The Stars’ Tennis Balls by Stephen Fry

Author:Stephen Fry [Fry, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_contemporary, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
Published: 2000-01-04T13:00:00+00:00

Babe also lay awake that night, and for many subsequent nights. He had detected a change in Ned that worried him.

‘I don’t like to see you thrashing your engine like this,’ he would say. ‘There is nowhere to take it. It can only burn you up.

Ned seemed to take no notice and retreated more and more into the past where he relived his final days in the world over and over, hearing again each syllable that had been spoken to him by Fendeman, Garland and Cade, seeing once more in his mind’s eye every glance and gesture they made. He had built up a picture of himself through their eyes.

He saw from Rufus Cade’s point of view an image of Ned the arrogant, Ned the cocky, Ned the careless and vain. Every sweet smile, every polite mumbled apology seemed to him now an obvious cause of resentment.

Ned understood how to Ashley he must have represented everything assured, everything attractive, everything unattainably privileged, perfect and graceful. Even the act of securing him summer employment as his father’s assistant could appear patronising and offensive.

Gordon too, arriving in a foreign land, would naturally look upon Ned Maddstone as the living image of all that was remote, English, gentile and alien. To see his cousin Portia ignore him in her obsession with a boy so opposite to himself could certainly drive Gordon to hatred.

Everything Ned had and was he could now interpret as repugnant, ugly, oppressive and obscene. Everything in and of him – the V-neck cricket sweaters, the flopping fringe of hair, the rueful smiles and pretty eyes, the lazy athleticism, the delicate skin and peachy blush, the voice, accent, manner and gait – all of Ned Maddstone stood as a monument that those of spirit would cry out to despoil.

Yet how dared they? How dared they not see that Ned had been unaware of all this? How dared they not understand that he was blamelessly unimaginative, gentle and innocent? Whatever arrogance he may have displayed, Ned would never in those days have assumed that his feelings had primacy over those of others. That they could be so confident in their interpretation of him was an arrogance way beyond anything he had been capable of. They hid their rage. They pretended to like him. They coldly planned to disgrace him in the eyes of his father and his lover, as if he had no emotional life, no point of view and no right to happiness of his own. That they could treat him as a symbol without life or capacity for pain marked them down as evil beyond imagining. There did not exist the faintest possibility that Ned could ever forgive them.

Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade.

‘I have been trying to apply the same thinking to what happened after my arrest,’ he said to Babe one morning, while Babe sketched a circuit diagram.

‘Let’s just concentrate on what we’re doing, shall we? Have you an idea what it is yet?’

‘It’s a hi-fl amplifier circuit.

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