The Biographer’s Moustache

by Kingsley Amis

  Eating took place in buffet style, which meant among other things that when Gordon ultimately got his food there was nowhere to sit down. This suited him very well, in that it offered him a chance of alleviating his hunger before drowsiness overcame him. At the last moment he put down his almost-finished plate of risotto, found a chair in a nearby unpopulated room and was instantly asleep.

  The next moment, or so it seemed, Jimmie was literally shaking him awake with enough violence in face and manner to be momentarily scaring.

  ‘Wake up, I tell you, wake up! We’re going!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I say we’re going, we’re off! Get moving!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake stop saying what in that cretinous way. Can’t you take in the simplest possible idea? We, you and I and the women, are leaving, immediately, by car. You clearly grew up in some appalling place where the menfolk take their collars off after Sunday dinner and have a proper kip but you’re not there now! Get up!’

  ‘Jimmie, if you could just give me a few seconds to pull myself together, I was dead asleep, you made me jump out of my skin.’

  At this appeal Jimmie calmed down somewhat but not all the way. Gordon’s discomfort changed direction. Sitting up on the edge of his chair he felt simply terrible, meaning he felt nothing else much, not even sleepy, and could have got no nearer saying how he did feel.

  ‘I have things to do in London,’ said Jimmie. ‘I dare say you could stay here overnight if you really wanted to.’

  ‘What about Louise?’

  ‘She seems to be coming with us, with Joanna and myself.’

  Gordon got to his feet. ‘If you’ll hang on for five minutes while I put my things together I’ll see you outside.’

  Jimmie compressed his lips and shut his eyes briefly. He made a movement with his head as if dodging a blow. All traces of impatience had left his voice when he spoke next. ‘Take as long as you like, dear boy. I’m afraid I might have sounded rather cross when I roused you, but Joanna had been going on at me to get us all on the move. You know how one minute they’re lounging about as if they wouldn’t dream of stirring until the middle of next week, if then, and the next they’re standing by the front door looking at their watch and tapping their foot. I didn’t mean –’

  ‘Say no more, we’ve all been through that.’

  Gordon said no more either, but hurried out of the room and upstairs. What he would have liked to say but could not say was that he had never seen Jimmie in such a state as when he had woken him up just now, much too extreme to have been the product of ordinary marital irritation. The real cause of the trouble would have to emerge of its own accord, if it ever did.

  Only a short time after the limit he had set himself, Gordon with suitcase in hand reached the front of the house and went up to the car, the one that looked like a Rolls-Royce but was not, where it stood in the turnaround part of the drive. The sky was clouded but it was a milder afternoon than of late. Needless to say there was not another soul about, or so Gordon would have thought until he had disposed of his luggage and taken his former seat at the back of the pseudo-Rolls. Then he caught sight of Louise and the duke slowly approaching out of the middle distance, and shortly afterwards, from a different direction, Joanna, Jimmie and Polly, the châtelaine-chauffeuse, now restored to her black rigout and for the moment carrying various impedimenta. With a vague idea of seeming helpful and perhaps polite, Gordon got out of the car again.

  ‘Sorry you’ve got to rush off,’ said the duke. ‘If it had been me I’d have left it till tomorrow morning and taken my time. For my own part I never rush anywhere. Bad habit altogether, rushing.’ He had drawn Gordon a little aside. ‘I hope you haven’t been too bored.’

  ‘Not at all, everything’s been most enjoyable.’ Gordon had been going to say what was actually truer, that he had found everything most interesting, but decided at the last minute it might sound a bit clinical and investigative put like that.

  ‘Nice of you to say so. Just one word in your ear before you vanish. I don’t know the ins and outs and I don’t want to be told, but perhaps I can ask you to keep an eye on my poor little Joanna for me. I think I told you I’m rather fond of her, and there she is having to cope with that shit Jimmie. Well …’

  Uncharacteristically, Gordon got as far as saying, ‘Why did you ask him here if that’s what you think of him? Good company you said – is that all?’

  The duke picked at one of several food-stains on his waistcoat. ‘Oh, he makes up the number, doesn’t he? I don’t say there’s anything you can do bar keep an eye on poor little Joanna. Nice girl, that. Louise, now, she’s another nice girl. Thank you for bringing her. Well …’

  Again remembering in the nick of time not to shake hands, Gordon muttered some reciprocal words of thanks and moved towards the car. Before he reached it a shout from the duke made him stop and turn.

  ‘That phrase you wanted me to explain. I knew what it must have been almost as soon as you asked me. Actually you hadn’t got it quite right. It was –’

  Willie Dunwich’s mouth went on opening and (nearly) shutting, but whatever he might have been saying was lost in a mechanical roar as Polly, perhaps impatient to be off, started and revved up her engine. Gordon could think of nothing to do but smile, wave good-bye and climb aboard next to Louise.

  22

  It would not be accurate to say that Gordon was again startled into wakefulness by Jimmie, if only because of the several brief awakenings that preceded the final one on the approach to the Fanes’ house. Nevertheless it was not until he was getting out of the car that Gordon attained something like full alertness.

  ‘I’ll be off then,’ said Louise.

