The Liar (20 page)

Donald Trefusis, a urinal Uranian, a bog bugger. Who’d’ve thought it?

Adrian, no stranger to sexual adventurism, had never been struck by the charms of the public lavatory as an erotic salon. There had been an occasion, not long after his expulsion from school, when he had found himself forced to answer the griping of his bowels in a Gents in the bus-station at Gloucester.

Sitting there, gently encouraging his colon, he had suddenly become aware of a note being fed through an uncomfortably large hole in the wall that divided him from the neighbouring cubicle. He had taken and read it more in an innocent spirit of good citizenship than anything else. Perhaps some unfortunate disabled person had got into trouble.

‘I like young cock,’ the note said.

Shocked, Adrian looked at the hole. Where the note had been there was now a human eye. Because he couldn’t think of anything else to do under the circumstances, or because he was born foolish, Adrian smiled. A winning smile, accompanied by a friendly, faintly patronising wink: the kind of beaming encouragement you might give a toddler who has presented you with an incompetent drawing.

There immediately followed a shuffle of feet next door and a clink of belt buckle hitting concrete. After a brief pause, a bulky and rather excited penis pushed itself through the hole and twitched urgently.

Without pausing for hygiene and comfort, Adrian had yanked up his trousers and fled in panic. For the next half-hour he wandered Gloucester looking for a place in which he might wipe himself, not daring to risk another public convenience. To this day Adrian failed to see any allure in the lavatory. Apart from anything else the smell. And the risk … but risk was the whole point, he supposed.

But nonetheless, the Trefusis that he knew – the man with startled white hair and Irish thorn-proof jackets, patched at the elbows, Trefusis the Elvis Costello fan and Wolseley driver, Trefusis the sports fan and polyglot – it wasn’t easy to imagine that Trefusis frenziedly gobbling at a trucker. It was like trying to picture Malcolm Muggeridge masturbating or Margaret and Denis Thatcher locked in coital ecstasy. But hard to imagine or not, these things had all presumably happened.

Adrian hopped across the lawn of Hawthorn Tree Court, a precaution learnt from schooldays.

‘Healey, can’t you read?’ they used to shout after him.

‘Oh yes, sir. I’m very good at reading, sir.’

‘Then can’t you see that it clearly says, Don’t Walk On The Grass?’

‘I’m not walking, sir. I’m hopping.’

‘Don’t be clever, boy.’

‘All right, sir. How stupid would you like me to be, sir? Very stupid or only quite stupid?’

He threw himself up the stairs and thumped on Trefusis’s oak. College rooms had two doors and if the oak, the outer door, was closed, it was generally held to be bad form to clamour for entrance. Adrian reckoned that circumstances warranted the solecism.

From within he heard a muffled curse.

‘Donald, it’s me. Adrian. Won’t you let me in?’

After a sigh and a creak of floorboards the door opened.

‘Really, couldn’t you see that my oak was sported?’

‘I’m sorry, but I thought –’

‘I know. I know what you thought. Come in, come in. I was recording.’

‘Oh, sorry.’

Donald’s irregular broadcasts on the radio, his ‘wireless essays’ as he called them, had recently given him a modest amount of fame that had kindled the resentment felt by men like Garth Menzies. Adrian found it hard to believe that, after the events of last night and this morning, Trefusis could contemplate continuing with them. He was even now rewinding the tape on his Uher recorder.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘There’s a rather comical Bâtard-Montrachet on the side. You might pour out two glasses.’

Now he poured out two glasses of wine and threaded his way through the librarinth towards the small study-within-a-study which contained Donald, his desk, his computer and his tape-recorder. The study was in the centre of the room and made up an inner sanctum no more than six foot square and eight foot high entirely constructed of books, mostly books in Romanian, it appeared. There was even a door. This had been made as part of the set for a student production of
Travesties
, which Trefusis had enjoyed. The director, Bridget Arden, a pupil of his, gave him the door as a present. It had required large stage weights to keep it upright at first, but with books stacked all round its frame it was soon as firmly wedged in place as could be.

One advantage of this strange inner room, Trefusis claimed, was that it made an excellent soundproof chamber for his broadcasts. Adrian’s view was that it satisfied a vague agoraphobia, or at least claustraphilia, that he would never admit to.

