The Biographer

by Virginia Duigan

  She said again, 'Wouldn't it be impossibly ruthless? And – unnatural?' She felt her heart race.

  'Youth is always ruthless.That is its nature. Love is the most ruthless of all.'

  'What about unnatural?'

  'What does that mean, natural? It is a meaningless word. The whole of civilisation has been a process of improving on the natural.'

  'How do you know all this?'

  'Everyone knows it in their heart.That's what great art is all about.The great novels,the work of Tolstoy,Flaubert, Zola. Music, paintings. You say Mischa Svoboda is a great artist.Well, he will have no difficulty with it.You just wait and see.'

  They had been so engrossed in the conversation on the beach that when she looked at her watch she was amazed to find it was lunchtime. Charlie would be back from his fishing trip, anxiously seeking her out.

  The Frenchman got to his feet first, then pulled her up and kept hold of her hands. He said,'But all of this, it rests on the hypothesis that the great artist Mischa Svoboda you have only known a week is the true love of your life.'

  'It's not a hypothesis. It's a certainty.'

  The love of my life. The phrase stirred a physical response.

  'Je comprends.When it happens, you know.'

  They stood in silence, hand in hand, facing each other. She remembered how they had suddenly and spontaneously embraced, and the way the embrace had morphed like a computer-generated image into a passionate kiss. How she had let it happen, with her eyes closed, with no resistance. The release of it.

  At least I was the first to pull back, she thought now, wryly. At least, I always like to think I was. It hadn't felt reckless, or even disloyal, just natural.Whatever that was. She had disengaged herself.They were both left smiling, rueful, and distinctly breathless.

  'So,' he'd said, 'then you will have to go through with this plan. When you get back, you must make a start by coming clean with him.'

  'Yes.Oh,God.'

  'If it's going to work out between you, it will work. You don't need God.'He grinned.'Love has a famous habit of finding a way.'

  She remembered his parting words.'Bonne chance. I wish it was me.'

  It was the last day of his vacation and she had seen Jean-Claude only once more, that same evening, at the far end of the resort dining room. Just an impression of his face, angled towards her as she walked in ahead of her husband. She had turned sharply on her heel, gasping involuntarily, as if stung. At dinner outside on the candlelit verandah she kept her eyes fixed on her innocent husband seated opposite, as if she were wearing blinkers.

  Even at the time Greer had retained no clear picture of Jean-Claude's face. He remained a blur, like the fleeting glimpse that night in the hotel. Sometimes she found herself wondering if she had imagined the entire incident.Was he some kind of ghostly scapegoat she had conjured up, so she could tell herself: it was his idea, not mine. He planted it in my mind; I would never have contemplated it. Had he been an agent provocateur, prompting a sequence of events that she might not otherwise have had the nerve, the heart, to embark upon?

  But her recall of the conversation was total.And she had no memory of ever asking him whether he thought she would find the strength to go through with it when the time came.The possibility that she might find herself unable to go through with it, she suspected, had never even entered her mind.

  In Greer's study lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves was a fine walnut writing desk with two lockable drawers. For the last ten years she had left the diary lying at the back of the left-hand drawer, unlocked. She turned the key of the drawer now, and put the key in her purse. The diary was an incriminating document, without any doubt. She could burn it. She was surprised to find herself strongly disinclined to do this. Because hidden between these covers is the person I was then. The answers to the questions are right here: the how and the why. This is the evidence, with no excuse and no apology. Just the raw feelings on the page.

  There was something abhorrent about the idea of destroying the evidence, however incriminating it might be. She felt some pride in taking this attitude. Even if it was never used, either for biography or autobiography, it was the personal equivalent of a historical document, a primary source. And a primary source, she felt instinctively, should be sacrosanct.

  She had been thinking of the diary as a fragment of autobiography. She revised this idea now. It was a mistake to think of it like that.The diary was too immediate, with its heat-of-the-moment roughness, its shameless partiality.

