The Biographer’s Moustache

by Kingsley Amis

  Joanna came back with the fresh drinks. One of her shirtsleeves had become unbuttoned and he saw the faint hairs on her forearm.

  ‘Where’s Jimmie today?’ he asked when she was settled in a dull-green cushiony chair near him.

  ‘He’s in Cambridge, having lunch with the Master or the Warden of somewhere in college. He does manage to get some strange people to give him lunch.’

  ‘I didn’t think they put on that sort of lunch in colleges any more.’

  ‘All right, it was just going to be drinks beforehand and then lunch somewhere else. Don’t be so bloody literal, Thompson, or whatever your name is.’

  ‘Sorry. Anyway cheers, Joanna.’ Gordon raised his glass briefly.

  ‘I was thinking about your moustache while I was over there sawing away at that lemon.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I decided you ought to shave it off. What induced you to grow it anyway? It’s not as if you’re short or round-shouldered or anything like that.’

  ‘I suppose you could say it goes back in time to when somebody told me I had a boring face.’

  ‘A female somebody, I presume. Come on, darling, she was only trying to get a rise out of you.’

  ‘I’d been thinking rather along those lines myself, but I didn’t actually start growing it until –’

  ‘I’ve heard exactly the right amount about your moustache. There’s only one thing about it that still interests me, and that’s got to do with what some other female it must have been a long time ago like before the first war or even earlier said that being kissed by a man without a moustache was like having to eat a boiled egg without salt.’

  The ensuing pause was quite brief, but it was long enough for several thoughts, if the word could be stretched so that it included mere inchoate scraps of fancy, to pass through his head at a brisk trot. Joanna’s attitude to him from the first had been leading up to this point, or to a point like this. He must have been responding without knowing it, or more likely without admitting it to himself, taking misplaced pride in his own objectivity. Several remarks, several glances of hers swam towards memory and vanished. Part of his mind, a part that possessed an unusually efficient security system, had no doubt been steering him to this same point, but whatever it was that had propelled him into coming here this morning had left him unaware of the fact until now. Even vaguer intimations, touching on Joanna’s looks and how they struck him, together with much else, he unhandily shoved out of range. The only certainty was what he had to do next. But exactly how was he to do that with a gap of several feet between them? At that moment she got out of the green chair and strolled towards a window or a picture or a bookcase, so there was no difficulty at all.

  He found he was so strung up that he failed to notice what she was like to kiss, but he was aware of considerable pressure against his moustache.

  ‘I see what the lady meant,’ said Joanna, ‘I don’t say I go all the way with her, but I see what she meant. Mind you, she must have said what she said when moustaches were the rule rather than the exception – Winston Churchill had one in his younger days. They’re a bit thin on the ground these days, moustaches, except among queers they say, one doesn’t like to think what they see in them. I expect you trim yours a good deal, don’t you?’

  ‘Now and then.’ Gordon’s head was in a whirl. By this time he was back in his original seat without any clear idea of how he had got there.

  ‘Perhaps you put something on it to sort of hold it together.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It struck me as very dense. You know, close packed. I’m sorry, darling, I mean Gordon, I realize I’m the one that’s supposed to know exactly what to do, in fact I thought I did until a moment ago, nice line in patter, then I suddenly got nervous. Whatever you may think I don’t make a habit of this sort of thing.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Gordon, ‘I’d better tell you I mean the whole thing, not just this sort. But you’d probably guessed that already.’ When she made no reply he went on, ‘I hope I haven’t put you off or anything.’

  ‘Absolutely not, I promise you faithfully.’ She took his hand and squeezed it.

  ‘Louise doesn’t really care for my moustache. She doesn’t mind the way it looks so much, but she says it chafes her face. Makes it sore if she’s not careful.’

  ‘No doubt she’s had more extensive experience of it than I have at this stage, but I think I see what this lady means too.’

  ‘So … some things are just as well. We couldn’t have had you looking all inflamed round the mouth when Jimmie gets back from Cambridge.’ Gordon felt quite daring as he said this.

  ‘Oh, he wouldn’t notice a thing like that, probably wouldn’t even see it.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t like wearing glasses.’

