The Biographer’s Moustache

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘I go a tiny bit woolly about heaps of things these days but never about money. In fact I think I can say I may even have got slightly better about that over the years.’

  ‘How are you about things like your life with Jimmie?’

  ‘Relatively woolly, I’m afraid, relatively woolly. Everything seems to tend to sort of go into one big blur.’

  ‘Are you going to set up with him again?’

  ‘Now that’s exactly the sort of question that makes me go really quite woolly. If Jimmie says I’m going to then it’s quite possible that I am. What does he say about it?’

  ‘I haven’t asked him.’

  ‘I know he’s a fearful old liar but you’re more likely to get the truth of a thing like that out of him than out of me. You seem quite a nice young man. I’m afraid I couldn’t make out what you were doing at a place like Hungerstream, no never mind, anyway I’ll remind you that to go woolly about something isn’t the same as to actually be woolly about it. I rather like to keep people guessing, do you see. You know that marvellous expression, to catch somebody on the wrong foot? I rather enjoy that, I’m afraid.’

  Just then the front doorbell rang and Lady Rowena cowered theatrically back among the cushions on her chair. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘So many people coming to see one. Well, I’m afraid you won’t get anything out of me about Jimmie or me-and-Jimmie.’

  ‘Why did you ask me to come round?’

  ‘Perhaps to see what would happen if Jimmie found you here.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I know he wanted to come round some day like today. So it might really be him.’

  It was not Jimmie or anyone like him but Mr and Mrs something unrecognizable to Gordon by name, recognizable enough in the flesh, however, as the daughter Periwinkle and her husband perhaps Oliver encountered once and briefly and some time ago. Neither treated him with overt hostility, but he decided against giving any of the hidden sort a chance to work its way to the surface and was off within a minute, forgetting what excuse he had made as soon as he had made it. Once more, with rain in the air but still not actually falling, he stood and waited for a bus, thinking to himself as he did so that despite hefty evidence to the contrary he had not in fact wasted the last thirty-six hours or however long it had been.

  His latest journey took him to a building that he found much more unwelcome in appearance than either of its predecessors, detectable by its very appearance as a place confining people whom the rest of society rightly or wrongly had no wish to be bothered with. It was the sort of place where visitors went on arrival to a central desk where information and directions were dispensed. Gordon went to it.

  Without anything that could be called a delay he was taken to a room on an upper floor where nobody would go except to see somebody. Again he had no need to hang about before somebody was shown in.

  If Gordon had not known differently he might well have supposed this person to have been a man, an old man rather short in stature wearing a loose shirt outside unpressed blue trousers, the hair white and closely trimmed, a handsome old man despite deep furrows round nose and mouth and at the corners of the eyes.

  After an exchange of amicable smiles, Gordon said, ‘Mrs Easton?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ The voice was masculine and senatorial.

  ‘I am addressing Mrs Easton, Betty Easton?’

  ‘That’s my name, certainly. And you are … ?’

  He gave his name and started to explain why he had come, but had not got very far when it struck him that the other was not listening. He smiled again, perhaps over-cordially this time, and said, ‘Didn’t they tell you anything about me or what I was after?’

  ‘Forgive me, but didn’t who?’

  ‘Well, the people here, the … whoever it was told you I’d come to see you.’

  ‘I’m sure everybody behaved impeccably. They’re all very nice and helpful and conscientious, I think I can safely say that. They’re all very nice.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they are. Let me just tell you very briefly why I’ve come to see you. I’m collecting material, that’s to say I’m writing an article about –’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr … I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Scott-Thompson, Gordon Scott-Thompson. I’m working on a –’

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr … ?’

  ‘I’d be most grateful for anything you can tell me about somebody called Jimmie Fane. I understand you –’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Jimmie … Fane. JRP Fane. He wrote books.’

  ‘What, what sort of books?’

  ‘Oh … novels, er, stories. Poems. Poetry. Lots of different sorts of book.’

