Gordon felt he could not say that Jimmie Fane had sounded rather old and sad in the making of his last few remarks, but that he had looked no older than usual and not sad at all. Nor could he, Gordon, summon up enough of the vigour necessary to any denial of those propositions, indeed there was nothing much that he wanted to say at all, certainly not about the rustic buffoon, now nowhere to be seen. So he kept his trap shut.
‘Well, it’s time we made for home,’ said Jimmie briskly as they started to do so. ‘I hope I didn’t embarrass you too much by, by holding forth as I did – very self-indulgent of me. I didn’t mean to say all that. In fact it wouldn’t be far out to tell you I didn’t know I had it to say. Past thoughts, they’re like a room in one’s house one’s got out of the way of ever going into without realizing.’
Gordon slouched along at his side, by now not daring to say a word.
‘You ought to hear it if anybody ought, I suppose. That kind of thing would come as no surprise to Joanna, but then I suppose nothing would.’ The small sighs and groans Jimmie uttered during and after this pronouncement came as an indication, satisfactory to Gordon, that no meeting of minds on the subject of Joanna was to follow. There was a droplet more to come, however. ‘One can’t help feeling,’ said Jimmie, but then at last fell silent, looking from tree to tree in wonderment as if it had only just occurred to him that they could be of different sorts.
What one could or could not help feeling was a question that soon ceased to engage Gordon. He felt as sure as he could be without raising the matter with him that Jimmie knew nothing, whatever he might have suspected, of his wife’s current spell of hanky-panky. That at any rate was how he felt at favourable times like the present. At less favourable times, like waking up unaccompanied in his bed at five a.m., he would remind himself that not all egotists were unobservant, especially not when their own interests were involved. He had even fancied once or twice there might be something in the view that Jimmie’s celebrated warning-off proclamation to him had actually been designed as an egging-on, as Joanna had thought, or said. But wiser counsels, or at any rate more comfortable ones, on the whole prevailed.
This week-end, now, had had its minefield-like aspects, what with Louise as well as Joanna about and Jimmie in attendance, not to speak of the anti-personnel nature of the nobby ambience, but so far things had held together. Coming down in the car, for instance, he had shared the back seat with a quiescent, almost silent Louise and had a close view of the back of Joanna’s neck, quite nice actually, and an almost equally close view of Jimmie’s more weatherbeaten-looking neck. Little had been exchanged or audibly said on the journey. What followed it had not been free of difficulties, but the women had been as good as gold, had behaved almost as if they wanted no trouble. Gordon was not somebody who often visualized telling his grandchildren something, but if he had been then an account of picking his way among the present lot might have figured. So again he felt at times. At other times, as it might have been catching sight of Joanna across a room, he felt clean out of his depth, stripped of rules and models that up to now had always been there, and the whole thing was to do with her. He could only be sure of not feeling like that when he was alone with her. Perhaps he was in love, or was going to be.
Soon the two men had reached the small road they had crossed earlier and, as before, halted beside it. ‘You won’t mind if I stand here a moment and look at this valley,’ said Jimmie in a voice that perhaps showed his true age. ‘I don’t imagine I shall often see it again.’
Furtively, Gordon glanced at Jimmie. The venerable wielder of the pen was clearly doing his utmost to earn such a description, or at any rate to look and sound the part, a tall unbowed figure of some rugged grandeur, or at least a figure of that general description as presented by an expensive Italian movie-screen. There was no trace in him now of the dignified acceptance of failure that Gordon had seen, or thought he had seen, just before they started back. And yet you could consider yourself worthy of all sorts of things from admiration to pity and still be worthy of them. Gordon felt matters were getting out of hand again.
‘And high bridge and indignant nostril nothing to do but look noble,’ said Jimmie without explanation, ‘I think I’ve rested my legs enough now. You know, if I walk more than a few yards these days they start aching. Give up smoking, my doctor said. I told him I hadn’t smoked for nearly forty years. Good for you, said the quack enthusiastically.’
