The Biographer’s Moustache, Page 3

  ‘I didn’t mean to. But you must admit things have come to a pretty pass when you get someone like Jimmie Fane hobnobbing with an Italian count who never learnt to speak English. Even fifty years ago one wouldn’t –’

  ‘Fuck fifty years ago, and it’s time you realized there’s nothing I must do, all right.’ Louise sighed and stretched. ‘Except now I must be going and things like that.’

  ‘Oh darling, do stay a little longer.’

  Gordon got to his feet as Louise had done and grappled with her briefly in an amatory way, at the end of which she disengaged herself without hostility and telephoned for a minicab. Within a few minutes she was being borne away from his flat towards the rather more commodious one she shared with a girl associate. It might have mildly surprised the Fanes to hear that, although the younger couple had certainly done the deed of darkness together, as Jimmie sometimes expressed it, they actually lived apart. Whatever the merits of this arrangement, at times like the present he was more strongly aware of its drawbacks. He doubted if Louise ever felt like that. When the subject of literal cohabitation came up, which it seldom did now, she was liable to say something like she wanted to keep her independence. He had given up wondering what she meant by that and had never asked her how many other chaps she was keeping her independence from.

  This apparent tolerance testified not to self-confidence but to unwillingness to imperil their present arrangement, which at times unlike the present suited him well enough. He asked himself occasionally whether he was suited to live with any woman at all. He had so lived in the past, up to and including the point of being married for nearly six years, not counting the interval between his wife’s departure and their divorce. She had departed with a man who worked in a government office on something to do with pensions and who, according to report, was three or four inches shorter and substantially younger than he. These factors had not enhanced Gordon’s self-esteem. His wife had once accused him of not knowing how to help a woman to feel pleased with life or even how to have a good time himself, and quite often and more succinctly of being hopeless. Perhaps he just had a low sex-drive. It was true, to be sure, that he thought or at any rate talked about sex less than his mates seemed to.

  An internal twinge smartly followed by an eructation reminded him of the unpleasant wine he had earlier drunk and so of its provider. Someone had told him that Jimmie Fane was one of the most money-conscious buggers in London, but had not reckoned on a demonstration of this quality at his own table. Gordon wished more than ever that he had managed to get a glimpse of the label on that bottle of red. Moving now towards the corner where he kept his typewriter, he thought of what Jimmie’s wife had intimated about the financial dangers of taking him out to lunch, but then she had probably been talking for effect, to impress him with how wild and free and not to be thought of as stuffy and middle-aged she was. However, discussing Jimmie with her was bound to have its points of interest.

  Now, by the window that overlooked the gloomy suburban park, he put a sheet of inferior paper into his typewriter and got to work on roughing out his curriculum vie-tee for Jimmie. Experience led him to resist the impulse to get it over in one go and try for a fair copy straight off. Wincing with boredom, then, and x-ing out every other phrase, he set down the facts of his London birth, his sound but beyond all question non-posh schooling, his minimally creditable, non-Oxbridge college course and ‘good’ final grading. None of this, he felt, would impress or even interest any sentient being but it had to be there in its entirety. Couple of years’ drudgery as sub-editor on Barnsley Echo or equivalent before lucky breakthrough to features desk, with special reference to culture, on London daily. Slow and limited ascent to books section on Sunday newspaper. Principal articles. Contributions to publications, to collections. First man to land on Mars 1995, on Titan 1996. The last entry would not survive retyping, but had been necessary to set down in order to ward off terminal coma. Something did that job, anyway, though far from having shown the least sign of private amusement he looked a little guilty at sinking into facetiousness, and hastily x-ed out the offending space fiction with the shift-key down.

