The Biographer (17 page)

They were a convivial party, enclosed by curtains and shutters against the elements.
Church candles of every shape and size were lined up along the dining table
and dresser, throwing a benign, painterly glow over the room and its occupants.
The room verged on overheated from Rollo's well-seasoned fire that had roared
away all afternoon. On the hearth the pugs lay splayed, impervious to the ravishments
of Samuel Barber's violin concerto (selected in deference to the four Americans
present).

Rollo had seated Tony between Benedetta,a local potter in her early thirties, and Barbara, a fifty-ish Oxford don with a dancer's posture who knew more, his host informed Tony, than any living soul about the Italian Renaissance. Possibly even more than anyone here at the Castello.

Corbino. Now where did that originate, Barbara had enquired politely. Tony explained
that his paternal grandfather had been the archetypal penniless immigrant from
Naples who'd made quite good in Brooklyn, before the next generation blew it.

Opposite Tony was the dowager Lady Dorothy Swannage, a well-upholstered and feisty old friend of Rollo's vintage. He introduced her as a collapsed Red and lapsed socialite.

'With, let's face it, dear, an increasing number of prolapsing promontories,'she said jovially,before Tony could respond. 'The descent into dementia is such a bugger, isn't it,Roly?'

'Don't ask me, Dottie, because I know nothing.'

Guy murmured in Tony's ear,'He wishes.'

Leaning over Tony's shoulder, Guy was contriving to pour wine very slowly into his glass.'Don't you be taken in by that pathetic, hangdog manner of Dorothy's. It's entirely spurious. She's a professional serial widow with a gimlet eye and unerring judgement, aren't you, Dottie? What's the current body count?'

With the arrival of the minestrone the conversation had turned to Mischa's biography.

'Is there anything you could imagine discovering about a person,' Dottie included in this the Bostonian Larry, an Am. Lit. professor and recent Hemingway biographer, 'that was so horribly bad that even you would hesitate to share it?'

'It's the sly little touches, isn't it?' Guy addressed the table.'The "even yous". Don't you just love the way she does that?' Dottie flapped her napkin, to laughter.

'In principle I think I'd have to say no.' Larry, as Tony's senior, pre-empted him. 'Given, I'm compelled to say but hate to say it, today's prurient climate. Mind you, all my subjects to date have shrugged off their mortal coils. It might well be a significantly different story, writing about someone who was still very much with us.'

He glanced at Tony for confirmation.

Tony shrugged. 'I can't offhand think of any stuff I wouldn't use. Of course, other living people might be affected, which means there's libel laws to duck. But, hey, isn't truth the best defence? Even the hottest defamation attorneys find it hard to argue with that.'

'But what if, Tony, what if you disinterred a thing –' Rollo looked towards the ceiling, then in the direction of Greer's house, and ground to a halt. He caught Guy's vigilant eye.

Guy was on the ball.'What if you uncovered a seriously gruesome secret? One that could wreak havoc if revealed. Would you feel it was profoundly incumbent upon you to spread it abroad?'

'He can't answer that.' Larry and June, husband and wife, were in rare agreement on this. It was an impossible question, far too vague. Be more specific, they urged.What kind of a secret? Whose lives?

When there was no response Benedetta spoke up. 'Perhaps you can discover that Mischa has another secret family living in another town?'

The others overrode Rollo's objection that this was too risibly farfetched to
be a realistic moral dilemma.Tony took up Benedetta's suggestion. He spoke
rapidly, crossing points off on his fingers.

'Right, let's look at the pros and cons here. Pros are the obvious value of this juicy info to the biography, the new light it sheds on Mischa's character, all these fresh leads to check out. Cons would be the negative effect on Gigi if she didn't know, ditto the effect on the other family, the strong probability of putting the subject – Mischa – terminally off-side, and that goes for other close friends who'd been left out of the knowledge loop. Like for instance,' he surveyed the table,'you guys.OK,so,'he paused,'do I use it?'

He grinned at them. 'You bet. But I'd keep it under wraps until I'd got all the other stuff I needed first.'

'In case of reprisals from us guys?'

'Right on,Rollo.You might retaliate by drying up on me.'

Benedetta said, 'And if he is having a big affair with somebody a long time ago, and the husband of this woman never knows about it?'

'I think you can confidently assume the husband of this woman is in for a surprise.'