They set off again. Presently they came in sight of the evergreen hedge where they had started. ‘One further brief cessation of ambulation,’ said Jimmie, ‘and then we can high-tail it for anchovy toast and Genoa cake served off a silver salver and washed down with oolong. I know you think I’m a frightful old arse-creeper of the nobility, and so of course I am, but you have to remember I’m not really out of the top drawer.’
‘Oh, I thought you were absolutely sort of kosher.’
‘Oh I’m kosher all right as far as I go. Actually that’s quite far, but in one way not quite far enough. I come out of, I should have said I come out of a top drawer but not of the top drawer, the topmost of all, the one with dukes and marquises in it. I suppose from down where you are it all looks much the same but I can assure you it doesn’t at all from up here. Not that parts of it don’t look even funnier from up here than they probably do to you down there. While we’re on the topic I’ll have you know it ties up with what I was saying about beauty back in that sort of druidical circle. These days there’s only one kind of place you can hope to come across it, that’s beauty, outside art, of course I don’t mean the kind of art that gets produced these days. Anyhow, with luck beauty is still to be found in the country, those few parts of it that man hasn’t gobbled up and spat out again, and those parts in my experience exist only on the property of some great landowner in whose family it’s been for centuries, before things started to go to pot. I agree it’s hard to think of poor Willie Dunwich as exercising any beneficent –’
‘Right on cue,’ said Gordon, nodding over at the house, which he happened to be facing.
Round one of the corners of the building there had just appeared the aforesaid Duke of Dunwich attired for the saddle, and two groom-like figures, the elder of whom led a largish chestnut horse accoutred for riding. All four were sharply visible in the bright air, and Jimmie and Gordon had an excellent view of what followed. For the moment nothing did, beyond some discussion among the three men and a vigorous, almost violent, tossing of the horse’s head.
‘I’ve been giving those puttock-sleighs some thought,’ said Jimmie. ‘Are you sure he didn’t say buttock-slaves? Think before you answer.’
‘No need to, I can’t swear he didn’t say almost anything roughly approximating to puttock-sleighs. Anyway, how much better off are we with buttock-slaves?’
‘Quite a lot, perhaps. Couldn’t a buttock-slave be an admittedly fanciful but still intelligible term for a passive partner in sodomy, whatever it’s called nowadays. It was a pansy when I was at school. A catamite.’
‘Now that does call for thought.’
‘It’s funny, at that early stage I was quite sure a catamite was a kind of puma or jaguar. Not one’s first choice for a bed-fellow. I must have got it mixed up with …’
Jimmie’s voice died away as his attention became fixed on the scene below. The duke had got one booted foot into the nearside stirrup, the side fully visible to the two observers, and being unable to swing the rest of him up by his own efforts, had had to hop a few yards beside his restless mount. Now, while the elder groom held the chestnut’s head, the younger one shoved his master up into the saddle. Through some trick of over-compensation he at once all but fell out of it again, now on the off side. By then the horse was in motion, indeed had broken into a full gallop almost at once. So the two progressed for a hundred yards or more with the duke still to be made out exerting himself. Perhaps a vestige of control on his part, or more likely just a whim of the horse, brought about a change of direction not q
uite sudden enough to be useful to the rider, who was now in open view again as he continued to try to climb into the saddle. Nothing in their relative positions had changed when man and beast disappeared round the corner of the house. For a few seconds the chestnut reappeared, this time with no one on or near his back, and then was finally gone.
‘Reassure me, Gordon: he couldn’t have done all that just for our benefit, could he?’
‘Not possibly. He couldn’t have laid the whole performance on in the time.’
‘No, of course he couldn’t. How ridiculous of me. Do you think a puttock-sleigh could be a horse, or a ride on one?’
‘Except that when I said I didn’t know anything about whatever they are he said I’d soon get the idea. Not quite what he …’
‘M’m. It looks as if we’ll just have to give it up.’
‘Perhaps he was trying to be funny.’
‘Not Willie Dunwich.’