  Soon he was retyping. A word-processor would have been quicker and the result perhaps more imposing, but Gordon had not got one of his own. Too expensive, he would say, and he had a sort of access to a machine in the office provided he had a good enough story and could persuade the editor’s secretary to let him use it. And this time there was the consideration that Jimmie would probably have learnt to tell apart a processor print-out and something run up on the old steam typewriter and, needless to say, would not have approved of anything in the former category. At the moment it was very likely not needful to say that he would have had no corresponding bias in favour of the latter. Having biases in favour of things, Gordon already suspected, was not something Jimmie was noted for, a trying characteristic in a biographee.

  Challenged by somebody like Louise, Gordon would probably have stuck to self-interest, enlightened where possible, as by far his leading motive in writing about Jimmie. But in his mind he would freely admit that he hoped the result would do something more than advance his own career. He had not lied when he said earlier that he had recently reread The Escaped Prisoner, at least on the understanding that by ‘reread’ was meant something like ‘read through to the end with some respect having several years ago looked at the thing and found it intolerably complacent.’ The fuller text captured a youthful observation that the book was silent on critical issues like racial equality and equal rights for women. Well, that was roughly how he saw the matter in retrospect.

  His transcription done, Gordon read through the page he had filled, trying to see what was there as a record of events and actions as well as a mere piece of typing with possible errors. Quite soon he stopped reading it and just checked it for literals. As a narrative of the better part of a lifetime it was undeniably thin, lacking in uplift. He now saw without difficulty that his original instinct had been right, and his personal history would not have been improved by including in it mention of the novel of his that had been rejected by fourteen publishers, even less of its successor that remained in rough draft if anywhere outside the mind of God. After some attempted clairvoyance, he pencilled a few words across the top of the sheet and got it ready for the post.

  Having done so he felt committed to something, small as it might have been, and about time too.

  6

  The day came when Gordon was to take Jimmie Fane out to lunch. The morning of it he filled in at the offices of the Sunday newspaper he worked for. These had once been majestically sited in the area of Fleet Street, but rising costs had compelled a series of moves into humbler quarters, ending for the moment in a dockland semi-wilderness. The building was reachable, or nearly, by a water-bus service that was slow and uncomfortable but at least different from that of the ordinary land bus with its route through miles of houses in silent-screen disrepair apparently occupied by remnants of a dwarfish aboriginal race. Both alternatives had the quality of always seeming a little worse to experience than to remember. This time it was the water-bus that Gordon swore he would never use again. The weather was wet and he had to plod across a kind of mudflat between disembarking and reaching shelter.

  ‘Nice of you to condescend to drop in on us,’ said the books editor. Originally he had not much wanted to be books editor, but the then editorial editor, the Editor in fact, had not wanted him to be anything else. ‘We appreciate immeasurably being spared some of your attention.’ This man was now nearing sixty and called Desmond O’Leary, though he gave no other sign whatever of having to do with Ireland or any of its inhabitants, past and present. ‘Everybody here understands that you have weightier calls on your time.’ Whatever his origins, O’Leary looked like a kind of bird or lizard above the neck, having no hair at all to be seen on his head, though he was very ready with the assurance that he was like an ape everywhere else. ‘All that we lesser mortals would beg from you in the forese
eable future is a thousand words on this latest piece of New England farmhouse guff, a round-up of female black American guff with some latitude as to space and, let’s see, no, yes, whither the docudrama as seen on TV and film and what, if anything, is literary truth.’ O’Leary laid bare and lit a smallish cigar of rectangular cross-section.’ Actually all I need from you more or less straight away is your next column piece and a word with Harry about our coverage of the Codex Prize. It looks like Latin America’s turn this time round, much to my personal mortification. How did your lunch with JRP Fane go?’

  ‘It’s today.’

  ‘Look, Gordon, when it comes to picking up the bill, mind you don’t –’

  ‘It’s come to that already and I’m picking it up. He virtually made it a condition of coming out at all.’

  ‘Oh did he? Clearly his hand has lost none of its cunning. Aristocratic sort of old sod, isn’t he? I saw him at some party once and there was nobody there half grand enough for him.’

  ‘He was quite willing to talk to me.’

