The Liar Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Stephen Fry

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Stephen Fry’s breathtakingly outrageous debut novel, by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic.

  Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders; and wholly unprepared for the truth.

  About the Author

  Stephen Fry was born in the twentieth century and will die in the twenty-first. In the course of writing seven books he has drunk four hundred and twelve thousand cups of coffee, smoked one and a half million cigarettes and worn out nineteen pairs of trousers. He has no birth sign.

  Also by Stephen Fry

  FICTION

  The Hippopotamus

  Making History

  The Stars’ Tennis Balls

  NON-FICTION

  Paperweight

  Moab Is My Washpot

  Rescuing the Spectacled Bear

  The Ode Less Travelled

  with Hugh Laurie

  A Bit of Fry and Laurie

  A Bit More Fry and Laurie

  Three Bits of Fry and Laurie

  To .......................................................

  (insert full name here)

  Not one word of the following is true

  A Fame T-shirt stopped outside the house where Mozart was born. He looked up at the building and his eyes shone. He stood quite still, gazing upwards and glowing with adoration as a party of Bleached Denims and Fluorescent Bermuda Shorts pushed past him and went in. Then he shook his head, dug into his hip pocket and moved forwards. A thin high voice behind him caused him to stop mid-stride.

  ‘Have you ever contemplated, Adrian, the phenomenon of springs?’

  ‘Coils, you mean?’

  ‘Not coils, Adrian, no. Coils not. Think springs of water. Think wells and spas and sources. Well-springs in the widest and loveliest sense. Jerusalem, for instance, is a spring of religiosity. One small town in the desert, but the source of the world’s three most powerful faiths. It is the capital of Judaism, the scene of Christ’s crucifixion and the place from which Mohammed ascended into heaven. Religion seems to bubble from its sands.’

  The Fame T-shirt smiled to himself and walked into the building.

  A Tweed Jacket and a Blue Button-down Shirt of Oxford Cotton stopped in front of the steps. Now it was their turn to stare reverently upwards as the tide of human traffic streamed past them along the Getreidegasse.

  ‘Take Salzburg. By no means the chief city of Austria, but a Jerusalem to any music lover. Haydn, Schubert and … oh dear me yes, here we are … and Mozart.’

  ‘There’s a theory that special lines criss-cross the earth and that where they coincide strange things happen,’ said the Oxford Cotton Button-down Shirt. ‘Ley-lines, I think they call them.’

  ‘You’ll think I’m grinding my axe,’ said the Jacket, ‘but I should say that it is the German language that is responsible.’

  ‘Shall we go up?’

  ‘By all means.’ The pair moved into the interior shadows of the house.

  ‘You see,’ continued the Tweed, ‘all the qualities of ironic abstraction that the language could not articulate found expression in their music.’

  ‘I had never thought of Haydn as ironic.’

  ‘It is of course quite possible that my theory is hopelessly wrong. Pay the nice Fräulein, Adrian.’

  *

  In a second-storey chamber where little Wolfgang had romped, whose walls he had covered with precocious arithmetic and whose rafters he had made tremble with infant minuets, the Fame T-shirt examined the display cases.

  The ivory and tortoise-shell combs that once had smoothed the ruffled ringlets of the young genius appeared not to interest the T-shirt at all, nor the letters and laundry-lists, nor the child-size violins and violas. His attention was entirely taken up by the models of stage designs which were set into the wall in glass boxes all round the room.

  One box in particular seemed to fascinate him. He stared at it with intensity and suspicion as if half expecting the little papier mâchè figures inside to burst through the glass and punch him on the nose. He appeared to be oblivious of the group of Bleached Denims and Acid-coloured Shorts that pressed around him, laughing and joking in a language he didn’t understand.

  The model that so particularly engrossed him was of a banqueting hall in which stood a dining table heaped high with food. Two little men had been placed by the table, one crouched in terror, the other standing with hand on hip, in an attitude of cavalier contempt. Both figures looked upstage at the model of a white statue which pointed down at them with the accusing finger of an Italian traffic policeman or wartime recruiting poster.

  The Tweed Jacket and the Blue Button-down had just entered the room.

  ‘You start at that end, Adrian, and we’ll meet in the middle.’

  The Jacket watched the Oxford Cotton move to the other end of the room and then approached the cabinet, whose glass was still being misted by the intense scrutiny of the Fame T-shirt.

  ‘Don Giovanni,’ said the Tweed coming up behind him, ‘a cenar teco m’invitasti, e son venuto. Don Giovanni, you invited me to dinner, and here I am.’

  The T-shirt still stared into the glass. ‘Non si pasce di cibo mortale, Chi si pasce di cibo celeste,’ he whispered. ‘He who dines on heavenly food has no need of mortal sustenance.’

  ‘I believe you have something for me,’ said the Tweed.

  ‘Goldener Hirsch, name of Emburey. Small package.’

  ‘Emburey? Middlesex and England? I had no idea you were interested in cricket.’

  ‘I get it out from a newspaper. It looked a very English name.’

  ‘And so it is. Goodbye.’

  The Tweed moved on and joined the Blue Shirt, who had fallen into conversation with a Frenchwoman.

