A Dog's Life

by Paul Bailey

  I made the acquaintance of other writers – most notably Angus Wilson, who had introduced me to Elizabeth Bowen and been characteristically kind, and Iris Murdoch, whom I had met on a tour of the Midlands organized by the Arts Council. One night, in Knutsford – the origin of Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford – an overdressed woman in the front room of the church hall announced that she hadn’t heard of the three men on the panel but simply adored Miss Murdoch’s novels. ‘Why is that?’ Iris demanded, out of curiosity. ‘Oh, because they’re so predictable,’ the woman replied. ‘That isn’t much of a compliment,’ Iris snapped. The woman was relentless in her misplaced enthusiasm. ‘I mean, I feel so at home in them. You seem to have written them with me in mind. I always know where I am.’ This was insupportable to Iris, who muttered ‘Stupid cow’ under her breath and invited a sensible question from somebody else.

  Iris was to use that expression again, at a party she gave in her London pied-à-terre. A rather butch ex-nun was telling anyone who could be cajoled into listening that she was now a painter. She wore a smock for emphasis. She had doubts about her new vocation. ‘Is there any point in painting after Titian?’ she wondered aloud to everybody she met. Before one could respond with a reasoned ‘Well…’ she had answered the question herself: ‘Of course there isn’t.’ As she became more and more drunk, the rhetorical question took on a defiant note. ‘Is there any point in painting,’ she boomed, ‘after Titian?’ I seem to recall a brave soul quietly remarking that Rembrandt and Goya came after Titian, but she was drowned out with an assertive ‘Of course there isn’t.’ Two hours later, when it was time to leave, the painter was reeling, and still muttering the name of Titian. We were standing in the hallway, saying our goodbyes to Iris, when the painter, pointing at a bowl of red roses, exclaimed: ‘What beautiful flowers, Iris. Who gave them to you?’ The reply was immediate, and brusque: ‘You did, you stupid cow.’

  In 1976, I went to live in America, where I remained for almost three years. In the summer of 1977, Iris invited David to her annual party. He arrived in some trepidation, not being at ease among intellectuals. The small flat was crammed with people, none of whom he recognized. It was then, with some relief, that he noticed the famous poet and his wife in a far corner. He made his way towards them and said hello. The poet, looking down on him, asked ‘Do we know you?’ and David answered yes. He reminded the couple that they had dined with us in our first flat, and then how he had rescued the wife’s meal when the taunts of Mr Amis had driven her into a state of near-panic. These calmly pronounced reminders made no impression on the pair, who began scanning the company for someone else to talk to. David walked away from them and out of the party.

  (I had assumed, wrongly it seems, that David had told them, in very precise Anglo-Saxon terms, where to get off. A friend who was lodging in our Hammersmith house at the time assures me that David returned home early in a state of shock and disbelief. He had been wounded by their snubbing of him, offended deeply by their haughty rudeness. He had left them in silence, his dignity intact.)

  ‘I hear enough about books and writers,’ David would declare, on opening the front door to Angus (always accompanied by his companion, Tony Garrett) or to Iris (who often came alone). Since the other guests were not literary types, the conversation ranged over a variety of topics. Iris never cared to talk about herself or her work, and was happy to ask questions, beginning with ‘And what do you do?’ Angus, by contrast, adored being the centre of attention, and allowed David to tease him and even, on one occasion, tell him he was talking bollocks. ‘I do like your wicked friend,’ Angus once confided. ‘But he’s bad for me. He makes me feel so camp.’

  I remember two dinner parties made hellish by the self-importance of authors. Both occurred towards the end of David’s life, when his cooking was unsurpassable. I had admired a certain biographer for many years, but nothing in her writing prepared us for the onslaught of egoism we were subjected to that night. She made no comment on the food David had prepared with such devoted skill, and assumed he was a hired chef, to judge by her parting words to me. She arrived late, barged into the sitting room and demanded, in stentorian tones, if anyone present knew anything about death by drowning. A stunned silence ensued. It was her theory – a theory that dominated the conversation for virtually the whole evening – that Virginia Woolf had not committed suicide. Au contraire– Leonard had murdered her, dragged her body down to the river, weighted it with stones (the very stones found in her pockets) and ditched it into the water. It made sense, she maintained, at length. Leonard was Jewish and his wife famously anti-Semitic. What better reason had he for killing her?

