The Liar

face's affair! The face presents these organs each set in their place to look at what they will and listen where they please. What countenance deserves the name therefore -my lords who look upon gold plate, my ladies who breathe fine perfumes, my friends who taste plump mutton and hear the sweet harmony of a loving voice - what face can be called a face which has not a nose set upon it? What term might we invent to describe a face whose nose is all ate up? A face with a hole in its middle where a nose should have stood - be it a nose pinched and long, swollen and bulbous, or Roman and aloof, be it any kind of nose plain or pretty - a face, I say, with a black nullity where nostrils and bridge should be presenting themselves for admiration or disgust, that is no face but the face of Shame, no countenance but the countenance of Want. It is the visage of Sin and Lust, the aspect of Need and Despair but not - I beg the favour of your believing me - not, an hundred times never, the face of a human child.

'Flinter! Fetch down young Joe for the gentleman. And Flinter! don't you never dream of touching no part of him neither, or bust me if you don't find your head a suddenly lacking of two ears also!'

Polterneck turned to Peter with an indulgent smile, for all the world as if to say 'Bless my buttons if I don't lavish more care on my young lads than they deserve!' He must then have caught sight of the expression of revulsion and horror on Peter's face, for he hastened to whisper an explanation.

'The pox, Mr Flowerbuck! The pox is a sore trial in my line of working. He was a good worker was Master Flinter and nor I don't have the heart to dismiss him now the pox has taken away his smeller.'

'I should imagine,' said Peter, 'that . . .'

'Slow down, for God's sake,' said Gary. 'My fucking wrist is about to drop off.'

Adrian stopped pacing the room.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I was getting carried away. What do you reckon so far?'

'Not sure about 'bulbous'.'

'You're right. I'll check it tomorrow.'

'It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm about to run out of ink. I'm going to crash.'

'Finish the chapter?'

'In the morning.'

In a service-station car-park off the Stuttgart - Karlsruhe Autobahn, a Tweed Jacket and a dark Blue Marks & Spencer's Leisure Shirt were licking their wounds.

'I just can't believe it,' the Leisure Shirt was saying. 'I mean out of nowhere and for what?'

'Perhaps they fancy themselves as latter day highway robbers,' offered the Tweed.

'Well that greasy one in a safari suit wasn't exactly my idea of a Dick Turpin.'

'No,' said the Tweed. He looked at the Leisure Shirt, who had turned away and started kicking a tree stump.

'Why did I have to go and suggest what is obviously the most secluded bloody service-station on the whole sodding Autobahn?

'I blame myself, Adrian, I should have parked nearer the main building, I do hope you are all right?'

Well they didn't take my passport or wallet, at least. In fact as far as I can see they didn't take anything.'

'Notquite true.'

The Tweed gestured forlornly towards the back seat of the Wolseley.

'My briefcase, I regret to say.'

'Oh. Anything in it?'

'Some papers.'

'Phew. Lucky escape then, I suppose. Shall we call the police?'

Three

I

At the front of the tractor, fed from its power-take-off, was a picker. A conveyor belt ran along the side and disgorged the potatoes onto a rolling rack. Adrian and Lucy's job was to 'dress' them, to pull out the rotten, green or squashed potatoes as they trundled on their way to Tony, who stood at the end of the line, bagging the survivors. Every twenty or thirty minutes they would stop and unload a dozen full sacks into a pile in the middle of the field.

It was revolting work. The rotten and the good looked alike, so Lucy and Adrian had to pick up and examine each potato that jigged and bounced along in front of them. The bad ones burst under the slightest pressure, exploding in a squelch of stinking mucus. When it rained, mud sprayed up from the wheels and spattered their faces and clothes; when it was dry, clouds of dust choked them and matted their hair. The endless clanking, grinding, whining roar could have been the soundtrack for one of those Hieronymous Bosch visions of Hell, Adrian thought, where the moaning damned stand with their hands over their ears while demons frolic gleefully around them, probing their intimate parts with forks.

But in hell the inmates would at least try to strike up conversations with each other, hard as it might be to make themselves heard above the rumble of the treadmills and the roar of the furnaces. Lucy and Tony, brother and sister, never said a word to Adrian beyond a 'Ning' when he turned up, freezing, at dawn and a 'Nernight, then' at dusk when, stiff as a statue, he mounted his bicycle to pound wearily home to bath and bed.

Lucy just stared at the potatoes. Tony just stared at his bagging apparatus. Sometimes Adrian caught them staring at each other, in a manner which reminded him of the joke definition of a Cotswold virgin: an ugly girl under twelve who can run faster than her brother.