  ‘I was telling this lady,’ said the Shirt, ‘that I thought the design for The Magic Flute over there was by David Hockney.’

  ‘Certainly so,’ said the Tweed. ‘Hockney seems to me to paint in two styles. Wild and natural or cold and clinical. I seem to remember remarking that there are two kinds of Hockney. Field Hockney and Ice Hockney.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘It’s a joke,’ explained the Blue Shirt.

  ‘Ah.’

  The Tweed was examining an exhibit.

  ‘This figure here must be the Queen of the Night, surely.’

  ‘She is a character altogether of the most extraordinary, I believe,’ said the Frenchwoman. ‘Her music – my God, how but that it is divine. I am myself singer and to play the Queen is the dearest dream of my bosom.’

  ‘It’s certainly one hell of a part,’ said the Oxford Cotton. ‘Pretty difficult I’d have thought. What’s that incredibly high note she has to reach? It’s a top C, isn’t it?’

  The Frenchwoman’s answer to this question startled not just the Blue Button-down Shirt and his companion, but the whole room. For she stared at the Blue Shirt, her eyes round with fright, opened her mouth wide and let go a piercing soprano note of a purity and passion t
hat she was never to repeat in the whole of her subsequent, and distinguished, operatic career.

  ‘Good lord,’ said the Tweed, ‘is it really that high? As I remember it –’

  ‘Donald!’ said the Button-down Shirt. ‘Look!’

  The Tweed Jacket turned and saw the cause of the scream and the cause of other, less technically proficient, screams that were starting up everywhere.

  In the middle of the room stood a man in a Fame T-shirt, twitching and leaping like a puppet.

  It was not the crudity of such a dance in such a place that had set everyone off, it was the sight and sound of the blood that creamed and frothed from his throat. The man seemed, as be hopped and stamped about, to be trying to stem the flow by squeezing at his neck with both bands, but the very pressure of the blood as it pumped outwards made such a task impossible.

  Time stands still at such moments.

  Those who retold the scene afterwards to friends, to psychiatrists, to priests, to the press, all spoke of the noise. To some it was a rattling gargle, to others a bubbling croak: the old man in the tweed jacket and his young companion agreed that they could never hear again the sound of a cappuccino machine without being forced to think of that awful death wheeze.

  All remembered the staggering quantity of the blood, the force of it pushing through the man’s fingers. All remembered the chorus of bass voices upraised in panic as helping hands braved the red shower and leapt forward to ease the jerking figure to the floor. All recalled how nothing could staunch the ferocious jetting of the fountain that gushed from the man’s neck and quenched the words ‘I’m Going to Live For Ever’ on his T-shirt with a dark stain. All remarked on how long it seemed to take him to die.

  But only one of them remembered seeing an enormously fat man with a small head and lank hair leave the room, letting a knife leap from his hand like a live fish as he went.

  Only one man saw that, and he kept it to himself. He grabbed his companion’s hand and led him from the room.

  ‘Come, Adrian. I think we should be otherwhere.’

  1

  I

  ADRIAN CHECKED THE orchid at his buttonhole, inspected the spats at his feet, gave the lavender gloves a twitch, smoothed down his waistcoat, tucked the ebony Malaccacane under his arm, swallowed twice and pushed wide the changing-room door.

  ‘Ah, my dears,’ he cried. ‘Congratulations! Congratulations to you all! A triumph, an absolute triumph!’

  ‘Well, what the fuck’s he wearing now?’ they snorted from the steamy end of the room.

  ‘You’re an arse and an idiot, Healey.’

  Burkiss threw a flannel onto the shiny top hat. Adrian reached up and took it between forefinger and thumb.

  ‘If there is the slightest possibility, Burkiss, that this flannel has absorbed any of the juices that leak from within you, that it has mopped up a single droplet of your revolting pubescent greases, that it has tickled and frotted even one of the hideously mired corners of your disgusting body then I shall have a spasm. I’m sorry but I shall.’

  In spite of himself, Cartwright smiled. He moved further along the bench and turned his back, but he smiled.

  ‘Now, girls,’ continued Healey, ‘you’re very high-spirited and that’s as it should be but I won’t have you getting out of hand. I just looked in to applaud a simply marvellous show and to tell you that you are certainly the loveliest chorus in town and that I intend to stand you all dinner at the Embassy one by one over the course of what I know will be a long and successful run.’

  ‘I mean, what kind of coat is that?’

  ‘It is called an astrakhan and I am sure you agree that it is absolutely the ratherest thing. You will observe it fits my sumptuous frame as snugly as if it were made for me … just as you do, you delicious Hopkinson.’

  ‘Oh shut up.’

  ‘Your whole body goes quite pink when you are flattered, like a small pig, it is utterly, utterly fetching.’

  Adrian saw Cartwright turn away and face his locker, a locker to which Adrian had the key. The boy seemed now to be concentrating on pulling on his socks. Adrian took half a second to take a mental snapshot of the scrummy toes and heavenly ankle being sheathed by those lucky, lucky socks, a snapshot he could develop and pore over later with all the others that he had pasted into the private album of his memory.

