Kingsley Amis - The Biographer’s Moustache

‘I’m afraid I haven’t noticed.’

‘That’s what they’re like, I do assure you. Now. Where is Citizen Cakebread’s eatery located?’ This last brought a brief and perfunctory return to the Jimmie accent. ‘ Hopefully .’

‘A few doors off Edgware Road.’

‘So we’re nearly there.’

If Gordon had set out to tell the whole truth from the start he would have had to add something about not having visited the little place himself for some time, but he decided to keep this fact up his sleeve. In what he intermittently saw as the battle of the lunch, or his attempt to protect what he could of his disposable capital against luxurious Jimmie’s ravages, the defence had made an encouraging start in the circumstances. Gordon’s mind went back to Monday’s telephone conversation. His ring had been answered by a voice he recognized with some relief as Joanna’s.

‘May I speak to Mr Fane, Jimmie Fane?’

‘Oh, isn’t that, isn’t that Gordon? Are you calling him about that lunch you were going to give him? Right, I’ll get him.’

Pause. ‘Hallo, dear boy. Yes, of course I remember. I’m afraid I haven’t really thought where. Oh, would you hold on just a minute?’ Burble burble burble, soon translated without difficulty. ‘Hallo? Er, it’s kind of you to leave the choice of venue up to me, my dear fellow, but I rather think it’s only fair that you should decide that question from your obviously more immediate knowledge than my, er …’

So, unexpectedly, it was not to be the Tripoli or Woolton’s but the joint Gordon had on the spur of the moment recalled from a couple of lunches with Louise’s predecessor. He was not a habitual luncher-out and Cakebread’s, he thought, had been cheap and cheerful and not too bad. Thereafter his sense of adventure had taken over.

The taxi stopped outside somewhere that did not, at first glance, look much like the Cakebread’s of Gordon’s memory, though the name was to be seen in fluorescent tubing. Jimmie sprang athletically out on to the pavement and peered in through the glass door. In an abstracted state Gordon paid the cab-fare and joined him, or more truly followed him into the restaurant. For restaurant it was or had now become, neither cheap-looking nor particularly cheerful. Waiters in little striped waistcoats and bow ties darted to and fro where overalled girls had once moved more slowly, and the menu no longer appeared on a smudgy blackboard but between fat leather covers on every table. The noise was immense. Jimmie put on a good king-in-exile show, holding his distinguished white head high above the rabble, apologizing with gestures for accidental buffets inflicted on him by others. He and Gordon were shown to a table by a side wall and brought drinks.

‘The industrious Mr Cakebread would appear to be prospering.’

‘There have been considerable changes since I was last here,’ Gordon shouted back. He felt he must immediately correct any mistaken impression that this was the kind of level on which he customarily refreshed himself in public.

‘I shouldn’t care to become an habitué here perhaps but it suits my mood at the moment.’

Gordon tried to look receptive.

‘Last night I did something I hadn’t done for what seems like simply decades and probably is quite a long time and dipped into one of those old novels of mine, not The Escaped Prisoner which you were kind enough to mention recently but another, no matter which for the present. And do you know it seemed to me, it seemed not too bad. A little wordy, a little clumsy, really rather embarrassingly clumsy here and there but on the whole not too bad. For the first time for many years I found it not inconceivable that I might one day return to the charge, try my hand at fiction once more. It was, I can’t tell you, it was like being reminded of one’s youth. And I’ve you or your advent in my life to thank for turning my thoughts in that direction. I see they offer natives here, meaning I take it oysters rather than cannibal islanders, offer them at what seems to me a ridiculously inflated price but I’ve long since given up trying to make any sense of such matters. Tell me, er, tell me, Gordon, from your past experience and your present information, do you imagine they would be of a respectable size or something falling a wee bit short of that?’

‘I –’

‘Because I know of very few minor disappointments as keen as that of expecting an oyster to fill the mouth in that agreeable way and then finding it just too small to do so, and this not once but a dozen times over. So to be on the safe side I think, yes, I think I’ll order eighteen and then if the worst comes to the worst quantity will have to do duty for quality. Yes, I think that’s the best solution in the circumstances.’

Holding his voice steady with an effort, Gordon said, ‘I’m sure if we asked them nicely they’d fetch a couple of specimens to the table so that you could –’

‘No no, dear boy, too much of a fuss and bother and certain to cause incalculable delay. Talking of which, they don’t seem to be positively falling over themselves with anxiety to take our order, do they? Oh well, it gives us time to catch up with our reading.’

With that, Jimmie brought up an eyeglass on a fine silvery chain through which he proceeded to study the menu. Or to pretend to, to look effective while apparently so doing. Did it just happen that what he fancied turned out to be the most expensive dish to be had? Or had he quite consciously set out to sting his host as painfully as practicable? Or was his motive somewhere in the capacious territory between the two? In search of an answer, Gordon observed Jimmie’s full-collared silk shirt and boldly clashing tie, side-parted silvery hair worn long for a man of his age, green-bordered handkerchief ‘carelessly’ pushed into jacket-sleeve, antique cuff-links. He would have observed the cut of the seasoned-looking dark suit if he had ever learnt to tell one sort of cut from another. Then Jimmie glanced up from the menu and round the room with an expression of tolerant superiority on his face that seemed to go with details of clothing and stuff. Old Jimmie Fane saw himself as an artist of a far-off time when artists were special people and looked special and of course ate lots of oysters. Any moment now he would be calling for a bottle of the Widow.

There were perhaps elements of the ridiculous in this picture, but Gordon felt no disposition to laugh, not even internally. He felt less like it than ever when a waistcoated waiter arrived and after appreciatively taking an order for eighteen natives asked what was to follow and got an inquiry from Jimmie about the available sizes of lobster. Gordon stopped listening for a while and did his best to put aside his copy of the menu. He swallowed the last of his gin and Campari – why had he ordered that? – and saw that after paying this bill he must simply go home and take to his bed and stay there until the end of the following week, when his monthly bit of salary would reach his bank. He would use the period of bodily inactivity to square his accounts with God and such matters.

Quite calm now, Gordon watched while Jimmie nodded approvingly at a bottle of no doubt expensive wine brought for his inspection, chewed an intervening mouthful of crust of bread, coughed thoroughly, drank fizzy mineral water, gulped a large mouthful of the wine poured out for him to try, followed it with more mineral water and after a short interval in which he sat stock-still, made a loudish noise that sounded like a kind of indrawn belch, but proved to be the first of a tremendously long and sort of well-entrenched series of hiccups. At first he stared at Gordon and held up his hand as if calling for a silence he failed to produce. Soon the waiter returned with a glass of still water and Jimmie sipped at it fast, slowly, from the right side of the glass, from the wrong side of the glass, to wash down any crumbs or other extraneous matter that might have been lingering in his throat, vaguely. Nothing happened, or rather he continued to emit belching sounds a dozen times a minute. Possibly these had acquired a new sonority, because now a partial silence did descend, though not on Jimmie. With the glass of water put aside, he pulled out a handkerchief, not the one tucked into his cuff, and stuffed it over his mouth, a manoeuvre that muffled his noises but failed to make them anywhere near inaudible.