  ‘Ask yourself why. But what’s the attraction as far as you’re concerned? Not your cup of tea as a bloke or as a writer, I’d have thought. And he’s what, he’s passé, over and done with, gone for good, thing of the past, beyond revival even by you.’ O’Leary stared over his half-glasses at Gordon, ‘I happen to think you’d do the job about as well as anybody if it could be done, but it can’t, as you’ll see. Not worth the sweat.’

  Gordon shrank from saying that O’Leary himself was something of a relic, specifically in the view he took of Fane’s irrevocable departure as a literary figure. What he did say, no less truthfully, was, ‘He may not be my kind of writer and he’s obviously not my kind of man. That’s an important part of what you called his attraction for me as a subject. I want to see how far I can –’

  ‘Oh God, it’s the challenge, is it, the fascination of what’s difficult and all that. Some old tit, even older and tittier than JRP Fane, anyway you remember he said when you’ve done something you can do, do something you can’t. Wrong again. Do something you can do and then do something else you can do and never mind if it’s the same thing. No virtue in trying what you find uncongenial because you find it uncongenial. You know that very well, or you would if you weren’t still stuck in that bloody Scottish Presbyterianism you flatter yourself you’ve left far behind you. My own upbringing was – but it’s a little early in the day to be bringing up bygones, I suppose. I shouldn’t really have started on any of this. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Gordon, though he could see little enough to forgive, O’Leary having mostly stuck to his habitual friendly-jeering manner. Well, perhaps what he had said had fetched up a little nearer the bone than usual, ‘In fact it’s a nice change to be treated as an adult. Anyway, with your permission I mean to have a fair crack at showing how decent writing can overcome almost any prejudice in the reader, if that doesn’t sound too pompous.’

  Perhaps it did; whether it did or not, O’Leary seemed to pay it small heed. He said, ‘I just hate to see a reasonably competent and successful journalist like yourself thinking it’s about time he did something less perishable and throwing his talents away on a serious book. I wouldn’t mind so much if you were going for something of your own, even a novel, but a critical biography, your phrase be it noted, of a prehistoric old sod like Fane, oh dear oh dear. Right, I’ve said too much already, not that any of it’ll shake your determination to misuse your abilities. You know, Gordon, in this life it’s important to recognize one’s limitations. Mine extend as far as this desk and no further, not my first choice as you may have heard, which goes to show one can sometimes do with a bit of guidance in setting one’s course. Now I mustn’t be late for the Chairman’s conference. He’s become a degree or two less tolerable since he got that bloody knighthood, unless it’s my imagination. Well, show me a pot of ointment and I’ll show you a fly. Give me a call tea-time about the days of the week you’ll be coming in to the office. Don’t forget to talk to Harry before you go. And first thing in the morning will do for your column but no later.’

  It had been arranged that, when the time came, Gordon as host-designate should call to collect guest at the Fane residence and he turned up there punctually, indeed with a couple of minutes to spare. A girl of about thirty answered his ring apparently clad in an excerpt from the Bayeux Tapestry. ‘Yes?’ she said loudly before he could speak. Her manner was unwelcoming.

  ‘I’ve called to pick up Mr Fane.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m taking him out to lunch.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Yes, meaning yes, I have a name, and if you ask me nicely I might tell you what it is.’ That was something like what Gordon was tempted to say. But all he did say was his name in full.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry but I’ve never heard of you.’

  ‘I exist nevertheless,’ Gordon actually did say this time. ‘Will you kindly tell Mr Fane that I’m here as arranged with him on Monday this week?’

  ‘Mr Fane is not here.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps I could wait for him. May I come in for a minute?’

  ‘Anything wrong, darling?’ asked a new voice, new in this conversation but in other respects age-old. Gordon had spied its owner, or that person’s head, sticking out of a nearby doorway inside the house a moment before. Now he was to be seen in full, striding up the hallway, a well-set-up man in a dark-grey suit and glasses. As he approached he repeated his question.