  Cartwright wondered why Healey sometimes stared at him like that. He could sense it when he did, even when he couldn’t see, he could feel those cool eyes surveying him with pity and contempt for a younger boy who didn’t have so sharp a tongue, so acid a wit as almighty Healey. But there were others dumber than he was, why should Healey single him out for special treatment?

  Setting a spatted foot on the bench that ran down the middle of the changing-room with elegant disdain, Adrian began to flip through a pile of Y-fronts and rugger shorts with his cane.

  ‘I was particularly taken,’ he said, ‘with that number in the first act when you and the girls from Marlborough stood in a line and jumped up at that funny leather ball. It was too utterly utter for words. Lord how I laughed when you let the Marlborough chorus run off with it … dear me, this belongs to someone who doesn’t appear to know how to wipe his bottom. Is there a name-tape? Madison, you really should pay more attention to your personal hygiene, you know. Two sheets of lavatory paper is all it takes. One to wipe and one to polish. Oh, how you skipped after that Marlborough pack, you blissful creatures! But they wouldn’t give you the ball, would they? They kept banging it on the ground and kicking it over your lovely goalpost.’

  ‘It was the referee,’ said Gooderson. ‘He had it in for us.’

  ‘Well whatever, Gooderson darling, the fact is that after this wonderful matinée performance there is no doubt that you are all going to become simply the toast of the town. Certain unscrupulous men may call upon you here in your dressing-room. They will lavish you with flowers, with compliments, with phials of Hungary water and methuselahs of the costliest champagne. You must be wary of such men, my hearts, they are not to be trusted.’

  ‘What, what will they do to us?’

  ‘They will take the tender flower of your innocence, Jarvis, and they will bruise it.’

  ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘Not if it is prepared beforehand. If you come to my study this evening I will ready you for the process with a soothing unguent of my own invention. Wear something green, you should always wear green, Jarvis.’

  ‘Ooh, can I come too?’ said Rundell, who was by way of being the Tart of the House.

  ‘And me!’ squeaked Harman.

  ‘All are welcome.’

  The voice of Robert Bennett-Jones bellowed from the showers. ‘Just shut up and get bloody dressed.’

  ‘You’re invited too, R.B.-J., didn’t I make that clear?’

  Bennett-Jones, hairy and squat, came out of the shower and stumped up to Adrian.

  Cartwright dropped his rugger shirt into the laundry bin and left the changing-room, trailing his dufflebag along the ground. As the doors flapped behind him he heard Bennett-Jones’s harsh baritone.

  ‘You are disgusting, Healey, you know that?’

  He should stay to hear Healey’s magnificent putdown, but what was the point? They said that when Healey arrived he had got the highest ever marks in a scholarship entrance. Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was so clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed.

  ‘It’s memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mother of the Muses … at least that’s what thingummy said.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know, what’s his name, Greek poet chap. Wrote the Theogony … what was he called? Begins with an “H”.’

  ‘Homer?’

  ‘No, dear. Not Homer, the other one. No, it’s gone. Anyway. Memory, that’s the key.’

  Cartwright went into the House library and took down the first volume of the Chambers Encyclopaedia. He had still only got as far as Bism
arck.

  In the changing-room, Bennett-Jones snarled into Adrian’s face.

  ‘Just plain fucking disgusting.’

  The others, some of whom had been peacocking about the room, stroking their towels round their napes like boas, staggered to guilty halts.

  ‘You’re a fucking queer and you’re turning the whole House into fucking queers.’

  ‘Queer am I?’ said Adrian. ‘They called Oscar Wilde a queer, they called Michelangelo a queer, they called Tchaikovsky a –’

  ‘And they were queers,’ said Sargent, another prefect.

  ‘Well, yes, there is that,’ conceded Adrian, ‘my argument rather falls down there I grant you, but what I say is this, my door is always open to you, R.B.-J., and to you as well, Sargent, naturally, and if either of you has any problems in coming to terms with your sexuality you mustn’t hesitate to visit me and talk about it.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake –’

  ‘We can thrash it out together. Personally I think it’s your habit of dressing up in shorts and prancing about on a field and this bizarre obsession with putting your arms round the other members of the scrum and forcing your head between the bottoms of the back row that is at the root of this insane fixation. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’

  ‘Let’s fucking throw him out,’ said Sargent, advancing.

  ‘Now I warn you,’ said Adrian, ‘if either of you touches me …’

  ‘Yes?’ sneered Bennett-Jones. ‘What’ll you do?’

  ‘I shall sustain a massive erection, that’s what, and I shan’t be answerable for the consequences. Some kind of ejaculation is almost bound to ensue and if either of you were to become pregnant I should never forgive myself.’

  This was just enough to bring the others down onto his side and have the prefects laughed into retreat.

  ‘Well, my lovelies, I shall have to leave you now. I am promised to the Princess Despina this evening. A little baccarat after supper is my guess. She means to win back the Kurzenauer Emeralds. Jarvis, you have a stiffy, this is most unpleasant, someone throw some cold water over him. Goonight, Lou. Goonight, May. Goonight. Ta ta. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.’