The Biographer (18 page)

'A better book, as in less constrained,' Larry was agreeing sagely.

'It was Mischa who made Martin, you know that, don't you, Tony?' Rollo waggled his empty glass at Guy. 'Marty wasn't at all top drawer before. He was an underdog, very bottom drawer. Streetwise, though, with sharp instincts and a good eye. He snaffled Mischa, back in the early '80s, and showed him in Pimlico before the Cork Street boys and girls could get their claws on him, and he eventually topped the charts in the chest of drawers stakes.That's when Marty got to be a top dog and changed into a d'Avery. He wasn't a d apostrophe at all before, he was just plain Avery. Not many people know that.'

'Tony knows that, you silly old fart, and you're drinking too much.' Guy slid a bottle down the table towards him with a show of reluctance. 'You can tell when he's had too many, he states the obvious, mixes his metaphors and never gets to the point.'

Everyone looked amused except Dorothy Swannage,who swatted Guy with her napkin.'Oh,stop it,you dreadful man.'

'Don't worry, Dottie. He's only trying to ruffle my feathers, and it annoys him
when he can't. But it's all water off this ducky's back.' Rollo did indeed
look supremely unruffled. He sliced into an artichoke heart with obvious relish.
'Yes, Mischa's always had a soft spot for underdogs.Well, you only have to
look at Tony. He can confirm that, can't you, Tony?' He gave Greer a stealthy
pat as they all laughed.

'Mischa's stayed with the d'lovely Marty ever since,' Rollo went on, 'forsaking all others.' He put on a playful look. 'Mischa's a paragon of brand loyalty, you have to admire him for that.'

'It's laziness. He can't be bothered, unlike you,' said Guy. '
He
changes dealers like other people change their knickers,' he continued airily to the others.'He's a sucker for the flavour of the month – always thinks they're going to be more elitist and sexy. When he gets stung for even more ridiculous conditions and loony commissions than the previous lot, the old Pavlovian response comes into play and he starts putting out his surreptitious little feelers again.'

Dorothy's protective antennae quivered. To defuse the personal, had Tony had to
do
anything in particular to capture this biography, she wondered. She was interrupted by Rollo.What Mischa had done to deserve it was more to the point.

Tony was self-deprecating in his appointed role as one of Mischa's underdogs. He hoped he was going the way of Martin d'Avery, but he confessed that he had started his working life as a hack in an advertising agency.

'I suppose you can draw on the same skills in a bio,' Rollo mused.'It's like flogging burgers,isn't it,Larry? Only you have to flaunt the naughty carbs and bad cholesterol instead of the good bits.'

Before Larry could compose a response his wife chimed in,'Whatever happened to the idea of a scholarly telling of a life, as opposed to the cynical sensationalism that passes for it these days? No frills, no unsubstantiated revelations, just the plain old facts speaking for themselves?'

She added with a boisterous laugh, 'When Larry goes down that unfashionable route he invariably gets written off as irrelevant, don't you, honey?'

Her husband looked annoyed. Dottie Swannage cut in, 'But we don't know what species of biography Antony is writing yet, do we? It might be ever so scholarly and squeaky clean. Do set our minds at rest.' She gave Greer a motherly smile.

'I'm not sure I know that myself,yet,'Tony said.

This provoked a rumble of disbelief around the table.

'I mean, until I've finished my work here I can't tell exactly where it's heading. Researching a biography's a bit like trawling with a net on the seabed.You sweep up shoals of useless little fish you have to throw back, but once in a while you catch a big guy, and that throws a whole new light on everything.'

He's talking to me, Greer thought, although he directed this with perfect impartiality
at everyone.There's an undercurrent of something here. It couldn't be apology,
surely.

'Do you mean big as in dolphin or big as in shark?' June asked.

Guy rode over her.'He means big as in killer whale.' He contrived an expiatory moment with Rollo. 'You have to admit Aggie's lamb leaves your tripe for dead.'

