A Dog's Life (5 page)

It had rained steadily before and after the burglary. Lila, venturing into the garden, chanced upon the tools the men had used to break into the house. They were covered in mud. She picked them up and carried them into the kitchen and washed them at the sink. Then she dried and polished them clean with a towel, little realizing that she had got rid of incriminating fingerprints along with the mud. The police were not pleased when she presented them with what she referred to as the ‘evidence’.

In the years of our friendship with Elsa and Lila, David and I lived happily – if somewhat histrionically – in the flat in Paddington. My first and second novels were published, and David left Covent Garden to work as a freelance costumier. (He loathed the word ‘costume’, which suggested something arcane and dead to him. He produced period clothes for living people.) The minute dining room became his increasingly cluttered workroom, for he loved to function in seeming chaos. I had daily employment too, as a reader for my publisher Jonathan Cape. The phrase ‘proud breasts’ appeared in one trashy spy novel after another, all written under the influence of Ian Fleming. ‘Why are the breasts always proud?’ I asked my fellow reader, William Plomer. ‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘I think it’s because they’re imposing. The girls’ mothers had to eat snoek, a distinctly fatty fish, during the war, and that may explain why the breasts have this stuck-up appearance. Blame their pride on snoek.’

David’s reputation as a costumier was at its highest then. His particular delight was in making clothes that fitted naturally and comfortably on operatic divas, and singers such as Montserrat Caballé, Shirley Verrett, Janet Baker, Beverley Sills and Teresa Stratas climbed the six flights to see him. The neighbours were impressed by the Bentleys and Rolls Royces waiting below. ‘You need a corset,’ he assured Caballé, who had given her measurements as 46, 46 and 46. She spluttered in protest that she had never worn, and would never wear, such a horrible object. ‘I will build you a corset in which you can sing freely,’ he guaranteed. She went on protesting until the hour of the fitting, when she looked in the mirror and saw that he had given her a waist. What’s more, she could breathe easily in the light contraption he had designed. ‘You have made a fat little Spanish girl very happy,’ she cooed, kissing him warmly on both cheeks.

David’s greatest asset in those days, apart from his admired talent as a tailor and cutter, was his honesty. He saw no reason to flatter or suck up to the artists he held in esteem. If a colour didn’t suit the singer’s complexion or physique, he advised her to resist it. He worked on a basis of mutual pride and respect, and was only disconcerted on those rare occasions when he was treated as a menial. Yet, deep down, he was aware that however well he had fulfilled the designer’s intentions (and sometimes he was able to interpret a sqiggle pretending to be a sketch) it was not enough to make his name, David Healy, known beyond a small, incestuous circle.

I made the acquaintance of other writers – most notably Angus Wilson, who had introduced me to Elizabeth Bowen and been characteristically kind, and Iris Murdoch, whom I had met on a tour of the Midlands organized by the Arts Council. One night, in Knutsford – the origin of Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford – an overdressed woman in the front room of the church hall announced that she hadn’t heard of the three men on the panel but simply adored Miss Murdoch’s novels. ‘Why is that?’ Iris demanded, out of curiosity. ‘Oh, because they’re so predictable,’ the woman replied. ‘That isn’t much of a compliment,’ Iris snapped. The woman was relentless in her misplaced enthusiasm. ‘I mean, I feel so at home in them. You seem to have written them with me in mind. I always know where I am.’ This was insupportable to Iris, who muttered ‘Stupid cow’ under her breath and invited a sensible question from somebody else.

Iris was to use that expression again, at a party she gave in her London pied-à-terre. A rather butch ex-nun was telling anyone who could be cajoled into listening that she was now a painter. She wore a smock for emphasis. She had doubts about her new vocation. ‘Is there any point in painting after Titian?’ she wondered aloud to everybody she met. Before one could respond with a reasoned ‘Well…’ she had answered the question herself: ‘Of course there isn’t.’ As she became more and more drunk, the rhetorical question took on a defiant note. ‘Is there any point in painting,’ she boomed, ‘after Titian?’ I seem to recall a brave soul quietly remarking that Rembrandt and Goya came after Titian, but she was drowned out with an assertive ‘Of course there isn’t.’ Two hours later, when it was time to leave, the painter was reeling, and still muttering the name of Titian. We were standing in the hallway, saying our goodbyes to Iris, when the painter, pointing at a bowl of red roses, exclaimed: ‘What beautiful flowers, Iris. Who gave them to you?’ The reply was immediate, and brusque: ‘You did, you stupid cow.’