They went down the incline, through the small gateway, across a paved yard where there were bushes or parts of bushes in tubs, and into the house. Here Jimmie at once said he must just go and see that Joanna was all right and disappeared up a markedly utilitarian-looking staircase. Gordon decided to assume without fear of contradiction that Louise was absolutely all right, or alternatively could do no harm in her continuing absence. He had been a very good boy so far and was determined to remain so, but was well aware that the less he saw of her the better his chances of not succumbing to her allure. That still left him in an unfamiliar part of the house, but after walking half a kilometre or so, always moving in the direction of increasing affluence of decor, he succeeded in regaining the library without assistance from any questing butler or other menial. Utter silence surrounded him from first to last. He wondered what state his host was in after having presumably fallen from his horse, but felt that the absence of domestic commotion indicated something on the right side of death or serious injury. He allowed his gaze to move round the shelves and cupboards where lay many of the glories of our literature in their earliest published form, and wondered why his desire to look at some of them should have sunk to such a low ebb.
He was in the middle of thinking this when the door of the room opened and, after a pause sufficient for a cursory look round the interior, somebody came in. The newcomer was recognizable as the blonde woman who, an infinity of time ago, had driven him and others down here from London. Clad now in an outfit less uncompromising than the black ensemble she had at first worn, she gave him a brief ward-nurse’s smile and said in a high unwelcoming voice,
‘Will you be requiring tea, sir?’
‘Thank you very much, that would be delightful.’
She went out again and stayed away for some time, but at the end of it there appeared a trolley bearing all sorts of tea-things and possible food, propelled by a younger and smaller servant. After what was not really a very long interval Gordon had beside him a couple of fingers of toast, a damp, dark slice of cake and a cup of tan-coloured tea without milk.
‘Got everything you want?’ said a voice recognizably, and the Duke of Dunwich came into the room and poured himself a similar cup. Far from bearing signs of a riding accident he was dressed in a smart tweed suit like a successful country auctioneer and walked to his chair in what was very nearly a straight line. An instant before he spoke, Gordon had bitten off a large piece of cake, which he bolted at his best speed but not quite before the duke had said, ‘Good, good,’ in a tone of heartfelt relief. ‘Jimmie not with you,’ he stated or possibly asked.
‘No, he said he was just going to look in on Joanna.’
‘Nice girl, that little Norah, I must say.’
‘Yes, isn’t she?’
‘What? But I doubt, I don’t suppose you need my opinion on that, hey?’
By now Gordon had another mouthful of cake in place, so he merely wagged his head pawkily.
‘Joanna now. What do you make of her … er … old boy?’ Luckily for Gordon the duke had more to say, though its relevance was not at once apparent. ‘Just between ourselves, you know, old Jimmie’s a bit of a bounder. Do I mean a bounder? I suppose not really. If a bounder’s a fellow trying to better himself, not too particular about how he moves up the social scale, like, well, like lots of fellows. Now old Jimmie, he’s a social climber in his way, everybody knows that, dying to be asked here, not to see me or even my things, but so as to be able to talk about when he was last at Hungerstream hobnobbing with old Willie Dunwich, the duke, you know. But he’s not a bounder exactly, m’m? More of a shit. You’re supposed to be writing this book about him, surely you’ve found that, haven’t you?’
Gordon actually stammered when he answered, ‘Well, no, er, not really, no.’
‘In that case you’d better start having a closer look, I’d have thought. Oh, he’s good company, that’s half the reason why he’s here from my point of view, but a shit all the same, not least in his treatment of poor little Joanna, whom I must say I’m rather fond of. A moment ago I asked you how you thought she was bearing up.’
‘Not too badly.’ Gordon was fully conscious of the inadequacies of this reply, but was deterred from saying more by a galaxy of motives, from not knowing how long this conversation would last, to not being as sure as he would like to have been that old Willie Dunwich would not, on hearing more, incontinently snatch up the cake-knife and set about using it on old Jimmie Fane. The duke’s eyes seemed to reflect the light in an odd way.
