Читать книгу The Biographer’s Moustache - Kingsley Amis - Страница 8

Quite soon afterwards, seven persons were gathered in the Fanes’ first-floor sitting-room, a place of thick light-coloured rugs, glass-fronted bookcases and paintings and drawings from earlier in the century. Guests for lunch, or luncheon, consisted of an elderly boring peer of the realm and his elderly drunken wife, a lone man in his fifties who looked like a retired boxer but in fact helped to publish expensive books in Milan, and the relatively unknown Gordon Scott-Thompson and his girlfriend. That was anyway how Jimmie would have described her if left to himself, though he understood the contemporary world well enough to be aware that you were not supposed to call people things like that in it. The young couple, whether or not it was all right to call them that, had turned up not long after peer and wife, whom Jimmie instantly abandoned for the new arrivals.

‘Come in, come in,’ he cried as they were doing so, ‘how absolutely splendid that you’re here,’ and he swept up to the girl and rested his hands on her shoulders. ‘Oh dear, I knew your name as well as I know my own until half a minute ago but now it’s completely vanished.’ He removed his left hand to smooth his hair back, thereby drawing attention to its continuing abundance and distinguished coloration. ‘Do help me out, there’s a darling.’

‘Louise Gardiner.’

‘Louise,’ echoed Jimmie, his right hand still on her shoulder. ‘Does that mean you’re French? If I may say so you don’t look it.’

‘I’m not. English all the way back as far as I know.’

‘Oh I thought so. But the name did make me wonder for an instant.’

At Louise’s side, Gordon admired the assurance of this while privately questioning some of its substance, and hoped he would be in as good shape when his turn to be seventy-six came round. At the same time he did rather wonder at what stage he might be expected to enter the conversation. His moment came after Jimmie had briefly wondered aloud whether there was such a thing as a characteristic English face without shifting his attention from Louise’s.

‘Do forgive me, you are … ?’

Gordon said, ‘Gordon –’

‘We haven’t met, have we?’

‘No, Mr Fane, but having read I think all your –’

‘Come and be introduced.’

A drink, in the shape of a medium-sized glass of champagne, found its way into Gordon’s hand after he had met two people called Lord and Lady Bagshot and just before meeting a latecomer in a high-necked sweater called Count somebody. The champagne tasted rather nasty to Gordon, but then champagne had never been his drink, and besides this sample of it could not in fact be nasty, because Jimmie Fane was known to be quite an authority on wines, had in the 1950s published a couple of books on the subject. Anyway, for the moment there was no alternative to be seen.

The view that Jimmie’s drinks could never be nasty required some modification over lunch, or luncheon. The meal was taken in a room on the ground floor facing the street. Here on a sideboard were ranged three bottles of still wine, two whites and a red, dl three with their labels facing the wall. They stayed where they were until the first course, a properly made vegetable soup, had come and gone. Then Jimmie went round the circular table pouring the white, his large and efficient right hand continuing to hide the label. As Gordon soon discovered, this wine, unchilled, was dry to the point of sharpness and, he thought, not at all good with the well-done roast beef it was perhaps meant to help down. He drank sparingly of it. So did the other guests, except for the sweatered count, who from first to last had nothing to say of it or of anything else, but drained his glass at a swallow. Was he truly a count? It still seemed perfectly possible.

Lord Bagshot spoke up. ‘What is this stuff we’re drinking, Jimmie?’

‘It comes from the prettiest little vineyard you ever saw, twenty miles or so south of the upper Loire.’

‘M’m. It’s only my opinion, I know, but it doesn’t seem to me to go too well with this very nice beef.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘I notice you’re not drinking it.’

‘No,’ agreed Jimmie. Not quite surreptitiously but without attracting much attention, he had helped himself to some of the red wine and replaced the bottle on the sideboard behind him, its label still out of sight. ‘The quack told me to avoid dry white wine with my acidulous stomach. Don’t tell me you’re in the same case, Basil, because if so …’ His voice died away before he could reveal what he might do if so.

