassment, should it prove to be a fake?’
‘As you know, we have taken on a number of new research fellows at St Matthew’s who are working extensively on the text to determine its authenticity-level. They will be running linguistic particles and image-clusters through a computer program which is as reliable as any chemical test.’
‘Authorial fingerprinting?’
‘Authorial is the term often used, fingerprinting, that is far from wrong.’
‘And how confident are you that this is genuine Dickens?’
‘Let me turn that question round and say that I am not confident that it isn’t Dickens.’
‘Let me turn that answer round and say “bullshit”,’ said Adrian.
‘Hush!’ said Jenny.
‘Well, I mean. Symphonic visions.’
‘I don’t think it insignificant,’ Anderson continued, ‘that at a time when English departments at my university and hundreds of others are being threatened with cuts, a discovery of pure scholarship like this should attract such attention and validate so completely what has quite properly been perceived as the beleaguered discipline of English studies.’
‘It’s a very lucrative discovery, certainly. How in fact was it made?’
‘I was alerted to the existence of the text by a student of mine from Newnham College. She had been participating in my seminars on Derrida and Sexual Difference and had been pursuing a number of independent lines of enquiry into the Victorian Deviant Ethic. She found the papers in the St Matthew’s College Library hidden amongst old copies of
Cornhill
magazine.’
‘Did she realise what she had stumbled across?’
‘She was not unaware of its potential lack of insignificance.’
‘I understand that a philologist from your own department, and indeed college, Donald Trefusis, has expressed doubts as to the genuineness of the find?’
‘I believe that I think it of immense value to express doubts. It is because of the Professor’s repeated queries that we have been granted the necessary funding to research the manuscript.’
‘Dr Anderson, many people like myself, who have read
Peter Flowerbuck
, have been struck by the candour and detail with which sexual activity and the nature of Victorian child-prostitution is described. Do you think Dickens ever intended to publish?’
‘We are currently trawling all biographical source materials for some clue as to the answer to that highly legitimate question. Perhaps I can turn it round, however, and ask, “Would he not have destroyed the manuscript if he never wanted it read?” Yeah?’
‘I see.’
‘I cannot deny myself the right to believe that he left it to be found. We therefore owe it to him to publish now.’
‘It is not of course a completed work. What you have is only a fragment.’
‘There is truth in that remark.’
‘Do you think there is a chance of discovering the rest of the manuscript?’
‘If it exists we are not doubtful of locating the residue.’
‘Dr Anderson, thank you very much indeed. The three currently extant chapters of
Peter Flowerbuck
, edited and annotated by Tim Anderson, will be available from the Cambridge University Press in October, priced fourteen pounds ninety-five. The BBC serialisation, currently in production, with an ending by Malcolm Bradbury, is due to reach our screens sometime in the spring of nineteen-eighty-one.’
Jenny got up and switched off the television.
‘Well,’ said Gary, ‘that’s set the apple-cart amongst the pigeons and no mistake. What do we do now?’
‘Now,’ said Adrian, ‘we wait.’
II
Adrian put down the cane and loosened the cravat. Gary sat down on the step and mopped his brow with a most preposterous handkerchief of bright vermilion silk. Jenny addressed them from the fire-escape.
‘I have very few notes to give,’ she said. ‘There’s an old theatrical saying, “Bad dress, good performance”; I’m sorry to have to tell you that this was an excellent dress. The mechanics of the show are all there. The greatest imponderable is the time it will take for the audience to follow Adrian into this yard. That’s something we’ll discover tonight. It’s all there: just pace and enjoy it. We’re all just waiting for the final director now – the audience. If you don’t mind standing here in the sun I’ll come amongst you now with individual notes.’
Jenny had approached Tim Anderson for permission to mount a production of
Peter Flowerbuck
and his gratitude to her for the discovery of the manuscript had made it impossible for him to refuse.
‘Jenny, can I ask at this stage how you imagine presenting on stage what is, ultimately, not a play?’
‘Didn’t you once say yourself, Dr Anderson, that all the theatrical energy in Victorian Britain went not into drama but into the novel?’
‘That is something I did say, yes.’
‘The RSC is apparently planning a dramatisation of
Nicholas Nickleby
, surely
Peter Flowerbuck
is even more suited to the theatre? If we use the ADC we can take the audience outside with Peter as he goes to the Den. The yard at the side of the theatre is pretty much a Victorian slum already.’