'It's never going to happen, Tony. Just think of all the schadenfreude we're going to miss out on,' Rollo lamented, 'just because Mischa's so spotlessly clean. It's enough to make you weep.'

Larry and June's son, Colin, who looked about fourteen and as serious as his father, had been following this. Now he asked, 'What if it was something worse? Like Mischa had murdered someone or something? Or he was a serial killer?'

Tony's laugh was the loudest.

'Good one, Colin.Well, I wouldn't be above using that. Whoopee! Think of the sales.'

'But what if he'd killed a really, really bad guy? And if he was found out now his career would be trashed and he'd be put in prison?'

June and Larry smiled with parental pride.

'Now there
is
a curly one, Colin.' Rollo was keenly engaged. 'Do we turn a blind eye or do we airily trash Mischa's career?'

'Like, say, the guy he killed had been a terrorist.'There was no stopping Colin now.'Or he was a Gestapo torturer, an
Ubersturmbahnfuhrer
.'

'Then I think I'd happily reveal the murder, and rely on the expertise of Mischa's crack legal team to get him off,' Tony said.

'Now, hang on.' Rollo's elbows were on the table, chin on his hands.'Aren't we being too easy on Tony,Colin? The murderee doesn't have to be the full monty of depravity.As long as he's a bit of a stinker, that's all we need.'

He looked at Tony.'What do you reckon? Is it curtains for Mischa?'

'Sure it is.This is his life story, you can't expect me to sugarcoat it. If
he killed someone, whether that guy was a Nazi or the neighbour from hell,
the
truth will out.'

Dottie smacked him on the arm.'You pitiless man.'

'I'm afraid so, Dottie. In that scenario, he goes right down the gurgler.'

'And the book soars into the bestseller lists.' June clapped her hands.'Larry,honey,eat your heart out.'

'Of course, there's no reason why Mischa's artistic reputation should suffer,'
Barbara observed dryly. 'One might confidently assume it could only be enhanced
by the scandal.'

Rollo digested this.'So,everybody's interests are served. Mercenary as well as artistic.You've got carte blanche then, haven't you, Tony?' He added, 'Thank you, darling,' as the soup bowls were cleared away by Violetta, a self-possessed sixteen-year-old from the village, one of Maria Paola's daughters.

Tony protested that his interests were at least as artistic as Mischa's and way less mercenary.

Colin's brow was still furrowed. 'But what if he'd got away with killing an ordinary person, a nice guy even, or a woman, and he would be tried for murder in America in a state that has the death penalty?'

This, they had to agree, was something of a different ball game. Tony prevaricated. Larry pointed out long-windedly that in the United States the vast majority of death-row inmates were, regrettably, poor and black. The sad truth was that it wasn't your guilt or innocence that determined your fate, it was the colour of your face and the price of your lawyer.

'Mischa's a rich and famous white dude, Colin,' Tony summed up.'He'd be laughing.'

'All the way to the bank,and so would you,Tony.'June laughed herself, and stroked
her son's crewcut hair. He looked morose, taken aback by his parents' cynical
assessment of the unfairness of things.

'What good timing,darling.'Rollo beamed.'Now we're the full complement. I do like to be symmetrical. It's my only weakness.'

Greer ducked through the door in a cold swirl of umbrella and rain, just as the
lamb was being carried to the sideboard to be carved by Guy. After the flurry
of greetings, kisses and introductions Rollo seated her between him and Larry,
who promptly appropriated her. She was in the wine game, wasn't she? He had
just read a provocative article on women winemakers. He sought her views. Did
she agree with its argument that they brought a feminine sensibility to bear
on the finished product, or was this a sexist premise?

Rollo took advantage of this to signal to Tony. 'Come and help me choose some more music.'

The B. & O. hi-fi, streamlined and top of the line, stood on a sideboard around the corner. The wall above it was stacked with shelves of CDs. Rollo went for a boxed set.

'These nice '30s jazz ladies came last week. Let's have them, shall we? Guy got them off the internet. He's very good at the internet, I can't do it at all.'

He inserted the disc without a pause.'Now,Tony, what about the little people on the sidelines?' The question was muffled by Ethel Waters singing 'Shake That Thing'.

'Excuse me?'

'I can understand your being keen to tip Mischa in the poo, but what about the innocent bystanders? You know the ones, they're all over the t-shirts in Covent Garden. "Don't blame me, I'm only an innocent bystander".' Rollo chuckled into Tony's ear.