In 1976, I went to live in America, where I remained for almost three years. In the summer of 1977, Iris invited David to her annual party. He arrived in some trepidation, not being at ease among intellectuals. The small flat was crammed with people, none of whom he recognized. It was then, with some relief, that he noticed the famous poet and his wife in a far corner. He made his way towards them and said hello. The poet, looking down on him, asked ‘Do we know you?’ and David answered yes. He reminded the couple that they had dined with us in our first flat, and then how he had rescued the wife’s meal when the taunts of Mr Amis had driven her into a state of near-panic. These calmly pronounced reminders made no impression on the pair, who began scanning the company for someone else to talk to. David walked away from them and out of the party.

(I had assumed, wrongly it seems, that David had told them, in very precise Anglo-Saxon terms, where to get off. A friend who was lodging in our Hammersmith house at the time assures me that David returned home early in a state of shock and disbelief. He had been wounded by their snubbing of him, offended deeply by their haughty rudeness. He had left them in silence, his dignity intact.)

‘I hear enough about books and writers,’ David would declare, on opening the front door to Angus (always accompanied by his companion, Tony Garrett) or to Iris (who often came alone). Since the other guests were not literary types, the conversation ranged over a variety of topics. Iris never cared to talk about herself or her work, and was happy to ask questions, beginning with ‘And what do you do?’ Angus, by contrast, adored being the centre of attention, and allowed David to tease him and even, on one occasion, tell him he was talking bollocks. ‘I do like your wicked friend,’ Angus once confided. ‘But he’s bad for me. He makes me feel so
camp
.’

I remember two dinner parties made hellish by the self-importance of authors. Both occurred towards the end of David’s life, when his cooking was unsurpassable. I had admired a certain biographer for many years, but nothing in her writing prepared us for the onslaught of egoism we were subjected to that night. She made no comment on the food David had prepared with such devoted skill, and assumed he was a hired chef, to judge by her parting words to me. She arrived late, barged into the sitting room and demanded, in stentorian tones, if anyone present knew anything about death by drowning. A stunned silence ensued. It was her theory – a theory that dominated the conversation for virtually the whole evening – that Virginia Woolf had not committed suicide.
Au contraire
– Leonard had murdered her, dragged her body down to the river, weighted it with stones (the very stones found in her pockets) and ditched it into the water. It made sense, she maintained, at length. Leonard was Jewish and his wife famously anti-Semitic. What better reason had he for killing her?

That evening, however, was – in retrospect – a mere foretaste of the horror to come. An old and dear friend of mine had developed an interest in the copious writings of an American named May Sarton, a tireless diarist, autobiographer, novelist and poet. She and Sarton had corresponded, and a friendship of sorts had begun. I was in Nairn, in the far north of Scotland, working on the opening chapters of my novel
Gabriel’s Lament
when a parcel containing a selection from Sarton’s vast output arrived. I took time off from writing to read a novel – I have forgotten the title though not, alas, the content – about an elderly woman being placed in an institution. I found the book insufferably sentimental. The central character is a saintly victim in a world of cruel doctors and nurses. My own first novel,
At the Jerusalem
, is concerned with an irritable and irritating widow coping with life in a home, surrounded by people who are neither saints nor demons. I phoned my dear friend and asked her what crime I had perpetrated to merit the punishment of having to read such twaddle. She advised me to turn to the diaries. I did so, but not for long. I soon wearied of details of book-signings and meetings with her devoted readers, who were all women and mostly lesbian. There were no insights into the work of other writers, and the bland prose was completely devoid of those charm-free asides that inform the liveliest published diaries – like those of the composer Ned Rorem, for example, who finds space in the latest entertaining volumes to savage each new work by his self-appointed rival Elliott Carter.

