An Awkward Lie by Michael Innes

first girl that any simple misidentification on his part was possible. If the two girls were not the same girl then Bobby was very mad indeed, and Susan had been more than justified in those inquiries about his family doctor.
    At this point, and while still sitting gloomily on the stump of the beech, Bobby felt in his pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch. Then suddenly he was aware that this impulse had come to him through some kind of sympathetic response to the fact that there was tobacco-smoke in the air already. A dim memory stirred in him. He got up, crossed the avenue, and dropped into a concealed hollow on the other side. Before him, comfortably sprawled on springy turf, were two of Dr Gulliver’s charges. It was clear that they had withdrawn from the afternoon’s athletic occasions for the purposes of an unholy joy. It was a delicious aroma of Turkish tobacco that was in the air. Master Beadon was one of the two sybaritic infants producing it.
    ‘Hullo!’ Bobby said. ‘Do you mind if I smoke a very plain sort of pipe?’
    ‘We shall be delighted, of course.’ Beadon, although a displeasing vision of chastisement at the hand of an outraged Doctor must have been hovering before him, answered with a sang-froid of which Angela Lady Beadon-Beadon would undoubtedly have approved in her favourite nephew.
    Bobby sat down, lit the pipe, and surveyed the two boys as candidly as they were surveying him. In terms of what he recalled of school-stories, they ought both to show complexions beginning to turn a nasty green. Nothing of the kind, however, was observable, and what he had come upon was one of those states of blissful and contented ease which talented twelve-year-olds do acquire skill in carving out of their scurrying, clamorous and harried lives. Alas! unconscious of their fate, the little victims play. Momentarily, a sharp nostalgia again smote Bobby Appleby.
    ‘This,’ Beadon said on a detectable note of social reproach, ‘is Walcot Major.’
    ‘How do you do?’ The second small boy made this inquiry with reserve – rather, perhaps, as his mother might make it of a new neighbour or doubtful provenance encountered after Matins outside her parish church.
    ‘How do you do?’ Bobby said gravely to Walcot Major. ‘My name is Bobby Appleby. I was at Overcombe.’
    ‘We know.’ Beadon appeared now to be aiming at a more relaxed atmosphere. ‘Some muddied oaf recognized you at lunch. He says you played scrum-half for England a long time ago. Is that so?’
    ‘Well, yes.’ Bobby was rather startled by this vision of the years rolling over him.
    ‘I suppose that explains your coming back.’ Beadon looked doubtful, even suspicious. ‘I’ve noticed it’s done mostly by people who make games their principal thing. Walcot has an older brother like that. An earlier Walcot Major.’
    ‘He’s putting on weight,’ Walcot said with obscure satisfaction. ‘Like our poor old thickie, F L. It’s what happens to muscle, if you go in for it.’
    ‘So I’ve been told,’ Bobby said humbly.
    ‘But you look to be keeping your form fairly well,’ Beadon said agreeably. ‘Do you still go for runs and things?’
    ‘Sometimes,’ Bobby perceived that he was in the presence of the intransigent intellectuals of Overcombe. He recalled with wonder Master Beadon putting on that coolie-turn for Onslow’s benefit. It seemed almost a trahison des clercs . ‘And,’ Bobby added, ‘I play golf.’
    ‘You’ll be able to go on doing that for a number of years. I should think.’ Walcot’s tone seemed to aim at judicious felicitation. ‘If all goes well,’ he added. ‘Do you drink much?’
    ‘No. And I don’t smoke cigarettes. Just this pipe two or three times a day.’
    This produced a brief silence. Beadon had rolled over on his stomach, his chin cupped comfortably in his hands, and his heels kicking in air. He was almost unnervingly like an illustration from some outmoded juvenile fiction – The Fifth Form at St