‘What? I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.’
‘Tissue,’ said Gordon, pronouncing the word now in Jimmie’s preferred style.
‘Of course, of course.’
‘We never quite got to what I was going to ask you just now.’
‘Fire away when you’re ready, then.’
‘You remember my saying when you rang up that I pronounced the word to rhyme with miss-you? Well –’
‘Oh yes, Johnnie Wessex had had the barefaced cheek to say he didn’t believe any English person, anybody born in England pronounced T,I,S,S,U,E in any other way than the way he and I pronounced it. So then …’
‘So then,’ said Gordon, ‘you thought of me as someone sufficiently far gone in creeping pedantry to pronounce the wretched word in what we’ll call my way, and that was enough to enable you to win your argument with Johnnie Wessex.’
Gordon would have said he had pitched the foregoing at a tolerably low level, though would have had to admit that his tone when uttering the name Johnnie Wessex had not carried a favourable view of that nobleman. It seemed at least that he had spoken nevertheless loudly or warmly enough to cause the nearby elderly men to look sharply at him and then at each other before doing a fast shuffle out of the room. The barman glanced up from a list he was checking through, but only for a moment. Jimmie seemed a little troubled or vexed, though in no way conscience-stricken. He said,
‘I suppose all of us speak much as those around us do, or used to early in our lives. But I suggest that’s enough on the subject. Well, Gordon, have you made a start on your book about me? Good God, how pompous that sounds.’
‘I’ve been reading through your works and making notes which I’ll be using later. In the meantime I’ll be asking you the odd question about your earlier life, as something occurs to me if that’s all right. I don’t want to subject you to long interrogation sessions like a –’
‘My dear boy, you may ask me any question you think proper at any time within reason and I’ll answer it. I’ve thought about it and I can see no virtue in my making things difficult for you. If I find I’ve told you too much and want you to take out something I don’t want made public, I’ll tell you when I come to it in your manuscript. Oh, and I’m making some notes of my own which I’ll pass on to you in due course, as they say.’
‘Very good; fine; agreed. Here’s a question to be going on with. When you met –’
‘I think if you don’t mind we’ll finish these and proceed to luncheon. They turn somewhat reproachful if one arrives at what they consider to be an inopportune hour. In fact I’d have suggested to you that we should go straight in to where one eats if it didn’t sound such a dismal notion, and a mean one. Sounds a mean idea? Nay, it is. Are you ready?’
They mounted a single turn of the fine staircase and went through a sort of outer dining-room into a sort of inner dining-room beyond it. Both were full of men in suits vigorously talking, eating and drinking. Several of them looked up at Gordon as he went by, making him feel like a spy in an old-fashioned film. Jimmie led the way to a vacant table laid for four near the back of the room. They had hardly settled into their chairs before two additional men in suits came out of the middle distance and took the spare seats at the table. Jimmie introduced them as Bobbie something and Tommie something else, both these surnames denoting some county or other portion of the land area of the British Isles. Gordon was unsure at the time, and was never able to establish afterwards, whether these two arrivals had been invited or had invited themselves. They treated Jimmie as their host throughout, but what with one thing and another there was no certain indication there.
‘So this is the great man’s biographer, Tommie,’ said Bobbie, and Tommie nodded and smiled. Both of them continued to look Gordon over in a considering and also greedy fashion, as if they had half a mind to eat him later. ‘You mustn’t mind us,’ Bobbie went on, ‘but you are called Gordon, aren’t you, I mean that is right, I hope?’
‘Gordon Scott-Thompson.’
‘How do you do. I mean it is marvellous that you’re here, isn’t it, Tommie?’
‘You’re very young, aren’t you, to be taking on a demanding job like writing Jimmie’s life?’
They were so friendly, or at least were smiling at him and at each other so much, that Gordon found it hard not to go along with them. Jimmie gave no lead, showed no more sign of being disconcerted than of being gratified at their presence. For the moment Gordon could see no alternative to reciting dull facts about himself, dull to him at least, though Bobbie and Tommie listened in seeming fascination. This phase lasted until a man too active-looking and speedy in his movements not to be a club servant appeared and gave out menus, a service unremarked by any of the three club members present. His own menu, Gordon saw, had no prices on it, no doubt to remind him that he could choose whatever he fancied – fancy that! And fancy another thing, already becoming clear, that Jimmie was going to have to pick up the bill for all four lunches, including the wine, which Bobbie and Tommie were now engaged in vociferously choosing from the list. Gordon told himself that what prevented him from ordering oysters followed by lobster, and so tit-for-tatting Jimmie, was not any form of compunction but simple dislike of those dishes. But when his preludial slice of melon arrived in front of him and he started on it under Bobbie’s observant eye, he had to admit internally that the real deterrent had been the prospect of that eye turned on his unpractised attempts to deal with oysters and such.
The meal progressed without resort to violence. The conversation between Jimmie, Bobbie and Tommie was mostly about the doings or condition of men referred to only by names similarly terminated. So Gordon had to say little and had little to say. He had meant to take the opportunity of seeing how far Jimmie had meant what he said about answering questions, but that now seemed to be ruled out. Tommie and Bobbie were chattering away with Jimmie nineteen to the dozen, as if they had lost interest in the fourth member of the party, but something in their occasional glances or his imagination suggested that they would come back to him when they felt like it. Both were drinking what he would have thought of as a fair amount of wine.
His moment came. The three others shared a sort of end-of-chapter laugh and collectively turned towards Gordon, who started to concentrate on sitting still in his chair. Both Bobbie and Tommie showed a friendly curiosity, though it struck him as a little excessive too. Jimmie was more non-committal, as if he was being told by Lord Bagshot about a delightful little place for lunch in the hills above Rome, now unfortunately closed down. At last Tommie said,
‘Well, Gordon – it is Gordon, isn’t it? – you haven’t had much to say for yourself for the last half-hour or so, have you?’
Gordon made gestures indicating that that was indeed the case.
‘I don’t suppose you know very many of the people we were talking about just now. Not very polite of us, I’m afraid. Perhaps never even heard of most of ‘em, eh?’
‘I have heard of the Prince of Wales.’ Gordon tried to push all expression out of his voice. ‘Not many others, it’s true to say.’
A single yelp or bark of laughter broke from Bobbie, who had just refilled his own glass and Tommie’s, vigorously waving away with his free hand the proffered attention of a servant. Jimmie raised his eyebrows in a further demonstration of impartiality. Tommie pressed on.
‘Yes, it was rather naughty of us to go on chinwagging about our cronies in that fashion, but Jimmie here is always bursting to hear the latest gossip, and we don’t seem to see him as often as all that.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Gordon.
For a moment Tommie looked at him in a new way, one accompanied by a small frown of puzzlement. ‘Didn’t we meet at Henley a year or two ago? Or was it, er, you know, Cowes?’