  ‘Oh. But surely at his age he has to have them for reading.’

  ‘Of course, but that’s all right because they’re reading-glasses, ones you put on and take off again, not like wearing them all the time in the ordinary way. Only old people and Jews have to do that. He had very good sight when the two of us started life together, but I doubt if he sees much more than what things are now.’

  ‘Are you telling me he’s never had a good look at my moustache?’

  Joanna laughed a lot when he said that, especially perhaps at its note of real mortification. After kissing him rather noisily on the cheek she said, ‘I’d better start lunch.’

  ‘Do you cook everything here yourself?’

  ‘I sometimes boil an egg or two at breakfast-time and do some toast for myself in the afternoon, otherwise nothing. Mrs Sargent does the meals. She’s the one that starts and finishes lunch, but she likes me to be there to see her start.’

  Left to himself, Gordon thought over what had taken place and what it might mean. He soon found himself quite unable to decide whether he had started an affair or received the equivalent of a very friendly pat on the head. Both alternatives seemed to him extraordinary and also somehow fraught with difficulty, but then what might have been called the sexual side of life had always seemed like that to him. In his case, though he had good reason to believe it was not only in his case, the strong childhood feeling had persisted that what men and women were supposed to get up to together could not really be true, or if true after all was not the whole story. He had of course grown up or learnt better since those early days, but the whole thing was still apt to strike him as, well, extraordinary, peculiar, curious, odd. Not so many years earlier he would have said to himself it was bizarre too. Eventually he might be able to knock another adjective or two off his list. One day, perhaps, the last of them would go and all that would become part of life instead of an image in a distorting mirror. Being able to foresee that state of affairs might mean he was growing up, unless of course it was nothing more than a premonition of growing old. He picked up his glass; there was not enough liquor left in it to be worth the effort of drinking, but he swallowed it just the same.

  Would it have been true to say that all this extraordinary, odd etc. stuff was merely the product of inexperience, un-familiarity, that and no more, as an Eskimo might still feel some disorientation on even his third tiger-shoot? If true, an unenlivening truth. As he quite often did, he let his mind run back over his sexual career, an exercise that took him only a short time. On this occasion, however, it reminded him of his years in the married state and suggested to him what he sometimes thought to himself under a different heading, namely that he had actually found out very little about his wife during the years they had spent together, painfully, shamefully little. She had been pro-him and a very nice girl at the start, and not nearly so pro-him but still quite a nice girl at the end, and that was about it. Well, it was over for good.

  Gordon continued his brief recapitulation or roll-call. Quite soon he realized, or saw as he had seen before, that although he had done what his grandfather would have called committing adultery a number of times, the wronged husband
had in both cases been at some distance, living with another woman or further off still, with a bloke. What would have been a third irregularity had suffered abrupt cancellation when the absent one had unexpectedly come out of the gaol he had been locked up in for a boldly executed insurance fraud. A wronged husband seldom more than a few miles away, often only feet away, would be a horse of a different colour. Gordon was not at all sure he would be able to face up to that one.

  If indeed there was going to be anything that required to be faced up to. That, whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, was the first consideration, if not the first morally then first in point of time. And here it came in the very tangible shape of the Hon. Joanna Fane, back from witnessing the start of the lunch. One look at her and the rights and wrongs of the matter disappeared. Perhaps they had never been very prominent. Gordon stood up and the two embraced.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she said, and sounded it. ‘The trouble is … But tell me, you do want to go on with this, do you? I mean now’s the time to say if you don’t.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he said warmly. He said it because he could not have faced saying anything different, and he said it warmly to cover any flicker of indecision he might have felt.

  ‘Oh marvellous.’ After a few moments she said, ‘Can we sit down?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘The thing is, now darling you’re not to laugh at me, but the thing is, I don’t really fancy, you know, going all the way in this house. I don’t feel right about it.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I doubt very much if you do, with the information at your disposal. Do you mind terribly if we have another drink?’

  ‘Just a small one for me.’

