The Biographer’s Moustache

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘So this is the great man’s biographer, Tommie,’ said Bobbie, and Tommie nodded and smiled. Both of them continued to look Gordon over in a considering and also greedy fashion, as if they had half a mind to eat him later. ‘You mustn’t mind us,’ Bobbie went on, ‘but you are called Gordon, aren’t you, I mean that is right, I hope?’

  ‘Gordon Scott-Thompson.’

  ‘How do you do. I mean it is marvellous that you’re here, isn’t it, Tommie?’

  ‘You’re very young, aren’t you, to be taking on a demanding job like writing Jimmie’s life?’

  They were so friendly, or at least were smiling at him and at each other so much, that Gordon found it hard not to go along with them. Jimmie gave no lead, showed no more sign of being disconcerted than of being gratified at their presence. For the moment Gordon could see no alternative to reciting dull facts about himself, dull to him at least, though Bobbie and Tommie listened in seeming fascination. This phase lasted until a man too active-looking and speedy in his movements not to be a club servant appeared and gave out menus, a service unremarked by any of the three club members present. His own menu, Gordon saw, had no prices on it, no doubt to remind him that he could choose whatever he fancied – fancy that! And fancy another thing, already becoming clear, that Jimmie was going to have to pick up the bill for all four lunches, including the wine, which Bobbie and Tommie were now engaged in vociferously choosing from the list. Gordon told himself that what prevented him from ordering oysters followed by lobster, and so tit-for-tatting Jimmie, was not any form of compunction but simple dislike of those dishes. But when his preludial slice of melon arrived in front of him and he started on it under Bobbie’s observant eye, he had to admit internally that the real deterrent had been the prospect of that eye turned on his unpractised attempts to deal with oysters and such.

  The meal progressed without resort to violence. The conversation between Jimmie, Bobbie and Tommie was mostly about the doings or condition of men referred to only by names similarly terminated. So Gordon had to say little and had little to say. He had meant to take the opportunity of seeing how far Jimmie had meant what he said about answering questions, but that now seemed to be ruled out. Tommie and Bobbie were chattering away with Jimmie nineteen to the dozen, as if they had lost interest in the fourth member of the party, but something in their occasional glances or his imagination suggested that they would come back to him when they felt like it. Both were drinking what he would have thought of as a fair amount of wine.

  His moment came. The three others shared a sort of end-of-chapter laugh and collectively turned towards Gordon, who started to concentrate on sitting still in his chair. Both Bobbie and Tommie showed a friendly curiosity, though it struck him as a little excessive too. Jimmie was more non-committal, as if he was being told by Lord Bagshot about a delightful little place for lunch in the hills above Rome, now unfortunately closed down. At last Tommie said,

  ‘Well, Gordon – it is Gordon, isn’t it? – you haven’t had much to say for yourself for the last half-hour or so, have you?’

  Gordon made gestures indicating that that was indeed the case.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know very many of the people we were talking about just now. Not very polite of us, I’m afraid. Perhaps never even heard of most of ‘em, eh?’

  ‘I have heard of the Prince of Wales.’ Gordon tried to push all expression out of his voice. ‘Not many others, it’s true to say.’

  A single yelp or bark of laughter broke from Bobbie, who had just refilled his own glass and Tommie’s, vigorously waving away with his free hand the proffered attention of a servant. Jimmie raised his eyebrows in a further demonstration of impartiality. Tommie pressed on.

  ‘Yes, it was rather naughty of us to go on chinwagging about our cronies in that fashion, but Jimmie here is always bursting to hear the latest gossip, and we don’t seem to see him as often as all that.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Gordon.

  For a moment Tommie looked at him in a new way, one accompanied by a small frown of puzzlement. ‘Didn’t we meet at Henley a year or two ago? Or was it, er, you know, Cowes?’

  ‘I’ve never been to either place.’

  ‘M’m. I must be mistaken. You may remember my saying when we met just now, Gordon, how young you seemed, I meant young to have taken on the job of writing up the life and works of an old josser like Jimmie here – I should add hastily that I’m a good year older than him. Anyway, I know I said something of the sort.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘Well, it strikes me now, how shall I put it …’ Tommie spoke with a short silence between each phrase and the next and Gordon fancied that Bobbie started listening with heightened intensity, ‘I don’t know whether … of course I should have explained that I only heard about this … this project of yours a short while ago, just before you …’

  ‘I merely happened to mention it in passing,’ said Jimmie, as one who exculpates himself.

  ‘I haven’t had time to … think very deeply about what’s involved, or …’

  ‘Get along with you,’ said Bobbie, with some roughness in his tone as well as his words. ‘What did you say to me as soon as Jimmie had told us a little about our young friend here?’

  ‘I don’t think we need actually …’

  ‘What did you actually say? Come on, Tommie old bean.’

  ‘All right, I said something to the effect that his earlier life, his background, Gordon’s background probably hadn’t often brought him into contact with the kind of people Jimmie had been, well, brought into contact with.’

  Tommie made to face Gordon again, but Bobbie broke in. ‘All right, as you say. All right. If you feel you somehow ought to water it down, all right.’

