The Liar

'Jenny does.'

'Women are different, you know that.'

'I do as well.'

'Men are different too.'

'Gay men, you mean.'

'I cannot believe I am having this conversation. You think I'm like Emma, don't you? 'Adrian Healey, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-three years in the world with very little to disturb or vex him.''

'Distress or vex, I think you'll find. It's as good a description as any.'

'Really? Well, I may have missed some of Jane Austen's subtler hints, but I don't think Emma Woodhouse spent part of her seventeenth year as a harlot in Piccadilly. I haven't read it for a couple of years of course, and some of the obliquer references could have passed over my head. Miss Austen also seems to fight very shy of describing Emma's time in chokey on remand for possession of cocaine. Again I'm perfectly prepared to concede that she did and that I have simply failed to pick up the clues.'

'What the fuck are you going on about?'

And Adrian had told him something of his life between school and Cambridge.

Gary was still indignant. 'You plan to marry Jenny without telling her any of this?'

'Don't be so bourgeois, my dear. It doesn't suit you at all.'

Adrian was growing disillusioned with Gary. He had started on his History of Art, or History O Fart, as Adrian liked to call it, at the beginning of the year and ever since he had begun to evolve into something else. Bondage trousers had given way to second-hand tweed jackets with Hermes silk nourishing from the breast pockets. The hair returned to its natural dark, slicked back with KY jelly; knives and forks dangled no more from the lobes. The Damned and The Clash were less likely to blast across the court from the rooms now than Couperin and Bruckner.

'It only needs a moustache for you to look like Roy Strong,' Adrian had told him once, but Gary hadn't been moved. He wasn't going to be the world's little piece of pet rough any more and that was that. And now he was lecturing Adrian on the ethics of personal relations.

'Anyway, why should I tell her? What difference would it make?'

'Why should you marry her? What difference would it make?'

'Oh let's not go round in circles. I've tried to tell you. I've done all my living. There's nothing to look forward to. Do I go into advertising? Do I teach? Do I apply to the BBC? Do I write plays and become the voice of the Bland Young Man generation? Do I consider journalism? Do I go to an acting school? Do I have a shot at industry? The only justification for my existence is that I am loved. Whether or not I like it, I am responsible for Jenny and that is something to get up in the morning for.'

'So it's a life of sacrifice. You're afraid that if you don't marry her, she'll top herself? I hate to wound your vanity but people don't behave like that.'

'Oh don't they? Don't people kill themselves?'

Jenny entered without knocking.

'Hiya, bum-holes, I cleared your pigeon-holes on the way in. Exciting jiffy-bag for you, big boy. Could it be the clitoral exciter we ordered?'

'Morning toast more like,' said Gary, taking the package and passing it over.

Adrian opened it while Gary explained to Jenny the history of Toast By Post.

'You taught a boy two years ago and he still has this crush on you?'

'His faithful little heart overflows with love.'

'Nonsense,' said Adrian. 'It was never more than an elaborate joke. If anything the parcels mock me.'

'Do you think he wanks into them before he seals them up?'

'Gary!'Jenny was shocked.

'As in 'I'm coming in a jiffy', you mean? No, I do not, though I grant you the toast is a bit soggy. What else have we? A little pot of apricot jam, a pat of butter, a note which says, 'And Conradin made himself another piece of toast. . .''

'That boy is weird.'

'Who's Conradin?'Jenny asked.

'Reach down my index, Watson, and look under 'C'. Dear me, what villainy is grouped under this letter alone! There's Callaghan, the politician to whose door we traced what you in your memoirs gave the somewhat fanciful title the 'Winter of Discontent', Watson. Here's Callow, the second most dangerous actor in London, any one of whose grimaces may be fatal, Lewis Collins, Charlie Chester, Leslie Crowther of dread memory, Marti Caine, what a catalogue of infamy is here . . .but no Conradin. Peter Conrad, who invented opera, William Conrad, whose Cannon was a Quinn Martin Production, but no Conradin.'

'I think it's from a Saki short story,' said Gary. 'Sredni Vashtar, the polecat.'

'Oh yes, you're quite right. Or was he a ferret?'

'And what's the relevance to you?' asked Jenny.

'Well, there we have to peer into the dark, dripping mind of Hunt the Thimble. The chances are that it is simply a literary reference to toast, and he is fast running out of those. But there could be a Meaning.'