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perhaps to be found in Dutch art of the seventeenth century.
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We sat in the Rat and Carrot, Entwistle and I, on that Christmas
weekend in which I was to meet Franny, laying down a liquid
foundation on which to budd strength for the annual high jinks
that welcome the Christ Child anew. 'Wait tid you see her,' he
said, smacking his lips lasciviously. 'You know that painting in
the Rijksmuseum, "The Jewess at the Loom"?'
'Piet vande Kieft?'
'Oh, very good, Robin.Yes, Piet vande Kieft.The fact is, Franny
looks just like her, could be her fucking double.'
I must say that when I saw Franny, I found no resemblance
in her whatsoever to the Jewess in vande Kieft s charming por-
trait. But then, I don't have an artist's eye.
It is obvious that had Franny accepted whatever role Entwistle
was fashioning for her, their relationship would in any case have
been doomed. What he loved was what she was, not the impos-
sible she of his fantasy. But in his imagination what she was was
a Jew, however defined, and, as it turned out, that Jew betrayed
him by running off to, by spreading her legs for, by buttering the
ego of an undoubted Jew, Itzhak Goldhagen, the cellist from Hed.
From that moment forward Entwistle became an anti-Semite,
contemporary only in that he masked his racism as anti-Zionism.
There are new victims out there now, the Palestinians in par-
ticular, whose plight he champions.
As for me, I hold no particular brief in this issue. A man must
have his prejudices. That is part of what it means to be a man.
I even have a few myself: Florida, for example. One should show
discrimination even in one's peeves. But anti-Semitism is such a
tired prejudice, it seems to me, one that has by now descended
all the way to the Third World, where it enjoys great popularity.
Why it should be re-emerging in Europe so soon after Europe's
most recent tearful cries of mea culpa, I cannot imagine unless
we suppose, as some have conjectured, that anti-Semitism is a
disease ever present in the Christian body politic, a bacidus that
122
lies dormant for a while only to break out again in a mutated
and more virulent form. As with many diseases in medicine's
storied past, the only cure seems to be a blood-letting. In ad
other respects, Entwistle is an original, and something of a dandy.
Here, he is like a man who has plucked a second-hand suit from
a rack in the vidage square on market day, synthetic, id-smeding
and poorly cut: one size fits ad.
With the passage of time he has become ever more virulent. A
few weeks ago, a talking head on the BBC' s Spotlight, he said he
was merely adapting to current circumstances the words of Ben
Hecht, a Jewish-American dramatist and screenwriter, anent the
British army in Palestine during the Mandate: 'I have a little hol-
iday in my heart every time I hear of an Israeli soldier kdled in
the West Bank or Gaza.' The programme's host, Nigel Flyting,
chuckled knowingly. Thus Entwisde, in his eighties and no intel-
lectual (a class he has spent a lifetime deriding), joins the intedec-
tual mainstream in Britain, a voice to reckon with alongside poets
and journalists and academicians, who have said much the same.
As a sort of coda here, I should perhaps mention that Cyril
quietly renewed his membership of the Royal Academy in 1983,
twenty years after his flamboyant resignation.
'Giving the blighters another chance,' he said to me.
'Very decent of you.'
He gave me the reverse V-sign. 'Nobody likes a clever dick,
Robin.'
I suppose that by then his indignation of 1963 may have
seemed to him not only twenty years out of date, but also mis-
guided. If he had been at fault, it was nevertheless a fault trace-
able to the Jews. But I don't doubt he also supposed that he was
generously giving the Royal Academy, as he said,'another chance'.
" " "
123
I WAS NO MORE THAN HALFWAY THROUGH MY UNPACKING when
the phone rang. It was Entwistle. 'You're back then?'
'Evidently.'
'You saw the Jew?'
'What Jew?'
'Don't fuck with me, Robin.'
'Yes, I saw him.'
'Dear boy! Do come to dinner.' Entwistle was wheedling.
'Claire is preparing a cassoulet.'
'Thanks, but no thanks. I've just got off the bloody plane.
Yorkshire's a bit beyond my capabilities at the moment.'
'Ah, but we're not in Yorkshire, you cheeky bugger. We're in
Notting Hid. You know Bunter, don't you? Lord Billy Pego?
No? Ah. Wed, he bought a place here in Lansdowne Rise for
Bettina, you know, Bettina Currie, Bunter's extra-marital sig-
nificant other? Fabulous tits, Robin, huge. Wonder is she can
stand up. Anyway, they're using our place in St-Bonnet-du-
Gard for a fortnight's slap and tickle. We're looking after
Lansdowne Rise while they're away. Claire wanted to do a little
shopping in town and see the Moliere at the National, L'Ecole
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