“Would you care for some tea? Only my partner has made this rather nice cake?”
Set on the trolley was a tea service with doilies and a homemade walnut cake.
When Renee, a journalist, but also a fan, turned up at the writer’s flat, she had been understandably apprehensive; the writer’s reputation preceded him.
Described invariably as a maverick, he had, as Renee would note of writers in general, the reputation for being an awkward interviewee. The writer, of course, had not showed his face in public for a number of years. Indeed, searching through the records, Renee realised that he had not published anything, apart from an essay in an academic review, on A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, for more than a decade.
If a lot of water had gone under the bridge, Renee’s initial impression was of a man in late middle age whose hair was gradually turning grey. The writer wore a pair of frameless, fashionista spectacles. Though tall, he had the elegant beginnings of a paunch.
At the beginning of the interview, there was a moment where Renee was searching for something to say. Casting her eye over floor to ceiling bookcase, among the many different books: classics of literature, thrillers and detective stories, books in Italian and French, biographies of saints and sinners, poetry of the avant-garde, books on linguistics, philosophy and popular science, and even comics of the type read by eternal adolescents, she noticed a photo of the young writer. He was reclining on a sofa, limbs slipping out of a frilly shirt; looking, all in all, she thought, rather pretty – indeed fuckable.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying,” he went on. “But I do like your frilly dress.”
Renee was suddenly embarrassed. Under the circumstances, the writer was – and could only ever have started life as a woman.
*
“Have you ever interviewed anyone quite like that?”
“Not on my watch. Mind you, I’ve had a few who’ve put hands on knees.”
“Good-looking people always think they are the bees-knees.”
“Journalists are usually the most unshockable people in the world.”
“I don’t think,” said Maude, “she would have been shocked if she hadn’t fancied him first.”