I have this friend, by the name of Terry and he's a great big bold faced liar. Literally. Ask him anything and if he thinks he can get away with lying - he will. When is lying acceptable? When it's a little white one? What exactly is a little white lie? I mean, how do you determine the size and colour of a lie? People lie all the time. I know people whose entire careers are based on lying, and one or two marriages that are too. Everything you've ever been told could have been made up. Does everyone know the tale of the boy who cried wolf? Well what if it never happened? A work of fiction one might say, creative writing to emphasize a point. What does that tell you about lies? Nothing, except they are rather common. People do lie all the time. For example; It's not unusual to see the back pages of many a free paper filled with personal ads, where ghastly people try and meet up with similar styled social recluses, filling their text with double meanings: Bubbly meaning fat. Good sense of humour meaning ugly. Outgoing and sporty meaning butch and one turn of phrase I have no idea the meaning of: Professional lady. As in opposed to an amateur one? I'm sure if Terry was ever to find his love life to be in the position to be called upon to write such an advertisement it would read like this:
Exciting, outgoing, outdoorsy agoraphobic six foot
midget with a Silver medal as an Olympic runner despite
being crippled from the waist upwards whist in a freak
shipping accident off the coast of Switzerland. Looking
for a gullible socialite with a good sense of cooking
and a large bank balance for possible embezzlement.
Terry has always been very likeable, one of life's natural wits and I have it on good authority that he's quite a looker too. I couldn't help but agree on the fact as I stared at his lifeless body lying in the oak box at the front of church. Taking aboard my friends reputation I sneakily checked his pulse, his flesh was cold and leathery. The words "Honesty is the best policy" echoed around my head in a mantra.
"How many kids have you got?" I remember asking over a pint.
"Two" Terry says in a friendly manner, without even pausing to think "Boy and a girl, Tommy and Jo".
I nod and listen closely as I'm a godparent to one of his children, however many he has, and I know for a fact it wasn't called Tommy or Jo.
After the occasion of his first divorce, when Terry found himself to be sleeping on my floor I asked him how he got the scar on his back.
"I was attacked, a gang of kids mugged me a month ago, only got about fifteen pounds, but the little shits hit me with a bicycle chain"
I accepted this obliviously at face value and offered the guest my bed to sleep in for the rest of his stay. Little more than a week after he moved out I discovered the wound actually came from getting entangled with a barbed wire fence in a pissed up stupor.
Terry happened to mention in conversation, that he used to work as a mechanic, so when my VW beetle decided to become the world biggest paper weight I turned to him.
"Anything you can do with it?" I asked
"Dunno, Dunno mate, VW's are pretty temperamental things" He replies while sucking on a rolly like he'd been in the business for years.
"Lets take a squiz at the engine" he added as he approached the broken down vehicle and I don't think I really need to go into too much detail about how surprised I was seeing him go to the wrong end in search of the motor.
When we were kids Terry told me his mother was dead, and years later, on her seventieth birthday celebrations I had the pleasure of telling her how well she looked in spite of it.
When we were thirteen, he told me he had an almost fatal allergy to pets, but owned two cats and a dog, and while on summer break from College he said he was going to Italy for a month - two weeks later I get a postcard from Crete.
I don't know whether I'm annoyed that Terry lies or because he's so bad at it. What's the point in telling me that's he's Jewish when I've seen him at Church? What's the point in telling me he has an intolerance to food additives as he licks the remains of a doughnut off his fingers? What's the point of any of it for that matter? He's lied to me so many times I can only assume that he's never told the truth. But I have to say, to Terry's credit, he never tries to make his life seem better through his lies, just different. Vastly different.
"How big's your house?" came my normal playground banter
"Tiny" came Terry's reply
"How many bedrooms?"
"Dunno?"
"Well how many storeys is it?"
"Only one"
"Is it a bungalow?" I ask
"Erm it looks like a bungalow from the outside, but there is an underground level which I dug in the basement like a rabbit warren"
Normal banter for a pair of six year old you might say, if we hadn't been two grown men working as supply teachers when it was said.
