‘I’m sorry,’ said Mark. ‘I’m making inapposite jokes again. Two years’ association with your grandfather has taken its toll. In various ways. Of course we shall see each other.’
‘It’s funny – suddenly you’re the one who keeps saying “I’m sorry”. It used to be me. You were a bit irritated.’
True, Mark thought, I was. He said, ‘There’s something different about you.’
‘Is there?’
‘Yes.’ You seem older, he was about to say, but that sounded mildly rude, and anyway it wasn’t quite what he meant. Less detached? More like other people?
‘Anyway … thank you,’ said Carrie unexpectedly.
‘For what?’
‘Well … For taking me to France …’
‘I think I’d better go,’ said Mark, ‘before this breast-beating gets out of hand.’ They looked at each other. He thought of kissing her, and decided that might be taking masochism too far. ‘Anyway, I’ll see you … we’ll see you sometime.’
17
Somewhere deep in the intestines of Broadcasting House, Mark sits at a table listening to the disembodied voice of Hermione and notes that the fraying flexes of the BBC are bound with black insulating tape, just like one’s own. Also that the BBC’s microphones are scratched and chipped; somehow these homely signs of vulnerability are interesting. They make him think of the ‘Nine O’Clock News’ and ‘Children’s Hour’, which he can just remember, and old photographs of radio heroes and T. S. Eliot, poker-faced, reading verse.
‘O.K.,’ says the producer, ‘that’ll do, Susie … What I thought, Mark, is – let’s keep that bit and chuck all the part where she’s going on about herself. Right?’
‘By all means. My sentiments entirely.’
‘Good. So we’ll take it from …’
And Hermione’s voice fills the room again. ‘… My father and I were terribly close of course, he was just like a sort of grown-up friend, we used to have the most lovely times together. He and Mummy were devoted too, and of course it was super growing up in that atmosphere, all those interesting people coming to the house, it’s so affected the sort of person one is oneself. What was he like? Oh well goodness, I mean when someone famous is your own father you don’t really see them like other people do, do you? He wasn’t a bit intimidating to me, not a bit, but of course we had this empathy, I suppose. We both loved art and travel … that’s where my thing about travel comes from, I imagine, actually I’ve lived abroad now since – goodness, since I was nineteen …’
‘We’ll have that out,’ says the producer. ‘Pick her up again when she’s talking about Lawrence. O.K., Mark?’
Mark snaps to attention. He has been adrift again, because Hermione’s voice carries with it now a backing of things that are not really connected with Hermione at all … Carrie sitting on the edge of a bed peeling off her T-shirt. ‘La lutte sanglante du moyen âge …’ Towels printed with the bison of Lascaux. Happiness. Guilt. Melancholy.
‘And then,’ says the producer, ‘I thought we’d go over to you …’
Mark listens to his own voice (unfamiliar – as though for an instant you did indeed hear what others hear): ‘Gilbert Strong was never part of a coterie. He knew Bloomsbury, but was never of it; equally, he rubbed shoulders with the Fabians, with Shaw, but was never much in sympathy with them. He was very much his own man, gregarious but essentially private, even solitary. Perhaps this accounts for the peculiarly diverse pictures of him that we get from friends and acquaintances. Certainly it makes the biographer’s task a hard one – a point noted by Strong himself in his well-known essay: “After all, we lie about one another with as much alacrity as we lie about ourselves – lies not of malice but of incompetence. We look at each other square – head-on – we seldom trouble to walk around behind and take another view.” ’
‘Nice,’ says the producer. ‘I like it.’
Mark is diverted for an instant to the producer, whom he knows hardly at all, head-on or any other way. The producer wears a maroon shirt and no tie and is younger than Mark but balder. He wears wire-rimmed glasses and, Mark thinks, is probably homosexual – but, since Mark’s perception in these things is notoriously unreliable, that is by no means certain. He seems a nice person, he has been pleasant to work with; on the other hand for all one knows he may be responsible for untold misery.
‘My wife,’ says the producer, ‘has been reading the Disraeli life. She found it rather hard going.’