  An autobiography was another thing altogether. It required distance from events.You had to take a step back, make an attempt perhaps to view the past through the eyes of a second self – a more dispassionate and grown-up version. A self that had become, you might even say, a different person.

  The obvious analogy, she thought, is right here in front of me: wine. A mature wine contains all the elements it displayed in youth, but they have undergone an alchemy, a sea change. Life has tempered them. Or tampered with them, more to the point. If one could freeze a particular red wine in its rackety youth, then drink it years later alongside a mature glass of the same vintage, to claim they were one and the same wine would be effectively meaningless.

  In what sense, then, am I the same person as the writer of this diary? Must I take responsibility for what she did? Or could I legitimately disown her?

  Mischa, she knew, had a remarkable, even eerie, ability to disconnect himself from his past. Unlike Rollo, he could never write an autobiography. He might get a kick out of reading a perceptive account of the evolution of his work. But he would read his own biography much as he might read someone else's,as an intriguing story.As a fiction,even.

  His identity and his sense of self were rooted in the present tense, as this man, this working artist, anchored today in the here and now. His younger self was another person altogether, one with whom he felt no particular sympathy and in whom he had only minimal interest. Was there any particular reason for this, and was it normal or abnormal? Healthy or unhealthy?

  How did writers of autobiographical works deal with questions like these? Like all authors, they would use their major resource, the mind. They would then channel it through the crafty constructions of the pen, or more likely the keyboard. Because an autobiography, essentially, was calculated. It was the considered presentation of a life story.

  And a unique marketing opportunity – not always taken up, she had to admit, by persons of integrity – to finesse the truth and present the author in a favourable light.It bestowed on the writer the precious gift of hindsight in the form of distance from events and a free hand to put a particular slant on them.

  And leisure, she thought, to tamper with those events. The chance not only to tweak, shape and embellish, but also, on occasion, to censor. Or to excise. It offered the chance to delete unwanted events from the author's life.

  She recalled Guy once delinquently dismissing Rollo's lauded memoir as the written equivalent of creative accounting.What an alluring concept this now appeared to be. She envied the ingenious autobiographer, free to rewrite history through the filter of selective memory. Free to flirt with dishonest self-interest.At liberty to leave things out.

  Unless, of course, a biographer had already pre-empted that freedom and was planning to put on record a full and frank account. Unless he felt it incumbent on himself to put on public record an uncensored, unabridged and essentially unimproved version of events.

  Greer had got up late, unusually for her, and shuffled into the kitchen in dressing gown and sheepskin boots. Mischa had left a fire burning in the grate. She stood with her back to it, reminded of how at school in the frosty Melbourne winters the girls had lifted their skirts and backed up against the radiators, luxuriating in the warmth on their bare legs.

  It was cold again today, leaden and overcast, a reminder that winter was not about to yield possession without a struggle. She felt an unease encircling the house as if some giant creature, an extinct flying reptile, had i
nvaded her territory and was hovering overhead, blanketing everything in shadow.The feeling would persist all day, she knew, until the interloper himself arrived smiling at her door.

  Mischa was already in his studio.The kitchen table was strewn with papers, today's International Herald Tribune and a pile of letters, which meant that he had been down to the village. She saw the current Guardian Weekly, and the remains of his breakfast – coffee, toast crumbs, a jar of peanut butter and the empty shells of two boiled eggs. Mischa was indifferent to any theories of healthy eating and cholesterol, just as he always forgot to put things away or turn off the radio. It was tuned to the BBC World Service.

  Also on the table in a glass of water was an indecently huge and showy pink peony from Rollo's garden and a handwritten note in his meticulous calligraphy: 'Please attend confab soonest.' She felt a rush of gratitude that lasted as she showered, dressed and pinned up her hair. The feeling that she was being watched was still there. She was a woman under investigation. She took her time.

  She smelt burning logs and fresh coffee well before she reached the front door of the big farmhouse. Some of Rollo's person was visible through the kitchen window, sprawled in an armchair, not reading but gazing out. He saw her coming and clambered to his feet, enveloping her in a hug at the door.