Sometimes I would have to admit, there were times when I quite enjoyed the lying, it's rather childish thing to do and even more so to admit, but when it hit the funny bone right nothing could quite match Terry's unlimited imagination. On our first day trip to Margate I remember a car pulling up adjacent to him and honking the horn. Terry and me turned around to see a balding man forcing his head through the small gap that he'd wound down for himself.
"Excuse me?" The bald head says "How do I get to the Theme park from here?"
I hadn't a clue, but Terry knelt down and without missing a beat started spouting four figure grid map references and even offering alternative more scenic routes as though the family had come to Margate for the stunning vistas it hasn't got.
Then, content with the new knowledge stored firmly in the ventricle of memory, the bald man nods his head, thanks the friendly navigator and whizzes off in what can only be assumed to be the wrong direction. I have no idea what happened to Mr Bald and the Bald family. I can only reason to guess that they're still looking.
This is not to say that all my friend's mistruths were comical. No, a good amount of them came completely mirth free. He recounted to me the strenuous lengths he went to find employment, mentioning briefly how he embellished his CV. Which, I might add, was an uncharacteristically honest moment on his behalf, but also a very careless one, seeing as the new career he found himself to be thrown into was in the construction industry. Not the best place for a man whose only construction experience was Meccano.
"Everyone lies on their CV" he said trying to justify himself.
"So should I tell people I'm a surgeon just because there is a vacancy in my local hospital?" I can't help but ask
"That depends. . ." he replies ". . .Have you got any background in that field?"
"No - have you got any background in making buildings?"
"Not directly" he states "But my Step Dad worked construction for fifteen years"
"What has that got to do with anything?"
"It's in the blood"
"It's your STEP dad!"
He stared blankly for moment and I suddenly felt the need to make an anonymous phone call. His employer was very understanding of the events.
"He's not the first person to try it on with us" The builder told me "One of many"
I personally find it hard to believe there are other liars, pathological or otherwise, that would wish to find themselves in an occupation that they are greatly under qualified for, would choose one that involved hauling bricks in all weathers and for little pay? But I take the man at his word and advise him not to let Terry set a single workman's boot on site. Which for all our safety - he did.
Terry begged me to accompany him to the doctors.
"Why can't you go by yourself?" Came my almost obvious question.
"I might not make it that long" He spluttered, and I then made the school boy error of asking him what his symptoms where? I don't have the time to recount the entire list here, but I think I can safely summaries his ailments as: a bit of everything. He must of either been hanging around hospital wards in hope of getting every strand of illness from MRSA to bubonic plague or he'd ingested an entire medical text book and was regurgitating it at will.
"Are you sure you want to see a doctor?" I asked "It sounds more like a case for Guinness book of records" But Terry swore that if he didn't get to a Doctors in two hours the next time I would see him would be in a morgue. So I rushed my friend to accident and emergency and prompted the doctors to jump in to action. They did. Terry was thrown into a wheel chair, whizzed across the hospital, scanned, probed, examined, whizzed back, scanned again, probed again, examined by an expert and finally administered with a large dose of good old fashioned rest and advised to eat more fruit. I gave him his grapes and told him to choke on them.
I confronted Terry once. "Why do you lie so much?" I said as I dangled at the end of my tether.
"I don't lie" he replied adding yet another one to the list.
In an effort to break this web of lies, I dragged Terry to a group therapy session. Him being the subject and me just being there for moral support. We listened to everyone's stories, about how they've wound up with nothing, and how they have no one to blame but themselves. . .
Then it came to Terry's turn to introduce himself and I couldn't believe my ears when I hear him say "Hello, My name's Richard. . . ."
"Why did you say that?" I ask Terry, as I drag him over to the side of the room.
"What?" He replies blankly
"Lie about your name?"
"I didn't. That's my real name. . ." then he spun a wild yarn about how he was adopted when he was six months old because he was in fact the bastard child of a Catholic Nun called Phyllis and an unnamed rapist from Putney.
