The Biographer’s Moustache

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘Well, so what’s on the agenda?’ she asked Gordon forthwith. ‘You were very mysterious over the telephone.’

  ‘I didn’t want to discuss this over the telephone. You see –’

  ‘What? Discuss what? Why not?’

  ‘I don’t really know why not, I just thought I ought to tell you this face to face.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  At this point and for some seconds afterwards the passing of a train going in the opposite direction effectively prevented communication. When relative quiet was restored Louise again asked him what he had brought her here to tell her.

  ‘It’s about this week-end at Hungerstream,’ he replied.

  ‘What about it? Christ.’

  Trying not to show it, he took a deep breath, ‘I’m afraid it’s been cancelled.’

  ‘What? When did you hear about this?’

  ‘Oh, last night.’

  At this she jumped to her feet, in annoyance he first assumed, but then concluded they were approaching their destination. No more was said while they waited, rather a long time he thought, for the train to arrive. In this interval, he noticed without appearing to that she took a series of furtive glances at him as if assessing his, well, something like reliability, not of course his actual sanity – it was clear now that that had been a joke of sorts. Then the train did arrive and they got out, walked along the platform, climbed stairs, were in a cold and also in other ways disagreeable street and shortly thereafter in a pub of the same general description. There was nowhere to sit down and an amazing level of noise from a variety of sources. Nevertheless they secured drinks and a place where they could at any rate stand and semi-bawl intelligibly at each other.

  ‘You told me in that train the week-end’s off.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. It seems –’

  ‘And when did you say whoever it was told you that?’

  ‘Last night. The –’

  ‘And who was it who told you?’

  ‘I don’t know, at least I’m not sure. Somebody who said he was speaking for the Duke of Dunwich.’

  ‘As it might have been the duke’s secretary.’

  ‘Quite likely.’

  ‘Yes. It’s funny that when I spoke to that very person not much more than an hour ago she didn’t say anything about the week-end being off or ever having been off and confirmed that I was expected. Yes, I rang from work, just to be on the safe side. Yes, Gordon, I got hold of the number quite easily considering. Right, now it’s your turn to come up with something.’

  Needless to say, Gordon’s mind had been moving fast for some time and at record-breaking speed almost from the beginning of what Louise had last said. Unfortunately he had been unable to think fast enough.

  ‘How extraordinary,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, sure, and now try harder.’

  ‘I was going to spin you a great yarn about Mrs Fane, that’s Jimmie’s wife.’

  ‘So it is. I take it you’ve been having your way with her, or however you put it in your quaint oldie-worldie style of expression.’

  ‘Yes. That is to say, yes. However you put it in your own style of expression.’

  ‘You may not have realized it, but by agreeing to divulge that, you’ve made it possible for you and me to talk to each other. For a little while longer at least. And the Honourable Joanna was going to feature prominently in the tale you’ve now decided not to hand me.’

  ‘I was going to tell you that on second thoughts you’d better keep out of her way because, because she’s actually so terribly jealous and hysterical underneath that it would be better all round, like safer and everything, if you kept out of her way.’

  Louise put her glass down carefully and stared at Gordon. ‘And you reckoned that that would be enough to stop me coming.’

  ‘It was all I could think of.’

  ‘How long was it before it dawned on you it wouldn’t do?’

  ‘Ten seconds. Five.’

  ‘What made you decide to tell me about it just the same?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Can’t we forget it now?’

  ‘All right, after I’ve said I’m relieved you saw straight away it was no good, because if you’d tried it on seriously I really would have had to think you were mad. As well as fully prepared to insult my intelligence.’

  ‘M’m. It looks as though I’d better let you have the truth.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of –’

  ‘But not here.’

  Louise’s flat was quite close by, close enough for the two not to have much time to converse on the way there should they have been minded to. In the event they exchanged hardly a word, being fully occupied in hurrying through a sudden downpour of rain. The flat was in a basement approached by a flight of remarkably steep steps where hanging on tight to the side rail was prudent. Scraps of saturated newspaper and cardboard lay underfoot. Inside it was dark, signifying the non-residence or supernatural assumption of the flat-mate. The breakfast dishes and pans were still in the kitchen sink and the whole place had a look of neglect, or more of being occupied for use only. The parchment-type shade round the main living-room light was crumpled on one side and bore an ancient scorch-mark.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ asked Louise, ‘I’m afraid there’s only beer.’

  ‘Beer would be fine, I’ll get it myself.’

  ‘Usual place.’

  Eventually Gordon was saying, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll believe this any more than the stuff about Joanna being terribly jealous, but it is true.’

  ‘Really. Try me.’

  ‘All right. I’m going on this trip myself because I have to – no, that’s not quite right. Nobody’s compelling me to go except myself. If I’m going to get this book written, which I must say is beginning to look doubtful, I’ve got to make it as good as I can, that’s a practical thing as well as a matter of professional honour, and to pass up a chance of seeing old JRP Fane in his natural surroundings, or what he thinks or seems to think ought to be his natural surroundings, well obviously that’s not on. With any luck –’

  Louise interrupted him. ‘I take it you have got a point you’ll be coming to some time this evening?’