  ‘I don’t really know, darling,’ answered the girl.

  ‘M’m,’ said the man. He came to a halt in front of Gordon, at whom he still gazed while he said, ‘Could this be the chap, do you think?’

  ‘Well, he certainly looks and sounds like it.’

  ‘M’m.’

  Now the man took his glasses off his nose and put them folded into the top pocket of his suit, ‘I think it might be better if you left, old man,’ he said. ‘No hard feelings.’

  Gordon moved his arms a little way away from his sides and leant slightly forward, and things looked quite interesting for a moment, but then a distinctive high voice could be heard from the street.

  ‘Ah, there you are, my dear fellow, I’m terribly sorry I wasn’t here to greet you, I just popped out for some cat-food.’

  ‘Never mind, Jimmie,’ said Gordon, ‘I’ve been well looked after.’

  ‘Periwinkle’s been taking care of you, has she? I’m afraid I’m absolutely hopeless at organizing things, especially people. Let’s be off, shall we? I suppose I must have asked them along to give a … That’s Oliver, my son-in-law, back there. I think you could hail this chap. Fancy painting a taxi yellow.’

  When they had driven off, Gordon asked, ‘She’s your daughter, is she, Periwinkle?’ He wanted to have it authoritatively confirmed that this was indeed a girl’s name.

  ‘Not a very friendly creature, I’m afraid, little Periwinkle.’

  ‘She wasn’t exactly welcoming me in just now. She seemed to think I was a tout or a hawker or something.’

  ‘She must have got you mixed up with a sort of cadger kind of fellow from Bulgaria did he say, who’s been hanging round the place for a day or two. She must have mistaken you for him.’

  ‘How extraordinary.’

  ‘Yes, different kettle of fish altogether. Horrible-looking broken-down sort of chap. It may seem an odd description of such a person, but what I believe is known nowadays as dead common.’

  ‘Really,’ said Gordon, remembering to make three syllables of it. He glanced surreptitiously down at his clothes.

  ‘He did have a moustache rather like yours.’

  ‘Perhaps that was what confused Periwinkle.’

  ‘Of course, she’s the child of my second marriage. She’s a funny girl. I don’t think she’s ever kissed me of her own accord. The truth is she’s a howling snob. I can’t think where she gets that from, it must be from her mother. Between ourselves I’ve never
greatly cared for young Oliver, what’s he called, Turnbull I fancy. He’s what they call upwardly mobile, or at any rate desirous of being so. He’s also something in the City. Remind me. Just remind me where you’re taking me if you would.’

  ‘I thought –’

  ‘And whatever you do don’t please say it’s a little place you happen to know.’

  Since that was more or less exactly what he had been going to say, Gordon’s reply was slow in coming. He was thrown off too by trying to remember where he had not long ago heard that very expression, and further still by wondering whether it was the form of words or the likely reality or both that was being interdicted. But in fact it was not at all long before he was saying gamely, ‘Well, it is a rather small place and in the nature of things I do happen to know about it.’

  ‘Yes yes, no doubt no doubt. What’s it called again?’

  ‘Cakebread’s.’

  ‘Really,’ said Jimmie, far outdoing in all respects Gordon’s pronunciation of the word. ‘He’s not an American, I hope, the valuable Cakebread?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Nevertheless I prophesy that his establishment will be full of citizens of that great republic. Hiram and Mamie are just mad about little places they happen to know, yes sir.’

  Jimmie’s second sentence here was delivered in what was presumably intended as an American accent, though one that failed to recall any actually used within the nine million square kilometres of the Union. Gordon was at a loss for an answer, so he just smiled nervously.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear boy, of course I adore Americans and feel at home with everything about them except the way they speak. I can never make out what their rules are for choosing between pronouncing every single syllable, as in tempo-rarily, and swallowing as much of a word as possible, as when Polonius tells Laertes, neither a bore nor a lender be.’