His forehead furrowed. 'I don't know if Gigi would have liked children. I've always left it up to her to raise the subject, but she's never brought it up. Which makes me wonder if it's a painful area. Do you get the impression it's a deep regret,Tony?'
Tony said,'I haven't asked her about it.'
'But you'll have to, won't you?'
'It's something I'll need to get on to, I guess.' He drank again, somewhat less gingerly.
'Of course, there's no doubt Mischa would have regarded the whole idea of children with complete horror. He never wanted to be tied down at all.That was why he came to home ownership so late. He was fifty-five by then, you know. He'd been a young man in the swinging '60s – well, I suppose they did the odd bit of swinging behind the Iron Curtain, by osmosis – and he saw the whole domesticity thing as dangerously stultifying.'
Rollo cast a complacent eye over his surroundings. 'Whereas his nibs and I were suckers for the nesting. We didn't hesitate when we saw this place, even though it looked like the aftermath of the bombing of Dresden back then. But, you know, I think Mischa came to see that settling down here brought a surprising freedom in its wake, whereas the old life of endlessly trudging from one place to the next had been quite restrictive, in its own way. That's how life often works, I've found, Tony. Through a series of paradoxes.'
They both jumped at the blast of a peremptory baritone. 'Rollo, are you still breathing in there, or have you died?'
Guy swung through the internal door that connected the chapel with the house, pugs snorting at his heels, and raised an eyebrow at the reclining couple on the sofa.'Why are you lurking when you could be having a bracing drink on the terrace with a ravishing view? Get a move on, Gigi's already there.We've laid on a good sunset for you,Tony.'
Rollo drained his glass and extended an arm. Guy took the empty glass with one hand and heaved him to his feet with the other.
'What was the name of that exhibition in Paris where we first met Gigi and Mischa?'
Guy ruminated. 'It was a photographic show. Landscapes or nature, by someone with an odd name. An American.What was it? You'd know him,Tony.'
'Landscapes or nature. Not Man Ray then. Stieglitz? Ansel Adams? Minor White?'
Rollo struck his chest. 'Minor White, the very one. I should have known because I bought a postcard emblazoned with a quote by him. I had it stuck up there,' he pointed to a cork noticeboard layered with cuttings and photos,'for years."Be still with yourself",it said,"until the subject affirms its presence".Then we had the great Ice Age of 1985. You've heard of that, I expect? It's when all the hundred-year-old olive trees died. Half the roof fell in here and Mr Minor's majorly apposite words got washed away.'
Guy blew a raspberry.'Having affirmed its presence the subject disintegrated.'
'He may scoff but it spoke to me, that quote,Tony, and it speaks to me yet. I'm going to have to write it down and pin it up again. It's very high on the quotable quote meter. Never underestimate the value of an improving homily,Tony.'
There was another snort from his left. Tony made a note. 'I must remember to ask Mischa about the quotes in his life.'
'Forget it,' Guy said.'Mischa's not into self-improvement.'
Tony stopped to give Rollo's corkboard the once-over on the way out. He saw photos whose colours were fading to sepia, faces he recognised lunching al fresco under the vines. There were some statuesque lifesavers on Bondi Beach, newspaper cartoons, and postcards of works by Cézanne, Goya and Morandi.
A saucy seaside postcard from England engaged his eye, a woman with a bulbous cleavage standing on a staircase next to an undersized, goggle-eyed man. She was saying,'I'll just slide down the banister and warm up the supper.'
Directly below this was a postcard from a French series, with a quote from Cocteau.It read,'Whatever they criticise you for, intensify it.'
Guy saw him looking at this one.'The story of his life.'
'Tony and I were having an in-depth confab before he came barging in and ruined it,' Rollo said to Greer.'It started off all highbrow and arty and then segued into the realm of intimate relationships.We've enjoyed a deep and meaningful bonding,haven't we,Tony?'
Guy yawned as he levered open a bottle of prosecco rosé.'Well,don't inflict it on us,for God's sake.Anything but art and relationships.We think even the bloody bio is preferable to that lot, don't we?'
Eyeing Tony, who was smiling, Greer said, 'I'm not so sure that we do.'Tony returned the look and laughed.