  That evening, however, was – in retrospect – a mere foretaste of the horror to come. An old and dear friend of mine had developed an interest in the copious writings of an American named May Sarton, a tireless diarist, autobiographer, novelist and poet. She and Sarton had corresponded, and a friendship of sorts had begun. I was in Nairn, in the far north of Scotland, working on the opening chapters of my novel Gabriel’s Lament when a parcel containing a selection from Sarton’s vast output arrived. I took time off from writing to read a novel – I have forgotten the title though not, alas, the content – about an elderly woman being placed in an institution. I found the book insufferably sentimental. The central character is a saintly victim in a world of cruel doctors and nurses. My own first novel, At the Jerusalem, is concerned with an irritable and irritating widow coping with life in a home, surrounded by people who are neither saints nor demons. I phoned my dear friend and asked her what crime I had perpetrated to merit the punishment of having to read such twaddle. She advised me to turn to the diaries. I did so, but not for long. I soon wearied of details of book-signings and meetings with her devoted readers, who were all women and mostly lesbian. There were no insights into the work of other writers, and the bland prose was completely devoid of those charm-free asides that inform the liveliest published diaries – like those of the composer Ned Rorem, for example, who finds space in the latest entertaining volumes to savage each new work by his self-appointed rival Elliott Carter.

  Four months before Circe came into our lives, May Sarton turned up in London to give a talk to her women admirers and sign copies of her recent books. My old friend, knowing my views on all matters Sartonian, was nevertheless pleased when David and I suggested that she invite Sarton and her travelling companion to dinner. I bought a brace of pheasants from the butcher we patronized in Soho. (Reg, who always served me, was in the habit of saying, during the game season, ‘Hello, Paul, do you fancy a large cock?’ The other customers at the counter were often startled by this question and by my enthusistic reply in the affirmative.)

  I feel somewhat like Conrad’s Marlow, the measured remembrancer of futility and despair, as I think back to that grim November evening. The chain-smoking, hard-drinking Sarton was in a belligerent mood from the outset. I had been told of her fondness for Scotch whisky, and duly filled a tumbler for her. She dispatched it down her throat with surprising speed. Her companion Edythe (felicitous spelling) drank moderately and said very little because Sarton gave her no opportunity to express anything as controversial as an opinion. My old friend tried to ease the tension that was steadily building up.

  Introductions were made. The already tipsy Sarton mistook Lisa, the actress who lived on the ground floor, for a novelist, and assumed that I was an actor. The full nature of her confusion struck me when I expressed cautious enthusiasm for the writer Jayne Anne Phillips, whose first collection of short stories I had just read. ‘Nobody takes the literary judgements of actors seriously,’ she declared. I was too astonished to continue.

  David listened intently as the diarist launched herself into a litany of self-praise. We heard that May Sarton was more than a mere novelist or poet. Sackloads of letters from lonely women reached her home in Maine by every post, and she replied to each one personally.

  Breaking the silence that followed these revelations, she turned to Lisa and
enquired, ‘What kind of books do you write?’

  Lisa laughed, and said she was an actress, and that I was the writer in the house.

  ‘You’re not an actor?’ The gruff voice sounded angry for some unaccountable reason.

  ‘I was. A long time ago. I’m a novelist.’

  It had taken almost an hour to establish this. I wondered if, from now on, any literary judgement I might venture would be treated seriously, not cursorily dismissed. In one of her volumes of autobiography, Sarton had boasted of a night of sexual – and presumably drunken – euphoria with Elizabeth Bowen. I mentioned, casually, that I had met the great author at a party shortly before her death. I had been tongue-tied in her presence, but she was gracious and charming in the face of my awkwardness as she sat on the sofa in the publisher’s office in Soho.

