The Biographer’s Moustache

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘As long as you like,’ said Gordon. ‘Just you carry on. It’s a fresh tape.’

  ‘But do you want to hear?’

  ‘Everything you’ve said so far I can use, Jimmie.’

  ‘You don’t say so. Very well. Now where was I? Oh yes. Enough of the toiling masses for the moment. Ascending in the social scale, but tactfully not specifying how far, we come to people like yourself, my dear fellow. You wouldn’t say, would you, that you were free of all feeling about your social betters as a group?’

  ‘I …’ Gordon hesitated.

  ‘All feeling includes what I believe goes by the name of negative feeling, such as dislike, disapproval, disgust, impatience, resentment, et cetera, both inward-looking and outward-looking. In other words, more numerous but better words, you may feel impatient with yourself for liking or disliking lords and ladies as well as simply impatient with lords and ladies. It all counts provided it’s say lords and ladies as a group. Now, would you say you were free of all such feeling?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Gordon without demur.

  ‘Excellent. Nobody is, nobody in these islands at least, unless he’s either a … I beg your pardon, unless he or she is either a moron or a monster, and by the way I know for a fact that I’m not a moron. Now I’ve mentioned me I might as well go on with me, it’ll only take a moment. Also like everybody else one ever hears about who isn’t insane I prefer the society of my own kind, but I must tell you that that seems to me a rather lame self-exculpation, hardly better than an excuse. So I’ll just say of myself that I like people of wealth and rank as a group, they’re the people I want to mix with and have as friends and live among and live with and marry and whose language I speak and understand, and as to why in the sense of why do I prefer such people to others I say who knows, who cares, I was born among them or it’s something I got from my grandfather, just as another fellow’s revolutionary zeal can no doubt be put down to something he got from his grandmother. And as to, as to …’, said Jimmie, more in earnest than Gordon had ever seen him, ‘as to what do I see in the kind of people I prefer, I see first individuality, and I know, I know from experience there’s a great deal of uniformity too but not everywhere and in many cases, in most cases not very deep, unlike what could be said of other social groups. Where does English eccentricity belong? In the English upper class or classes. Individuality, then, and freedom, not only freedom to live anywhere and go anywhere and so on, which is very important, but freedom of thought. The upper class is the only class whose members don’t care a tuppenny damn what anyone thinks of them. Oh very well, also true of the plebs, no doubt, but I’m obviously not going to set about cultivating their society, partly because I happen to prefer claret to lager and Royal Ascot to the Cup Final and all that. Wooh, that’ll do for the moment, if you don’t mind too terribly.’

  Gordon stopped his recorder and said, ‘I suppose you must have said some of that before.’

  ‘In bits, perhaps, not end to end, and less elegantly expressed.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You’ll be able to use it, I trust.’

  ‘It’ll need very little in the way of trimming and tidying up.’

  ‘I’m delighted you think so.’

  ‘Is there anything more you’d like to say on the subject? Or on any other subject?’

  ‘Just a final word, perhaps. Yes, all right, I’m ready. Aren’t you going to actuate that device again?’

  ‘If you want it on the record what you’re going to say.’

  ‘Why not? I can always strike it out later, as you observed. Ready? Here we go, then. Lastly, there’s nothing wrong with being a snob, in moderation of course. In fact as dear Evelyn remarked more than once in my hearing, he puts it in the mouth of one of his characters but he was fond of offering the comment himself, being a snob is surely the most sensible thing to be. It was for him, certainly, as his books show with their wonderful command of social nuances such as a snob is specially fitted to register. And I feel my own novels on their inferior level would suffer if the snob’s eye and ear and nose were somehow to be removed from them. So yes, I’m a snob and jolly good luck to me I say. It does seem to be a way of winning the Muse’s favour.’

  ‘Is that all?’ said Gordon after a pause. ‘For now, I mean.’

