The Biographer’s Moustache. Kingsley Amis

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СКАЧАТЬ when I wiped somebody’s eye it stayed wiped. That unspeakable wine I offered was by way of getting back at Bagshot for the vile Peruvian red he gave us the last time we dined with him. He saw that all right, which was why he didn’t make more of a fuss. Oh, and if you’re worried about young Carlo, that count person, he doesn’t care or notice what he drinks. Where he comes from one can’t afford to.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘I think now we might rejoin the others,’ said Jimmie, rising to his feet. ‘Give me a telephone call, will you?’

      Gordon likewise rose. ‘I will. I’ll also send you my c.v.’

      ‘Send me your what?’

      ‘My c.v. My curriculum vitae.’ He pronounced the first word like curriculum and the second like vee-tye.

      ‘Your what?’

      Gordon said it again and added, ‘Meaning a dated account of what I’ve done and written if anything and where I’ve worked and such. So you’ll have it by you, what there is of it.’

      ‘Oh, presumably you mean a curriculum vitae,’ said Jimmie, pronouncing the first word like curriculum and the second like vie-tee.

      ‘Yes, if you prefer.’

      ‘I do prefer if it’s all the same to you. Since we’re supposedly talking English rather than Latin or Italian. Yes I agree I know what you meant the first time but then one often infers as much from a grunt or a whinny and that’s no argument for conducting one’s discourse wholly or even partly in a series of approximations and lucky guesses. I hope you take my point?’

      ‘Yes I do.’ Gordon spoke with some warmth. He was relieved not to be called upon to repeat the phrase in its preferred pronunciation slowly after Jimmie.

      ‘Good. Can I tempt you to a glass of port?’

      ‘No thank you.’

      ‘I think I’ll let myself be tempted. I should give it up but I can’t. No – cannot is false; I will not give it up.’ Jimmie gave a smile that only the literal-minded would have hesitated to call charming. ‘We’ll have some fun with this business.’

      ‘Indeed we will.’

      The rest of the company had split into two, or two and a half. The half was Lady Bagshot, who was sitting near but not with Joanna Fane and Louise and was conscientiously working her way through her half-bottle of vodka. Another drink like the one she had just poured herself would get her there with no more than a heeltap left over. Her current drink, as she took a mouthful, looked quite small beside the vastness of her face. By the window the still-vigilant count let Lord Bagshot go on telling him all about somebody’s house, it might have been his own. Gordon went over to Louise and Joanna, who looked up expectantly.

      ‘Well?’ they both asked, and Joanna added, ‘I’ve been hearing.’

      ‘The answer’s yes.’

      ‘I knew it,’ 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.’

4

      ‘Darling, СКАЧАТЬ