Four months before Circe came into our lives, May Sarton turned up in London to give a talk to her women admirers and sign copies of her recent books. My old friend, knowing my views on all matters Sartonian, was nevertheless pleased when David and I suggested that she invite Sarton and her travelling companion to dinner. I bought a brace of pheasants from the butcher we patronized in Soho. (Reg, who always served me, was in the habit of saying, during the game season, ‘Hello, Paul, do you fancy a large cock?’ The other customers at the counter were often startled by this question and by my enthusistic reply in the affirmative.)

I feel somewhat like Conrad’s Marlow, the measured remembrancer of futility and despair, as I think back to that grim November evening. The chain-smoking, hard-drinking Sarton was in a belligerent mood from the outset. I had been told of her fondness for Scotch whisky, and duly filled a tumbler for her. She dispatched it down her throat with surprising speed. Her companion Edythe (felicitous spelling) drank moderately and said very little because Sarton gave her no opportunity to express anything as controversial as an opinion. My old friend tried to ease the tension that was steadily building up.

Introductions were made. The already tipsy Sarton mistook Lisa, the actress who lived on the ground floor, for a novelist, and assumed that I was an actor. The full nature of her confusion struck me when I expressed cautious enthusiasm for the writer Jayne Anne Phillips, whose first collection of short stories I had just read. ‘Nobody takes the literary judgements of actors seriously,’ she declared. I was too astonished to continue.

David listened intently as the diarist launched herself into a litany of self-praise. We heard that May Sarton was more than a mere novelist or poet. Sackloads of letters from lonely women reached her home in Maine by every post, and she replied to each one
personally
.

Breaking the silence that followed these revelations, she turned to Lisa and enquired, ‘What kind of books do you write?’

Lisa laughed, and said she was an actress, and that I was the writer in the house.

‘You’re not an actor?’ The gruff voice sounded angry for some unaccountable reason.

‘I was. A long time ago. I’m a novelist.’

It had taken almost an hour to establish this. I wondered if, from now on, any literary judgement I might venture would be treated seriously, not cursorily dismissed. In one of her volumes of autobiography, Sarton had boasted of a night of sexual – and presumably drunken – euphoria with Elizabeth Bowen. I mentioned, casually, that I had met the great author at a party shortly before her death. I had been tongue-tied in her presence, but she was gracious and charming in the face of my awkwardness as she sat on the sofa in the publisher’s office in Soho.

‘I knew Elizabeth
very well
,’ Sarton announced. ‘Very well indeed.’

That was another show-stopper. Sarton’s proffered glass was refilled. It was clear to me that she wanted us to praise her writing. I am no stranger to deviousness, but I have never been able to pretend to admire work I consider second-rate. It does not follow that an inferior writer must of necessity be an inferior person. I had hoped, against the written evidence, that Sarton would prove to be interesting at least. Fond hope.

We sat down to eat. Edythe praised the smoked salmon mousse, which Sarton picked at. She was now consuming wine with the same fervour she had applied to the whisky. Trouble seemed to be looming with each intake. She had begun to glower. She offered no comment on the pheasant, which Edythe again was the first to praise, but complained instead of the terrible burden she had to fulfil by responding
personally
to the thousands of letters she received every year. There were days when she had no time for her own work.

‘When I get back to Maine, there’ll be hundreds of the damned things waiting for me.’

‘I’ve only read two of your books,’ Lisa remarked. ‘I can’t understand why so many people write to you or why you have to reply to them.’

Sarton, enraged, banged both fists on the table.

‘If you’d bothered to read the other forty, you would understand,’ she bellowed.

‘Could we keep the decibels down a little?’ David asked, while Sarton snorted.

‘Shut up,’ she shouted, glowering at Lisa. ‘I’m talking. You’re only the cook.’

The moment I had dreaded had come. But David surprised me. He took off his apron and placed it carefully on the back of a chair. He walked over to the dining table and looked straight at Sarton, who was still fuming. He spoke quietly but firmly.

‘You are without doubt the rudest, the most egotistical, monstrous human being I have ever met.’

‘He doesn’t like me,’ Sarton wailed, her gravelly voice sounding almost girlish.

David went downstairs and phoned a close friend, whom he regaled with a detailed report on the behaviour of our guest of honour.