  ‘I think so, don’t you? Should I come up with anything more on the topic I’ll make a note of it if you think that’ll do, dear boy.’

  ‘Of course. Jimmie, may I ask you a question?’

  ‘Nothing too intimate, I hope.’

  ‘That’s really up to you to decide, but I doubt it.’

  ‘Okay, shoot, as they say in the cinema.’

  ‘Since you and I obviously come from let’s call it quite different social groups,’ said Gordon steadily, ‘what possessed you, I mean what was in your mind when you agreed to not merely let me write something about you and gave it your blessing but so to speak accepted me as your official while-you’re-alive biographer and you’ve already told me so much about yourself.’

  ‘Oh dear, that’s quite a question if that’s what it is, but very roughly I thought whatever you as a, as an outsider might say would carry much more weight than anything an associate of mine or a son of such might. Be more fun to read too. Sufficient? If so perhaps I may ask you a question in return.’

  ‘Let’s have it, Jimmie.’

  ‘Are you having an affair with my wife?’

  Until a second or so earlier, Gordon would have expected to be asked how he pronounced CONTROVERSY or IDEAL, but a warning flash from somewhere enabled him to say ‘No’ even more readily than when asked some minutes before whether he considered himself free of all class feeling.

  ‘Oh, what a relief, and I hope you won’t mind my supplementary asking if you have any strong or firm intention of trying to bring about such an association.’

  Gordon had hardly had time to say No to that too before Jimmie’s words rode over him.

  ‘… because I would strongly advise against any such embroilment on the grounds of, how shall I put it, what about incompatibility, intended as a description neither vague nor, I hope, obnoxious. Rightly or wrongly, and if I had to choose I should probably plump for rightly, a large and unchangeable part of each one of us is decided for us by the circumstances of our birth and the environment, to use the word correctly for once, in which we did the first part of our growing up. The chance of overcoming an initial disparity here between individuals depends on the temperature of the feelings involved. If it’s low, as in the case of a writer and his biographer, the result may be a fruitful and amusing relationship; if it’s high, even for a short time, the result will inevitably be dissatisfaction, reproach, recrimination, misunderstanding, bitterness, mutual contempt and above all embarrassment on both sides. I won’t go on, I don’t think I need to. Here, I say, er, I say, this thing is still listening to everything I’m telling you, isn’t it? I notice its little red light is on.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Gordon, pressing the On-Off button. The light went out.

  ‘Oh I’m not worrying, dear boy, I doubt if you’ll want to use this last chunk for anything. I merely dislike the thought of wasting all that wax or whatever it may be.’

  ‘I can blot it out if I want to by recording something else over the top.’

  ‘That must be absolutely marvellous for you.’

  ‘It has its uses.’

  13

  But of course Gordon did not at all want to blot out that last chunk. He even wrote down a fair approximation to Jimmie’s following couple of remarks as soon as he got home that afternoon. This done, he took out of his recorder a nearly full tape of Jimmie’s later account of his first year at Cambridge and put this on one side to go over and type up later. For the moment, but not only for the moment, what most interested Gordon was the gradation in Jimmie’s tone of voice from the half-humorous self-deprecation of his opening remarks on snobbery, through the seeming objectivity of their middle reaches, finall
y to something almost defiant, even strident, by the close. So at any rate Gordon remembered what he had heard that morning. Now he settled down in his working corner and started to play back the earlier tape from the beginning.

  She knows me as well as I know myself, if not better in some respects. Private joke.

  The relevant article … Yes, very good accent. ?Maybe disturbingly good, tending to indicate close attention to how people sound as well as what they say. Not borne out by dialogue in his novels. What about Hunt hurting his head etc.?

  I’m sorry, how ill-mannered of me to laugh and what followed. Observant. Compare preceding note.

  Ascending in the social scale [from the plebs], but tactfully not specifying how far, we come to people like yourself, my dear fellow. NB fellow also has force of ‘one of same class’ (COD). But no malice here. Laughing and inviting me to laugh with him at expense of pompous sociologists et al.