  ‘Why don’t you and Polly come in for a cup of tea?’ asked Joanna.

  ‘Jolly nice idea,’ said Polly, ‘but I think we’d better be getting along, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Sure.’ Louise turned to Gordon. ‘So long, old fellow. Thanks for taking me to that remarkable place. A fair treat it was.’

  ‘Glad you enjoyed it.’

  ‘See you soon.’

  They embraced affectionately. The two girls drove away in the gathering dusk. Gordon stood next to Jimmie on the pavement and waited with him for the car to turn and come back past them, as it would have to do.

  ‘So it’s straight to Louise’s digs,’ said Gordon.

  ‘Where Polly helps her pack.’

  ‘And then drives her to wherever she’s arranged to meet Willie.’

  ‘Very likely the airport.’

  ‘En route for Monte Carlo?’

  ‘Quite possibly Monte, though this time of the year it’s more likely to be Bermuda or the Caribbean.’

  ‘Bit of luck for Louise whichever it is.’

  ‘Or for Willie. No, let’s say and.’

  Both men waved diligently at the car as it went by, then started to look about them.

  ‘Where’s Joanna?’ said Jimmie.

  With a piece of luggage in hand he hurried into the house, followed by Gordon similarly burdened. For some time the latter moved uneasily round the upstairs sitting-room, not daring or at any rate liking to sit down. Then Jimmie came back in. He looked at Gordon with an expression hard to read, hostile but by no means altogether hostile.

  ‘Your turn now,’ he said. ‘I’ve done what I can and it isn’t any good at all. You go up and see what you can do. It’s the first right on the second floor, that’s if you don’t happen to know that already.’

  There were immediate signs that Jimmie found something less than satisfactory in this last speech, perhaps in its closing few words, but Gordon disregarded such considerations and went straight up to Joanna’s room, of which he indeed knew the location, though without ever having crossed its threshold. He knocked at its shut door, waited a moment in vain, then went in. It was now quite dark outside and the curtains were undrawn, though the lights were on.

  Joanna was sitting at her dressing
-table on a padded stool but now turned round on it towards him. Apart from taking off her outdoor coat she had done nothing to her appearance since coming into the house. Her face had changed, though, as if some internal string that normally held things together had been cut or released.

  Gordon came half way into the room. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing much has actually happened,’ she said in an only slightly flatter tone than usual, ‘I merely saw something I should have seen before. Sit down on the bed and I’ll tell you about it, it won’t take long. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No thank you,’ he said, sitting as directed.

  ‘I’ll make a cup of tea in a minute. Now, you may have wondered how I managed to take it so calmly, comparatively calmly anyway, when I added up two and two about Jimmie’s plans for himself. Actually he and I had a high word or two on the point last night, nothing much out of the ordinary but poor old Willie was quite shocked, it must be the sheltered life he leads. Where was I?’

  ‘You were going to explain how you managed not to act up.’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, you see, I thought if things came to the crunch, and there’s always a part of you that thinks they never will, I thought that’s all right, I’ve got someone else.’

  He thought she must mean him but felt he must not assume so. ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, you, you bloody fool. I must have forgotten I’d made the same mistake just the other day when I thought you must have fallen for me the same as I’d fallen for you because you said you’d finished with Louise.’

  ‘But I had and I still have and anyway she’s got the duke now.’

  ‘For a bit, at least. What I saw, I was going to tell you what I saw, what I saw was you and Louise saying cheerio for now just now.’

  ‘But I’ve just told you –’

  ‘Oh I don’t mean anything like that, I know that’s all over, but what’ll never be over is how much younger you are than me. Do you know, some of the time, well all the time in a way I thought it didn’t matter, we were the same age really, you and I, what had a few years got to do with anything these days, as if that came into it at all. I thought we’d go off and even get married and everybody would just accept it. I even thought, never bring this up will you, promise me you won’t, but I even thought that one day, perhaps you saw in the paper about that woman, something like ten years older than me she was, she’d been trying all her life to have a baby and thanks to whatever it is they can do now she was going to.’ A single tear caught the light as it fell to the green part of the pink-and-green rug that surrounded the padded stool she was sitting on. ‘I’d known it could never happen but I didn’t really realize it till I saw the two of you kissing good-bye just now. You’re nearly as young as she is. Now will you please promise me you’ll forget I said any of that.’

  ‘Look, Joanna, first of all I was born in –’

  ‘I don’t want any of that. Or being told I’m barmy or exaggerating or imagining things or Jimmie won’t be able to face all the upset and commotion if it ever comes to it and at least wait till he makes a move. I don’t want to be told anything at all.’

  As she spoke the last words they heard the front door emphatically shut and, in the quiet street, footsteps receding. Gordon turned his head.

  ‘That’s him.’ Joanna got up, looked at herself in the glass and drew a comb through her hair, not greatly improving its appearance. ‘Off to Gray’s.’

  ‘Will there be many people about on a Sunday evening?’

  ‘You can be quite certain there’ll be someone about, someone worth his while.’

  ‘As a matter of interest, how will he get there? Surely not by bus?’

  ‘Christ no, he’ll pick up a taxi in the King’s Road. Are you ready for that tea now, darling?’