"My parents raised me as their own - I didn't even know I was adopted myself until I was almost twenty"
I looked deep into his eyes trying to pinpoint where this was coming from, and ultimately failed.
The trouble with Terry, or Richard, is that he has told me so many lies I can only assume he has never told me anything but. There were a few occasions I can vaguely recall a word or two of honesty coming out of him mouth. When he had to back out of being my best man for instance as he found out his dad had Alzheimer's. His dad's not doing bad now, or adoptive dad as it might be, he is still alive and kicking and, Alzheimer's aside, is healthier than I am. There was also the occasion of our history homework. We were no older than twelve when the teacher assigned joint projects for the class. A simple task for two bright children, and Terry and I made sure it was done swiftly at the beginning of the Easter holidays so as not to interfere with eating chocolate. But two weeks later, on deadline day, young Terrance, to whom the homework had been entrusted, appeared in class clutching little more than a handful of ash - it seems that lightning didn't have to strike twice to ruin Terry's day as once was more than enough; a storm three nights before had knocked an electricity pole into the boy's home, smashing the chimney and causing the building to be stuck ablaze. One massive bonfire later and the entire contents of Terry's home along with our homework had been turned to charcoal.
The reason I tell you all this, is because Terry died. I'm not sure when exactly as the Doctors told me he had been dead for quite some time when I found him. Lying face down in his barely furnished rented house in the middle of Reading. He'd moved out of the house two doors down from me a month prior.
"That's it" He said when I saw him in the street "I'm going to the Bahamas"
I nodded and mumbled "yeah, me too" and thought nothing more of it. The next thing I knew he had gone.
As I looked down at his body on that day I found him, I wondered why he had called me.
"I'm in Reading, I need your help"
"Why what's up?" I asked
"I'm in a bit of trouble" A bit of trouble turned out to be an understatement, if I can believe what Terry then said to be true, which I normally can't, the following took place: Terrance, after never having set foot on Barbados soil, moved to Reading. He found comfort in drinking neat vodka and living on three square meals a day, which consisted solely of barbiturates. During a three day binge Terry found himself in an alien working man's club with ten pounds in Scottish notes, a stomach full of vodka and no membership. Where upon he was challenged by the drunken Irish man at the bar to an arm wresting tournament, if Terry won he could stay and drink himself into oblivion but if he lost Terry got a punch in the face. To which Terry accepted and promptly lost. Eager to stay in the warm confines of the tavern Terry proposes a compromise:
"Double or quits" and promptly loses again. Then in an eager attempt to keep his youthful looks he ran and hid in a beech tree for the next forty-five minutes convinced that a member of the IRA wanted to smash his face in. Twice.
I said "Nice to hear from you" In sarcastic tones, and "do call back again soon" But as soon as I hung up the phone I felt worried, I hadn't seen old Terry for weeks, or months.
His voice on the line was nervous, frantic. His speech was fragmented with stutters. Not that Terry wasn't a fine actor when he wanted to be. He brought the house down in every performance we did at secondary school. The first student to get a standing ovation for his King Lear. But none the less, I didn't sleep that night, or the night following. I tried to phone him back but no answer came. So early one morning after another night of unrest I got in my car and drove the two hundred miles to Reading to find his pale white body lying on that wooden floor in the harsh winter sun. I don't know how or why he died, though I'm sure that if he had the ability to tell us, he probably wouldn't. It was a quiet funeral. Not many people came. I don't know why that surprised me, he always said he had lots of friends. But we gave him the send off I thought he deserved. After the vicar said his piece, I got up and told a few lies of my own: "Terry was as honest as the day was long" I remember saying and following it up with similar sort of guff, I then introduced myself to his extended family as Saint Peter and told them I was the welcome committee. After all its what Terry would have wanted.
Now, at least ten years later I find myself visiting his grave on a regular basis, not because I miss him, I just want to make sure he's still in it.
good
cranky
bitchy
accomplished
