Читать книгу The Biographer’s Moustache - Kingsley Amis - Страница 9

‘Darling, what did you really make of that young man?’

‘Not a lot, darling. Pleasant enough, rather conventional, anxious not to say the wrong thing. The very chap to be your biographer, darling.’

‘It’s to be literary too. A critical study of what I’ve written. I’m not sure he’s up to that. For all I know he may be. I hope he’s been properly educated. He says he’ll send me what he calls his c.v. Fascinating. Do you fancy him?’

‘Darling, please. With that moustache?’

‘I’m sorry, darling, yes. It didn’t look like hair at all.’

‘More like something that’s been turned on a lathe. Anyway he’s about thirty years younger than me. What did you make of little Louise? I saw you firing on all cylinders.’

‘Pretty as a picture but rather stodgy. Filling, like plum duff, you know. Do you think the noble lord enjoyed himself?’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised. He didn’t care for being given wine he didn’t care for.’

‘I hope not. Now he knows how it feels.’

‘I didn’t care for that warm white stuff either.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry, darling. I just couldn’t think of a way of getting a decent drink into your glass.’

After a pause, Joanna said, ‘Lady B sensibly brought her own tipple as usual.’

‘I wonder when those two talked to each other last.’

‘You can’t really expect it of her. She talked to me a bit at one stage but she wasn’t making much sense.’

‘He might as well keep quiet too.’

‘But both of them are positive conversational giants compared with Carlo.’

‘These voluble Italians,’ said Jimmie.

‘Darling, I wish you’d have another go at him about his English. He gets about one word in twenty of what I say to him and one in a hundred of anybody else and apparently he can’t say anything himself.’

‘Not in English. His Italian’s fluent enough.’

‘Why doesn’t he stay in Italy then? There can’t be anything for him here.’

‘Something to do with his tax, as I said. And he likes eating in friends’ houses in London because he hasn’t got to grapple with English as he’d have to in a restaurant.’

‘Can’t he go to an Italian restaurant? There are dozens all over London.’

‘As I told you, he doesn’t like Italian food.’

‘But why do we keep asking him here? Actually I can tell you the answer to that. Because he keeps asking us to that palazzo place of his and we keep going there. After all, he is a count.’

‘Well, if you must hark back to the primordial rudiments of everything,’ said Jimmie in a weary tone.

‘Hard luck on those youngsters, getting let in for two duds and one semi-dud.’

‘Only duds conversationally.’

‘Oh, you mean it’s much more important that they’ve all got handles to their names?’

‘That Scotchman and his bit of stuff would think so.’

‘I can’t see it cutting a single millimetre of ice with either him or her.’