Читать книгу The Biographer’s Moustache - Kingsley Amis - Страница 12

‘Oysters and lobsters and some crêpes suzettes that were really quite well done. I’m afraid I rather over-indulged myself there. I seemed quite unable to stop eating them. Little Mr Thompson couldn’t keep up with me. Well really, he didn’t try, he said he’d had enough to eat.’

‘Was it very expensive?’ Joanna put a large dark Belgian-made chocolate into her mouth.

‘What? I didn’t do any sums and wasn’t shown the bill. Perhaps it did cost a little by Mr T’s standards. I must say, darling, it was really quite funny.’ Jimmie produced a brief cracked laugh, an old man’s laugh. ‘He was consternated when he saw the place was slightly more what he no doubt calls up-market than he’d remembered. I only had to mention oysters to fill him with horror. He put on a great show of being frightfully concerned when I was having my hiccups but he couldn’t hide his glee at the thought of not having to pay. And then when I recovered … well …’

‘What did he have to eat himself?’

‘I didn’t notice much, I blush to admit. Some kind of soup, I fancy, and cheese or something. Why? I mean, should I have …’

‘It sounds as if you chose the priciest dishes on the menu.’

‘Not as such, they were what I fancied eating. Are you saying I should have lunched off a sardine and half a tomato out of consideration for Mr Thompson’s pocket?’

‘No, but you needn’t have caned him as ruthlessly as you did. No doubt you managed to force down a bottle of wine or so?’

‘Yes we did, but before you ask on behalf of your Uncle Arthur from Penge it was quite a decent Chablis but not even premier cru.’

‘How many bottles?’

Speaking with less urbanity than before, Jimmie said, ‘Darling, I can’t think why we’re having an inquisition. The answer to your latest question is one, one bottle.’

‘Which you had most of.’

‘If I did it was to save leaving half of it for the waiters to swill at their leisure. I don’t think your precious Mr Thompson is used to wine. He’d obviously have felt more at home with a nice tankard of wallop.’ Jimmie paused and eyed his wife. ‘And if you ask me whether I drank any brandy I might get rather cross,’ he said, giving the last word an old-fashioned pronunciation. ‘To put your mind at rest I refrained, out of kindness not to my host not to myself. I’d had quite enough to eat and drink and I didn’t want to run the risk of stirring my insides up. And I must say, darling, I find it a teeny bit boring of you to tell me I’m not to ask that fellow to take me where I want to go for luncheon and then when I manage to get a tolerable meal after all to haul me over the coals for eating and drinking what I fancied.’

‘Well done,’ said Joanna, looking for another chocolate but for the moment not settling on one. ‘Your capacity for –’

‘Oh, what?’

‘I was going to say, your capacity for putting other people in the wrong seems if anything to increase from day to day.’

Immediately the telephone began to ring downstairs on the ground floor, there being from Jimmie’s repeated prohibition only the one instrument in the house. On hearing it now he laid his hand energetically across his forehead like a figure in high drama expressing the ultimate dissatisfaction with fate. ‘Oh, that damned contrivance, don’t tell me it has no mind of its own, it knows just when to ring to cause the maximum … Well, I’m glad to hear that some faculty in me is increasing against the general trend. Answer that thing, would you, darling, there’s a sweetheart, it’s certain to be for you.’

But when Joanna came back again from downstairs soon afterwards she said, it’s for you.’

‘Oh God. I hope you –’

‘The second Mrs Fane. She’s hanging on.’

‘That bloody woman. I thought I’d made it perfectly clear …’

Saying no more, Jimmie dashed from the room like somebody half his age. Joanna followed him as far as the door, then moved quietly to the stairhead. After a moment she heard a clink and a clash as Jimmie noisily rang off, and was sitting reading a fashion magazine and eating a chocolate on his return to the room.