They had ventured on to the western terrace, a small paved extension of Rollo and Guy's garden, to catch the dying rays. There were four or five iron chairs around a marble-topped table. Guy had brought out a tray of glasses and a two bowls of nibbles. He poured four flutes of the sparkling blush-coloured wine, handing Greer hers first.
'Here's to the damn thing anyhow,' Guy said. He clinked glasses with Greer and Rollo.'Tony's bloody bio.'
'And all who sail in her,' Greer added, telling herself, I will be upbeat.
'Aren't I allowed to drink to that?' inquired Tony.
'Oh no, it's very bad form to drink to your own bio,' Rollo said. He turned to Greer. 'Is Tony going to be in it, darling? Will it be a gonzo type of thing? A bit sluttish and postmodernist,like Hunter S.Thompson?'
'God knows,' Greer said. 'If he's planning a personal appearance he hasn't told me.'
'What do you know about postmodernism?' Guy was demanding of Rollo.'Let alone the tedious Hunter S.T.? He was just a jumped-up T. Capote. It's pathetic, isn't it? By the time he catches on to these terms and gets round to dropping them in a vain attempt to keep up, they've become obsolete.We're into the post-postmodernism now.Verging on the ultra-post-post. Everyone knows that.'
Tony had sat himself down on the low stone parapet facing the other three. It was unexpectedly mild and he had rolled up his sleeves to the elbow. His blond hair, with the sun's rays catching it from behind, gave his head a lustrous golden crown. Greer thought, he knows. He's sat there on purpose, to give himself a halo.
'It can't resist a little carp, can it?' Rollo was saying amiably.'Listen to it carping over a perfectly reasonable and well-informed question.Where a biographer plonks himself in relation to the material affects everything else, I should have thought.'
'Quite right, Rollo, and it's funny you should ask that,' Tony said, swinging his legs, 'because I'm considering writing it the way the research has unfolded – is still unfolding,' his quick glance at Greer was like an afterthought, 'in real life. Some of it in the present tense, like interviews and observations.That way the reader will be in on the action.'
Greer looked away. She had a new taste in her mouth, a bilious taste which was nothing to do with the prosecco.
'Do you mean a Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil kind of thing, where the author's one of the luvvies?' Rollo was attending to this closely and leaning forward in his chair, which brought his face close to Tony's crotch.
'Well, very vaguely, yeah.'
'I liked that.Good, cleanish fun, I thought. Nice juicy characters.'
'Of course, mine's a biography rather than a gothic detective yarn.'Tony grinned impartially at the three of them.
'Still, you wouldn't mind those sales, would you?' Rollo looked at Greer.'I suggested it for your book reading group, didn't I, and they thought it was a very good tip. Did you know Gigi was in one of those,Tony? You could sit in on a meeting, only they won't allow males in. It's full of formidable females with alarming erudition.'
He winked at Greer. 'She's a very intelligent woman, Gigi, you know.'
'Oh yeah, I think I'm allowed to drink to that.' Tony raised his glass and clinked hers before she could take evasive action.
'She's not one of your common or garden artisans,' Rollo jerked an expressive thumb at Guy, 'like some we could name.'
Guy was leaning back in his chair with a practised air of ennui.'Here we go.'
'In fact she came to the wine bizzo quite late in the piece. Have you told Tony about your cou
p de palate, darling?'
She shook her head.
'She's far too modest and self-effacing. I'd better fill you in.Women have an extra layer of skin and can hear higher notes than men, so they probably have more tastebuds as well, don't you think,Tony?' He began to recount at some length the story of Greer's performance in the original blind tea-tasting.
Guy interrupted. 'Americans don't understand tea and they're obdurate in their ignorance, so this means zilch to him.You put hot, not even boiling, water in a cup and when it's lukewarm you add a teabag.Right,Tony?'
'Let him finish,' Tony protested, 'he's trying to educate me out of these brutish habits. So, what's the verdict? Do you put the milk in before or after for peak performance?'
'The jury's still out,' Guy barged in again.'It was the best kind of experiment because it had a definite result that was totally inconclusive.'