  ‘I knew Elizabeth very well,’ Sarton announced. ‘Very well indeed.’

  That was another show-stopper. Sarton’s proffered glass was refilled. It was clear to me that she wanted us to praise her writing. I am no stranger to deviousness, but I have never been able to pretend to admire work I consider second-rate. It does not follow that an inferior writer must of necessity be an inferior person. I had hoped, against the written evidence, that Sarton would prove to be interesting at least. Fond hope.

  We sat down to eat. Edythe praised the smoked salmon mousse, which Sarton picked at. She was now consuming wine with the same fervour she had applied to the whisky. Trouble seemed to be looming with each intake. She had begun to glower. She offered no comment on the pheasant, which Edythe again was the first to praise, but complained instead of the terrible burden she had to fulfil by responding personally to the thousands of letters she received every year. There were days when she had no time for her own work.

  ‘When I get back to Maine, there’ll be hundreds of the damned things waiting for me.’

  ‘I’ve only read two of your books,’ Lisa remarked. ‘I can’t understand why so many people write to you or why you have to reply to them.’

  Sarton, enraged, banged both fists on the table.

  ‘If you’d bothered to read the other forty, you would understand,’ she bellowed.

  ‘Could we keep the decibels down a little?’ David asked, while Sarton snorted.

  ‘Shut up,’ she shouted, glowering at Lisa. ‘I’m talking. You’re only the cook.’

  The moment I had dreaded had come. But David surprised me. He took off his apron and placed it carefully on the back of a chair. He walked over to the dining table and looked straight at Sarton, who was still fuming. He spoke quietly but firmly.

  ‘You are without doubt the rudest, the most egotistical, monstrous human being I have ever met.’

  ‘He doesn’t like me,’ Sarton wailed, her gravelly voice sounding almost girlish.

  David went downstairs and phoned a close friend, whom he regaled with a detailed report on the behaviour of our guest of honour.

  I served the dessert. ‘It’s delicious,’ said the ever-placatory Edythe.

  Sarton pushed the plate away from her. She was in need of the last word, and here it came, deafeningly. ‘I get the impression that no one in this house likes writers.’

  It was impossible for David not to hear this. ‘Too fucking right,’ he called up the stairwell.

  It was time for Sarton and Edythe to go, even though the proud author of forty books was spoiling for a real fight. My friend rang for a taxi, which came in ten minutes, to the relief of everybody but the disgruntled writer. Lisa and I said goodbye to Edythe, and tried to say goodbye to May Sarton, but she was muttering to herself and swaying from the drink she had knocked back with such determination.

  ‘I feared something like this would happen,’ Edythe confided in my old friend as they descended the stairs to the street.

  We had a post-mortem. Had David met Sarton five years earlier, he would have frogmarched her out of the house. He could laugh now, which he did as the four of us repeated the various slights and insults Sarton had bestowed on the company for nearly three hours.

  Sarton sent me a Christmas card, with one of her execrable poems on the back. She thanked a fellow writer for a memorable meal. The cook had been ignored once again. That she hadn’t registered, in her self-absorption, what the kindly Edythe had clearly seen – that the man who cooked the dinner was terminally ill – is a horrible fact which continues to shock me. She hadn’t noticed his gaunt eyes and sunken cheeks. Her mind was on those letters that had to be answered personally.

  David’s oldest and staunchest friend, Bill Pashley, told me recently of their first meeting in the late 1950s. David was working as a barman in a gay club called The Calabash, which was situated – until it was raided by the police and closed – in a back street in South Kensington. Bill was sitting in the club one evening chatting to an acquaintance when he saw that the voluble young man behind the bar was making everybody laugh.

  ‘Who’s he?’ Bill asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t have anything to do with him, if I were you. He’s dangerous.’

  It was that single word – ‘dangerous’ – that drew Bill to David. He went across to the bar and introduced himself. Bill’s self-deprecating humour and gift for recognizing and then mocking pomposity and pretentiousness greatly appealed to David, whose own talent for trenchant piss-taking was similar to his.