  ‘I was just going to say, I’ve made up my mind to go, but I don’t expect to enjoy myself at all. Quite the contrary. This Hungerstream joint may be Jimmie’s habitat but it’s certainly not mine. They’ll all be watching me, waiting for me to make a fool of myself which I’m bound to do, probably more than once, and I don’t want you around the place to … witness my humiliation. You know me and I’ll know what you’ll be thinking and even though I’m sure you won’t say or do anything unsympathetic you’ll make everything worse, so please don’t come. I know you want to and I know I’m being selfish a well as wimpish just asking. Sorry, love.’

  ‘Is that the lot?’ Her tone of voice and her expression gave nothing away.

  ‘Essentially. There’s a bit about not wanting to have you despising me for kissing the arses of the ruling classes, but I’ll spare you the rest.’

  ‘But you can put up with being despised for being what you call wimpish.’

  ‘Better than the other and I reckon it’ll help you to believe what I’ve been saying.’

  ‘Oh, I believe that all right.’

  Gordon exhaled noisily. ‘Well, that’s something.’

  ‘As far as it goes, that is, which isn’t all the way. To begin with you’re obviously not telling me the whole story. Mrs Jimmie Fane comes into it somewhere.’

  ‘I was a fool to let you know about her and me.’

  ‘Oh, I guessed about that ages ago but it was still good that you came out with it yourself.’

  ‘You said to begin with I wasn’t telling you the whole truth.’

  ‘Did I? I must have done if you say so. All right, to be going on with whatever I say and however you may feel about it I’ll be coming to bloody Hungerstream with you. You just haven’t considered how supportive I can be.’

/>   20

  ‘Have you had much experience of puttock-sleighs?’ asked the Duke of Dunwich.

  That at any rate was how the question sounded to Gordon. The last word or pair of words was new in his experience and he was never to see it or them written down. It was also the case that the duke spoke indistinctly, touching only lightly on or near most consonants. Whether he did so because he was upper-class or because he was drunk or for some other, hidden reason, it seemed safe to Gordon to answer in the negative. Experience had already shown that if asked to repeat something the duke responded with slightly reduced clarity and lowered volume, though with eye-catching exaggeration of lip and tongue movements. No help towards answering his latest question was to be had from others round the table nor from the context, given his five-minute silence immediately before asking it. Whereabouts between aardvarks and zymotics its field of reference lay, if anywhere, must be left to emerge of itself.

  Some of this sped through Gordon’s mind in the second before he spoke. ‘No, I have to confess I haven’t,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it.’

  ‘I’m sure I shall.’

  The scene was the lunch-table, or perhaps luncheon-table, in one of the smaller dining-rooms at Hungerstream. Gordon had worked out the one-of-the-smaller detail from the apparent size of the place – in the same league as Windsor Castle at a distance and still a bloody great building when seen close to. No doubt parts of it dated from one of the more prosperous periods of the Dark Ages, but in general it must have been given its present form only the other day, probably less than two hundred years earlier. Where the company was now sitting and the room where it had sat for its pre-prandial drinks had been just about warm enough, though the lofty hall and the far from narrow corridors had been cold enough for anybody’s taste. But despite this, and despite their host’s taciturn style, whereby no one got to be introduced and food turned out to be available rather than duly served, Gordon was in goodish heart. He had remembered not to shake any hands, the drink had flowed and his head was still on his shoulders almost two hours after he had crossed this seigneurial threshold.

  As arranged, the group of four had been picked up that morning by a chauffeur-driven car that looked like a Rolls-Royce but was not. Nor was it strictly chauffeur-driven, the one who chauffed it being a tall hatless blonde wearing a matt black coverall that stopped only at wrist and throat. Gordon wondered a little at this and so, he could see, did Louise, but nothing was said, not even when the blonde snatched aboard the Fanes’ substantial suitcases as if they contained only ping-pong balls. She spoke hardly at all, reminding Gordon by her demeanour as well as her dress of some global villain’s hench-woman in a film of the 1960s.

  An ordinary-looking chap in a suit had shown the four visitors into a spacious high-ceilinged room that might well have been a library, to go by the number and non-recent appearance of the books it contained. It also contained somebody sitting in a large scuffed leather armchair by the garage-sized roughstone fireplace, where unstripped logs smouldered and spat and hissed. The occupant of the chair was largely hidden from Gordon and the others by a spread newspaper, though the tweed trouser-legs and thick varicoloured socks rather hinted at maleness. No sound came from behind the newspaper.

  Without hesitation Jimmie led the group over to one of several tall windows, from which they gazed out on apparently limitless lawn with a few full-grown cedars distinguishable between them and the horizon. This phase was soon ended when the person with the newspaper, evidently having read enough or decided to postpone the rest, quickly refolded it, shook it together, folded it again, hurled it accurately on to a sofa and rose to a standing posture. He was now revealed as indeed a man, though it was still not instantly clear whether he was actually a duke of something or a criminal psychopath energetically disguised as one. Rubbing his hands together and wincing, he sauntered across to the four by the window.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So here you are at last. Glad you could come, all of you.’