‘Oh, good,’ said the latter with a touch of sarcasm, but had time to add urgently, ‘You know what’s happening this evening?’ before Jimmie himself came into the room along with the ruffianly couple who had arrived shortly before lunch, looking somewhat less ruffianly now with a dress and a collar and tie here and there, but with cranial and facial hair still in place. The medium-intensity giggling of all three as they entered might have suggested that all three had seen that Joanna was all right. The next moment Gordon hurried out, doing his best to look like a man in sudden need of a pee, and ran upstairs.
Outside the Fanes’ door he raised a knuckle but lowered it again. Assuming Joanna was talkable-to, what was he to say to her? Just then the door opened and showed her ready for parade in a new buttercup-and-brown outfit with a wide shiny belt. She stared at him.
‘You look nice,’ he said.
‘What’s the matter?’
He realized he had rushed up here in order to warn her, but all he could think of to warn her against or about was something due to happen that evening, if as much, so instead of anything cautionary he said, ‘The duke fell off his horse but he’s all right now.’
‘And Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.’
‘What?’
‘Have you ever wondered why I don’t lead you a dance?’ She spoke in a friendly tone.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well I have. Wondered, I mean. I usually do with men. Lead them a dance, that is.’
Frowning with self-dissatisfaction, he said, if there’s anything you want me to do, now or later, I’ll do it.’
She opened her lips and closed them again. Then she said, ‘For now, you’d better just bugger off before Jimmie comes up to make sure I haven’t bumped my head on a William and Mary cornice. That’ll do to be going on with.’
So Gordon buggered off, and eventually the whole party had gathered in the library and seven or eight people came for drinks, some of whom the duke seemed to know, by sight at any rate, and that went on for some time without detectable damage to anyone present. Eventually there came the moment whose analogues Gordon had always found strange, not that he had experienced many of them, the moment when drinks-guests were intended to leave and dinner-guests progressively arrived, the first lot dismissed by implication as too drunk to be allowed anything more, the second lot kept off until now as too keen on the booze to be allowed free and uninterrupted access to it for six hours or more. But eventually that moment too had come and gone, leaving Gordon’s
senses blunted to what seemed to him an appropriate degree.
‘I didn’t have time to ask you how things were going,’ he said to Joanna.
‘What things, or rather which things?’
‘Jimmie things, Jimmie plots,’ said Gordon daringly but, since Jimmie was talking to the duke and Louise on the other side of the room, perhaps not as daringly as all that.
‘Those things have been quiet. I reckon I must have been wrong when I thought something was due to happen on this week-end. He’s making a bomb all right, but it doesn’t look as if it’s set to go off yet awhile. How’s Louise?’
‘I think she’s quite smitten with the duke. He with her too a bit, but then I expect girls quite often smite him in that sort of way.’
Joanna looked at him. ‘Is that all you have to report from the Louise direction?’
‘Well, I’ve managed to keep her hands off me, which hasn’t taken much doing. I sometimes get the impression she’s not really a very sexy girl.’ His statement about his impression was true enough, though it was also true that at other times he got a different impression.
‘Gordon.’
‘Yes?’
‘You find this sort of four-cornered deal we’ve got down here a touch on the bizarre side, don’t you darling?’
‘Yes. Since you ask me.’
‘All right, but don’t knock it. You’re part of it yourself, remember, and quite a prominent part at that. You’re the only one with your fingers in both pies, if you’ll pardon the expression.’
It could not really have been at this exact point, just that Gordon ever afterwards remembered it so, that the door of the room opened and a number of assorted people came in, evidently the dinner-guests arrived in a body. Among them was a tallish, thinnish woman whom Gordon at first took to be about fifty but after a moment saw was some years older. Nevertheless she had kept herself in trim, what with a close-cut green woollen dress, hair expertly tinted to a sort of auburn and a peering, disgruntled expression that indicated to him her membership of some privileged social group. But most of this he took in later; what he caught an immediate glimpse of was Jimmie’s face, well displayed in the light in that part of the room and showing for a moment pure and intense consternation. Old Jimmie might or might not have been good at hiding his true feelings in general, but then at least he registered sincere dismay.
The Biographer’s Moustache Page 18