  Now, would you say you were free of all such feeling? Still no malice.

  Excellent … I happen to prefer claret to lager and Royal Ascot to the Cup Final and all that. It’s during this speech that his tone, actual tone of voice, changes in the direction of personal animosity (?deliberate). Compare tone to remarks that follow:

  if you don’t mind too terribly

  less elegantly expressed (but even so a bloody sight more elegantly expressed than the likes of me could manage)

  You’ll be able to use it, I trust (slight but appreciable stress on you)

  and finally … if you think that’ll do, dear boy. Similar stress on you but also compare and contrast the tone of this use of dear boy with earlier uses.

  Not to mention the alas-not-taped couple of remarks he, Gordon, had jotted down on returning here.

  That first session had in fact closed with a sort of addendum from Jimmie:

  Just one thing I forgot to say but now remember – when I said that about the upper class having the freedom of not minding what anyone else thinks of them, perhaps you noticed, I meant to say or should have said too that this enables us to be free of envy, and that is a rare and priceless virtue or a rare and priceless gift, whichever you will, in our country as it is today. As she is today.

  Gordon stopped his tape and listened to the silence, complete for the moment without passing vehicles. It occurred to him now to wonder again what Jimmie had had in mind when he made his lady-wife remark, noticeable enough at the time, since then perhaps unfairly overlooked. Surely it was on the tape. Yes.

  I hope my lady wife is proving useful to you in your researches, dear boy.

  M’m. After three or four replayings Gordon was as sure as he could be that Jimmie’s purpose there had been, if anything more than conversational, just to assure him that his chats with Joanna were no secret from anybody. His own guilty conscience had had a distorting effect there. M’m.

  But later … In a few seconds Jimmie’s recorded voice was asking him if he had any strong or firm intention of trying to bring about such an association with Joanna. At that point he pressed the Record button, said at his normal pitch and speed, ‘As a matter of fact that will be the sole object of my endeavours until it and the association itself are consummated, you stuck-up old fart,’ pressed Play and heard Jimmie’s voice placidly saying, a description neither vague nor, I hope, obnoxious. Off. By way of completing this section, Gordon laughed loudly and in a jeering fashion at his tape-recorder for a short time.

  Feeling sufficiently charged up by now he went to the telephone, intending to ring Louise, but his own instrument chirruped at him before he could get that far. ‘You’re another,’ he said to it and picked up the handset. ‘Hallo,’ he said. What he heard was not quite silence, more like a distant someone of indeterminate sex trying to shout through an efficient gag. When things failed to improve he disconnected and punched Louise’s number. Engaged. He swore mildly and hung up again and again his own telephone trilled.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said into it with some impatience.

  ‘Is that Mr Scott-Thompson?’ asked an elderly female voice pleasantly. ‘My name is Madge Walker. You won’t know me, but I used to be friendly with Jimmie Fane. I heard you were writing an article or perhaps a book about Jimmie and his earlier life, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, that’s broadly correct.’

  ‘Ah, so my information is accurate.’

  ‘May I ask who gave it you, Mrs or is it Miss Walker?’

  ‘Mrs. Oh, it was just somebody I know. Well, now I’m sure I have the right person perhaps I can tell you that many years ago I used to know Jimmie quite well, and I was wondering whether you might like to hear something from me about those days. I’m an old lady now but my mind is clear and my memory is excellent.’

  ‘I’d appreciate that very much, Mrs Walker, that would be most interesting.’ And it really might be. It might equally be that Mrs Walker was little or nothing but an enterprising old blatherer, but that was a risk that had to be run. ‘When can we meet?’

  ‘So you haven’t yet sent your pages to the printer? Good. Well, perhaps you’d like to come round here, Mr Scott-Thompson. There’s only me and my husband and I’m afraid I don’t find it very easy to get about any more. I could give you tea.’