Larry said reprovingly, 'Tony's right. I've always felt the research and the
writing discover your pathway for you.Where a biographer places him or herself
in relation to the material is critical.I think of myself as a sculptor,chipping
away at a block of marble. I chip and whittle away at the surrounding obfuscation
until the free-standing subject emerges. It's a gradual process, and only imperceptibly
do I realise who it is I'm dealing with.The cut of his or her jib, if you will.'

His wife rolled her eyes. Rollo wasn't having any of it either.'I'm sorry, you two,' he nudged Greer again under the cover of the table, 'but all this waffle about trawlers and whittling away just won't do. We're not that easily fobbed off.We need to be reassured that Tony's bio is going to be scandalous and defamatory, and if not, why not?'

'Rollo, if you know something I don't about Mischa, particularly if it's even remotely scandalous, I'm trusting that you'll share it with me and Gigi.' Tony's eyes fluttered at them.'That's right,isn't it,Greer?'

'You, me and the rest of the world, you mean,' she said.

Violetta carried in strawberries and a cake, Rollo's treat, made in her mother's restaurant from chestnut flour and studded with a pattern of pinenuts and dried fruit.

Rollo took advantage of its reception and ceremonious cutting to confide,'I don't know, darling. He mightn't have anything incriminating after all. We might have got off unscathed.What do you think?'

'She looked good, long winter skirt and she'd done her hair differently. A bit more around the face. There was a touch more restraint after she arrived. Before she came they were wetting themselves to hear if I'd got anything on Mischa.' Tony had his feet propped on the table he was using as a desk, his face close to the dictaphone.

'And Rollo almost lost sphincter control in his anxiety to find out if I'd got
anything on her.They tried to camouflage their seething curiosity under the
guise of discussing whether there should be any limits to biographical indiscretion.
I was tempted to hand over Elsa Montag, which I guess they haven't heard about
because no one said anything, but on balance I thought she was better kept
in reserve.

'Also, in spite of their mad rush to let me know they have no loyalties where the biography is concerned, I get a distinct whiff of too much protestation. Rollo and Guy might well consider something like the Elsa thing as like a family secret. OK, maybe, to be written down, but not gossipped about with a bunch of strangers.'

He unscrewed the cap off a litre bottle of mineral water and took a long swig.

'They all drink like there's no tomorrow. Bottles uncorked to breathe, and lined up, and Guy fetching more from the cellar. Great wines, of course, and food. Rollo's treasures everywhere, like being in an Aladdin's cave. And everything bathed in candlelight, an amber glow, like in a Merchant Ivory movie.They partied on till half one having a high old time, and the couple only left then because their kid had been asleep at the table for the last two hours. Dottie Swannage was legless.'

I'll walk you to your house in case you get lost, Guy had said to Tony, but Rollo had overheard and overruled. Not now he wouldn't, he would take Dottie upstairs, where the blue room was freshly made up. He added, sotto voce in Guy's ear, that the dear girl was pickled, she'd only just got over her third hip replacement, remember, and a broken leg on top of it she did not need. Getting Dottie upstairs had been a complicated and time-consuming manoeuvre that kept Guy constructively occupied for quite some time.

Tony emptied the rest of the water into a glass, spilling some. He wiped it off
the table carefully with his handkerchief.

'They're incredibly close, in each other's pockets, in this incestuous little commune, you'd think they'd know every last thing about each other. But I'm not at all sure they do.'

Greer probed with the tip of her tongue, cautiously exploring the back of her upper jaw. She had her eyes tightly shut. It was as she had feared. She felt only exposed gum where the left rear molar should have been. The bad memory returned, of the tooth coming loose during dinner in the village and finally falling out in her mouth. She'd had to remove it surreptitiously with her napkin so the others would not see.