Rollo brandished a bowl of brazil nuts in his face.'Here, chew on some nice big nuts.You might like some too,Tony. Getting back to the bloody bio, so you're really going to be a major character in it, are you? I'm not sure I'd want that in mine.'
'Well, only in the sense that I'm the guy collecting and synthesising the material,'Tony demurred.'Comes of being a control freak, I guess. Someone has to do it.'
'Aren't you risking a titanic clash of egos: writer and subject?'
'I'm sure Tony sublimates his swingeing ego in his work,' Guy said. 'Like you don't.' He turned to Tony. 'Remind me to tell you my theory of painters. It's better when he's not interminably trying to get his end in.Are you monopolising Tony tonight, G.?'
'I hope not.' She threw Tony a derisory look. 'We haven't booked him.'
Tony said,'I've got some stuff to do,but after that –'
'You can tell him now, if you like,' Rollo interposed genially.'I don't need to get my end in any more, unlike you. Mind you, he's not very scientific,Tony. His theories are best kept off the record.'
Tony grinned. 'Allow me to be the judge of that. The record's ready and waiting, Guy.'
'Good, because this is well researched. Fruit of a lifetime's interminable observation.' Guy was topping up Tony's glass. 'All successful artistes, Tony, have five per cent talent and ninety-five per cent self-belief.You need a messianic ego to succeed. Mischa never wavers. Rollo veers uncontrollably between massive self-doubt and revolting smugness. But the massive self-doubt is simply self-obsession in another guise.'
'Uh-huh. What's your take on this, Rollo? There's no truth in it, is there?'
Rollo looked blasé.'It's just another way of putting the old inspiration-perspiration, isn't it? A mantra for all shapes and sizes is a suspect mantra, but if it makes him happy.'
'He means, it's true of Mischa but not of him,' Guy said rudely.
Tony said to Greer, 'Is it primarily an ego thing with Mischa? Ninety-five per cent talent apart, I mean.'
She was still processing Tony's laconic disclosure. If he said he was thinking about putting himself into the biography it meant he was doing it.
Tony turned to the others, shaking his head, 'I don't know about you guys, but this man's a huge puzzle to me. Sure, he works of his own volition, but it's like the driving force comes from somewhere outside of himself. I kind of think self-belief is an irrelevance with Mischa. I'm not convinced it's even a part of his equation.'
He looked at Greer again with eyebrows raised. 'Does that make any sense?'
She said,'Not a conscious part of his equation,anyhow.' She thought, I can't bear this young man. My violent mistrust is so palpable I must be giving it off like an odour; the others must sense it. But even Rollo seems oblivious.
Rollo thrust his empty glass at Guy.'Do you know what I think? Having your bio written is a bit like being outed. Mischa's in the process of being outed by Tony.Tony can say anything he likes about him in the book. Any way-out theory that takes his fancy. He's – what do they call it in spy thrillers – he's running him.Tony's Mischa's control.'
He gave Greer a stealthy glance she couldn't quite interpret. She thought, Rollo is unusually tipsy tonight. Before Tony could reply, Guy came charging in again. 'The life belongs to the biographer: discuss, with relevance to film noir.'
Rollo's eyes, for the first time, betrayed a flicker of annoyance.
Tony laughed.'These days the life absolutely belongs to the filmmaker.'
'You're from LA, aren't you, Tony?' Rollo said, with another look askance at Greer.'Ah,but you'll never sell the rights to this one.Will he,darling? It's far too straitlaced for a Hollywood fillum.They couldn't raise the money. No one would go.'
'Don't be obtuse, Roly. They'll ditch Mischa and give the lubricious yet intrepid young biographer the lead. Anything they need in surplus raunch they can make up, like they always do.' Guy gazed skywards.'How can I have been shackled to someone for so long and him remain so naïve?'
'You can't make a movie where all the prime movers are still living and litigious,'Rollo objected.'You see,I'm not as naïve as I look.'
Tony nodded. 'It's true, I found most of the people on my A-list were still around and kicking butt. Far more than I thought there'd be.'
'That's what a young man thinks,' Rollo said. 'Just because his subject is of mature years he expects all the suspects to have kicked the bucket, but we're kicking butt instead.' He sniggered at the others. 'In a bit of an arthritic way.Especially we lucky old A-listers.Although if you don't get cracking with me soon you might lose your chance.'
