Читать книгу The Biographer’s Moustache - Kingsley Amis - Страница 15

‘I was just wondering what the argument was about,’ said Gordon to Jimmie again. This time he said it not over the telephone but face to face or near enough, in the hall of Gray’s club. Not wishing on the whole to have to go in search of Jimmie all over the building, which he had never visited before, Gordon had told the porter who was expecting him and had himself waited here in the hall.

At least he had hoped the fellow was the or a porter. There had been a moment of slight and wordless misunderstanding when, meeting some difficulty with the glass door from the street, Gordon had seen through the pane a man coming towards him who looked no older and was better dressed than he and whom he had briefly taken for a member of the club on his way out. From the change in this man’s demeanour at Gordon’s inquiring reference to Mr Fane, it was easy to guess that he for his part revised any first impression that the newcomer might have been some artisan or workman, arrived at the club to repair its dishwasher, say. All was quickly well, and no more than a couple of dukes or millionaires had put their heads round the corner to look him over when Jimmie himself arrived, full of total memory of who Gordon was and what he was doing there. After some irresolution on both sides Gordon had reminded him of the recent telephone-call.

‘Oh good God yes,’ said Jimmie amiably, ‘I should have explained there and then but I didn’t want to take up your time. I’d dined here, rather well as perhaps you inferred, and Johnnie Wessex and I and one or two others had got into some sort of barney about language and pronunciation, a prime concern of mine as you must know, Gordon. I won’t bore you with an account of their rather unthinking points of view but I was taking the line that the old natural way of speaking, among reasonably well-educated and thoughtful people, was being, how shall I put it, was becoming eroded by creeping pedantry. Creeping pedantry,’ he repeated, making no move in the direction of the inner parts of the club where food and drink were presumably to be found. ‘Whenever I turn on the wireless or the television I hear the announcer putting in glottal stops in places where they’ve no business to be, they talk about the I R A,’ said Jimmie with a little explosion of breath before the name of each letter, and I expect they call it the R A F,’ similarly enunciated, ‘and in no time every English word that begins with a vowel or vowel sound or looks as if it does will begin with a confounded glottal stop. Have I told you all this before, dear boy?’

Gordon hesitated. ‘No,’ he said, it’s true you’ve mentioned glottal stops before, but then they were part of an attack on Americans.’

‘Americans?’

‘Yes. You said it went to show how German they were.’

‘When was this supposed to be?’

‘It was in the taxi on the way to Cakebread’s. That restaurant.’

‘An excellent place, let it be said.’ Jimmie spoke strongly, as if contesting disparagement. ‘Excellent, what I had was first-rate.’

‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’

‘You did get my note thanking you for the occasion?’

‘I must have done.’

‘Oh dear, these days I’m quite capable of having forgotten to post it. I’m afraid I’ve always been scatterbrained in such regards and of course in recent years I’ve deteriorated even from what I was. Which is not to say I make no sense any longer. On the contrary, let me remind you that we were talking of pedantry in pronunciation and I was saying I come across it whenever I switch on any broadcasting device. Any moment now I expect to hear somebody talking about whenever or how-ever. The traditional way of saying such words is I should have thought quite sufficiently comprehensible, don’t you agree?’

‘Yes,’ said Gordon. He did agree. More than that, if Jimmie wanted to talk about ways of saying words it would have been impolitic and almost certainly useless to try and prevent him. On the other hand, something seemed to be needed to shift them from the kind of padded pews that, still in the hall, they had settled companionably down on. At that moment he caught sight of a youngish man, doubtless heir to a fortune or a marquisate or both, who had evidently come to peer at them. More to the point, he held a drink in his hand, a reasonably powerful-looking one, and it was not every day that Gordon felt he could do with a drink, but today was such a day. He swallowed furtively.

Jimmie had been going on, ‘I take as part of the same undesirable phenomenon that it’s becoming fashionable in ordinary speech, not just in song to give unstressed vowels their full value, not only Manchester and observer but, well, caramel and condom and no doubt plenty of others. I say, would you fancy a drink perhaps?’

‘Yes, I rather would.’ Gordon tried to sound unequivocal without seeming to have no room for any other thought. ‘What a good idea.’

‘Oh. I’m terribly sorry, my dear fellow,’ cried Jimmie, ‘I do so clearly see that on a day like today you would be feeling in particular need of a wee tassie.’

Since the day was neither particularly cold nor rainy nor windy, in fact rather clement for the time of year, nor yet the notorious anniversary of the battle of Flodden, say, Gordon could not fully understand what was meant. He made a vague noise designed to show that there was no ill feeling on his side at least.