‘No, I’m not,’ admitted Lord Bagshot. He forbore from going on to say that, whether acidulous or not, a stomach was apt to welcome what must have been at least a tolerable claret more heartily than a tepid Muscadet with hot roast beef. All he did was push his barely tasted glass away from him, an action perhaps unnoticed by Jimmie, who at that moment was engaged in recharging his own.

Gordon had been placed between Louise and Lady Bagshot. Without trying he could think of plenty he wanted to say to Louise, but little of it seemed sayable then and there, and no amount of trying was ever going to suggest to him anything at all to say to Lady Bagshot, who had one of the largest faces he had ever seen surmounting a human neck and whose spectacles were in proportion. Not that she had the air of someone who wanted to be talked to, being quite satisfied with the companionship of a half-bottle of vodka stowed between times in a beaded woollen bag she kept within her direct reach. Before her stood an untouched bowl of cooling soup and a sparse plate of cooling beef. She was vigorously smoking cigarettes.

On her other side sat the count and beyond him Joanna Fane, who was giving him a full account of a visit to the opera paid perhaps earlier that week, perhaps a decade or two before. As he had been doing, the man nodded and smiled and now and then dilated his eyes sympathetically, drank and had his glass refilled. It might have been that he had had his tongue torn out by an indignant peasantry.

Many things might have been true of him without upsetting Gordon, who got conscientiously on with the task of sorting out impressions. The house, a few doors down from the King’s Road towards the river, was only a room and a passage broad but it ran back some way, and no doubt fell into one or another upper category of posh people’s praise like rather ravishing. Gordon could not have said much about things like lamp fittings and cutlery but he could tell they were expensive here without being either flashy or new. The ceilings had the look of having been the work of somebody in particular and over the sideboard there hung an oil painting of foreign parts that had a distinctly pricey appearance. Yes, but what about the couple who lived here?

A glance in Jimmie’s direction showed him to be looking straight at Gordon. So did a second glance a moment later, with the increment that this time he was frowning slightly and evidently concentrating his attention on Gordon’s moustache, until a great yawn supervened. Gordon could so vividly imagine Jimmie’s high voice asking him to be a good chap and try not to stare in that extraordinary fashion that he lost no time in transferring his gaze to Joanna. She too proved to be looking back at him, while still telling the count about who might well have been, but fairly unexpectedly was not after all, to be seen in the opera-house bar. It occurred to Gordon to wonder what, if anything, the Fanes had said to each other about him and his possible intentions.

This wonderment returned in a sharpened form when the party had finished lunch and moved back to the sitting-room upstairs. Here Jimmie had seized him by the arm and borne him off in stagey style to a narrower extension where books of a more consistently solemn, leather-bound aspect were to be seen. Jimmie at once sat himself down on a comfortable-looking old-fashioned chair, did not invite Gordon to find a seat but made no perceptible objection when he did. After shutting his eyes and perhaps dozing for a few seconds he suddenly said to him,

‘It’s very nice of you to come over today and bring that enchanting little girl with you.’

‘Oh, it’s very –’

‘Joanna, that’s my wife, you know – Joanna tells me you’ve got a proposition you want to put to me.’ Also suddenly, Jimmie reopened his eyes, ‘I confess to you I’m all agog to hear what it can be.’

‘Oh. Well, I was rereading The Escaped Prisoner the other day, and I thought –’

‘Do tell me just what your proposition is, dear man.’

‘All right. I’d like to try my hand at a long article or even a short book on you and your work. It’s been eleven years since the –’

‘Who would publish it?’

‘If it ends up as an article I reckon I could get a couple of instalments into The Westminster Review of Books, they rather go in for length. If it extends to a book it would certainly be worth trying it on your old publisher right away. Somebody there seemed very interested when I mentioned the possibility.’

‘I have to say I don’t think many people today would want to sit down and read a whole book about an old back number like me.’

‘I don’t think that’s true, Mr Fane, and you’re –’

‘Jimmie, please.’

