The Liar

'It's a bed and breakfast place.'

'Do you have a job?'

Adrian nodded.

'Where?'

'I'm working in the West End.' The 'in' was redundant, but Uncle David was unlikely to be impressed by the truth.

'Doing what?'

'It's a theatrical agency in Denmark Street. I make the coffee, that kind of thing.'

'Right. There's a pen, there's paper. I want you to write down the address in Muswell Hill and the address in Denmark Street. Then you are to write a letter to your parents. Have you any idea what you've put them through? They went to the police, for God's sake! What the hell was it all about, Adrian?'

Here he was in another study, in another chair, facing another angry man and being asked another set of impossible questions. 'Why do you do this sort of thing?' 'Why can't you concentrate?' 'Why can't you behave like everyone else?' 'What's the matter with you?'

Adrian knew that if he answered 'I don't know' in a sulky voice, Uncle David would, like dozens before him, snort and bang the table and shout back, 'What do you mean, you don't know? You must know. Answer me!'

Adrian stared at the carpet.

'Well?' asked Uncle David.

'I don't know,' Adrian said sulkily.

'What do you mean, you don't know? You must know. Answer me!'

'I was unhappy.'

'Unhappy? Well why couldn't you have told someone? Can you imagine how your mother felt when you didn't come home? When no one knew where you were? That's unhappy for you. Can you imagine it? No, of course you can't.'

Beyond a pewter mug at his Christening, a Bible at his Confirmation, a copy of Wisden every birthday and regular bluff shoulder-clapping and by-Christ-you've-grown-ing, Uncle David hadn't taken his sponsorial duties to Adrian with any spectacular seriousness, and it was unsettling to see him now glaring and breathing heavily down his nostrils as if he had been personally affronted by his godson's flight. Adrian didn't think he'd earned the right to look that angry.

'I just felt I had to get away.'

'I dare say. But to be so underhand, so ... sly. To sneak away without saying a word. That was the act of a coward and a rotter. You'll write that letter.'

Uncle David left the room, locking the door behind him. Adrian sighed and turned to the desk. He noticed a silver letter-opener on the desk in the shape of a cricket bat. He held it to the light and saw the engraved signature of Donald Bradman running obliquely across the splice. Adrian slipped it into the inside pocket of his blazer and settled down to write.Under a Portrait of Prince Ranjitsinhji,

A funny little office near the Long Room,

Lord's Cricket Ground, June 1975 Dear Mother and Father, I'm so sorry I ran away without saying goodbye. Uncle David tells me that you have been worrying about me, not too much I hope.I'm living in a Bed and Breakfast place in 14 Endicott Gardens, Highgate, and I have a job in a theatrical agency called Leon Bright's, 59 Denmark Street, WC2. I'm a sort of messenger and office-boy, but it's a good job and I hope to rent a flat soon.I am well and happy and truly sorry if I have upset you. I will write soon and at length to explain why I felt I had to leave. Please try and forgive Your doting son Adrian PS I met the new England Captain, Tony Greig, today.

Twenty minutes later, Uncle David returned and read it through.

'I suppose that will do. Leave it with me and I'll see that it's posted.'

He looked Adrian up and down.

'If you looked halfway decent I'd invite you to watch from the Members' Stand.'

'That's all right.'

'Come tomorrow wearing a tie and I'll see what I can do.'

'That's awfully kind. I'd love to.'

'They give you days off to watch cricket, do they? From this place in Denmark Street? Just like that?'

'Like the Foreign Office, you mean?'

'Fair point, you cheeky little rat. And get your hair cut. You look like a tart.'

'Heavens! Do I?'

Adrian did not return to Lord's the next day, nor any of the other days. Instead he had gone back to work and found time to hang around the Tottenham Court Road catching Tony Greig's ninety-six and Lillee's maddening seventy-three on the banks of televisions in the electrical appliance shop windows.

The risk of meeting people he knew was acute. He remem- bered how Dr Watson in the first Sherlock Holmes story had described Piccadilly Circus as a great cesspool into which every idler and lounger of the Empire was irresistibly drained. It seemed now that as the Empire had dwindled in size, so the strength of the Circus's pull had grown. Britain was a draining bath and Piccadilly, its plug-hole, now seemed almost audibly to gurgle as it sucked in the last few gallons of waste.

It was part of Adrian's job, in the centre of the whirlpool, to scrutinise every face that eddied past. Innocent passers-by tended not to meet the glances of strangers, so he usually found himself able to turn away in time if there was someone he knew in the area.

One rainy afternoon, however, about a fortnight after the meeting with his Uncle David, while sheltering in a