He threw Tony a roguish look. 'And there might be a marked shortage of bean spillers to interview.You could be confronting a pitiful paucity, couldn't he, Guy? Dear old Dottie Swannage knows a thing or two about me, but she can't last for ever. My colleague here will fill you in,' he beamed at Guy, who grimaced at Tony, 'but you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. It's always a mistake to think one person can be the repository of all the secrets.'
He took a handful of Brazil nuts and crunched them with relish.
Tony said,'Right.And if it weren't for the new breed of lubricious yet intrepid young biographers I represent, all those secrets might never get out.' He remained deadpan for a few beats, his blue eyes alighting on Guy, then Rollo, and finally Greer, before the onset of the guileless grin she expected.
Greer watched the two older men succumbing to the embrace of his boyish, inclusive charm. As she stood up to leave them she thought, he is deliberately driving me away.
16
'Rollo is different when he's not around Guy,' Tony dictated. 'More serious-minded and thoughtful. Yeah, and perceptive. He's a shrewd cookie all right. Guy's the same whoever he's with. Ditto Mischa.They both have emphatic personalities that are kind of indelible and not susceptible to fine tuning. Not spectacularly responsive to the sensitivities of others. Greer, on the other hand –'
He stopped. As he spoke he rocked backwards and forwards in his chair and flicked through the glossy pages of a book on Sicilian wines he had picked off the shelf in his sitting room.It was inscribed by its English author:'To Gigi and Guy, santé santissima! With lots of love from Kate.'
'When Rollo talked about how artists put their work first, I went, yeah. But then I thought: is that totally accurate here? Maybe Mischa's only been able to do this because his top priority is sorted.'
He replayed these two sentences twice, listening to them with an air of surprise, toying with his hair.Then he added, 'Could be that's the higher truth. All those years before he met her, he didn't get much done. He did zilch. He was all over the place.
'She's something else. Impossibly hard for me to get a handle on because she's so internalised, suspicious, guarded and uptight. I get little insights of what she's like with other people. She and Rollo are as thick as thieves. I think they get from each other what they don't get from their partners. Interesting he'd say she's the best judge of Mischa's pictures, because she doesn't care to analyse them to me. Has a real resistance to it. She's either got no talent for it or she's frightened by it. She doesn't like me one little
bit.What do I think of her? I'm not sure. I provoke her, but I guess I'm kind of neutral about her.'
He pushed the chair back as far as it would go, pressing his heels to the floor.
'We're closing in on the nitty-gritty. Like they say, something's gotta give.All the balls are in my court,and she knows that. I think we need to move things along. It may be a matter of forcing the issue into the open.'
He took his feet off the floor and the chair pitched forwards. It was an old bentwood rocker festooned with fringed suede cushions.
'The timing means it may need to be me who breaks the deadlock, because she knows she's in deep shit but I don't think her pride will allow her to dig herself out of it. Do I have any qualms? Well, hell, I think I may do, actually. Half of one, maybe. I find that kind of surprising. Does it mean I'm more ambivalent than neutral?'
He gave a short laugh and switched off the dictaphone, then flicked it on again and added: 'It means I have mixed feelings rather than no feelings at all. Is that a small step for a man or a giant moral leap?'
The following night he was surprised by a meal cooked by Mischa. The three of them ate casually at one end of the kitchen table, separated by candles and a pot of yellow jonquils. We're having a barbecue tonight, Greer had informed Tony. Mischa is quite a whiz at the barbecue.You can see another side of him.
Tony stayed outside with Mischa on the south terrace below the house, and observed him setting the outdoor fire-place with balls of newspaper and a tent of twigs. Mischa used a single match to light it, then added branches of aromatic wood from a stack of cut logs. When the flames had settled down and the coals were glowing he laid out three freshwater trout on a rack.The fish had been stuffed with breadcrumbs, garlic and rosemary and brushed with olive oil and lemon. Spring vegetables dipped in oil and garlic and threaded with thyme were heaped up ready to be grilled on the side.
The Biographer Page 24