‘Jimmie. I reckon you’re due for a revival and I’m not the only one by a long chalk. Those novels aren’t going to stay away for ever.’

‘I haven’t published a book of any sort since 1987, and that wasn’t much better than a potboiler of snippets and cuttings.’

‘Jimmie, you deserve to be back in the public eye and there are strong signs that you’re moving in that direction or why would I, well …’

‘Bother. Quite so. Yes, I suppose it might be taken as such a sign.’

This was not far out. Or it was a possible way of putting it. A way of putting it closer to Gordon’s view of the matter would have been that, on the literary stock exchange, Fanes had been due for a recovery but for the moment could be snapped up cheap pending a strong reissue. He himself would have said he had no definite opinion of the quality of Jimmie’s writing but saw clearly enough that as a figure of the prewar and wartime years and later, with an admittedly heterosexual but still conspicuous personal history, the old fellow could without undue difficulty be made the subject of a publishable set of articles or even a book. And now, or soon, was the time. What Gordon had been going to say was that it had been eleven years since the appearance of the last book on him. Just the right sort of interval.

Again Jimmie’s attention seemed to focus for a moment on Gordon’s moustache before diffusing itself. ‘I imagine I can’t stop you from publishing practically anything you like.’

Gordon nodded reflectively. ‘No, in a sense that’s true. But I hope to have your co-operation in this case.’

‘Even if I give it you, what’s to stop your writing and publishing anything that comes into your head, however untrue or unpleasant?’

‘Short of recourse to the law, you could stop me by refusing to let me quote more than the odd line from your works, which wouldn’t be nearly enough for what I have in mind.’

‘I think I see that,’ said Jimmie. ‘Of course.’ Then he turned animated. ‘Naturally, my dear chap, I’ve not the slightest reason in the world to suppose that any words of yours would be other than irreproachably veracious and well-mannered, I do assure you.’

‘Well, that’s a relief.’ Gordon ventured a smile. ‘Perhaps we can proceed to the next stage.’

‘And what do you see as the next stage?’

‘Well, just a thorough general chat, working out an approach. I’ll need to do some thinking in the meantime, make a note or two.’

‘You mean we should have a sort of preliminary discussion.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Very well. May I insist we conduct our discussion over luncheon somewhere?’

‘That sounds like a good idea.’

‘I do so adore being taken out to luncheon.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Gordon bravely.

‘I’m sure you’ll do me reasonably well, better than I did the Bagshots today.’

Gordon found this remark difficult to answer, so he merely nodded his head in a dependable manner.

‘Perhaps I owe you a small explanation. When I was a young man, it used to be said of me, not only in jest, that when I wiped somebody’s eye it stayed wiped. That unspeakable wine I offered was by way of getting back at Bagshot for the vile Peruvian red he gave us the last time we dined with him. He saw that all right, which was why he didn’t make more of a fuss. Oh, and if you’re worried about young Carlo, that count person, he doesn’t care or notice what he drinks. Where he comes from one can’t afford to.’

‘I see.’

‘I think now we might rejoin the others,’ said Jimmie, rising to his feet. ‘Give me a telephone call, will you?’

Gordon likewise rose. ‘I will. I’ll also send you my c.v.’

‘Send me your what?’

‘My c.v. My curriculum vitae.’ He pronounced the first word like curriculum and the second like vee-tye.

‘Your what?’

Gordon said it again and added, ‘Meaning a dated account of what I’ve done and written if anything and where I’ve worked and such. So you’ll have it by you, what there is of it.’

‘Oh, presumably you mean a curriculum vitae,’ said Jimmie, pronouncing the first word like curriculum and the second like vie-tee.

‘Yes, if you prefer.’

‘I do prefer if it’s all the same to you. Since we’re supposedly talking English rather than Latin or Italian. Yes I agree I know what you meant the first time but then one often infers as much from a grunt or a whinny and that’s no argument for conducting one’s discourse wholly or even partly in a series of approximations and lucky guesses. I hope you take my point?’