  ‘Who do you say wrote these books?’

  ‘Jimmie Fane. You remember Jimmie.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t remember reading any books by … that author.’

  ‘But you were …’ Gordon drew back at the last moment from saying that Mrs Easton had at one time been married to the Jimmie Fane he had introduced into the conversation. Instead of that he thanked her for talking to him, apologized for taking up her time and in due course left.

  ‘Just checking out,’ he said to the chinless but friendly girl at the central desk. ‘Mrs Easton.’

  ‘Oh yes, how did you find her?’

  He shook his head wordlessly.

  ‘M’m, I’ve always said there’s a case for telling people in your position not to bother to come, but you see we have this rule against doing anything to discourage outside visits.’

  ‘Of course, I understand.’

  When Gordon had left the building he walked a hundred yards or so to the nearest pub and went in. He was already starting to feel better at not being in Mrs Easton’s company, but the improvement went into reverse for a time when, without meaning to, he thought about the fact that she had been the female that the youthful Jimmie had married. It also occurred to him to imagine the two of them engaged in – well, nothing much more than holding hands, actually, but it was quite enough to send his imagination reversing at full speed. He ordered two large Scotches in quick succession and started feeling better again, more because there he was drinking them than from anything they were doing for him in themselves. He went home by taxi, feeling that his chat with the first Mrs Fane narrowly justified the expense.

  27

  Soon the two excerptible chunks were ready. In a half-hearted attempt to make them seem like two parts of a whole, Gordon had put something about Jimmie’s wives and girl-friends into the chunk that was mainly about his works, and something about his works into the chunk that was mainly not. The latter piece had cost him some trouble and he had had to take it through several drafts. Much of their respective contents had oscillated between portraying their subject as a greedy lord-loving egomaniac, redeemed only by flashes of lust, and making him seem no worse than any other creative artist, with exacting standards of comfort and support, perhaps, but with no history of alcoholism, theft, venereal disease or other literary characteristic. Satisfying Brian Harris without alienating Jimmie himself was a tricky requirement. Or so it seemed to Gordon. He wished he could send his final version straight to Brian, but he thought that both honour and policy required the imprimatur of the central figure.

  Accordingly, when the chunks existed in fair copy Gordon took them along to Jimmie’s choice of venue, the members’ lounge at Gray’s club. It was a few minutes before noon on a fine spring morning with quite noticeable sunshine slanting in from St James’s Street.

  ‘Come along, my dear boy, come along,’ said Jimmie, his effusiveness perhaps evidencing knowledge that it was not strictly all right for a non-member of the club like Gordon to be where he was at such a time, ‘I expect you know these chaps, don’t you?’ There were three or four of these chaps, boasting two or three baronial names between them, soon distancing themselves in one way or another from host and guest. ‘Have a glass of champagne,’ continued Jimmie, ‘I’ve worked
it out that you actually make money if you drink it like this before luncheon.’ He was wearing a pale-grey suit that was new to Gordon, perhaps new absolutely, through which he managed to radiate an appearance of health and relative youth and affluence. ‘Now do correct me if I’m wrong but I rather fancy you’ve put together or even actually written something you say you want me to cast my eye over, or am I simply talking through my hat?’

  By this early stage Gordon was more than half reconciled to having put together or actually written a couple of paragraphs unhelpful to a laudatory general view of Jimmie and his activities. ‘Would you like to take this stuff away with you and study it,’ he said, ‘or would you prefer to have a look at it now? It’s in two lots, one critical, one personal.’

  With a touch of magisterial impatience amid all the bonhomie the old artist-man thrust out his hand. ‘Pass me the critical stuff, I’ll give it my best attention at leisure. The personal stuff or whatever you call it I’ll go through with you straight away.’

  ‘Right.’

  Jimmie took about half a minute to get through the first page of personal stuff. ‘Have I really got to read all this?’