‘How very thoughtless of me. We must repair that discreditable oversight with all speed.’ Jimmie looked at his wrist-watch, a piece that displayed its merit by being large rather than small. ‘However it might be easier if I just rounded off this point while it’s fresh in my mind. Fowler remarks somewhere that when reciting a sentence like, for instance, Hunt has hurt his head – m’m? – it’s as important not to pronounce the initial H in has and his as it is to pronounce it in Hunt, hurt and head. Yet we hear trained actors bleating of their inamorata that they love her and villains growling that they must kill him. Years ago, much farther back than they remember, their ancestors decided to proclaim that they knew how to speak proper …’

As a conscientious but exhausted watchman might strive to keep awake, so Gordon fought to go on taking in what Jimmie was saying, and failed. He was beset by longing less for a drink than simply to be elsewhere, not necessarily far away, the next room would do, even at a pinch some unoccupied corner of this one, but it was not to be. What was to be took place quite soon after all.

‘… not a very momentous sound-shift, but I think it is starting to happen,’ said Jimmie. ‘And now we simply must have that drink. You’d have got it earlier if you hadn’t been so patient with me when I was going full tilt on my hobby-horse, or one of them. Ridiculous of me. Anyway, what will you have?’

They stood now in the bar, which was rather more like an immensely spacious and well-appointed cupboard than anything Gordon understood by a bar. He mentioned gin. Two elderly men had hurried out as they arrived; two others in dark suits studied them from some feet away. Or rather they seemed to be studying him, Gordon; in some puzzlement, as he thought. None the less, with his drink in his hand he felt bold enough to bring up tissue again.

‘What? I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.’

‘Tissue,’ said Gordon, pronouncing the word now in Jimmie’s preferred style.

‘Of course, of course.’

‘We never quite got to what I was going to ask you just now.’

‘Fire away when you’re ready, then.’

‘You remember my saying when you rang up that I pronounced the word to rhyme with miss-you? Well –’

‘Oh yes, Johnnie Wessex had had the barefaced cheek to say he didn’t believe any English person, anybody born in England pronounced T,I,S,S,U,E in any other way than the way he and I pronounced it. So then …’

‘So then,’ said Gordon, ‘you thought of me as someone sufficiently far gone in creeping pedantry to pronounce the wretched word in what we’ll call my way, and that was enough to enable you to win your argument with Johnnie Wessex.’

Gordon would have said he had pitched the foregoing at a tolerably low level, though would have had to admit that his tone when uttering the name Johnnie Wessex had not carried a favourable view of that nobleman. It seemed at least that he had spoken nevertheless loudly or warmly enough to cause the nearby elderly men to look sharply at him and then at each other before doing a fast shuffle out of the room. The barman glanced up from a list he was checking through, but only for a moment. Jimmie seemed a little troubled or vexed, though in no way conscience-stricken. He said,

‘I suppose all of us speak much as those around us do, or used to early in our lives. But I suggest that’s enough on the subject. Well, Gordon, have you made a start on your book about me? Good God, how pompous that sounds.’

‘I’ve been reading through your works and making notes which I’ll be using later. In the meantime I’ll be asking you the odd question about your earlier life, as something occurs to me if that’s all right. I don’t want to subject you to long interrogation sessions like a –’

‘My dear boy, you may ask me any question you think proper at any time within reason and I’ll answer it. I’ve thought about it and I can see no virtue in my making things difficult for you. If I find I’ve told you too much and want you to take out something I don’t want made public, I’ll tell you when I come to it in your manuscript. Oh, and I’m making some notes of my own which I’ll pass on to you in due course, as they say.’

‘Very good; fine; agreed. Here’s a question to be going on with. When you met –’

‘I think if you don’t mind we’ll finish these and proceed to luncheon. They turn somewhat reproachful if one arrives at what they consider to be an inopportune hour. In fact I’d have suggested to you that we should go straight in to where one eats if it didn’t sound such a dismal notion, and a mean one. Sounds a mean idea? Nay, it is. Are you ready?’

They mounted a single turn of the fine staircase and went through a sort of outer dining-room into a sort of inner dining-room beyond it. Both were full of men in suits vigorously talking, eating and drinking. Several of them looked up at Gordon as he went by, making him feel like a spy in an old-fashioned film. Jimmie led the way to a vacant table laid for four near the back of the room. They had hardly settled into their chairs before two additional men in suits came out of the middle distance and took the spare seats at the table. Jimmie introduced them as Bobbie something and Tommie something else, both these surnames denoting some county or other portion of the land area of the British Isles. Gordon was unsure at the time, and was never able to establish afterwards, whether these two arrivals had been invited or had invited themselves. They treated Jimmie as their host throughout, but what with one thing and another there was no certain indication there.

‘So this is the great man’s biographer, Tommie,’ said Bobbie, and Tommie nodded and smiled. Both of them continued to look Gordon over in a considering and also greedy fashion, as if they had half a mind to eat him later. ‘You mustn’t mind us,’ Bobbie went on, ‘but you are called Gordon, aren’t you, I mean that is right, I hope?’

‘Gordon Scott-Thompson.’

‘How do you do. I mean it is marvellous that you’re here, isn’t it, Tommie?’

‘You’re very young, aren’t you, to be taking on a demanding job like writing Jimmie’s life?’