‘Yes I do.’ Gordon spoke with some warmth. He was relieved not to be called upon to repeat the phrase in its preferred pronunciation slowly after Jimmie.

‘Good. Can I tempt you to a glass of port?’

‘No thank you.’

‘I think I’ll let myself be tempted. I should give it up but I can’t. No – cannot is false; I will not give it up.’ Jimmie gave a smile that only the literal-minded would have hesitated to call charming. ‘We’ll have some fun with this business.’

‘Indeed we will.’

The rest of the company had split into two, or two and a half. The half was Lady Bagshot, who was sitting near but not with Joanna Fane and Louise and was conscientiously working her way through her half-bottle of vodka. Another drink like the one she had just poured herself would get her there with no more than a heeltap left over. Her current drink, as she took a mouthful, looked quite small beside the vastness of her face. By the window the still-vigilant count let Lord Bagshot go on telling him all about somebody’s house, it might have been his own. Gordon went over to Louise and Joanna, who looked up expectantly.

‘Well?’ they both asked, and Joanna added, ‘I’ve been hearing.’

‘The answer’s yes.’

‘I knew it,’ said Louise.

‘Well I didn’t,’ said Joanna. ‘Not his kind of thing at all. It’s not that he doesn’t like publicity, it’s just that he likes to be in complete control of it and everything else. Do sit down.’

‘I can’t see Gordon letting anyone else control what he writes.’

‘Time will show. What’s he agreed to so far?’

‘Lunch and a chat,’ said Gordon.

‘It’ll be your lunch and his chat. Don’t let him flannel you into taking him somewhere madly expensive like Woolton’s or the Tripoli. Make it a little place you happen to know. Where is he now? Did he say where he was going?’

‘To get himself a glass of port, I thought.’

‘He’ll be stretched out on his study couch and fast asleep and dreaming by now. Not a pretty sight.’

But if Jimmie was indeed asleep as his wife spoke he was very soon awake again and re-entering the sitting-room. Any port he carried back with him had come within him, a possibility that on recent form Gordon did not at all rule out. However that might have been, Jimmie seemed in elevated form and at once settled down next to Louise on the little padded couch with its vividly covered cushions and resumed the intimate revue style of their earlier meeting. Joanna cast her eye over Gordon to no purpose he could determine, but he evidently passed whatever muster it might have been. She said,

‘I suppose you’ve written this sort of thing before.’

‘About someone else, you mean. No, I haven’t ever.’

‘If you had, I was going to warn you you’re up against something new this time. I was going to tip you off he’s not like other people.’

Nobody is, thought Gordon rather dully, so this time he made what was meant to be a thoughtful face.

‘You can’t know very much about him.’

‘Only his work.’

‘His what? I thought you were going to write his biography.’

‘That was the idea, or part of it.’

‘Nearly all of it, surely. A catalogue of his principal publications and appointments would hardly get you on to the second page.’

‘I hope to be digging a bit deeper than that.’

‘If you do, watch out, as I said. You probably won’t come to much actual harm, but parts of it won’t be much fun if you do your job properly. You’d better let me talk to you about him to get a rounded picture.’

Gordon knew enough already about Jimmie to know too that he would be actively displeased with any really rounded picture, but he kept this reflection to himself, saying only, ‘Does that mean I’m to take you out to lunch as well – on a different occasion, of course.’

‘I expect it occurred to you that he’d do his damnedest to stop you printing the juicy bits. Maybe, but I think someone in your position ought at least to have some idea of what they are, don’t you? And it’s terribly nice of you to ask me to have lunch with you somewhere, if that’s what you were doing, but it would be sure to get back to him, which might be embarrassing at this stage. So I’m afraid that’s not on at the moment.’

‘Oh.’

‘But if we shared a crust one day when he’s cavorting with his chums at Gray’s, shared it here I mean, then that couldn’t get back to him.’

‘No.’

‘In fact I can’t see why it should get back to anybody, frankly.’

‘Nor can I.’

‘Give me a ring. Between half past eight and nine on a weekday morning is a good time.’