She let her tongue slide slowly, tentatively, to the side of the empty socket. Nothing there, either. Increasingly full of dread, hardly daring to breathe, she moved her tongue further round, inching along the gum-line towards the front.Sure enough,there were no teeth left.Not one.They had all gone, even the two front teeth, leaving a gaping hole.

Now she recovered in its horror the entire grotesque memory of the night before. As she'd been chewing, every single tooth in her upper jaw had slowly and gradually loosened, one after the other, and crumbled away in her mouth, until finally she had the whole lot scrunched in her napkin on her lap.

She had opened the napkin to steal a look at them and seen, with a shock of revulsion, that they were not her teeth at all.The two rows of gleaming white teeth that were bared in a grinning grimace were Tony's.

She was overcome with nausea and groaned aloud. She was lying on her back and this caused her to wake up with a convulsive jerk, gasping for breath. His face buried in her shoulder, Mischa stirred too.

'Wha's that? What's wrong?'The words came out thick and muffled. His hand caressed her stomach reflexively.

'Oh!' She was still marooned in the terrible landscape of the dream. 'I dreamt all my teeth fell out. One after the other.They wereTony's.It was so awful.'

She pressed herself up against him. He made a soothing noise and wrapped her in his arms. He fell back to sleep instantly.

She'd had versions of this dream before, but not for many years.

In the morning it was light and almost balmy again with just a breath of breeze.
April was like that, you could be shivering one day and basking the next. It
was never enervating, like the blistering heat of summer, but a more comfortable
domestic warmth.

Greer thought the capricious April sun resembled a hibernating animal emerging for a cautious scout around. Or an adolescent person, Agnieszka's daughter, Eva, for example, who, having been stubbornly gloomy for days, surprised you with a burst of transforming effervescence.

Tendrils of sun were beginning to heat the stone on the terrace, bringing the tiny lizards scuttling out in force. But there were still patches of snow on the distant mountain. There remained the possibility of frost, the locals said, until every trace of snow was gone.

She carried her coffee and toast outside. She watched the red tractor chugging in the vineyard directly below, towing a reaper. Mauro, their man of all work, was combing the soil to uproot the grass and spring-clean the roots of the vines. He saw her and waved. Swallows dipped and sailed in front of her, catching the updrafts from the valley. The Virginia creeper on the east wall of Rollo and Guy's house was noticeably greener today, and there were branches of heavy pink blossom on their Judas tree. She thought, mindful of the ironies: all the things around me are starting to come out.

3rd August
Melbourne
We're back in real life. It's evening. It's freezing here, an icy wind was howling as we left the airport.The house was dark and cold, like a portent.Almost feels as if it's going to snow.

I just looked in the mirror. I loathe the way I look. I've changed since we've been away, I think anyone who knew me could see it. C. just thinks I'm exhausted. He fussed round, putting on the heating and getting hot drinks, insisting I had a bath first while he unpacked my things.

It's weird, but my heart feels heavy, like a concrete block in my chest. I'm having panic attacks.The thought of seeing M. doesn't shift this weight, it just gives me palpitations. I'll have to speak to Josie tomorrow before I do anything else.At least then I might have a plan of action, something to put on the table for C.

Before I do anything irrevocable I have to be sure nothing's changed with Mischa. I'll go to him straight after Josie. I feel laden with dread. Heavily laden, and I hate it.

It's all so complicated. Could I be getting cold feet?

Everything might change when he sees me.

She had written in small capitals, after this last sentence:

BUT I DOUBT IT.

'Can I rock up for a mo?' It was Guy, on the path. She closed the diary and covered it with a newspaper.

He leapt up the steps. 'I just spoke to Giulia. Angelo who-is-no-angel-o is coming to start on the pergola when the weather's OK. He wants to know how many mates he should line up. And Jacopo's bringing the forklift on Saturday at eight-thirty prompt.' Jacopo, an errant university student, was one of Giulia's swains.

'Eight-thirty Saturday? Jacopo? In your dreams, dude. Think ten, more likely. Sit down, there's another cup left.' She went inside for the pot.