  ‘Later.’

  She watched him while he went and drew the curtains together. The curtains themselves were much nicer and posher than the ones in his flat, but not quite as nice and not nearly as posh as the medieval-chasuble style of drape at Hungerstream, though these here did run on old-fashioned brass rings, each one chunky enough for the Minotaur’s nose. When he was satisfied with the effect he started to take off his tie.

  ‘What makes you think it’ll work as well as it did that time at your place?’ asked Joanna.

  This isn’t meant to be the same as that. To start with, that was there and this is here.’

  ‘So it is. Do you remember my saying to you I didn’t feel right about having this sort of performance taking place in this house?’

  ‘Yes, I do remember. But the situation’s changed since then, hasn’t it? I didn’t feel right about it then either, by the way, not that I imagine my objection went as deep as yours.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Nothing I can tell you about in words.’

  She seemed to consider for a moment, then began unhooking her dress.

  Gordon had not been much taken with his last remark, had indeed been somewhat relieved to find Joanna apparently prepared to tolerate it. At the same time he had tried to excuse himself to himself with the thought that he had had to say something to that effect and had at least been in earnest when he spoke. He had another thing he wanted to tell Joanna, much more serious and unsayable, to do with him and her. Too many bad people had used the words in question, too many people both bad and good had used them lightly, too many people had used them. Nor could he get round the point that to tell her what he wanted to tell her conferred obligations on him, obligations he had not attended to enough. When was he going to have attended to them so? And if there was a strong case here and now for not saying the unsayable, there was a stronger one for not letting it go unsaid. He would have liked to say it without thinking, but unfortunately it was too late for that. At least he had never said it before.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  At his side, Joanna said nothing, not even a word of acknowledgement, nor did she move at all. She was either asleep or what was in effect the same thing, closed for maintenance. Never mind, having said it once he would of necessity find it easier to say a second, a third, an nth time. He was pleased all right and knew he always would be to have got it said, but felt already something of the full force of those obligations, which he resented not at all but was a little scared of. Then there was the question, most easily imagined being asked in his father’s voice, of why the hell he had got himself so deeply involved in a social class whose code of behaviour, if any, was to say the least not the one he had been brought up in. The only comforting thing about that problem was that its still sizeable interest was now largely academic.

  ‘What about that cup of tea?’ asked Joanna.

  ‘I’d rather have a drink.’

  ‘So would I.’

  ‘You stay there, I’ll get them.’

  23

  Gordon had sufficiently mastered the posh code of behaviour, and had enough sense, to be aware that in such circles knowing something was not the same as avowing knowledge of it. So Jimmie must beyond doubt have had a working knowledge of how matters stood between his wife and his biographer, but for reasons of his own had chosen not to be seen to allow this to colour his behaviour. Meanwhile, in other words while this professed ignorance lasted, there was plenty for Gordon to get on with.

  For example, whatever anybody might say or not say they believed, there was still some sort of book about the life and works of JRP Fane to be got into a publishable state. More immediately than that, the very next morning, Monday, was scheduled as an occasion when Gordon should report his progress in the matter.

  Back in his flat now, he got up early, something that proved unexpectedly easy, and settled down to the task of recording in abbreviated form what Jimmie had told him during the Saturday afternoon just past. At the same time he had found, sensed, a kind of forlorn, dried-up romanticism in Jimmie’s professed feeling for the Tennyson of In Memoriam and in Tennyson’s own feelings for t
he so prematurely dead and endlessly mourned Arthur Hallam. But now Gordon found it impossible to recapture that softer aspect and was driven up against the coarseness of fact. But he noted down as much as he remembered and hoped that something would return to him in the interval that must elapse before he should commit himself to a final version.

  Since Gordon had last come to his office, Brian Harris had had his hair cut and had shaved a mere couple of days earlier. Though still of course tieless he was wearing the sort of shirt whose neck could without implausibility be encircled by a tie. For a couple of weeks now he had seemed to be not so much smartening himself up as pursuing a more house-trained image. Already he would have passed the head waiter’s inspection at any but the least innovative London restaurants. Perhaps, knowingly or unknowingly, he was helping to start a trend.

  After some preliminaries he said to Gordon, ‘I read that stuff you sent last week,’ as if it was a mark of unusual favour for him to have done so.

  ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘We’ll come to that in a minute if that’s all right. In your covering letter you said something about perhaps wanting more time for delivery. Is that still the position?’

  ‘If not more so. Fresh material keeps turning up.’

  ‘That’s good, I’m glad to hear it, but on the understanding we publish in the autumn of next year, then we’ll need to have your final manuscript by the end of this coming October. That’ll be our real deadline.’

  Without having had much in the way of direct dealings with publishers, Gordon knew enough about their behaviour to understand that in their world a real deadline was no more a real deadline than a manuscript was expected to be handwritten and that, after months of futile attempts to produce a cover design and of damaging the text by subjecting it to the expert attention of copy-editors, a proof rich in imported error would emerge accompanied by an unapologetic note requiring its return corrected by first light the following morning. But he also knew enough to say no more than that he thought he understood the position.