The Biographer’s Moustache. Kingsley Amis

know I said something of the sort.’

      ‘Yes, you did.’

      ‘Well, it strikes me now, how shall I put it …’ Tommie spoke with a short silence between each phrase and the next and Gordon fancied that Bobbie started listening with heightened intensity, ‘I don’t know whether … of course I should have explained that I only heard about this … this project of yours a short while ago, just before you …’

      ‘I merely happened to mention it in passing,’ said Jimmie, as one who exculpates himself.

      ‘I haven’t had time to … think very deeply about what’s involved, or …’

      ‘Get along with you,’ said Bobbie, with some roughness in his tone as well as his words. ‘What did you say to me as soon as Jimmie had told us a little about our young friend here?’

      ‘I don’t think we need actually …’

      ‘What did you actually say? Come on, Tommie old bean.’

      ‘All right, I said something to the effect that his earlier life, his background, Gordon’s background probably hadn’t often brought him into contact with the kind of people Jimmie had been, well, brought into contact with.’

      Tommie made to face Gordon again, but Bobbie broke in. ‘All right, as you say. All right. If you feel you somehow ought to water it down, all right.’

      ‘I was simply –’

      ‘All right, all right.’

      Now Tommie did say something to Gordon, it’s quite straightforward. Obviously you and Jimmie have had different sorts of upbringing and, and life. Nothing mysterious about it.’

      ‘No,’ said Gordon. ‘Nothing mysterious at all.’

      Aware that Bobbie looked like breaking in again, Tommie hurried on. ‘What I’m getting at, what we’re getting at is just that you can’t, you wouldn’t want to write any sort of book on Jimmie without, er, seeing him in the company of the people and the kind of society he grew up in and has, well, been in ever since, and it’s not the same as the kind you grew up in, am I right?’