'All right, dude.You've twisted my arm.'

The small forklift truck would carry their tubs of citrus trees, lemons and limes, grapefruits and mandarins, out into the open from their winter shelter. This was supposed to happen when there was no further chance of frost.

She indicated the distant traces of snow.

'We've had the last frost.' Guy was positive. 'Last night was a shocker, but there still wasn't a trace on the ground this morning.' She was inclined to believe him. He was almost always right about these things.

They talked practicalities. It was a busy time. Olive-pruning and bonfires were in full swing.Vineyard poles and electric fences needed endless repair.The vines were at their most vulnerable now as their tender green shoots, deer magnets, began to bud.

'Giulia's giving Tony a no-holds-barred personalised tour of the winery this morning,' Guy remarked.

'Is she now? Don't worry, I'm sure he's more than capable of defending himself.'

'If he wants to.'

'I thought the feeling of the meeting was he would want to.'

'That's Rollo's take, but he's so hopelessly retro about these things. Young Tonio's not averse to batting for both teams, is my educated guess.You haven't asked me how I thought last night went.'

'How did it go, did you think?'

'I thought it was quite a hoot, didn't you? The food was very good. Aggie's really got the hang of artichokes at long last, after all these years.Weren't you glad you came? In spite of po-faced Barbara. I don't know
what
Roly sees in her.' He shook his head. 'And what did you make of Larry and June and their pimply son, poor kid? Larry's mutated into the most frightful academic bore. It's blindingly obvious that June can't stand him. I made a bet with His
lèse-Majesté
that she'll have left him by Christmas.'

Guy stretched.'His blockage has shifted, did he tell you? It must have been the cake. Lo and behold, the royal bowels moved this morning and he's back beavering away in the studio, and may we all be truly thankful, O Lord.'

'Hosanna in the highest.That's
very
good news.'

'Isn't it just? I was getting desperate.You haven't asked me what I thought of Tony's performance last night. Before your inhibiting arrival, of course. Before best behaviour was resorted to.'

'And how did you rate his performance?'

'Well, interesting you should ask. He was rather good value. Although we didn't get very far in our dutiful quest for info about the work in progress. I did notice that he waited until he thought we were all safely plastered before he started asking anything about Mischa. We threw a few innocuous funnies at him to be going on with. Mischa the techno-klutz who can't change a light bulb, who has to be restrained from bawling "Maria" in karaoke bars – you know the routine. Roly told the one about him being the only guest the Savoy has ever had who actually did etchings but never invited anyone up to see them.'

He swilled his coffee in one go. 'I toyed with the idea of putting a few spanners in the works. Mischa the cross-dresser who likes getting into your frocks.The metrosexual who orders moisturiser by mail order.The health freak.That sort of thing.'

'The golf fiend with an analytical mind who cooks the perfect risotto and plays the futures market for recreation.' After she had said this, she was visited by the unsettling thought that it could almost be a description of her first husband,Charlie.

'You got it. It could be the basis of a new game.'They enjoyed games of all sorts – board, parlour and particularly word.

'So, do you like Tony?'

'Do I fancy him, do you mean? Nice bum, very perky. He's quite a presentable package overall, isn't he? Quite a cutie.'

'I didn't mean do you fancy him. I meant, do you like him?'

Guy looked at her.'Is there a difference?'

C. is so sweet & kind. It's ironic, I know I could do anything – turn into a raving nympho or an axe murderer, anything at all, not even within reason – and he'd forgive me. He'd never leave me.And he'd always have me back.Whereas with Mischa it's the opposite. I don't think he'd care two hoots if I was a serial killer, but I know instinctively that he would finish things instantly if I was unfaithful. And I'm the same. If I discovered he had killed somebody it wouldn't matter to me one whit. But if he slept with another woman now it would destroy everything.

