The Liar

'It'll brighten her day. Better than picking up the manky Y-fronts of the economists opposite.'

'Fuck you, Gary. Why do you always make me sound so prissy and middle-class?'

'Bollocks.'

Adrian looked round the room and tried to fight down his bourgeois panic.

'So, hinged panelling, you say?'

'Shouldn't cost too much if that's what you're worrying about. I picked up this builder who's working on the site of Robinson College. He reckons he can get me some good stuff for under five hundred and he'll do all the rendering and plastering for free if I let him fuck me.'

'Not exactly in the great tradition is it? I mean, I don't think that Pope Julius and Michelangelo came to a similar kind of arrangement about the Sistine Chapel. Not unless I'm very much mistaken.'

'Don't bet on it. Anyway, someone's got to fuck me, haven't they?' Gary pointed out. 'Since you won't I've got to look elsewhere. Makes good sense.'

'Suddenly the whole logic becomes clear. But what about work? I'm supposed to be working this term, don't forget.'

Gary got to his feet and stretched.

'Bugger that, that's what I say. How was the porn?'

'Incredible. You've never in all your life seen anything like it.'

'Naughty pictures?'

'I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to look a labrador in the face again. But, ruined as my faith in humankind may be, I have to say that we of the twentieth century are a pretty normal bunch compared to the Victorians.'

'Victorian porn?'

'Certainly.'

'What did they do} I've often wondered. Did they have dicks and fannies and the rest of it?'

'Well of course they did, you silly child. And the zestier volumes indicate that they had a great deal more. There's a - '

Adrian broke off. He had suddenly given himself an idea. He looked at Gary's cartoon.

Why not? It was wild, it was dishonest, it was disgraceful, but it could be done. It would mean work. A hell of a lot of work, but work of the right kind. Why not?'

'Gary,' he said. 'I suddenly find myself at life's crossroads. I can feel it. One road points to madness and pleasure, the other to sanity and success. Which way do I turn?'

'You tell me, matey.'

'Let me put it this way. Do you want to pay off all your debt in one, plus the five hundred for wooden panelling? I've got a job for you.'

'Okay.'

'That's my boy.'

Trefusis approached the counter of the reading-room. The young librarian looked at him in surprise.

'Professor Trefusis!'

'Good morning! How wags the world with you today?'

'I'm very fit thank you, sir.'

'I wonder if you can help me?'

'That's what I'm here for, Professor.'

Trefusis leant forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially, not an easy task for him. Among his many gifts he had never been able to count speaking in hushed tones.

'Oblige the whim of a man old and mad before his time,' he said, quietly enough for only the first twelve rows of desks behind him to catch every word, 'and tell me if there is any reason why I shouldn't have come in here an hour ago?'

'Pardon?'

'Why should I not have come into this room an hour ago? Was something afoot?'

The librarian stared. A man who services academics is used to all forms of mental derangement and behavioural aberration. Trefusis had always struck him as blithely and refreshingly free from nervous disorder. But, as the saying had it, old professors never die, they merely lose their faculties.

'Well apart from the fact that an hour ago you couldn't have been here . . .'he said.

'I couldn't?'

'Well not while you were at St Matthew's talking to Mr Leyland on the telephone.'

'I was talking to Mr Leyland on the telephone?' said Trefusis. 'Of course I was! Dear me, my memory . . . Leyland rang me up, didn't he? On the telephone, as I recall. That's right, it was the telephone, I remember distinctly, because I spoke to him through it. He rang me up, on the telephone, to talk to me about. . . about. . . what was it now?'