  ‘That sounds delightful if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you. Whereabouts are you?’

  The answer to this question took little for granted beyond a knowledge of where and what London was. Victoria, for instance, not to be confused with the sovereign of that name, turned out to refer to a district as well as a railway station and one readily accessible by bus and underground train. Gordon listened and made a grunt of comprehension or reassurance. He felt indulgent about the whole rigmarole, reflecting that before it set in Mrs Walker had come to the point with commendable speed. He further reflected that her parents at least must have been born while that incarnate Victoria was still firmly enthroned.

  ‘Pearson Gardens is first on the right and number 14 is down on your left.’ Mrs Walker withheld any data about where 14 came in relation to other numerals. ‘We’re on the first floor. Our name’s on the bell-push. Walker.’

  ‘When would you like me to come, Mrs Walker?’

  ‘We’re free this very afternoon, but I expect that’s a little soon for you.’

  Gordon considered, but only for a moment. ‘Not a bit. What a good idea. Thank you.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to arrive between a quarter and half past four.’

  Gordon managed to turn up and ring the appropriate bell at 14 Pearson Gardens just after four twenty-two. A voice spoke to him out of the wall, he answered it, found his way into the house and mounted stairs to the first floor. Here he was welcomed by somebody who was indeed an old lady and to spare, though she was dressed more like a character in a pageant, with a purple tabard and a sort of shiny apron, an outfit recalling to Gordon that of the girl Periwinkle. Mrs Walker had streaked grey hair cut in a short bell with fringe and altogether looked unusual but not ridiculous. Her manner was friendly without being confident.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ she said. ‘Then come and meet the captain.’

  The captain had not been captain of anything substantial for a long time. He was generic retired officer above the waist, including ancient good looks and a dark pullover covered lower down by a blanket. This hid details of what exactly he sat on and discouraged curiosity on the point. He gave Gordon a sunny smile.

  ‘Alec, this is Mr Scott-Thompson, who’s come to have tea with us.’

  Extending his right hand to be shaken and making with his left a mimed apology for not rising, Alec gave no sign of having heard or listened. This and something in the way he carried his head made Gordon think he must be very deaf, though no doubt he expected to be spoken to at suitable times like the present. So Gordon smiled back at him and told him, he hoped without mouthing any of it, that he was very glad to meet him. Alec nodded amiably and motioned him to a chair.

  ‘If you don’t mind I think I’ll go and bring the tea
in now,’ said Mrs Walker. ‘Get it out of the way.’

  As soon as she had gone, Alec picked up a newspaper that had been lying on the floor beside him and held it in front of his face. Around them was a rather small room full of small ornaments but pictures of a size or two larger, including several photographs of superannuated-looking warships that indicated which of the services Alec had risen to the rank of captain in. Such matters apart, the decor reminded Gordon of his father’s parents’ sitting-room in Bromley in the 1950s, but perhaps belonged even further back, like the houses whose outsides he had seen on his way down Pearson Gardens. He had got no further than that when Mrs Walker started bringing in the tea, a meal that had no doubt been in a high state of readiness at his arrival. First she took Alec a plate of mouthful-sized jam sandwiches and a blue mug of tea or other hot liquid. Gordon saw this as invalid-style service and was mildly surprised to find the other portions similarly organized instead of being the doily-napkin affair he had half expected. But on reflection it was no wonder that things were as they were.

  ‘Perhaps I should tell you, Mr Scott-Thompson, that my husband is not just hard of hearing but more or less totally deaf,’ said Madge Walker. ‘The only reason I don’t simply say he’s totally deaf is that, when he watches the television as he does in the evenings, he puts on a pair of earphones with the volume turned up as far as it’ll go and perhaps he gets something from that, though I’m very doubtful about how much. Nine years ago he was no more than a little hard of hearing, not bad at all for a man in his late seventies, then it all went in a matter of eight or ten weeks, and he was as he is now.’