The Biographer’s Moustache. Kingsley Amis
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.’
‘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.’
‘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