  By some prodigy of phonic aptitude he had managed to get his message across without apparently bringing his jaws together at any point. Seen at closer quarters, his possibly psychopathic look came down largely to his not having much in the way of eyebrows or eyelashes and a kind of blistering effect over the cheekbones. According to Jimmie as they motored down, this present duke had not had that title for very long, his father having shot himself to death climbing over a stile a couple of years back and his elder brother perishing from drink even more recently. One wife had run away with her driving-instructor, her successor died by her own hand, as was known, although whether she had intended to die was unknown and likely to remain so.

  ‘Let’s get the sightseeing over,’ said the duke, who was perhaps three or four years younger than Gordon. Without looking where he was pointing he gestured to his left. ‘Memling, Gheerardt David, Jan Mathys, Brueghel, Rubens, Allan Ramsay this end. Hamlet, Paradise Lost, The Rambler, Lyrical Ballads, In Memoriam the other. The orangery is supposed to have been worth looking at until my grandfather restored it. Right, now what are we all going to have?’

  So saying, he led them down the room to a table with an inlaid top on which there stood a large silver tray on which in turn there were numerous bottles. Among them Gordon noticed three kinds of blended Scotch whisky and a Speyside and an Islay malt. Also on view was a part-emptied bottle of Trotanoy Pomerol 1979.

  ‘I vote we all help ourselves to a drop of whatever we fancy,’ said the duke, half filling a cut-glass tumbler with a VSOP cognac, ‘I don’t know about you,’ he went on, ‘but I find it saves an awful lot of fuss.’

  ‘Isn’t it a wee bit early yet?’ said Joanna with a glance at Gordon.

  ‘Good Lord no.’ The duke shoved back a tweed cuff to reveal a wrist much hairier than his brows and a squarish watch showing figures but no dial. ‘It’s nearly twelve-twenty,’ he said in a tone of mild remonstrance. Then his eye was caught a second time. ‘Know how much I paid for this? Go on, have a guess.’

  Nobody offered one, not even when urged anew.

  ‘Two quid! Two quid! That’s how much I paid for it. Keeps time to the second with no nonsense about winding for a year or more till the battery runs out and then you just chuck it away and buy yourself another. Uh-ooee-ahersh-ee-uh-ehee-ee-ung,’ he added, but since he was yawning as he spoke what he had meant to say, if anything, was uncertain. More intelligibly he went on to say to Louise, ‘Ah, I think you must be Norah.’

  ‘Actually –’

  ‘Let me top that up for you, Norah. Are you sure? I think we can leave these nice people to look after themselves while you and I go and look out of the window. There’s a fair bit to be seen from there if you use your eyes.’ And with his glass in his hand and the other with its associated arm round her waist, the Duke of Dunwich guided Louise back up the room to where the quartet had halted just before.

  ‘Christ,’ muttered Joanna.

  ‘Oh please shut up darling, and try not to be so bloody suburban.’ Jimmie was crisp without sounding cross. ‘Surely you can see that there’s a man who isn’t as other men are who’s also been under a lot of strain recently what with one thing and another.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think that was his first drink of the morning, would you?’ said Gordon.

  Now Jimmie lowered his own voice. ‘As I say, he’s had a great deal on his mind and it’s no wonder he finds an occasional stiffie helpful. It runs in the family.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ said Joanna. ‘But what’s all this strain he’s been under? A great deal on his what?’

  Jimmie did not answer these questions. He shifted the duke’s folded newspaper and the three of them sat companionably down on the sofa with their drinks, just close enough to the fire for them to feel a small benefit of warmth. Near them stood a glass case on legs, in which Gordon had noticed an open copy of Samson Agonistes, the authour loh: Milton.

  Unwilling to let the subject drop altogether, Gord
on asked Jimmie, ‘From your knowledge, is it a settled condition or does it fluctuate?’

  ‘He means is young Tomnoddy pissed all the time or just some of it,’ explained Joanna.

  After giving one of his more tolerant laughs, Jimmie said, ‘Quite honestly I don’t know. I’ve only met him half a dozen times, you realize. But I’ve heard aristocrats talk like that who couldn’t have been pissed at all. Chaps like old Lord Something-or-other, never touched a drop of anything stronger than tomato-juice and mumbled his head off whenever you happened to run into him.’

  ‘I suppose a fellow like that reckons it’s the other fellow’s job to make out what he’s said.’ Gordon spoke in a neutral tone.

  Joanna nodded vigorously but said nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry if I sounded a little bit haughty a moment ago,’ said Jimmie, ‘but it struck me as bad form to say disrespectful things about one’s host behind his back, as it were.’

  He had timed this reference cleverly or luckily to coincide with a burst of laughter from the duke at something he had no doubt said himself, but Gordon had felt less than easy about such matters since the three had moved nearer, ‘I hope no one’s been paying any attention to us chatting.’

  ‘I know, you must find that feeling hard to shake off, but I can assure you that in my experience of them, my dear Gordon, aristocrats don’t take any notice of whatever other people may happen to say while they’re in hearing.’