  'At last, you lazy slattern. I've done you a fire, very possibly the swan song of the season. Coffee's made, crumpets are poised, and I'm busting for a bitchy debrief.' He appraised her: ankle boots, black wool trousers and grey-green cashmere sweater over a silk shirt.'You've scrubbed up again, and you're wearing that celadon-coloured number I like. And a discreet touch of lippy.I know it's not for me,but you look molto svelte and ornamental, darling.You'll impress him no end.'

  The fire blazed in the capacious grate at the dining end of the L-shaped room. At the business end, on Guy's new ultra high-tech stove, the coffee in a sleek Alessi pot was bubbling into the upper chamber.A fresh packet of English crumpets, flown in for Rollo every week by friends in London, sat by the stove.

  He placed four crumpets on the grill and led her by the arm to the sofa. One of Rollo and Guy's stylistic quirks was to have comfortable sofas and armchairs around the kitchen table instead of wooden chairs.

  'Well? Did you like my pulchritudinous peony? His Majesty thinks it's vulgar. He can be so prissy, can't he? All right, so what did we make of our nubile young biomeister?'

  He poured coffee into two old pink and white Spode cups from an incomplete set displayed on the vast dresser. Like other pieces of furniture in the house, the dresser had been rescued years earlier from the refectory of a disused monastery in Urbino before the building was converted into apartments. It occupied the length of the wall and provided a theatrical showcase for Rollo's eclectic and ever-expanding collection of crockery. Jugs, plates, bowls, vases and pots of every derivation – singular finds all – each one there solely because he had stumbled upon it somewhere, usually off the beaten track, and fallen for it.

  The sense of threat retreated for the moment. Rollo always made Greer feel wanted – almost, she thought, in the way of a love object. Other friends were as affectionate, but only Rollo habitually convinced her that she was, then and there, the person in the world whose company he most craved.They sat close together, elbows touching on the table.

  'I'm not at all sure what I made of him. I found the teeth a bit unsettling.'

  'Flawless and dazzling? That's because he's from California.They all have spotless ceramic choppers there.'

  'What did you think? Choppers apart?'

  'Well, he's a gay boy, for starters.'

  She was startled.'Is he?'

  'Of course. He'll be off to Rome with Guy at the drop of a capello. Hear the prophetic words of the sage.'

  She considered this.'Is he really Guy's type? He's not at all like Mischa.' Guy's unrequited penchant for Mischa and other big bear-like men of his sort was a running joke at the Castello.

  'Oh, Guy's type is completely flexible, you know that. It bends with the wind. It's like that man's famous theorem, you know the one – work expands to fill the time available. Guy's type expands to accommodate the goods on offer. Besides, one can pretty well guarantee Guy will be his type.'

  'That's very true, I suppose.' Guy's raging sex appeal had never gone unnoticed by a visitor of either sex.

  'He's a bit of a looker himself, our young Antonio,' Rollo looked prim,'if you like that sort of winsome blondie thing.'

  'Come on, you love that blondie thing.You're as bad as Guy.'

  'Not any more, I'm not. Age has wearied me and the years condemned.'

  'What utter nonsense. You'd be gadding off to Rome every weekend if you had your wicked way.'

  He turned the crumpets. 'Really, you know, I can't remember when we last went to Rome. A deux, that is. It must have been before your time.'

  When Rollo and Guy first came to live in the Castello they had embarked on the lengthy drive to the capital most weekends.'No rest and intemperate recreation'was the slogan. These less edgy days, the euphemism 'going to Rome' was usually employed only in relation to Guy's activities, Rollo stressing that he used it purely in an unprejudiced and non-judgemental fashion.

  He cut a large slab of butter, bisected it into two perfect triangles and deposited one on Greer's plate.

  'It's depressing, isn't it, the decline of the sex urge?'This was a regular conversational gambit of his. Before she could respond, he added, 'Sorry, sorry, I know you don't want to talk sex this morning, only him. Not that the two topics are unrelated,necessarily.'

  'Well then?' She turned and gazed at him.