Trefusis was speaking into the microphone as Adrian tiptoed through with the glasses.

‘… and since this embarrassment in all its noble and monumental proportions will be known to you by now through the kind offices of the press, I shall, for the moment, spare you a description of its more gaudy details, although I look forward to sharing them with you in a frank, straightforward and manly way before the year is quite out. For the time being I will, if I may, take a break from these wireless essays and see something of the world. When I have found out what the world is like, be sure that I will let you know, those of you who are interested, of course, the others will simply have to guess. Meanwhile if you have been, then continue to and don’t even think of stopping.’

He sighed and put the microphone down.

‘Well, it’s all very sad,’ he said.

‘Where shall I put the wine?’ said Adrian, looking around for a free space.

‘I should try your throat, dear boy,’ said Trefusis, taking his glass and drinking it down. ‘Now. I suppose you have come to tell me about the meeting?’

‘It was outrageous,’ said Adrian. ‘Menzies was after your blood.’

‘The dear man. How silly of him, it wasn’t there, it was in here all the time, running through my body. He should have come and asked for it. Was he terribly cross?’

‘He wasn’t too pleased by my tactics, anyway.’

Trefusis looked at him in alarm.

‘You didn’t say anything reckless?’

Adrian explained how the meeting had gone. Trefusis shook his head.

‘You are a very silly boy. Clinton-Lacey read out my letter, I suppose?’

‘Yes, it rather took the wind out of Menzies’ sails. But it wasn’t necessary, Donald, no one else wanted you to step down. Why did you write it?’

‘The heart has its reasons.’

‘You’ve got to watch Menzies. I bet he’ll fight your reappointment next year.’

‘Nonsense, Garth and I simply overflow with love for each other.’

‘He’s your enemy, Donald!’

‘He most certainly is not,’ said Trefusis. ‘Not unless I say so. He may dearly want to be my enemy, he may beg on bended knee for open hostility of the most violent kind, but it takes two to tangle. I choose my own enemies.’

‘If you say so …’

‘I do say so.’

Adrian sipped at the wine.

‘Buttery, isn’t it? The vanilla comes as a late surprise.’

‘Yes, yes it’s excellent … um …’

‘You have a question?’

This was rather difficult.

‘Donald?’

‘Yes?’

‘About last night …’

Trefusis gazed at Adrian sadly.

‘Oh dear, you are not going to ask me an embarrassing question, are you?’

‘Well, no,’ said Adrian, ‘not if it does embarrass you.’

‘I meant
you
,’ said Trefusis. ‘You are not going to embarrass yourself, are you?’

Adrian gestured helplessly.

‘It just seems so … so …’

‘So squalid?’

‘No!’ said Adrian. ‘I didn’t mean that, I meant it seemed so …’

‘So
unlike
me?’

‘Well …’

Trefusis patted him on the shoulder.

‘Let’s go to the Shoulder,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Bob will find a nice quiet table for us.’

The Shoulder of Lamb was very crowded. Choral Scholars from St John’s, limp with Pimms from an early May Week garden party, were singing an
a capella
version of ‘Message in a Bottle’ in one corner, a pair of millionaire computer designers poked each other heatedly on the chest in another. Adrian remembered how two years ago one of them had bummed cigarettes off him in the Eagle. Now his company was worth sixty million pounds.

The landlord stepped crisply forward and winked.

‘Professor Trefusis, sir, and young Mr Healey!’ he said, rolling his head back on his neck like a sun-struck sergeant-major. ‘Bit busy this evening, sir.’

‘So I see, Bob,’ said Donald. ‘Is there somewhere …?’

‘I’ll take you upstairs, sir.’

Bob led them through the front bar. One or two people stopped talking when they caught sight of Trefusis. Adrian was amazed at the blithe calm with which he greeted them.

‘Evening, Michael! I did so enjoy your Serjeant Musgrave. Quite to the purpose. Such boots, too.’

‘Simon! I see that your results were posted. A Third! You must be thrilled.’

Bob took them up the stairs.

‘We was all most proud to read of your exploits in the paper, sir.’

‘Why, thank you, Bob.’