  ‘Don’t you know you’re supposed to say thank you when somebody offers you a drink?’ she asked, looking not so much older than he as senior to him.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. Thank you, I’d love a drink.’

  ‘That’s more like it.’ Now she did smile. ‘Thank you for not throwing a sulk.’

  When it came it was not a very small drink but Gordon sipped at it anyway.

  ‘Now darling,’ said Joanna, ‘the chap before you, there haven’t been many as I told you, but there was a chap before you, and he and I were running a bit behind the clock one afternoon, and Jimmie was back a bit early from his lunch, and he didn’t catch us but he came closer to it than I cared for. He could have guessed, he didn’t say anything but he doesn’t say everything, as you know. So whether he guessed or not, I made up my mind, from then on absolutely no hanky-panky on the premises. That’s these premises; other premises are other premises. I’ll tell you the rest of the story another time. Never mind, do you like rissoles?’

  ‘What? It rather depends on the rissole. Sometimes –’

  ‘They do vary a lot, obviously. Mr Tucker round the corner here makes his own and they’re out of this world darling. Anyway they’re what’s in store for us.’

  With several of Mr Tucker’s rissoles and some curious but acceptable soggy peas under his belt, plus a couple of glasses of severely ordinary red wine, Gordon finally left the house. He was also the beneficiary of some information about Jimmie’s earlier years that would at any rate give him something to follow up for the next few available mornings. When he got back to his flat he sat himself down in a large chair with his outdoor clothes still on and made exhausted-sounding noises for a time, though he would not have said he was physically exhausted. Then he made himself a cup of tea, moving very delicately about as he did so as if fearful of disturbing somebody old or ill. After he had drunk the tea he looked for and found a pair of scissors and took them into his bathroom, where he unwrapped the safety razor and packet of blades he had bought on his way home, dropping the wrapper tidily into the waste-bin. Then he set to work with scissors and razor. Fifteen or so rather painful minutes later his moustache, having hidden a rectangular portion of his face for nearly eleven years, was no more. He was far from sure that he liked the change but found he could no longer remember why he had had any time for the previous state of his upper lip, and anyway the thing was done now.

  12

  ‘Gordon,’ said Jimmie with a smile, ‘you’ve shaved off your moustache.’

  ‘Is it an improvement?’

  ‘An immense improvement, dear boy. Oh confound it, how dreadfully tactless of me to imply that your erstwhile appearance could ever have been immensely improved. Let’s agree to call it a definite, manifest improvement, shall we?’

  ‘Fine with me.’ Gordon smiled back. He had got over his momentary feeling of disappointment, or irritation, to find what he still liked to think of as a wondrous metamorphosis so unceremoniously penetrated, ‘I’m glad you welcome the change.’

  ‘You look younger, more optimistic, altogether less … what shall I say, less gangling, more sophisticated perhaps is what I mean.’

  Noises of moderate pleasure came from Gordon. He knew Jimmie well enough by now to be in no doubt that what he had been going to call his new appearance, before balking in the nick of time, was less common. Oh well, it took all sorts to make a world, thought Gordon to himself.

  The two were standing, Gordon having just arrived, in what Jimmie called his writing-room. There was indeed to be seen there an oblong table bearing blank sheets of blotting-paper, equally blank sheets of foolscap paper that somebody might well write on one day, a pen-tray of amber glass containing pens or penholders with steel or perhaps gold nibs but with an unused look, and an elaborate painted china inkstand which it was possible to doubt had ever featured any actual ink. It was hardly necessary for Jimmie to assert that he wrote whatever he wrote, much or little, in pen and ink, in longhand. But Gordon looked on the array with indulgence; although as he sometimes said he was not much of a writer, he was enough of one to understand the importance of such forms of sympathetic magic as an aid to getting blood out of a stone and forcing the words to flow or, more often, especially in prospect, ooze.

  Jimmie seemed to sense that, after an initial mild sensation, Gordon might have welcomed a move to other topics than his newly seen absence of moustache. Accordingly he continued to focus on it, uttering variants on his surprise and pleasure at the transformation, soon insisting that Joanna should be shown it without further ado. This took place in such a way that for a short but appreciable moment she failed to recognize Gordon and for longer than that evidently thought it was no great matter.