So much for sexual perception (or, rather, up to a point so much for sexual perception). Mark agrees that Disraeli has its longueurs and the producer does some more fiddling around with tape and into the room comes Edward Curwen, his twittery old man’s voice conjuring up that Charlotte Street restaurant and a waitress who nannyishly hovers for the order, and Curwen’s blue eyes and mouth pink-horned with wine-stains. ‘… He was a bit of a bully, frankly. Liked to have his own way, you know – push people around. Hadn’t much time for younger colleagues and he certainly didn’t care for anyone else muscling in on what he regarded as his preserve, as I had occasion to discover when I made a few criticisms of the Disraeli book. His behaviour then, I’m bound to say, was pretty reprehensible. Of course I was young myself and a bit impulsive I dare say but nevertheless …’
And Mark thinks not of Curwen nor of Strong but of himself, a switch prompted by that word ‘young’. He sees suddenly an alter ego, twenty-eight-year-old Mark engaging in his first round of public contention, an article questioning the judgement of a well-known critic. Incurring, thus, the unswerving hostility of the well-known critic who has probably done him disservices of which he does not even know. Bold and enterprising was how this was seen at the time; Mark got a certain kudos. But what brings a private blush to the cheek is the remembered change of heart when the article was accepted and the panicky phone call to the editor with propitiatory amendments. But fate decreed that the editor should be unavailable and courage once again got the upper hand and none but Mark now know of that craven moment.
‘And now,’ says the producer, ‘I thought it might be nice to go over to the other lady, what’s-her-name, Stella Bruce. A mistress, is that right?’
‘That’s right,’ says Mark, and listens to Stella Bruce’s plummy girlish voice telling of free living in the thirties: ‘… Yes, I knew Gil extremely well, we were … very close for a number of years; in fact I think I can say I was probably more of a … how shall I put it? … more of a soul-mate than anyone. He used to tell me everything – I presided over the writing of the Disraeli book. He did a lot of it at my house in the south of France. I can see him now, sitting on the terrace in that frightful old panama hat … He was a man who needed that kind of bolstering from a woman …’
‘Interesting turn of phrase,’ murmurs the producer.
‘… and of course I could understand so well what made him tick – I’d always been with writers and artists, you see; it was the world I knew and to be honest Gil didn’t always get quite enough of that at home. Violet led very much a country gentry sort of life with her dogs – beastly little terrier things – and her good works. He turned to me for release, you see. To be honest, he wasn’t much of a family man. He wasn’t close to the daughter either.’
‘So we’ll let her carry on along those lines for, um, as far as the bit about this travel book,’ says the producer, ‘and then over to you again.’
Stella whirrs and gobbles for a few seconds and concludes, ‘… and anyway no one would have believed Hugo Flack, he was the most dreadful line-shooter, so I suppose Gil reckoned he could get away with it. He was, as I’ve said, an awfully complex person.’
And Mark’s voice now breaks smoothly in: ‘Well, Mrs Bruce’s account of the writing of Long Weekend in the Caucasus is of course very interesting. Unfortunately Strong left no notes or letters pertaining to the book and Hugo Flack died shortly after the incident Mrs Bruce mentions. We must suspend judgement.’
‘Quite,’ murmurs the producer. ‘Yo
u can’t come right out and call the old girl a liar, I see that.’
‘As indeed the wise biographer frequently must. We all know, with reference to our own lives, the curious ways in which truth can be not so much distorted as multi-faceted. Give the kaleidoscope a shake and a different picture forms. Each of us sees through a glass darkly, impeded not just by the frailties of memory but by our own convictions. We see what we persuade ourselves that we have seen. The biographer’s task …’
To hell with the biographer’s task, thinks Mark moodily. He does not like his voice: smooth, pedantic – savouring, it seems to him, its choicer phrases. He wonders who on earth listens to this kind of thing anyway.
A girl comes in with plastic cups of coffee. The producer thrusts his chair back from the table and yawns. He glances at the clock and says not to worry, the studio’s booked till twelve, we’ve plenty of time. Anyway, he says, we’re getting it nicely tied up – the balance is good, there’s some very effective stuff. He remarks that it’s a pity the granddaughter didn’t want to say anything. ‘What’s she like?’ he enquires, and Mark, busying himself with the removable lid of the plastic coffee (and spilling some in the process on the BBC’s already battle-scarred table), mumbles something about her being very pleasant.
