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By Root 612 0

peek-a-boo and you could see white pants cupping her buttocks like a bra. I wondered ... Fielding maintained that Lorne was 'all fucked out', having gorged himself to the point of decrepitude during his first decade at the top, a common enough syndrome in the movie business. According to Fielding, Lorne hadn't had a hard-on for thirty-five years. Of course one had to remember that Lorne, in his time, had been very big, enormous, colossal. While making Gargantuan in Spain during the Fifties (Fielding again), Bullion had chartered sex planes from New York, London and Paris just to keep Lorne in chicks for the five-month shoot. His boast had been that he could tackle a whole consignment with a bottle of brandy and a soft-on. Lorne had been big then all right. All my life I had seen him up there on the screen.

'Mr Guyland. Sir, your director's here!' said Thursday in her singing-telegram voice. She laughed raunchily. 'Sure, lover. You got it.' Then she turned. 'I'm sorry if I seem a trifle flushed. Lorne's been balling me all day. He's right up there.'

I climbed a padded spiral staircase. I climbed from the stalls to the gods. Lorne surged across a cloud of carpet, seventh heaven, dressed in a white robe and extending a broad-sleeved arm through the conditioned air. With silent urgency he swivelled, and gestured towards the bank of window—this was his balcony, his private box, over sweating Manhattan. He poured me a drink. I was surprised to taste whiskey, rather than ambrosia, in the frosted glass. Then Lorne gazed at me for a very long time, in ripe candour. I delivered what was to be my longest speech of the evening, saying that I gathered he was keen to talk about his role, to talk about Gary. Lorne gazed at me for a very long time again. Then he started.

'I see this Garfield as a man of some considerable culture,' said Lorne Guyland. 'Lover, father, husband, athlete, millionaire — but also a man of wide reading, of wide ... culture, John. A poet. A seeker. He has the world in his hands, women, money, success— but this man probes deeper. As an Englishman, John, you'll understand what I'm saying. His Park Avenue home is a treasure chest of art treasures. Sculpture. The old masters. Tapestries. Glassware. Rugs.

Treasures from all over the world. He's a professor of art someplace. He writes scholarly articles in the, in, in the scholarly magazines, John. He's a brilliant part-time archaeologist. People call him up for art advice from all over the world. In the opening shot I see Garfield at a lectern reading aloud from a Shakespeare first edition, bound in unborn calf. Behind him on the wall there's this whole bunch of oils. The old masters, John. He lifts his head, and as he looks towards camera the light catches his monocle and he ...'

I stared grimly across the room as Lorne babbled on. Who, for a start, was Garfield? The guy's name is Gary. Barry isn't short for Barfield, is it. It's just Barry, and that's that. Still, this would no doubt be among the least of our differences. Lorne now began mapping out Garfield's reading list. He talked for some time about a poet called Rimbo. I assumed that Rimbo was one of our friends from the developing world, like Fenton Akimbo. Then Lorne said something that made me half-identify Rimbo as French. You dumb shit, I thought, it's not Rimbo, it's Rambot, or Rambeau. Rambeau had a pal or contemporary, I seem to remember, with a name like a wine ... Bordeaux. Bardolino. No, that's Italian ... isn't it? Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour, you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how hard, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.

Yes, all in all, a dreadful little show was being staged for me, up here on the twenty-first floor. I knew that at least. In his gilt sandals Lorne walked with poised uncertainty from one window to the other,