  ‘Not if you don’t feel like it. Concentrate on pages four and five.’

  Jimmie concentrated, but not very hard. ‘Yes … yes … did I really do that? I expect I did … yes … oh no, how thoughtless of me … yes … well of course.’ He put the papers in order and handed them back.

  ‘Aren’t you going to just glance at the end?’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Some ten seconds later Jimmie said, ‘There. You know, dear boy, I don’t really care what you or anybody else says about me and what I’ve got up to in my time, never have. Well, that’s not quite true, I suppose I care what people like Willie Dunwich say about me but anyone less exalted is free to say whatever he chooses. Or think it. I’ve lived in the world, I can’t really object to being judged by the world.’

  ‘What did you get up to during the war?’

  ‘Oh bless my soul.’ Jimmie threw back his fine head and laughed abundantly, ‘I fancy I know where that came from. For your enlightenment, dear Gordon, I joined the civil service on 28th August 1939 and before I could turn round I was neck-deep in scrap-metal collection. It was inordinately boring but one stood only a very small chance of being shot or blown up. M’m. Do you kindly reflect that there are some whose curiosity it’s a duty as well as a pleasure to leave unsatisfied.’

  ‘How does Willie Dunwich think you spent the war?’

  ‘I’m sure he’s been told but he wouldn’t have noticed.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My period in the civil service was over before he started going to school.’

  ‘What about the war itself? He must have noticed being told about that.’

  ‘Too large an event to miss altogether. Anything on a smaller scale would have to have happened to one of his ancestors or immediate family.’ Jimmie looked over Gordon’s shoulder at somebody who had just come into the room.

  It was in fact two persons, the Bobbie and Tommie met with on these premises before. They came over and Bobbie, nodding at the typescript, said in his melodious voice, ‘Paper in the club.’

  Gordon would not have remembered thinking about the matter much in the interval, but now it was clear to him that Bobbie’s demeanour was conditionally hostile, ready to retreat into humour if confronted. ‘How do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘He means one isn’t supposed to work in the club,’ said Jimmie, ‘sign papers or conduct business or anything like that.’

  ‘Actually a very good rule when it was instituted,’ said Tommie. ‘A long time ago now of course.’

  Bobbie nodded with a touch of impatience. He looked wordlessly at Gordon in a way designed to draw attention to the presence now and in this quarter of a non-member of the club, again with a smile in reserve.

  Gordon liked and approved of the way Jimmie saw this and reacted, elaborately apologizing with a display of shame and distress that put Bobbie firmly in his place. In the middle of the whirl of counter-apology that emerged he found room for the observation that all cultures had their rituals.

  ‘Sometimes I’m not quite sure where I stand with Bobbie,’ said Jimmie as they left the room.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I can never make up my mind whether he feels a rankling personal hatred for me or just dislikes me enough to enjoy teasing me.’

  ‘I should imagine he dislikes quite a few people enough for that.’

  ‘I’ve thought of asking Tommie but I can’t summon up enough interest in the answer. What about another drink? – in the bar this time, you’re allowed there.’

  ‘Well, yes, please, just a small one.’ As often over the past weeks, Gordon accepted a small drink much less for itself than because of what Jimmie or another might let fall at such a time. Jimmie probably understood this, but what of it?

  In the bar, where the barman was the only sentient being on view, Jimmie even so said, ‘Gordon, dear boy, I really brought you in here to say thank you.’

  ‘Why, what on earth for?’

