‘Bravely spoken, but it’s not on. He’s not prominent enough and it’s much too long ago and it wouldn’t be scandalous, just discreditable. Surely you see that.’
Gordon made a large internal effort. ‘You’re probably right, but I would just like to know out of curiosity. I’ve made it sound more important than it is. Let’s forget it and have another drink. If that’s all right with you.’
For a moment he thought he had left it too late as she stared at him intensely and yet without definable expression. He felt an equally nondescript qualm. Then she smiled, with a faint tremor at one corner of her mouth. The waiter came and was duly despatched. Gordon wanted to say something apologetic but prevented himself. She did say something about the restaurant and the way she said it brought him a vague though timely warning about what it must feel like to have served her a Dry Martini cocktail that deviated from the perpendicular or had in it an insufficiently contorted twist. Thinking this distracted him from taking on board what she actually said, but he endured that with resolution.
The menu proved to consist mainly of uninformative, sometimes cryptic entries apparently in English for the most part with a few enigmas in some other tongue or tongues. Gordon felt like going through the whole lot asking the waiter in a loud slow voice for clarifications, but realized that to start with he was about fifty years too young to play that game. So, doing his best now not to impersonate a schoolboy taken out for a special treat in a grown-up restaurant, he brilliantly got Joanna to order for him. Then he felt a part of his insides give a sort of lurch as his second Dry Martini cocktail (with gin) took possession of him, and he reckoned he could take on anything short of a prince of the blood royal or a head of government without turning a hair. When his first course arrived, irregular strips of mummified chicken enlivened with half-melted peanut butter poured over it, he fell on it with avidity.
They had some wine, some red wine which evidently only the man who brought it was allowed to pour. After he had poured some of it for the second time Joanna said to Gordon,
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, what do you actually think of old JRP Fane’s works? Are they any good according to you? All this time you’ve never said.’
‘No, well for the moment let’s leave it at they naturally have their points of interest.’
‘Yes, naturally I see that, darling. In fact I think anybody at all could see that, but you’re supposed to be writing an entire book about them and their author. You surely feel there’s more to them and him than just points of interest.’
‘I hope to find out how much more there is to be said in the course of writing the book.’
‘But you must have thought that they, the works, were seriously underrated as part of the idea of writing about them at all. Or seriously overrated, but it wouldn’t have been that.’
‘It won’t make much difference to Jimmie whatever I thought to start with.’
‘But it makes a difference to you, to what you are, whether you’re somebody with real ideas and enthusiasm or just a, well, a Scotsman on the make. Of course Jimmie always tells me I don’t understand these things.’
Joanna’s voice slackened. She had the look of somebody who has said more than enough, or perhaps less than enough, less than intended. Gordon was not sure which, but either way he felt grateful.
17
Gordon’s parents lived near the western edge of London, in the belt of postal districts in double figures. The house they now occupied was not the one Gordon had lived in from babyhood to university age, but was only a couple of miles from that primeval and gravely undersized relic, as it had appeared to him on the very few occasions he had happened to go past it. Most weeks he spent an evening with the old people, eating with them either at their table or, less often, at a nearby Italian restaurant, where he habitually did the paying. Whichever it was to be, he would turn up at the house in the first place. So he came to be ringing its bell shortly before seven o’clock in the evening of that same day.
Habit died hard: he found he was bracing himself against some expected onslaught before he realized that any such need had passed with the belated passing of the snarling, squealing Jack Russell terrier Jip, so named by his father after Dora’s dog in David Copperfield. Gordon’s mother had not greatly cared for Jip and quite likely had vetoed the introduction of any successor. It was she who came to the door now, dressed up for most things short of a Buckingham Palace garden-party.
‘Hallo, Mum, how are you?’
‘Gordon!’ she said as if in surprise, embracing him a little more fervidly than he wanted.
‘I thought you might like this.’ He gave her a small plastic pot with a yellow-and-orange primula blooming in it. ‘The girl said it would plant out all right.’
