The Biographer’s Moustache, Page 2

  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 y
ou.’

  ‘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.’

  4

  ‘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.’

  5

  ‘Well, what did you really make of that lot at lunch-time?’ Gordon asked Louise.

  ‘I wasn’t particularly struck by any of them.’

  ‘Not even by poor old Jimmie? He was doing his best, after all.’

  ‘Doing his best to what?’

  ‘Well, to make you feel at home or something of the sort.’

  ‘If he’d wanted to do
that he could have asked us to meet somebody a bit more interesting than his bloody lordship and his piss-artist elephant’s-bum-faced four-eyed boiler of a wife. Oh, and that asshole of an Italian who never opened his mouth except to put food and drink into it. Not that I wanted him to talk. No, poor old Jimmie was showing me and you and Mrs Jimmie and possibly others that there was life in the old dog yet. Some hopes. By the look of him he hasn’t had it up for half a century.’

  ‘I reckoned he asked those people to impress us with his aristocratic connections.’

  ‘Fancy that. Well, all I can say is he didn’t impress me.’ Louise spoke sulkily rather than with any heat.

  ‘Nor me, actually.’

  ‘If you’re right about him wanting to impress us he’s even more pathetic than I thought.’

  ‘Yes, I think there is something rather pathetic about poor old Jimmie.’

  ‘I don’t mean that sort of pathetic. And you must be careful of poor old Jimmie. He’s bad news.’

  ‘I’m sorry I inflicted him and the rest of them on you.’

  ‘That’s all right, it was quite an interesting experience considered as an item of social anthropology. A chance to see the British class system in action.’

  ‘You must mean in inaction. Decline from whatever it may once have been.’

  ‘Christ, Gordon, after that display?’

  ‘All … bangs and coloured lights. A hundred years ago, even up to 1939, the thing really had some teeth in it. There was an empire to run and a comparatively barbaric peasantry and proletariat to be kept down. What’s left of either of them today? The, the remnants of that class system operate in the other direction. Dukes and what-not complain that their titles hold them back, get in the way of their careers in banking or photography or whatever it may be. The British class system, as you quaintly call it, is –’

  ‘I know, it’s dead, which up to a point is a good thing, but beyond that point isn’t so good. Don’t go on about all those dukes who can’t get on in banking because they’ve admitted they’re dukes unless you want me to burst out crying. But anyhow, please don’t lecture at me.’