  'What do we make of him? What manner of chap, apart from being a fragrant figure of one, is he?' He doled out the crumpets, buttered his lavishly and spread them with Fortnums thick-cut English marmalade. She waited. His habits were as ingrained a part of his personality as his patterns of speech.

  'He's bright.Very bright.And adaptable.I admired that, didn't you? The way he tuned in to the wavelength, put his feet up, metaphorically speaking, and enjoyed himself.'

  She agreed. Visitors to the Castello often found it a daunting experience.The intimacy of the self-sufficient little community could be hard to penetrate. There were those who found the intimacy suffocating and the self-sufficiency elitist and smug.

  She said, 'He struck me as one of the most confident young men I've ever met.'

  'Too right. One of those enviable creatures who is entirely at ease in his own skin.The cut of his cloth was nice too.Very trendy clobber. I have to say that I'm not altogether sure that I'd trust him.'

  'Whatever do you mean?'

  'That's clear enough, isn't it? Molto engaging, in fact moltissimo charming, but I don't think he's got an off-the-record button on his dashboard.Which, let's face it, is only to be expected in his line of work.'

  'Charming or ingratiating? Confident or cocky?'

  'Ah. He's a charming devil, so shall we err on the generous side? And probably rather good at his job.'

  'Good at getting people to tell him things? A plausible bugger?'

  'You said it, not me. Just bear in mind that any passing remarks are likely to be regurgitated, unexpurgated. Don't let anything drop that might come back to haunt you.'

  He quartered his second crumpet with a surgeon's precision. Greer knew that he did this in order to make it last longer.

  'I'll implore His Majesty to keep mum, but that's a lost cause, as you know. Once he lays his lascivious eye on young Tonio he'll be falling over himself to curry favour by scandal-mongering. The fact that he may not have much scandal to monger is neither here nor there.'

  'Do you think Tony's –' She hesitated for some time, unsure how to phrase it. Rollo waited with no sign of impatience. He very rarely interrupted or finished her sentences, a courtesy that he and Guy had long since dispensed with between themselves.

  She passed him her second crumpet and watched him heap on the butter and marmalade.Finally she said,'In spite of the
above, do you think he's fundamentally a kind man?'

  'Ooh.What a heavy question.I should think he's as ruthless as all get-out, wouldn't you? I'm not sure that kindness is considered a virtue in the contemporary bio. More of an irrelevance. Or a hindrance.'

  'But wouldn't most biographers of living people be well disposed towards their subjects? Why would you take the project on, otherwise?'

  'One assumes you'd be interested. Well disposed? That depends. Maybe that has to be earned by the subject. But self-interested? Yes and yes again.And there's the rub.'Rollo wiped his mouth with an Irish-linen napkin starched by Agnieszka. 'Because we all know the megabucks are to be made from muckraking. The golden olden days of gentlemanly discretion are long gone. That's one of the facts of modern life, even for someone as hopelessly old hat as Mischa. It's not an optional extra.You take it on board as a freebie when you agree to a bio.'

  'I hate that.' She shook her head vehemently.'I just hate it. The idea that you let someone into your life knowing they're going to be poking around, trying to unearth a . . . something to your detriment. It's horrible, Roly, it's like inviting a spy from MI5 inside, throwing open the cupboards, tossing him the keys to the filing cabinets and then blithely going away on holidays.'

  'Darling, the spook's well and truly over the threshold now, so the gnashing of teeth – here we go again – is a touch academic, isn't it?'

  'Why did we ever agree to it, Roly?' She was filled with despair at her own comprehensive stupidity.

  'Because Mischa's a major cheese,' Rollo repeated patiently, 'and this is what you get when you get to be the consort of a grand fromage. People want to come and write you up.You can't reasonably expect to be famous and have a private life, it's just not on.'

  He looked at her more closely.'You've been done over before, in heaps of glossies.'

  'Maybe, but they were just articles about Mischa's work. Serious stuff. Not – gossip. I've kept out of the way. I've hardly featured in them at all.'