‘Oh, you really shouldn’t, dear.’
‘Only 99p, and you won’t be getting anything so extravagant next time.’
Now an idea seemed to strike his mother. ‘Come into the warm,’ she said.
In the warm already were Gordon’s father and his young sister Gillian. Both of them greeted him affectionately and showed pleasure when they saw what he had brought them, a packet of fags and a couple of flimsy pink-bordered handkerchiefs. Scott-Thompson senior looked like an elderly businessman who was still sufficiently active but, being a retired schoolmaster, was neither of those things, Gillian, in jeans and with fresh-from-the-curlers hair, looked like the teenager she was, though she bore no signs of drug addiction or other bodily harm. She, the late fruit of her parents’ embraces, was no trouble and never had been any but on a notional level to those who really cared for music. Nobody under that roof did, so the offensive sounds she caused to be made there aroused no intrinsic objection, and she kept their volume down.
She had slipped away to set some such sounds going overhead when Gordon placed himself opposite his father. Public-library copies of the works of Anthony Burgess and William Golding were on display. Mr Scott-Thompson visually alluded to them as a kind of prelude to what would inevitably have been a full exposition of their authors’ merits and possible demerits. Experience showed Gordon that to plead he had not read the books in question would make little difference. His only hope of forestalling talk of coruscating genius and mythic passion was to plunge in with a suitably elevated topic of his own choice.
‘I expect you saw that statement in the paper about Arts Council grants to the opera and the symphony orchestras,’ he said.
Luckily his father forbore from asking him whose statement and what paper. His comment was, ‘No doubt those fellows are moaning about not having a penny to bless themselves with.’
‘The costs of that sort of thing are shooting up all the time,’ said Gordon.
‘It beats me why people can’t be expected to pay the economic price of their seats.’
‘A city like London has got to have more than one ballet company.’
‘They’ll happily fork out hundreds of pounds in a restaurant.’
‘Without a subsidy, lots of things we take for granted would simply disappear.’
‘Why should a taxpayer in Bolton help to finance somebody’s evening out in Hampstead?’
They were happily settled now till supper. Both father and son, especially son, refrained from asking a comparatively radical question like how many times they had been over that same ground before. Mrs Scott-Thompson kept out of their way for the time being. If challenged to account for why she did so, she might well have said something about there having to be a time in the evening for men’s talk, a description of it both the men concerned would have assented to, though not in the same tone of voice.
As supper-time approached, Scott-Thompson senior produced two small wine-glasses into which he poured dry sherry. More exactly, it was superannuated dry sherry that had started to lose its savour after being opened a fortnight before and by now, without having gone off, had lost nearly all of it. The old man, who had been almost deprived of his senses of smell and taste as a result of a
street accident shortly after his retirement, was doubtless unaware of any change. Gordon sipped with pretended relish. Without wanting to come here any oftener than he did, he felt comfortable and secure in the small room among furniture he remembered from his childhood. Indeed, nothing more than the modestly sized television set, which he had only ever known his sister to watch, was in that sense unfamiliar. Probably some of the hundreds of books on the shelves were not many years older, but unlike his father he took no account of them.
Gillian came and announced the meal, not catching Gordon’s eye as she did so. That was normal: though on good terms, the two had never been close, as perhaps they could not have expected to be, having grown up quite separately. This evening, to nobody’s surprise, the main attraction at the table was shepherd’s pie. As always, Mrs Scott-Thompson had browned the top layer of mashed potatoes to just the required degree of crispness and had got the proportion of sliced onions right too. Spicy brown sauce and bottled mild ale complemented the dish, with apple pie and fresh Cheddar and biscuits to follow, as always.