‘Reminds me of my old Adjutant when we was on household duties at the Palace. Fuckingham Palace we used to call it then, of course.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Dear oh dear, St James’s Park was a sink in those days, sir. Wasn’t a bush that didn’t have at least one guardsman and customer in it. Course, you’ll remember Colonel Bramall, won’t you, sir?’

‘Thank you Bob, this room will do splendidly. Perhaps Nigel could be induced to bring up a couple of the Gruaud Larose?’

‘Certainly, sir. How about a nice veal and ham pie? Spot of chutney?’

‘Ludicrously ideal.’

‘He’ll be with you in a breath, sir.’

When they had disposed of the veal and ham pie, but not the chutney, which Trefusis warned would have a most ruinous effect on the palate, he poured out two glasses of wine.

Adrian gulped at his greedily, determining that drunkenness was the only state in which to cope with his discomfort. If the Wizard of Oz was going to reveal himself as a sad and bewildered old man, Adrian didn’t want to be sober when it happened.

To be fair, Donald looked about as sad and bewildered as the Laughing Cavalier as he sipped his claret and dipped his head in appreciation.

‘A purist might recommend another year of ageing for the tannin to smooth out its rougher edges,’ he said. ‘I think it already supernacular, however.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Adrian, pouring himself another glass.

Trefusis watched him contentedly.

‘A good wine is like a woman,’ he said. ‘Except of course it doesn’t have breasts. Or arms and a head. And it can’t speak or bear children. In fact, come to think of it, a good wine isn’t remotely like a woman at all. A good wine is like a good wine.’

‘I’m rather like a good wine too,’ said Adrian.

‘You improve with age?’

‘No,’ said Adrian, ‘whenever I’m taken out I get drunk.’

‘Except that in your case you get laid down after drinking, not before.’

Adrian blushed.

‘Oh dear,’ said Trefusis, ‘that was not a sexual allusion. Merely frivolous paronomasy on the theme of alcoholically induced unconsciousness. I was particularly pleased with “in your case”. Are you to be discomfited by the potential for erotic interpretation of every remark I might make?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Adrian. ‘I’ve a feeling I’m a bad vintage.’

‘That’s nonsense, but very graceful. We were talking of drink, I’ve always believed it right for young people to drink. Not be alcoholic of course, that is a passive state of being, not a positive action. But it is good to drink to excess. That sounds like a toast. To excess.’

‘To excess,’ said Adrian, bumpering. ‘Nothing exceeds like it.’

‘Your strenuous tongue is bursting Joy’s grape against your palate fine, and that’s just as it should be.’

‘Keats,’ burped Adrian. ‘Ode to Melancholy.’

‘Keats indeed,’ said Trefusis, refilling their glasses. ‘Ode
on
Melancholy in fact, but we are beyond pedantry here, I hope.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Adrian, who hated being corrected, even kindly.

‘Now,’ said Trefusis, ‘we should talk.’

‘For the moment,’ he said, ‘I have nothing to say on the subject of last night. One day, when the world is pinker, I will a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine, and generally make you go all of a dither. But for the moment, shtum, you can keep all thoughts on the topic to yourself: zip your lip. However I do have a proposition to put to you which I would like you to consider very seriously. You have no fixed plans for next year, I think?’

‘That’s right.’

Adrian had made up his mind to wait until after his Finals before deciding what to do with himself. If he got a First he still planned to stay at Cambridge, otherwise he supposed he would look for a teaching job somewhere.

‘How would it be, I wonder, if you were to spend the summer travelling with me?’

Adrian goggled. ‘Well, I …’

‘As you know, I shall be doing a little research for my book. But I have something else to do. There is a problem that needs sorting out, a noisome problem but not unchallenging. I believe you will be able to offer me material assistance with it. In return I will naturally take care of all expenses, hotels, flights and so forth. It will, I think, be a tour not wholly devoid of interest and amusement. At journey’s end we will both deposit ourselves back in England, you to become Prime Minister or whatever lowly ambition you have set your sights on, me to pick up the threads of a ruined and disappointed career. How does that strike you as a plan?’

It struck Adrian as Roscoe Tanner struck a tennis-ball, but how it struck him as a plan he couldn’t say. His mind reeled with questions. Had Trefusis run mad? What would his parents say? Should he tell them? Did Donald expect him to share his bed? Is that what it was all about?