A Dog's Life(7)

David had once tried to dye his hair with a product that burnt his forelocks away. He had green eyes that darted with happy mischief or ferocious anger. He was small and slightly built, yet he had the power to terrify bullies or thugs. He had exquisite manners when he wasn’t incensed by someone’s boorish or grand behaviour. I remember an evening when a famous poet and his wife invited us to dinner. The other guests were a charming French journalist and Kingsley Amis and his then wife, Elizabeth Jane Howard. Amis was in a foul mood, insisting on eating eggs, bacon and sausage instead of the ‘foreign muck’ being prepared. The poet’s wife was in a tizzy in the basement kitchen. When she came into the sitting room looking flustered, Amis quipped, ‘You must be stewing something in Albanian goat’s piss to judge by the smell.’ On the instant David said, ‘That was bloody rude, Mr Amis. I think you should apologize.’

Amis mumbled a few words and fell silent.

I had met the famous poet when David and I were still living in our Paddington eyrie. He had been kind to me, praising my early novels, and he would later secure me a well-paid job at the universities of Newcastle and Durham, where I was writer in residence. By way of expressing my gratitude, I invited him and his wife to dine with us, for David was an excellent and inventive cook. They duly arrived, climbing the six flights of stairs that led to the flat. They walked into our tiny sitting room, and the poet’s wife stared at the pictures, the ornaments, the furniture. Then, ignoring her hosts and turning to her husband, she exclaimed, ‘Just think, darling, only two nights ago we were in New York with Igor and Véra.’

We were too stunned by this lofty put-down to enquire which Igor and which Véra she was referring to. It says much for David’s graciousness that on the night of the Albanian goat’s piss witticism he came to the wife’s aid at the stove, rescuing the meal she was preparing for those not averse to foreign food. He was to regret this act of simple decency, as I shall relate.

David had trained to be a classical dancer, but his looks and height meant that he would be confined to character roles. He was told by his teacher, Elsa Brunelleschi, that he could never be a danseur noble. He was, briefly, a chorus boy at the London Palladium, attracting several sugar daddies, who took him for supper at the Savoy Grill or the Café de Paris. His expertise as a tailor and cutter, with a faultless eye for what looked natural on a dancer, singer or actor, ensured him a job at the Royal Opera House, where he was healthily disrespectful to the stars and designers who treated the staff as menials.

He displayed his republican mettle whenever Princess Margaret attended the dress rehearsal of a new ballet. Her Royal Highness sat in the stalls, with a lackey or two beside her to light her cigarettes and top up her glass with whisky. Anyone passing in front of her was required to bow or curtsey, as often as a dozen or more times. David refused to bow, explaining to his boss that to do so would be to waste precious minutes. The success of the show did not depend on the presence of the royal dwarf, he reasoned. I cherish this memory of him, the sole person at Covent Garden who refused to toady to the privileged martinet, smoking where others could not smoke, drinking where mere mortals could not drink. She was lucky. If he had bowed – or curtsied – he would have let out, in one form or another, an appropriate raspberry. Some are born not to bow or scrape, and he was of their exalted number.

It was his close friend Jean who kept me informed about David’s small, but necessary, acts of rebellion. Jean, who somehow managed to fend off the unsubtle advances of a famously randy tenor and the very specific sexual requirements of a great bass from Bulgaria, revealed that David had ordered Rudolf Nureyev to take a long shower with lots of soap before he, David, would continue with the fitting. ‘You stink, Rudi,’ he complained. ‘And your jockstrap is disgusting.’ The startled Nureyev complied, returning in half an hour, smelling fresh and sporting a clean truss. ‘That’s better, isn’t it? We can both breathe now, can’t we, Rudi?’

David was at Covent Garden when the Kirov Ballet performed in the summer of 1966. He went into the lavatory one morning and was struck by the sight of a handsome Russian dancer clutching his penis in a state of obvious anxiety. ‘Help’ was the only word the man seemed able to speak. The penis, David saw, was inflamed. ‘Interpreter,’ David remarked, whereupon the dancer gestured wildly to indicate that the interpreter, who was also Russian and a member of the company, must not know about his problem. The dancer zipped up his fly and followed David into the corridor, where David found his boss and explained that the Russian had the clap and must be treated at a nearby hospital. Outside the Opera House he flagged down a taxi and told the driver to take them to St Thomas’s. The Russian was making little moaning noises, and David patted his arm to assure him that all would be well.