  ‘I was simply –’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  Now Tommie did say something to Gordon, it’s quite straightforward. Obviously you and Jimmie have had different sorts of upbringing and, and life. Nothing mysterious about it.’

  ‘No,’ said Gordon. ‘Nothing mysterious at all.’

  Aware that Bobbie looked like breaking in again, Tommie hurried on. ‘What I’m getting at, what we’re getting at is just that you can’t, you wouldn’t want to write any sort of book on Jimmie without, er, seeing him in the company of the people and the kind of society he grew up in and has, well, been in ever since, and it’s not the same as the kind you grew up in, am I right?’

  ‘Or don’t you think things like that matter?’ Bobbie immediately said to Gordon.

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Bobbie,’ said Tommie in a weary, pleading tone.

  ‘I certainly think things like that matter.’ There Gordon spoke the truth, but kept to himself his next thought, which had to do with whether the things in question ought to matter as much as they did. Aloud, he said, ‘But I also think that the difference between Jimmie’s background and my background should give me an advantage when I write about him. It, I mean the difference’ll give me perspective, make me more of a detached observer.’

  Bobbie nodded his shiny bald head. ‘Yes. Yes, well we’ll have to wait and see, shan’t we?’

  ‘Yes, you will have to wait and see,’ Jimmie said to him. ‘For what it’s worth, and it must be worth something, I consider Gordon to be ideally suited to write my biography, which perhaps I omitted to tell you will be a critical biography, in other words it’ll incorporate full discussions of my works. I use the simple future tense because the die is already cast. One of the purposes of his presence today is run over with me the publisher’s contract, which if you’ll forgive us we’ll now go and do.’ Jimmie rose from the table. ‘What fun to bump into you and have this delightful chat.’

  Good wishes to wives and families were speedily exchanged. Gordon and Jimmie were half way to the door when Bobbie called Jimmie back. From where he was, Gordon had no difficulty seeing what followed as some sort of apology being offered (by Bobbie) and some sort of reassurance supplied (by Jimmie). It took
only a few seconds.

  ‘Poor Bobbie is really the most frightful snob,’ Jimmie explained to Gordon as they sat in an otherwise empty corner of the lounge, or whatever it might have been called. ‘I’ve known it to show itself before when he’s had a couple of glasses of good claret at luncheon. It must come of being the youngest son of an earl. Nice enough fellow on the whole, and thought a great deal of in this club. Now I suppose it’s inescapable that we two really and truly go over that contract? Thank God, what a relief, I hate contracts, yes of course you can tell me the gist of it. But before you do that I’ve got a question to ask you, if I may.’

  ‘Of course, Jimmie,’ said Gordon, who himself had not been looking forward to having to communicate a clause-by-clause exposition of the aforesaid document. ‘A couple of dozen if you feel like it.’

  ‘Just one will do for the moment.’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘How do you pronounce O,F,T,E,N? Sounding the T or not?’

  11

  Gordon sat in the corner of his room, by the window from which he could have surveyed the grey apparently deserted park had he wanted to. He was not at the moment using his typewriter, instead vigilantly reading through a sheaf of rough typescript headed Early Years. This was not a title he held in much esteem or affection, but there was plenty of time to come up with something more deserving. The dissatisfied frown he kept reverting to as he read was produced by contents rather than heading. Jimmie Fane’s early years, primeval, indeed antenatal years, were well documented, those relating to his family rather than himself. In Gordon’s world a family started when somebody got married and stopped again when that person died, by which time his or her descendants would probably have originated another family or two. In Jimmie’s a family evidently went back in history through the male line like the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and further, fetching up in times like the early seventeenth century and places like Barra and Normandy. Gordon had got all that in Jimmie’s case. The trouble was he had got in the kind of profuse detail that would have been all right at the opening of an 800-page study but seemed top-heavy for the kind of 180- or at most 200-page book he had been modestly contemplating. And yet the stuff was so good, so factual, so much the sort of thing people liked or expected in biographies. Was it? How did he know?

  Shifting in his chair, Gordon feverishly attacked an itch that had started in his right eye as if it meant to eject it forthwith on to his cheek. The itch itself vanished at once but left a powerful stinging sensation behind. He thought of making himself another cup of coffee, looked at his notes less attentively than before, tried without success to heave a great all-encompassing yawn. His vision went misty with the effort of it. Then he picked up the telephone and punched buttons.

  ‘Is it possible to speak to … Oh, hallo, it’s Gordon here, Gordon Scott-Thompson, Gordon the … Yes. You said it was all right to ring you between … Good. Look, I’ve got a bit bogged down in the first chapter, with … Yes, I know, but I want to get it right before I press on. Well, I don’t really fancy asking him unless I have to. Well, it would be marvellous if you … When? I mean what sort of time?’

