Already a subscriber? Log in
He writes, with an economy so vivid you breathe the cold country air, of his quintessentially English childhood, ‘in an old pink farmhouse with a moat’; and, unless you’re prone to read nostalgia willy-nilly into childhood, no hint of it. And with fluency: on a train, ‘ruined warehouses flashed past, close to the tracks, bouncing the roar … back into the open window’. Note that subtle ‘into’, not ‘through’. Rupert even then had a weather eye cocked for the mot juste; burning the stubble turns the pink farm’s cornfields into ‘giant tiger skins’; flying into Miami, he sees waves breaking on reefs ‘like lace on a glass table’. There are acute observations of the foibles of those who people his hurly-burly mind, Warhol’s ‘signature inanity’, or the thought of the dying ‘Wilde, penniless and toothless … leering at grooms and footmen’; he watches, unseen, Tony Richardson, Christopher Isherwood and elderly boyfriends playing bridge. ‘They hardly moved. They stared at one another. Occasionally in slow motion, one laid a card on the table, an eyebrow was raised slightly, one face turned imperceptibly … a hand reaching for a drink.’
However, it’s the parting of the crimson curtains at the Braintree Embassy, revealing to the goggle-eyed little Essex bundle a flying nanny, that sowed the seeds of a starry future. And by the time, a few months later, the curtains again swished together, this time on a singing nun, who ‘had responded to my desperate tele- pathic messages’, Rupert had come to believe, while sitting in an apple tree wearing his mother’s old red skirt and paying lipstick service to Julie’s goody-goody persona, that his newly-born ‘giant and deranged ego’ was destined to slouch out of Braintree heading for the boards and Beverly Hills.
Luckily for him, and us, Mary and Maria’s shining flightpath lasted only until Rupert, now at prep school, prayed for a visitation from the Virgin. After that his virginity gets lost sharpish, and all heaven breaks loose; eventually, Our Lady comes to him in a Hollywood restaurant.
Now, 30-odd years later, back amid the calm, white panelling of 18th- century Bloomsbury (though this flaming creature, ever avant le déluge, is toying with the purchase of a couple of buildings in Berlin), Everett’s ego, certainly giant but hardly overbearing, often maddening but rarely deranged, has been all over the shop; ever since his instant stardom in Another Country — prophetic title, given the headlong pursuit of some inner lode — he’s roamed the lands of Cockayne and the cities of the plain, busted or flush, crack-headed or clean, made marvellous movies and stinkers, and, if he hasn’t always kept his powder dry, nothing’s dampened his resilient spirit.
Also in Book Reviews
Also by Nicholas Haslam
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in