  ‘He looks altogether different,’ Jimmie kept saying, turning from one to the other of them. ‘Younger, to start with.’

  ‘I suppose it did have a sort of old-fashioned association, that moustache,’ conceded Joanna. She was so far from making any other concessions that Gordon began to worry slightly lest Jimmie should notice a peculiar constraint of manner in her. But he gave no immediate sign of having noticed anything. Soon the two men returned to the writing-room, where Jimmie lost no time in saying,

  ‘I hope my lady wife [an expression, thought Gordon, mischievously designed] is proving useful to you in your researches, dear boy.’

  Forewarned by Joanna at their last meeting, Gordon found it easy enough to field that one, but he filed it too while he was about it. He made some affirmative reply. Jimmie went on,

  ‘She’s a very observant girl, always was. She knows me as well as I know myself, if not better in some respects. I’m afraid she thinks I’m a hopeless old snob. Well now, what’s on the agenda this morning?’

  ‘Well, if it’s all right with you, I thought something along those very lines. Class distinction and all that, your views on the subject. These days it pretty well has to come up in anything I might write about you.’

  Jimmie’s face took on an expression of overdone and also somehow proletarian dismay. Gordon was emboldened to drop into his efficient television-cockney.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Fane, what do you understand by a snob and would you say you were one yourself?’

  ‘The relevant article in the Concise Oxfo
rd Dictionary, 1964 edition,’ said Jimmie in a slightly better version of the same, ‘talks about exaggerated respect for wealth and social position. I’m sorry,’ he continued in his customary high posh tones, ‘but if I keep that voice up for more than a few seconds I find my jaws start aching. I can’t imagine how some people go on like that all their lives. Anyway, er, I’d say unrepentantly that by that reckoning I am indeed a snob, except for the qualification exaggerated respect. So it seems that in the view of the dictionary I’m not a snob after all, since the respect I feel for wealth and social position, far from being in the least exaggerated, strikes me as by any reasonable standards perfectly proper.’ Jimmie started to go on but burst out laughing instead. After a moment he did go on, saying, ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but one result of the removal of your facial hair has been to lay open your expression to the public gaze. Oh dear, how ill-mannered of me to laugh.’ At this point he started laughing again, though with less abandon.

  ‘What expression did you see just then?’ Gordon spoke in a thoroughly controlled voice.

  ‘Oh, a mixture. An abundant, not to say a heady mixture. I suppose the chief ingredients were disbelief, consternation, shock and, let it be said, amusement. Good for you, Mr Scott-Thompson.’ Jimmie delivered the last half-dozen words in his TV accent, but changed back to say, ‘Hadn’t you better turn on that gadget of yours, what’s it called?’

  ‘This? A tape-recorder. It’s been on ever since we came up here. I hope you don’t mind it too much.’

  ‘Oh no no no, not a bit, not a bit.’

  Jimmie made it sound as if the tape-recorder had been a typification of the modern age (initiated 1960, 1939, 1914 or earlier date) and to be accepted without fuss as equally inevitable. He sat in his high-backed chair, which might have figured in a Victorian cartoon as a self-evidently ‘writer’s’ chair, and looked expectant, but went on without being prompted.

  ‘I agree there are snobs and snobs,’ he said in his smoothest tones, ‘I’ll even go so far as to grant that there are snobs and snobs and snobs. But it’s quite proper that the original use of the word, and the first sense given in the Concise Oxford, refers merely to a person of low birth or social position. Nothing about respect for wealth and rank and so on, exaggerated or not. But that is surely unnecessary. It goes without saying that the lower orders, as we see whenever we are unlucky enough to catch sight of a popular journal, have at any rate an inexhaustible interest in the doings of the rich and wellborn. What is less often remarked is that alongside the plebs’ noisy satisfaction at the disgrace or ruin of one of their betters, that that feeling of triumph is accompanied by something not far from its opposite, bitter disappointment at a moral failure to observe the highest standards. I say, am I expected to go on all the morning about this topic, fascinating as it may well be?’