  Out in the street it was less damp than the day before but colder. Wishing he had been drunk, Gordon got on a bus apparently reserved for winners and runners-up in some pan-European repulsiveness contest. Successions of coughs, sneezes and nose-blowings could be heard above or through the sounds of traffic and an Oriental observer was holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nostrils. When Gordon eventually got off the bus he turned to his left at the first opportunity and walked a short distance, turned another corner and was soon pushing a bell-push. With the advantage of knowing what to expect he actually caught the latchkey this time when it was dropped in his direction.

  ‘You’re a bit later than when you came before,’ said Joanna Fane, ‘so what about a drink now? It’s the sort of day for one.’

  ‘It certainly is. I’d love a drink.’

  ‘A small one as before?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘You’re getting the idea.’ When Joanna had come back from the chiffonier with a vodka and tonic in each hand, she said, ‘I gather you were put through the hoops recently at Gray’s. What happened exactly?’

  ‘What did Jimmie tell you?’

  ‘Let’s hear your version.’

  Gordon started to oblige. Before long he was saying, ‘He looked at me, Bobbie looked at me in a funny way when we were introduced.’

  ‘What sort of funny way?’

  ‘Sort of …’ Gordon let his mouth hang open and his eyelids droop. ‘As though he’d come over very tired all of a sudden.’

  ‘I can just see him.’ Joanna giggled slightly. ‘You’re quite good. I know that look of Bobbie’s. What did he say?’

  ‘I remember he wanted to know if I had a double-barrelled surname, and I said I supposed I had, and he asked if it had a hyphen in it, and I said again I supposed so, and that was more or less it.’

  ‘What did he say then?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve forgotten. Anyway, that was it, end of conversation about my name. I’m not sure just what he was getting at, I mean he was obviously –’

  ‘I am. He was wondering whether to ask you if you knew there are only seven families in the British Isles or anyway England and Scotland that can actually claim the right to use the hyphen.’

  ‘Families,’ said Gordon with strong but vague feeling.

  ‘I heard him use the thing once on a chap who could trace his ancestry back to Henry VII.’

  ‘Whenever he happened to feel like it.’

  ‘If he didn’t go that far Bobbie must have decided to let you down lightly. In a good mood for some reason.’

  ‘Snakes alive.’

  ‘Darling, sorry I mean Gordon – Gordon, poor Bobbie seems to have got under your skin rather.’

  ‘Well, it was where he was trying to get. And what’s this poor-Bobbie bit?’

  ‘You don’t seem to mind it so much when Jimmie gets grand. Of course I agree compared with Bobbie young Jimmie’s a raging egalitarian. After all, he married me, didn’t he?’

  ‘M’m? What does that show?’

  ‘My folks aren’t nearly as grand as his folks. Trade, you know. Groceries.’

  ‘Oh God. Anyway, I still can’t decide whether he’d asked Bobbie and his mate along or they turned up under their own steam. Any ideas?’

  ‘Not from here. You never quite know where you are with Jimmie. Bobbie’s a much simpler, more straightforward sort of chap, though I agree that doesn’t make him a nicer chap, or a nice chap at all.’

  ‘Did I mention that when Jimmie and I were on our way out, Bobbie called him back to apologize to him? I was too far away to hear what they said.’

  ‘I’m not. I hope you don’t mind me talking like that. No, what Bobbie said was, I’m sorry if you think I leant a bit on that double-barrelled young bounder you brought along, and Jimmie said, That’s all right, Bobbie, he has worse to put up with any Saturday down the Mile End Road.’

  Gordon scratched his jaw. ‘Do you think that’s altogether fair to him, to Jimmie, that is? I realize you’ve known him longer than I have.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. You know, darling, I think you’re sometimes a bit carried away by fairness.’

  ‘You’d find plenty of unfairness down the Mile End Road any day of the week.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve actually been there a couple of times, have you? You are the most –’

  ‘If things in that neighbourhood are at all the way I imagine them to be.’

  ‘You know something, I don’t think Bobbie would have been as hard on you as he was, not that he seems to have been hard on you much by his standards. You should hear him tell an American the score.’

  ‘If what? He wouldn’t have been so hard on me if what?’

  ‘Sorry, it’s actually but for, not if. Bobbie might have been nicer to you than he was but for your moustache.’

  ‘Oh.
I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘There’s nothing much wrong with it when you’re sort of ordinary, but when you smile it makes you look terribly ingratiating. Jumped-up, almost.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gordon again, ‘I didn’t know that I did much smiling.’

  ‘You don’t. It’s time I got us both another drink.’

  Once or twice since arriving, Gordon had wondered whether the first drink he had seen Joanna drinking was not in fact her first but her second or even third. It was well enough known in his world that married ladies no longer in the springtime of their youth sometimes tended, if they had not much to do in the house, no visible children and an often-absent husband, to drink out of hours. Watching her trim figure at the far end of the room efficiently engaged, he thought the characterization less than fair to her. Today she was principally wearing a high-collared carmine blouse and a short leather skirt, not very short but short enough to allow a fair showing of leg. The room was pleasantly warm. He thought in the second place that she was looking better, even indeed slightly younger, than he had first supposed. He assured himself with some emphasis that any such improvement was objective, or at least derived from a more refined view of her, less hasty and negligent than before. What he saw was actually there