The Liar

'Conradin was a boy who had a horrible, repressive aunt,' said Gary. 'So he prayed to Sredni Vashtar, his polecat . . .'

'Or ferret.'

'He prayed to his polecat or ferret and his prayers were answered. Sredni Vashtar killed the aunt.'

'And meanwhile Conradin calmly made himself another piece of toast.'

'I see,' said Jenny. 'The polecat is a kind of phallic symbol, do we think?'

'Honestly, dear,' said Gary, 'you're so obsessed, you'd think a penis was phallic.'

'Well Sredni Vashtar is a monster from the Id, at the very least,' said Adrian. 'The dark, hot-breathed stink of the animal that Conradin would one day release from its dark hiding-place to wreak its revenge on the chintz and teacups of his aunt's drawing-room life.'

'Do you think this boy is trying to tell you something?'

'Perhaps his thimble is a thimble no more, but a long, furry savage beast that wriggles and spits and mauls aunts. I'll write and ask him.'

He looked through the rest of his post. A cheque from his mother was always welcome, a cheque from Uncle David for five hundred pounds even more so. He slipped it quickly into his jacket pocket. Reminders that Billy Graham was in Cambridge and would preach in Great St Mary's were always monumentally unwelcome, as were invitations to hear Acis and Galatea played on original instruments.

'But not sung,' he suggested, looking through the rest of his mail, 'on original voices. I suppose in two hundred years' time they'll be giving Beatles concerts on ancient Marshall ... oh and a letter from old Biffo, bless him.'

Biffen was the only master from school with whom Adrian stayed in touch. The man was so fluffy and white and decent and had taken so much pleasure in the news of Adrian's scholarship to St Matthew's which had somehow filtered through to the school the year before, that it would have been a positive cruelty not to write to him from time to time to let him know how it was all going.

He glanced through the letter. Biffen was full of the news of the Dickens manuscript.

'Donald writes me that there may be some doubt about it. I do hope not.'

'I'd forgotten Biffo knew Trefusis,' said Adrian, laying the letter aside. 'Hello! What have we here?'

There was a crumpled handwritten note for him. 'Please come to tea at C5, Great Court, Trinity. Alone. Hugo.'

'How is Hugo?' asked Jenny. 'I haven't seen much of him since Flowerbuck.¹

'I remember him being rather naff in Bridget's production of Sexual Perversity In Chicago] said Gary. 'He kept forgetting his lines and tripping over. He hasn't been in anything since.'

Adrian put the note down and yawned.

'He's probably been swotting for his Part One's. He was always that kind of creep. Hand me Justin and Miroslav.'

Adrian noticed that the permanent puddle in the passageway between King's and St Catharine's had iced over. Spring was having to make a fight of it. He wrapped Miroslav, his cashmere scarf, closer round him as he stepped out into the icy gale that blasted along King's Parade. They used to say that Cambridge was the first stopping place for the wind that swept down from the Urals: in the thirties that was as true of the politics as the weather.

Adrian wondered whether he mightn't become political himself. Always one to walk the other way from trends, he sensed that left-wingery was about to become very unfashionable. Long hair was out, flared jeans were out, soon there would be no more cakes and ale, canapes and Sancerre at best, Ryvita and mineral water at worst. Trefusis complained that the modern undergraduate was a cruel disappointment to him.

'They're all getting firsts and married these days, if you'll forgive the syllepsis,' he had said once. 'Decency, discipline and dullness. There's no lightness of touch any more, no irresponsibility. Do you remember that damning description of Leonard Bast in Howards End? 'He had given up the glory of the animal for a tail-coat and a set of ideas.' Change tail-coat to pin-stripe and you have modern Cambridge. There's no lack of respect today, that's what I miss.'

As Adrian hurried past the Senate House he noticed two old men standing outside Bowes and Bowes. He put an extra spring in his step, a thing he often did when walking near the elderly. He imagined old people would look at his athletic bounce with a misty longing for their own youth. Not that he was trying to show off or rub salt into the wounds of the infirm, he really believed he was offering a service, an opportunity for nostalgia, like whistling the theme tune from Happidrome or spinning a Diabolo.

He skipped past them with carefree ease, missed his footing and fell to the ground with a thump. One of the old men helped him up.

'You all right, lad?'

'Yes fine ... I must have slipped on the ice.'

Using Justin, his umbrella, as a walking-stick, he hobbled down Trinity Street, ruthlessly mocking himself.

'Adrian, you're an arse. In a world of arses, you are the arsiest by a mile. Stop being an arse at once, or I'll never talk to you again. So there.'

'Is there a problem, sir?'

'Oh sorry, no . . .I was just. . . humming to myself.'

He hadn't realised he'd been talking out loud. The Trinity porter stared at him suspiciously, so as Adrian limped into Great Court, he broke into more definite and deliberate song to prove his point.

'How do you solve a problem like Maria?' he fluted. 'How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you find a word that means Maria? A flibbertigibbet, a will o'the wisp, a clown.'