Any Human Heart by William Boyd

well by next Saturday but only a fool would change this winning team.
    Lucy writes to say that she will come to Austria on the condition that our ‘romance fantasy’ is understood to have terminated. I will write back reluctantly, with pleasing melancholy, to agree. Once I have her there all will be different. Scabius’s maddening success with the farmer’s daughter has emboldened and encouraged me. Lucy shall be mine.
    To my vague surprise I find my thoughts turn more and more to next Saturday and I realize I am looking forward to the match — Harrow at home. I mustn’t lose any more of my Bolshevik spirit.
     
     
11th March [1924]
     
    Ben and I cashed Mother’s postal order for five guineas (bless her: I said I wanted to buy Lucy a really special birthday present) and we treated ourselves to tea and anchovy toast at Ma Hingley’s. Ben said that Vanderpoel was willing to drop out for one match only but that he wanted to meet the person who was prepared to pay such a high price. ‘He suspects it’s you, of course. Or he might just think it’s that ass fforde, I suppose — you’ll have to do it.’ He’s right, I have to admit. By the way, we drew 9-9 with Harrow; while our first team were thrashed 3-27 — I sense my star is in the ascendant.
    Ben told me he was going straight to Paris after school — it seems he’s been offered a job in an art gallery, and he wants to be a dealer. I felt a throb of jealousy: maybe Ben is right? Maybe we are fools to postpone our adult, proper lives by three years at varsity? Three years that, as far as I can see, might be just as frustrating as life at school…
    The really pleasing news is that Clough has become suspicious of Peter and Tess’s closeness and has contrived to keep them apart. On his last three visits to the farm Peter has been occupied shredding mangel-wurzels — or some such menial task (his hands are fearfully blistered) — with no sight of the delicious Tess to distract him or compensate. Ben and I privately rejoice — though I admit such an attitude reflects badly on us both.
     
     
    Later. Went over to Foster’s after second prep to seek out Vanderpoel. He’s a pale-faced fellow with an unpleasant bulbous nose. We haggled a bit over the price and I was able to knock him down to £5.
    ‘One game, mind you, that’s all,’ he kept repeating, pocketing his fiver. Then he looked suspiciously at me: ‘Why’s it so important for you?’
    ‘My father’s dying,’ I said spontaneously. ‘He played rugby for… Scotland. It was his dearest wish to see me in the First XV. Following in his footsteps and all that. Before he went.’
    Vanderpoel was so touched that he insisted I have my £5 back — which I naturally accepted (I will not tell Ben this, however). Vanderpoel assured me that he would ‘twist’ his ankle or something during the Friday training session before the game. The match is against Oundle, he said — very rough bunch. ‘I’ll even suggest you replace me — not that peasant fforde. Don’t worry, Mountstuart, your old man will be proud of you.’
    Why am I lying so much? To Mother, to Lucy, to Vanderpoel, to Ben… Is this normal, I wonder? Does everybody do it as much as me? Are our lives just the aggregate of the lies we’ve told? (‘Lives’ — the ‘v’ is silent.) Is it possible to live reasonably without lying? Do lies form the natural foundation of all human relationships, the thread that stitches our individual selves together? I shall go and smoke a cigarette behind the squash courts and think more great thoughts.
     
     
13th March [1924]
     
    Snow — a good six inches — and all sports are cancelled. Yet the newspapers say London is clear — it seems only to have snowed in wretched East Anglia. Why do I feel so frustrated by the thought of the Oundle match being postponed? Longing to get on the field — I must be turning into a true hearty. Vanderpoel sidled up to me in the cloisters and asked me how my