Through most of the meal, Gordon’s mother kept up a flow of information about relatives and neighbours barely known even by name to him. He had heard it said that small-talk became in time, perhaps was from scratch, the foundation of a successful marriage. Either his mother supplied enough talk of that kind for two, since his father had none of his own, or the pair of them provided an exception, an undoubtedly successful marriage nearly fifty years old between one party who wondered if Ted and Laura would be going to Frinton again this August and another party who showed an enduring interest in the social function of art in a democracy. Both themes were tenaciously pursued, but the Frinton one had pauses between paragraphs. After one of them Gordon’s mother said to him,
‘How have you been getting on with writing your book about that man, what’s his name, you did say.’
‘JRP Fane,’ said Mr Scott-Thompson. ‘A typical product of –’
‘I’ve become a sort of friend of the family,’ said Gordon, not very accurately, he knew, but at least promptly. He hurried on, ‘His wife used to be his secretary and she’s got some really quite interesting stuff about his early career when he was still principally a poet though I suppose these days he’s thought of as a novelist though again …’ He proceeded to give a not very coherent, but at least long, account of Jimmie’s career as a whole, not just its early part. Not unexpectedly, Mrs Scott-Thompson’s interest in what her son was saying began to fall off at about the point when Mr’s began to quicken. Some quirk of training or temperament had seen to it that he never interrupted anyone who was actually talking or pausing for breath. At the same time he had silent ways of indicating that he wanted to say something, notably by making unambitious faces. Just then, for instance, as a summary of the sixth novel and its publishing history showed signs of drawing to a close, he parted his jaws and began fluttering his eyelashes behind the massive multifocal glasses he wore.
‘Is that all?’ he asked when silence had fallen.
‘It’s all for now.’ For a brief moment Gordon luxuriated in the self-admiration he felt at the quality and precision of what he must be carrying in his head about Jimmie and his output.
‘You told me before you started work that you meant to write a critical biography of your subject.’
‘Yes.’
‘In other words you’ll be offering critical judgements as well as descriptive accounts.’
‘Yes,’ said Gordon again.
‘When we last discussed the matter you told me you’d set out to read all Mr Fane’s books, not a protracted enterprise I should have thought.’
‘No, I’ve managed to at least run my eye over just about every volume he’s published.’
‘I can’t say I have. I’ve had to be content with what the library round the corner had or could get, but I’ve managed quite well considering. Having nothing else to do I read what I did read more, more concentratedly than perhaps you’ve had time for as yet.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’ Gordon vainly searched his memory for some remarkable but hitherto undisclosed fact about Jimmie, the sort that might interest Gillian, whatever that was, or distract his father, if there had been any such thing.
‘I thought it might amuse you to hear very briefly what I made of what I read,’ said Scott-Thompson senior, his tone and his choice of words both hinting lightly that something like irony was somewhere present in his remark.
‘Of course,’ said Gordon rather helplessly.
‘The poems are the product of skill and a genuine feeling for language rather than anything that could be called emotion. I think you’ll understand what I mean by a phrase like, how shall I put it, they have nothing to say, as read from … the standpoint … of the present time. Or am I talking nonsense?’
‘Not as I see it.’
‘The fiction, the novels, there’s skill there too. But all that has dated to a degree the poems have not. When we say a work of literature has dated, we don’t mean merely that it shows signs of its period and so we keep reading about horses and carts instead of cars and lorries or some men put brilliantine on their hair or even that people hazard or flourish an utterance instead of just saying something. No, we mean if it seems to a contemporary reader silly or affected or absurd or embarrassing or laughable, the work has failed to survive the passage of time and the associated changes of fashion. All Mr Fane’s novels seem to me to suffer some degree of damage from this fault, the first two or three and especially the first one, The Escaped Prisoner, being touched by it least, as isn’t surprising. I’m afraid all this must seem rather obvious to you, Gordon.’
‘Well, it can’t be said too often.’ Actually Gordon thought different, that it had indeed just been said once too often. Far from seeming to him obvious, let alone mistaken, his father’s judgement was very much the conclusion he was himself approaching, with the same exceptions or partial exceptions made. With a hazy idea of gaining time, he said, ‘But tell me, why do you say it’s not surprising the early Fane books have dated least?’
