The Biographer (11 page)

'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.'

'Well, Mischa's success is less than half of his own making, as any woman worth her salt will confirm, so here's your chance to take centrestage for a change. Strike a blow for the sisterhood. Blow your own bugle. Let's face it, you'd make a much better subject than Mischa.'

When her face remained set he took her hand. 'Look, maybe I've gone and overdone
the scaremongering. You know me – it's that dreadful drama-queeny temperament I'm saddled with. Let's forget everything
and give young Tony the benefit of the doubt. He's probably just a pompous
little prick with massive probity and not a skerrick of salacious intent.'

She managed a small smile. He said in an altered tone, 'Is there something you want to tell me, darling?'

In the moment's silence she heard a rushing wind start up in the three tall pines that shaded the house.

'I wouldn't mind what it is. It wouldn't make any difference.You know that.'

'I know.'

Through the kitchen windows they both saw Agnieszka rushing in her usual frantic
fashion from the car park towards the house. Her long black hair streamed behind
her like the tail of a kite.

'There's nothing.'

But she had wavered, and she knew Rollo had seen it. She knew she should have confided in him, and Guy too for that matter, well before this.Their pique, and Rollo's hurt, would be further factors to contend with.

She thought, I can still get in first. If it ever comes to that.

31st July
I've found a little beach with no one on it.Thank God – I couldn't face talking to anyone. C.'s stuck to me like a limpet until today, when I persuaded him to join some of the boys on an all-day fishing safari.

Only 2 days left. Now it's nearly time to go I don't want to leave. I want the next 2 days to drift on for ever. I'm scared. Terrified. Dry-mouthed, sweaty-palmed, gut-churning terror. I can't believe C. can't tell. It proves he doesn't know me at all.

Am I really going to go through with this? I think I might be going quietly insane. It's one thing to nut out a desperate plan with a total stranger, another thing entirely to put it into practice. Jean-Claude's a foreigner, he's from a different culture. He's not involved, and he's a male too, so he could look at the situation from a detached perspective. It was just a fantasy to him –
he
doesn't have to go through with it.

What about C.?? And what about M.? Mightn't his feelings change when he hears about all this? Why aren't I more concerned about his reaction? Why aren't I tearing my hair out over that?

Why indeed? The writer on the beach had laid aside her pen at this, but only
for a second. It was true, she had entertained scarcely a doubt over Mischa's
role in all this. He was central and problematic, yet he was the least of her
worries. He had made the strength of his feelings plain and known in no uncertain
terms. She found that she believed in them absolutely.

Well, on that score maybe – conceivably – when I see him again I won't feel anything, it'll have all dissolved away like some bizarre mirage and I won't need to do a thing & can just get on with my former life as if nothing had ever happened.Then I can push the boundaries, as Verity says, enrol in art school part-time and become a successful portraitist.

That's a delusion, I know perfectly well. I've got a terrible conviction that nothing will have changed. Even the idea that it might have is anathema. The thought of never seeing him again makes me feel dead, to all intents & purposes. I couldn't live like that now, not any more. He's made it impossible.There's me before I met Mischa, and there's me after.Two totally different people.

It's weird how everything around me here on this island brings back his presence.The sheer raw energy he exudes. It's explosive. The thought of everything about him – his face, the texture of his skin,his mouth – provokes a reaction in me,instantaneously.An internal shudder of rapture.

Everything I see here is sensuous – the vibrant colours and shapes, the steamy atmosphere, the brilliant flowering shrubs & willowy palm trees, the sand – especially the supple, velvety feel of this amazing sand. It's like rolling in clotted cream, I find it supercharged with eroticism. I think something in me's been switched on & I've evolved. My body's gone through some elemental chemical change & now, if I fantasise about making love with him, virtually anything can turn me on, just by being in my orbit. It's as if I've been smitten with sunstroke – the sun is beating down & I'm burrowing into the sand in a kind of mad, erotic trance. It's as if I've gone demented, crazy with longing for him.

I have to go back to him, whatever it may involve.Yes, yes,
yes
. Like Molly Bloom, no doubts. I have to do it, whatever it takes.

How could something as familiar as sand be arousing? She was a Melbourne girl; sea and sand were part of her daily environment. Yet she saw herself clearly on that remote beach, shutting her eyes against the groaning drumbeat of the sun and letting the sinuous bleached threads run through her fingers, over and over like an hourglass endlessly revolving. Saw herself lying face down on the silky powder and working her hips rhythmically and ecstatically into it until she had hollowed out a shallow depression in her own image and lay there spent, spread-eagled in a sticky bath of sweat.