Free Dunster by John Mortimer

Blair?’
    â€˜Naturally, she’s extremely upset.’
    â€˜And you’re upset because she’s your girlfriend.’
    â€˜Well ...’
    â€˜Oh, come on. Don’t think it wasn’t obvious. “There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ... Don’t look so pleased with yourself, Progmire.’
    â€˜No one could look pleased with themselves after that notice.’
    â€˜But you’ve got to admit, quite honestly, you weren’t all that good?’
    â€˜Probably not.’
    â€˜But you wanted praise.’
    â€˜Of course I did. Everybody does.’
    â€˜So everybody expects a critic to lie.’
    â€˜Well, at least to look for the best things in a performance.’
    â€˜Why should he? Why shouldn’t he look for the worst things if he wants to?’
    â€˜Because it’s brutal. It causes unnecessary suffering.’
    â€˜To your girlfriend?’
    â€˜And to me, I suppose. If I’ve got to be honest.’
    â€˜Have you? I thought you didn’t believe in honesty. Isn’t honesty something rather beastly that hurts people’s feelings?’ He was sitting at his desk, among an indescribable mess of books and papers. There were at least three mugs of cold, half-drunk Nescafe and a paper plate smeared with yellow rice, a relic of some hastily snatched take-away, among the illegible, unfastened pages of an essay which had drifted on to the chairs around him and then fluttered on to the floor. He looked up and favoured me with one of his rare smiles.
    â€˜It’s because you’re my friend,’ he said, ‘that I expected so much more of you, Progmire. Because you’re my friend I had to apply the highest possible standards.’
    â€˜You ...?’ Of course I should have known it all along. I had half guessed when I came into the room, but I put it past him. I was wrong. Nothing should be put past Dunster. ‘ You’re bloody Paul Pry!’
    â€˜A well-kept secret, don’t you think?’
    â€˜So you wrote all that poison, about me and Beth?’
    â€˜Don’t you understand, Progmire?’ Dunster was still smiling as he explained it, as though to a child. ‘I couldn’t write something I didn’t believe was true, just because we’re friends. Could I?’
    â€˜I really don’t see why not. It wouldn’t’ve cost you anything.’
    â€˜It would have cost my integrity.’
    â€˜I don’t give a fart about your integrity,’ I had to tell him.
    He looked at me then, very sadly, and refreshed himself from one of the cups of cold Nescafe. ‘Progmire, you’ve always lived in a world of make-believe with absolutely no idea of morality.’
    â€˜Is it morality to make people miserable?’
    â€˜Sometimes it has to be.’
    â€˜If your precious integrity’s so valuable to you, why didn’t you get someone else to review Hamlet ? Why not send one of those sad-looking girls from the office? They might have been glad of a night out.’
    â€˜They might not have told the truth. They might have thought I wanted them to go easy on my friend.’
    â€˜Oh, really?’ I hope I sounded bitter. ‘I’m sure no one could have suspected you of any decent, human, merciful feeling like that.’ I had reached another point in my life when I was absolutely and entirely through with Dunster.
    â€˜I wanted to write the notice myself,’ he said with maddening solemnity, ‘because it was quite clearly my duty to do so.’
    â€˜â€œI was only doing my duty.” That sounds like a sort of hangman’s excuse.’
    â€˜Honestly, Progmire.’ Dunster got up then and came over to me. He looked, as always, pale, overworked, untidy, uncombed, his long wrists and hands dangling from the sleeves of the jacket which had always been too small for him. ‘I know you’re a kind of