I think this is the definition of true love, and I'd never realised it before. It's all or nothing, and you must be prepared to make great sacrifices for it. Even to the lengths of giving up the things and the people you previously held dear. I think it can only happen this way, when you can see no alternative except to tear everything apart in order to be with someone.This is what defines a grand passion, what sets it on another planet from the pallid feelings other people mistake for love.

What I feel about Mischa is categorically different from how it is with me and C. It's like the gulf between Anne of Green Gables and Anna Karenina. Or between lazing in a bath and hurtling over Niagara Falls.

The tragedy is that I'll never be able to explain it to C., and he will never understand, although I know he will forgive.

Greer had a clear memory of composing this entry. She had been in bed, propped against pillows, a mug of cocoa on the bedside table, brought by her solicitous husband. After a grimy day's travel lugging their cases on to a ferry and a change of planes, he was relaxing in the bath listening to music.

Beethoven's
Moonlight Sonata
wafted from the bathroom radio down the passage on a current of newly warmed air. The liquid notes of the piano were almost drowned out by the downpour on the iron roof of their mud brick house. She had always loved the sound of rain drumming on a roof, but that night she found it mournful and oppressive.

She remembered feeling complacent about the last three paragraphs.They had taken no time to compose, in a concentrated spurt before Charlie emerged from the bath. Scribbling them down had been, like Stella's telephone call yesterday, only a brief respite from the weight of anxieties.

Now, re-reading those lines which she had once thought self-evidently true and
with which she had been so satisfied, she marvelled at their presumption.They
were like the proverbial young wine in this respect. And like a cocky young
wine, their confidence was to some degree misplaced.There was a vulnerability
clinging to the words,and a residue of sadness, so strongly present to her
now that she knew it must have been sensed at least subliminally by the writer.

She picked up her pen. In the space at the bottom of the page, she wrote:

17th April 2006
That is not a definition of true love, of course. It's a description of a certain type and stage of love.There can be no single definition, because love takes infinite forms. Perhaps one has to be the age I am now to begin to understand this.

The difference with me and C.

She paused, and crossed this out. She began the sentence again.

The difference was not that Charlie and I didn't love each other while Mischa and I did.The difference was that Charlie loved me deeply, but I was not in love with him.

She laid her pen down and meditated, remembering the piano and the rain, and the clinging sadness.Then she wrote:

And I knew this, but was not brave enough to say it.

'It'll soon be time to put out the ping-pong table.'

Greer and Tony were on the wide lower terrace in wicker chairs, making the most of the fading afternoon sun. They both wore hats,Tony's an old Panama from the rack in his house, one of Rollo's discards. Looked down on from above we must resemble a companionable couple, Greer thought, as if he's an old friend. Or the son of one. It was a sharply destabilising thought, and she shoved it aside.

Tony's little recorder stood on a cane table between them. Its demeanour was reticent and neutral, but she couldn't look at it without wondering what other voices it had heard. What disclosures had it been privy to on the journey that led to this destination?

'Ping-pong? You play down here? That's cool.'

'We play a lot before dinner in summer. Mischa, Guy and I, and anyone else we
can rope in. Even Rollo sometimes, although he tends to plant himself in one
place and refuse to move. Mischa's surprisingly good. Ferociously competitive.'
She gave a laugh. 'We've got photos of him wielding the bat. I'll dig out a
good one for you.'

Tony made a note in the pad that sat semi-permanently on his knee. For this alfresco interview he had changed into a white t-shirt and denim shorts, faded and frayed, worn with sneakers and no socks. There were no laces in his sneakers either, she noted. His legs and arms were tanned and toned. He looked like an advertisement for gym membership.

'So, can we talk a bit about your first husband, Charlie McNicoll. He was a management consultant, right?'

'Charlie? Why do you need to know about him?'

Greer was right on the qui vive with this topic, but covertly. She was pleased
with the conversational, almost offhand way she put the question. As if it
was of no particular import one way or another.