The Liar [calibre]

Trefusis stubbed out his cigarette.

'Well now, that is precisely what I have taken the liberty of doing,' he said. 'With your permission I shall read a statement that the press might be offered without too much embarrassment.'

Everyone around the table murmured assent. Trefusis took a piece of paper from his satchel.

'"Using a linguistic analysis program pioneered by the English faculty in collaboration with the Department of Computing Science,'" he read, "'Dr Tim Anderson, Fellow of St Matthew's College and Lecturer in English at the University, has refined and perfected techniques which have allowed him to determine precisely which parts of the play The Two Noble Kinsmen were written by Shakespeare and which by Fletcher.'"

'Er ... I have?' asked Tim Anderson.

'Yes, Tim, you have.'

'What on earth has Shakespeare got to do with it?' cried Menzies. 'We are talking about . . .'

'"Comparing textual samples of known Shakespeare against the writings of the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe, he is also in a position to prove that all the plays of the Shakespearean canon are the work of one hand, William Shakespeare's, and that Oxford, Bacon and Marlowe are responsible for none of it. There are, however, some intriguing passages in three of the plays which would appear not to be by Shakespeare. Dr Anderson and his team are working on them now and should soon have positive results. An interesting byproduct of this important work is the discovery that the novel Peter Flowerbuck is not by Charles Dickens, but is almost certainly the work of a twentieth-century writer. There is evidence, however, that the story is based on an original Dickens plot. Dr Anderson's team is following up this suggestion with great energy." I think that should meet the case.'

'Ingenious, Donald,' said Clinton-Lacey. 'Quite ingenious.'

'You're too kind.'

'I don't see what's so ingenious about it. Why bring Shakespeare in?'

'He's diverting attention, Garth,' Clinton-Lacey explained. 'Bring out the name Shakespeare and it's even bigger copy than Dickens.'

'But all this guff about Dr Anderson working on bits of Shakespeare and the plot lines being original Dickens? What's that about?'

'Well you see,' said Trefusis. 'It shows that we are currently researching all this important material, that there may be something in Peter Flowerbuck after all.'

'But there isn't!'

'We know that, but the newspapers don't. In a couple of months' time the whole thing will be forgotten. If they do make enquiries about our progress we can say that Dr Anderson is still working on the problem. I'm sure Tim will be able to bemuse the press.'

'He will be the one to make the announcement then?'

'Certainly,' said Trefusis. 'I have nothing to do with the affair.'

'I'm unsure as to what the tension between the ethical boundaries and the margins of pragmatism might announce themselves to be in a situation which . . .' Anderson began.

'You see? Tim will do splendidly. His is the only major European language I still find myself utterly unable to comprehend. The press will be bored. It isn't quite enough of a hoax story to excite them and is too rigorous and scientific to have any human interest.'

'But all this means that we will have to keep funding the extra staff,' Menzies complained. 'For appearances' sake.'

'Yes,' said Trefusis dreamily, 'there is that drawback of course.'

'That's outrageous.'

'Oh I don't know. As long as they're kept busy lecturing, teaching undergraduates and authenticating documents that will be sent to us from all over the world - now that we are acknowledged as the leading university for authorial fingerprinting - I'm sure we'll find a use for them. They may even pay their way.'

IV

'You're lying,' said Gary. 'You've got to be lying.'

'I wish I were,' said Adrian. 'No, that's not true, I wouldn't have missed it for worlds.'

'You're telling me that you sold your arse down the Dilly?'

'Why not? Someone's got to. Anyway it wasn't my arse exactly.'

Gary paced up and down the room while Adrian watched him. He didn't know why he had told him. He supposed because he had been stung once too often by the accusation that he had no idea what the real world was like.

It had started when Adrian had mentioned that he was seriously considering marrying Jenny.

'Do you love her?'

'Look Gary. I'm twenty-two years old. I got here by the skin of my teeth, because I awoke from the bad dream of adolescence in the nick of time. Every morning for the next, God knows, fifty years, I'm going to have to get out of bed and participate in the day. I simply do not trust myself to be able to do that on my own. I'll need someone to get up for.'

'But do you love her?'

'I am magnificently prepared for the long littleness of life. There is diddley-squat for me to look forward to. Zilch, zero, zip-all, sweet lipperty-pipperty nothing. The only thought that will give me the energy to carry on is that someone has a life which would be diminished by my departure from it.'

'Yes, but do you love her?'

'You're beginning to sound like Olivier in The Marathon Man, "Is it safe? Is it safe?" "Sure it's safe. It's real safe." "Is it safe?" "No, it's not safe. It's incredibly unsafe." "Is it safe?" How the hell do I know?'

'You don't love her.'

'Oh piss off, Gary. I don't love anyone, anything, or anybody. Well, "anyone" and "anybody" are the same, but I can't think of a third "any". Which reminds me . . . that bloody Martini advert, it's bugged me for years. "Any time, any place, anywhere." What the fuck difference is there between any place and anywhere? Some advertising copy-writer was paid thousands for that piece of rubbish.'

'This is a change of subject on a cosmic scale. You don't love her, do you?'

'I just said. I don't love anyone, anything or any body, any time, any place, anywhere. Who does?'

'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.