They drink their coffee. ‘The only thing that bothers me,’ says the producer, ‘is that we’re not getting what you might call a rounded picture of Strong.’ He frowns. ‘Truth to tell, he seems to add up to about five different people at the moment. I’m worried about confusing the listener. Of course I take your point about … what was it you said? … Multi-faceted … kaleidoscopes … nice, all that. But this is a radio programme, not real life.’ He laughs. So does Mark. ‘Anyway … Let’s get back to it. I’ve got a little surprise for you in a minute. But first of all let’s decide what we can keep of your nice old boy from Porlock. He was a real find. Marvellous old fellow.’
And the Major comes on, loud and clear, saying, ‘Just tell me if you’d like me to speak up a bit, won’t you? Eh? Oh, I see – this contraption here’ – there is a sudden dreadful surge of sound, the Major bellowing and then abruptly cut off – ‘Dear me, I’m afraid I’m letting you down right and left. Is that better? Oh good. Now, what was it you were saying? Well, let’s see now … I think my first recollection of Strong is fishing off Bossington Point. Used to hire a little boat, you know, trail lines for mackerel, awfully good fun. I had no idea the feller was a writer – not that I’d have been much interested anyway, but he was a very good chap to have a day out with. You know, it’s a funny thing – you can’t quite clear your mind of everything that comes after. You’re asking me to tell you about how I remember Strong, but the fact is all the things that came after get in the way. Know what I mean?’
Oh, I do indeed, thinks Mark, I do indeed. And to reinforce the point the producer is fiddling around again and now comes Mark himself, pontificating (or so it seems): ‘… A problem, for the biographer, is this omniscience. We know the narrative sequence. We record our subject’s childhood and youth with wisdoms of what is to come – we have this god-like advantage over the person of whom we write. The bearded sage who is Strong in the 1950s lies, for me, across the pinafored child two world wars away. And, in a curious way, this both distances one from the subject and invites more personal feelings.’
‘Hmn …’ says the producer. ‘Shall we put that in there or shift it till later? I’m not sure. Let’s go back to the old boy again.’
‘… She was a handsome girl, my aunt, very handsome, yes. Lots of brown hair – always falling down, you remember the way girls wore their hair in those days, all pinned up, stacks of it, very fetching really, very … What was I saying? Irene, yes. I remember her and Strong laughing together … Walking up a hill, through the bracken, hand in hand, laughing … They always seemed to have a lot of fun together – know what I mean?’ And the voice stops.
‘Funny the way he went dead on us there,’ said the producer. ‘I thought you’d never get him going again. Actually you sound a bit, well, a bit glum yourself.’
‘Could be,’ says Mark.
‘We’ll just run through the rest of him, anyway, and see if there’s anything else …’
The Major rambles on and Mark, listening, continues to think, but in a more personal way now, about the wisdoms of hindsight. He recovers that heady moment of looking down from the attic ladder at Dean Close onto the top of Carrie’s head and feeling as though he had received violent news of some kind. Now that the content of the news is known the frisson is lost for ever. He thinks, with various emotions, of Diana, and the several Dianas of the last few months pass before his eyes: peremptory or loving or guileful or reproachful or plain cross. He is attached to them all, he realises; further, he depends on them. He wishes suddenly that he could talk to her. He waits till the tape ends and says, ‘Sorry – could we break for a few minutes. I’d just like to …’
‘Sure,’ says the producer. ‘End of the corridor on the right.’
‘No – could I make a phone call?’
‘Susie – get Mark an outside line, would you?’
Mark, in the room beyond the glass screen, huddles over the receiver, feeling embarrassed. ‘It’s me. I’m at the BBC.’
‘I know you are,’ says Diana. ‘That’s where you said you were going.’
‘I just felt like saying hello.’
There is a pause. Mark, who knows exactly what is going through Diana’s head, says, ‘Nothing has passed my lips except BBC coffee.’
‘Oh. Well … hello then.’
‘Are you busy?’
Diana, guarded, replies, ‘So so.’
‘Ah. The old bag’s around, then?’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ says Diana.
‘Oh well. Could we have something nice for supper?’
‘We always do,’ says Diana, nettled.