  ‘Just … undertaking and constructing this work of yours on the subject of JRP Fane, man and artist. You may be surprised and even pleased to hear that whenever I’ve mentioned it round the place, in confidence of course, the response has been not merely encouraging but specifically encouraging. No fewer than, well, several men shall we say not unconnected with publishing and bookselling have assured me that when this work appears it will trigger off a large revival of interest in what I’ve written. And in myself too, the one reacting upon the other. It doesn’t matter that some of my actions have been, how to put it, offensive to conventional morality, in fact it’s a great advantage, which is another reason for accepting your warts-and-all treatment as seen in that … disquisition you showed me. These days the public like to think of an artist as a, as a shit, known to behave in ways that they themselves would shrink from. Did it harm either the reputation or the sales of that Danish fellow or whatever he was when the public learnt how monstrously he’d behaved? Far from it, far from it. I myself don’t aspire to his level, but the principle’s the same. I don’t think I need go on. But I did just want to say,’ and here he shifted position a little so that Gordon could see his face in profile, ‘… thank you.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, Jimmie.’

  ‘Will you have another of those?’

  ‘I’d like to, but I’m afraid I really have to be getting along.’

  ‘I’ll telephone you if I may to let you know of anything I might like to see changed in that … treatise you gave me to look at.’

  The place Gordon was bound for now was near the distant end of Piccadilly. It was an Italian restaurant that was unusual in having Brian Harris in it. Round the corner from Gray’s Gordon boarded a bus and was presently joining Brian at the table where he now sat.

  Even in the brief interval since they had last met, the publisher had moved some further distance back towards a style of appearance his predecessors might have tolerated. Given some negligence in the execution he might have been freshly shaved, and his neck was encompassed by an actual tie, shaggy, irregular in cross-section but definitely a tie. Even his voice was less harsh. He used it now to bid Gordon welcome.

  Gordon finished arriving, accepted a small Campari-soda and apologized for being a few minutes late.

  ‘I hope you used them to get a bit of drink down you,’ said Brian.

  ‘I suppose you could say –’

  ‘Because I’m afraid I’ve been rather knocking them back here. This is my second.’

  ‘Not like you.’

  ‘It’s working in publishing that does it, you know, Gordon, makes you hit the old firkin. People talk about the ruthlessness of property tycoons and what are they, asset-strippers, but they’re angels of mercy compared to the bastards who run publishing these days. I mean really run it, not the sort of tweedy twit who used to offer you a glass of pale sherry when you went t
o see him among his panelling, so legend said anyway. Still, don’t let’s go into that now. Look, do you mind if we order, I’ve got a meeting this afternoon and there’s some stuff I want to look up first. Right, now you tell me what you’ve been up to. How’s Jimmie Fane getting on?’

  ‘If you mean JRP Fane in italics followed by a colon and some piece of crap like lyrist and libertine, in other words my critical biography of that literary figure, then it’s getting on as well as can be expected. If you’re asking after old Jimmie, then that’s not so easy.’

  Gordon considered his distinction between book and subject rather neatly phrased, and was mildly irritated to find that Brian seemed to have missed it, had started to deal with the waiter instead, was giving instructions as to the serving of his avocado pear.

  ‘These days if you’re not careful they take it out of the skin and slice it up and spread it out on the plate in a sort of fan instead of letting you dig it out for yourself,’ he explained to Gordon. ‘No doubt it’s how they dish it up at American ski resorts. Now what are you grinning at?’

  ‘I was thinking, that’s exactly the sort of thing Jimmie would say, especially the bit about America.’

  ‘Oh Christ, it must be the influence of that classy babe of mine. She’s still the centre of my existence, by the way. Which reminds me, how’s the lovely Mrs Fane?’

  ‘Lovelier than ever, which speaks well for her considering what a shit Jimmie’s being to her, or contemplating being to her. A new vile scheme of his.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Sure, but just – you did get those faxes of mine, those two sort of extracts?’

  ‘Yes, they’re okay, I’ll tell you later. I want to hear about Jimmie’s new vile scheme first.’

  This lasted them through the meal, which was washed down with plenty of wine. Brian listened attentively, but was also interested in keeping Gordon’s glass filled. Was he trying to get him drunk? Why should he? No no, merely helping him to catch up with the party. Anyway, by the time Gordon had covered his visit to Betty Easton and coffee and grappa had arrived he had become quite eloquent. He had also reached a decision.