  Bill, who now makes wedding dresses for the daughters of the titled and wealthy, only once shared a workroom with David. That once was more than enough. David created an atmosphere about him that was electric, nothing less, and Bill’s placid temperament couldn’t cope with it. Others could, and for them it was a source of inspiration, a challenge to give of their best.

  ‘Are you always so charming, or is today a special occasion?’ This was his standby question, delivered with an ingratiating smile, in the face of downright rudeness. He employed it for as long as I knew him, and I delighted in watching the reactions of those to whom it was addressed. People who make a habit of being insulting to their supposed inferiors tend not to have a capacity for self-deflation, and it was with a certain keen pleasure that I became aware how many of them actually thought they were charming, believing what David had said to be true.

  David and I went about our different sexual ways eventually, but continued to live together. I still laugh when I remember his simple, but invariably successful, seduction technique. ‘Have you ever thought of having your trousers hand-made?’ he would remark, en passant, to the policeman – he specialized in policemen – or taxi driver, or labourer he had invited in for the ubiquitous ‘quick coffee’. The reply was always the same. ‘I couldn’t afford it, mate. Don’t have that kind of money.’

  ‘My prices are very reasonable. Why don’t I measure you anyway?’

  Then he produced the tape measure, rather like a magician surprised to see a rabbit in his hat, and a few minutes of careful measuring would lead to the desired goal.

  I was alone in the house when a woman from the wardrobe department at BBC Television phoned. She needed a piece of material urgently. She described it to me – the precise colour and pattern – and I went into his cluttered workroom to search for it. I did find it, and the woman said she would send a courier to pick it up. I also found something else that day – the evidence of his serious, private drinking. Underneath the scattered piles of silks and cottons were dozens of empty gin bottles, mostly miniatures. Why hadn’t he thrown them out with the rubbish? Had he wanted me to discover them?

  He lived in fear of contracting Huntington’s chorea, and steadily killed himself in the process. It took a long time for his work to deteriorate, and when it did he was too blinded by gin to understand why no one was phoning him, apart from a couple of loyal friends who gave him the odd, relatively small, commission.

  He had money troubles, too, even when he was in constant employment. Organizations like the BBC, the famous opera houses and theatrical managements seldom pay on delivery, and he often waited weeks or months for his ch
eque. I recall that once, exasperated beyond the limit of his limited patience, he made himself some sandwiches and mixed gin with tonic in a bottle and set off for the offices of the theatre company that owed him thousands of pounds. He arrived there at nine-thirty in the morning and sat himself down opposite the secretary who had been assuring him for six months that the cheque was on her desk ready to be signed by her boss, who seemed to be permanently absent.

  ‘I am going to sit here until he signs it. I’ve brought my food and drink. If I have to go to the lavatory, I shall do it on the carpet. That’s a promise.’

  The secretary made a series of frantic phone calls before she located the head of the company. She told him that things were desperate. The man appeared at noon and observed that he regarded David’s behaviour as beneath contempt. He signed the cheque.

  ‘May I use your telephone?’ David enquired, with feigned politeness. ‘What’s the number of your bank? It would be so inconvenient if this bounced.’

  David learned that there were sufficient funds in the account, while the terrified secretary and the apoplectic manager looked on. And with the words ‘Quoth the raven’ he left the premises.

  He was not to be so belatedly fortunate with the management that staged the ill-fated musical Barnardo, about the Victorian philanthropist who founded the homes for orphaned children. This was a huge undertaking for David, so large in fact that he required the assistance of three friends whom he promised to pay handsomely. There was an initial payment. After weeks of day-and-night activity the costumes were finished and delivered. The show opened to blisteringly bad reviews. The management was forced into receivership. The cast refused to perform one night, and money was somehow found for them. They were the only people to be paid. David was never to receive the £10,000 owing to him. Yet he honoured the agreement with his friends, though it took months of back-breaking labour to do so.