Tony claimed he still didn't get it.

'The poor unfortunates caught up in Mischa's slipstream. Will you take the same merciless attitude towards them?'

'Are you referring to yourself, Rollo?'

Rollo looked shocked. 'Oh, you can say anything you like about me. Or Guy. Within reason, and as long as it's sycophantic, I don't mind at all. And you don't even have to be sycophantic about Guy. Dear me, no, I'm referring to Mischa's nearest and dearest.'

'That's only Greer, isn't it? As far as we know. Gigi, I mean.' Tony gave an involuntary glance over his shoulder. Greer was not in his line of sight.

'Yes, I know who you mean. Gigi and Greer are two facets of the same complex woman.'

'I'm afraid in a biography, pragmatism's the order of the day.You can't afford to be sentimental. Gigi, well, her story's arguably as important as his.'

'Why? Because Mischa's lean pickings?'

'Because she's a central spoke in his wheel.'

'She's the pivot of his wheel,Tony.'

'Right.'Tony veered away from the older man's gaze, in which there was a discomfiting cast. 'You'd prefer I took a chivalrous attitude to my female talent.'

'Oh, very much so. I'm a sucker for the chivalry, from way back. Call me old-fashioned, but if we're talking cads, Tony, I'll take the gentlemanly bugger every time.'

The tone was flippant but the eyes fixed on Tony were speculative and assessing. Rollo put an effective end to the exchange by leading the way back to the table, where the chat was in full flight. Biography was making a comeback. It had already edged out women winemakers, and threatened to overpower Barbara's rearguard action of Muriel Spark versus Iris Murdoch.

Apart from any more dubious qualities, the biography would be lovely to look at, wouldn't it, Dorothy Swannage said to Tony as he returned to his seat.

Sure, there'd be pages of pics and hardly any words,Tony declared, with a humorous nod in Greer's direction. He wanted every work mentioned in the text to be illustrated.

'Gigi knows,' he said emphatically, 'that I've done nothing else for months on end except hunt down pictures and get the go-aheads from museums and galleries. Not to mention the private owners. They change hands over the years: works you really want go missing, trails go cold. It's been a long investigative haul, I can tell you.'

Larry got the gist of this and turned to Greer.'I trust he already secured the artist's permission to use the works.That can be a legal and logistical minefield for the unwary.'

'Oh, I think Mischa just consented to anything Tony asked him.Didn't he,Tony?'

She glanced his way.The vigilant blue eyes were already on her, as she had known they would be.There was nothing wrong with Tony's hearing. He seemed well able to follow two conversations at once. Three, if you counted Ella Fitzgerald. His head was swaying along with Dottie's in time with the music.

'Good point, Larry.Yeah, I'm happy to say we cut a deal way back. Mischa gave me the green light to use whatever I could get.' Now he was also contributing to his end of the table's popularity poll of jazz songs and singers.

'He can't renege on the deal if he takes exception to anything you write,Tony?' Larry winked at Greer to signal that this was a joke.

'No way. It's safely signed in visible ink.'

'I'm a bit on the surprised side,' Rollo joined in, 'that London and New York didn't pull rank and insist on a right of veto.' He turned to Greer ostentatiously and raised his voice. 'As an insurance policy against Tony, darling. So they could take exception to anything and everything he writes.'

She shook her head. 'Oh, there's no insurance policy against Tony.Tony is an act of God.'

They appreciated that, and so, she saw, did he. His eyes rested on her for a moment, before he looked to the heavens laughingly. She thought, I'm at the mercy of this young man, and Rollo thinks he is ruthless.

'The d'lovely Marty,' Guy remarked, with a sigh that suggested reminiscence.

Rollo pursed his lips.'And la Isabella figura.'

Greer explained for everyone's benefit,'Mischa's dealers.'

'Mischa's terribly top-drawer dealers,' Tony amplified. 'Martin d'Avery in London
and Isabella Jay in New York. There was some power play along those lines,
Rollo. In the end, I'm glad to say, and under pressure from the publisher and
from Mischa himself, they caved in. I guess they envisioned they'd get a better
book if they gave me a free hand.'

Pressure from Mischa? Greer thought this was highly unlikely.Had Tony meant to say that? She took a covert look at him. As she had imagined, he was leaning back, the epitome of relaxed sociability. She thought, but everything he says is deliberate.