‘I know,’ says Mark, mollifying. ‘I wasn’t casting aspersions. Just something specially nice.’
‘Are you pleased with the way the programme’s going?’
Mark hesitates. ‘Up to a point. It disconcerts a little.’
‘How?’ demands Diana.
‘Well … All these assertive voices. Including one’s own. And where’s the man himself, amid it, eh?’
‘Dead,’ says Diana crisply.
Mark would like, all of a sudden, to talk about the Porlock letters. He would like to be able to explain the complexity of his feelings, if only for his own satisfaction. How he wishes, in a way, he had not read them; how he knows this is emotional self-indulgence; how they have subtly changed his relationship with (dead) Gilbert Strong. But he cannot. So instead he says, ‘I’d better go.’
‘Yes,’ says Diana. She adds, ‘I’m still not sure what you’re ringing up for.’
Mark reads a note on the producer’s desk-pad and looks away guiltily.
‘A sudden rush of blood to the head. Or something. See you tonight.’ After a moment he adds, ‘I love you.’
‘Oh,’ says Diana. ‘Well, ditto, as it were.’ She rings off.
He returns to the studio. ‘And now,’ says the producer, ‘here’s my little surprise. How about this, then!’
There is a crackle and a hiss and into the room comes a new voice, an unfamiliar voice, a male voice with that diction heard now only on the lips of very old Tory politicians, Edwardian speech in other words but subtly modified in this instance in a way that Mark also recognises: the speech of the man of letters.
‘Strong?’ he says.
The producer beams. ‘We dug it up from the archives. They trundled him out for Network Three when it first began. Not too long before he died, I suppose. I thought you’d like it.’
And so here is Strong made manifest. And yes, he sounds very much as imagined: confident, a trifle hectoring. Mark listens, fascinated. He believes in Strong, all of a sudden. It occurs to him that at points over the last couple of years Strong has come to seem unreal: a fictional character,
almost – none the less powerful, but someone safely tucked away in a book. This voice corrects all that. It is a forceful voice, but the sound is slightly reedy – aptly so, as though reduced by the passage of time.
‘I’m an old man. One says these words, let me tell you, with a certain sense of disbelief. It is not an anticipated condition unless you happen to be a person of unusual passivity. And I do not care for it. Age does not come naturally to me, if I may put it thus. When I dream, the ego of my dreams is young, a child even. But I am not dreaming of the past, I am dreaming of here and now, indulging in whatever mysterious activity of the brain dreams fulfil.’
‘He waffles on rather,’ says the producer. ‘It seems to have been one of a series of talks in which they got the eminent elderly of the day to reflect on changing society – or whatever took their fancy, frankly.’
Gilbert Strong, though, does not waste too much time on changing society, apart from a few token swipes at the literary scene, the rape of the landscape and the declining verve of British politicians, in that order. He is chiefly concerned with the changes in Gilbert Strong, which he discusses with a not unengaging mixture of detached interest and personal affront. ‘The future,’ he says at one point, ‘I have always regarded as impenetrable and therefore uninteresting’ – not a particularly profound remark but one which seizes Mark for a while nevertheless, so that he misses the next bit and has to ask the producer to run the tape again. He thinks of Diana, that undaunted planner, forever trying to control the provoking random processes of fate. And of himself, whose consideration of the future has been restricted to occasional perfunctory assessments of life insurance or the mortgage.
‘Once,’ says Gilbert Strong, ‘a long time ago, I rested a certain belief in the future which turned out to be misplaced. Since then, I have learned to put my trust in expediency rather than in hope.’
It occurs to Mark, with a sudden sense of conspiracy, that Strong is probably talking about Irene. In which case he is talking to himself, but is also, unknown to him, now communicating with Mark, which is odd and confusing but somehow moving. Strong goes on to discuss some of his own books in a way that seems to be disarmingly blunt and candid but, Mark recognises, includes a classic Strong method of special pleading which presents possible counter-arguments with subtle crudeness and then demolishes them with an apparently superior case. It is like listening to the expected manner of a parent, or of a very old friend. I know him better than I thought I did, Mark thinks. This brings a surge of confidence: maybe the book will be better than he believes, maybe the whole activity is more sound than at times he has felt.