‘Well, perhaps all I really mean is they’re better than the later ones, which is certainly not in the least surprising. After all, a man can put everything he has into his first novel, everything he’s seen or thought up to that point, but into his second only what he hasn’t put into his first, or so at least he’s likely to feel. A writer, almost any writer but Shakespeare, has only a limited number of things to say and he’s going to get them said as soon as he gets a chance. Auden is an example in point. If you pursue, Gordon, if you take that sort of line on this chap and what he’s written I’m afraid he’s not going to be very pleased with you. If he’s anything like other creative people he imagines, however ludicrously, that his later productions are at least as interesting and as worth-while as his earlier ones and doesn’t like to hear that contradicted. Imagine what Mendelssohn would have said if you’d told him the best thing he’d ever written was his Midsummer Night’s Dream music’
Gillian surprised Gordon very slightly by saying, ‘Is that what you think yourself, Dad?’
‘Not being a musician I’m afraid I’m not qualified to say, my love, but I understand it’s by no means an uncommon view in this century.’ Mr Scott-Thompson turned back to his son. ‘I feel perhaps I went on rather a long time about what we mean when we say a work of literature has dated and the rest of it. For one reason and another I don’t often get a chance to discuss matters of that sort. That thing about Mendelssohn was the sheerest self-indulgence, based on a remark I once overheard in the common-room.’
Again very mildly, not emphatically, Gordon felt such points would better have been left to be inferred rather than openly stated. But he sympathized with his father and, as often before, wished for a moment that they met more often.
‘I quite thought you two would have finished your talk about books before we sat down to supper,’ said Mrs Scott-Thompson genially, ‘but there you go still chattering away lik
e a couple of magpies.’
‘I’m afraid it was mostly me,’ her husband admitted, ‘I never find it easy to talk about somebody who writes or wrote books without, well, talking about books, his books at least.’
‘Of course, I quite see that. But the way you do it, I’ve said to you before, it does rather tend to shut other people out.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear it, my dear, I promise you I don’t purposely talk in any special way, certainly not one intended to exclude anybody.’
‘No, really, I’m sure you don’t mean it. I was just sort of apologizing for not joining in much myself. I’m afraid Gillian and I haven’t had the sort of education you need to have if you’re going to go in for literary theory.’
At no time in that brief exchange, not even in her last remark, had Gordon’s mother allowed any hint of malice or sarcasm to colour her tone. Theory, sometimes particularized as now, more often left unadorned, had become her favourite description of the kind of thought and talk she found impenetrable or unprofitable or, an earlier favourite, heavy. It was as near as she ever came to recognizing what differentiated herself from her husband, whom Gordon had never known to suggest any simpler way of contrasting the two of them. Only a stranger to the house could have suspected that tonight might have been the night for plainer speaking.
With the question of (literary) theory left behind, Gordon’s mother said to him, ‘You haven’t had much to tell us about Mrs Fane, have you? I can’t help feeling a little bit inquisitive about her. According to your father she’s years younger than her husband.’
Gordon went into that kind of thing. His mother gave every sign of listening, though he thought the inquisitiveness she had mentioned was more a matter of what she should declare than of what she felt. Just as well if so, he also thought. At the same time he was aware that Gillian was paying closer attention than usual to what he was saying, in other words closer than minimal. Really? How much closer? He found himself unable to dislodge from his mind the fancy that his sister was on to him, at least that something about his look had suggested to her that his interest in the Hon. Mrs Fane went beyond what was strictly proper. As he talked inexactly of Joanna’s clothes and dinner-parties he did his best to concentrate on his own negative feats like not blushing or knocking the cruet over. He was doing well at that when Gillian spoke for perhaps the third time since sitting down to supper.
The Biographer’s Moustache Page 13