They were so friendly, or at least were smiling at him and at each other so much, that Gordon found it hard not to go along with them. Jimmie gave no lead, showed no more sign of being disconcerted than of being gratified at their presence. For the moment Gordon could see no alternative to reciting dull facts about himself, dull to him at least, though Bobbie and Tommie listened in seeming fascination. This phase lasted until a man too active-looking and speedy in his movements not to be a club servant appeared and gave out menus, a service unremarked by any of the three club members present. His own menu, Gordon saw, had no prices on it, no doubt to remind him that he could choose whatever he fancied – fancy that! And fancy another thing, already becoming clear, that Jimmie was going to have to pick up the bill for all four lunches, including the wine, which Bobbie and Tommie were now engaged in vociferously choosing from the list. Gordon told himself that what prevented him from ordering oysters followed by lobster, and so tit-for-tatting Jimmie, was not any form of compunction but simple dislike of those dishes. But when his preludial slice of melon arrived in front of him and he started on it under Bobbie’s observant eye, he had to admit internally that the real deterrent had been the prospect of that eye turned on his unpractised attempts to deal with oysters and such.

The meal progressed without resort to violence. The conversation between Jimmie, Bobbie and Tommie was mostly about the doings or condition of men referred to only by names similarly terminated. So Gordon had to say little and had little to say. He had meant to take the opportunity of seeing how far Jimmie had meant what he said about answering questions, but that now seemed to be ruled out. Tommie and Bobbie were chattering away with Jimmie nineteen to the dozen, as if they had lost interest in the fourth member of the party, but something in their occasional glances or his imagination suggested that they would come back to him when they felt like it. Both were drinking what he would have thought of as a fair amount of wine.

His moment came. The three others shared a sort of end-of-chapter laugh and collectively turned towards Gordon, who started to concentrate on sitting still in his chair. Both Bobbie and Tommie showed a friendly curiosity, though it struck him as a little excessive too. Jimmie was more non-committal, as if he was being told by Lord Bagshot about a delightful little place for lunch in the hills above Rome, now unfortunately closed down. At last Tommie said,

‘Well, Gordon – it is Gordon, isn’t it? – you haven’t had much to say for yourself for the last half-hour or so, have you?’

Gordon made gestures indicating that that was indeed the case.

‘I don’t suppose you know very many of the people we were talking about just now. Not very polite of us, I’m afraid. Perhaps never even heard of most of ‘em, eh?’

‘I have heard of the Prince of Wales.’ Gordon tried to push all expression out of his voice. ‘Not many others, it’s true to say.’

A single yelp or bark of laughter broke from Bobbie, who had just refilled his own glass and Tommie’s, vigorously waving away with his free hand the proffered attention of a servant. Jimmie raised his eyebrows in a further demonstration of impartiality. Tommie pressed on.

‘Yes, it was rather naughty of us to go on chinwagging about our cronies in that fashion, but Jimmie here is always bursting to hear the latest gossip, and we don’t seem to see him as often as all that.’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Gordon.

For a moment Tommie looked at him in a new way, one accompanied by a small frown of puzzlement. ‘Didn’t we meet at Henley a year or two ago? Or was it, er, you know, Cowes?’

‘I’ve never been to either place.’

‘M’m. I must be mistaken. You may remember my saying when we met just now, Gordon, how young you seemed, I meant young to have taken on the job of writing up the life and works of an old josser like Jimmie here – I should add hastily that I’m a good year older than him. Anyway, I know I said something of the sort.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘Well, it strikes me now, how shall I put it …’ Tommie spoke with a short silence between each phrase and the next and Gordon fancied that Bobbie started listening with heightened intensity, ‘I don’t know whether … of course I should have explained that I only heard about this … this project of yours a short while ago, just before you …’

‘I merely happened to mention it in passing,’ said Jimmie, as one who exculpates himself.

‘I haven’t had time to … think very deeply about what’s involved, or …’

‘Get along with you,’ said Bobbie, with some roughness in his tone as well as his words. ‘What did you say to me as soon as Jimmie had told us a little about our young friend here?’

‘I don’t think we need actually …’

‘What did you actually say? Come on, Tommie old bean.’

‘All right, I said something to the effect that his earlier life, his background, Gordon’s background probably hadn’t often brought him into contact with the kind of people Jimmie had been, well, brought into contact with.’

Tommie made to face Gordon again, but Bobbie broke in. ‘All right, as you say. All right. If you feel you somehow ought to water it down, all right.’

‘I was simply –’

‘All right, all right.’

Now Tommie did say something to Gordon, it’s quite straightforward. Obviously you and Jimmie have had different sorts of upbringing and, and life. Nothing mysterious about it.’

‘No,’ said Gordon. ‘Nothing mysterious at all.’

Aware that Bobbie looked like breaking in again, Tommie hurried on. ‘What I’m getting at, what we’re getting at is just that you can’t, you wouldn’t want to write any sort of book on Jimmie without, er, seeing him in the company of the people and the kind of society he grew up in and has, well, been in ever since, and it’s not the same as the kind you grew up in, am I right?’