Having a little more time, I can now
give some of the text of the Peter Moffatt play. I never finished
reading the play, but my copy summarises the plot as:
"Nick, a successful barrister and
devotee of football and pop trivia, is emotionally estranged from his
wife while recklessly embroiled with a young female client - a
small-time drug dealer, who may or may not be more than she appears."
Fran: I cannot imagine how you come to
know that Camus didn't wear gloves.
Nick: Goalkeepers didn't... then.
Fran: It's just general then... general
knowledge about goalkeepers?
Nick: No. I know specifically that Camus
didn't wear gloves.
Fran: How?
Nick: I don't know. It's why they look a
bit crap - goalkeepers then. They were. They needed gloves, basically.
Even Nabokov needed gloves.
Fran: Nabokov was a goalkeeper.
Nick: Yea. And no gloves. He would've
written differently... if he'd worn gloves... in goal. All that flashy
fuck-off prose comes from having sore hands all the time. He's a sore
handed writer. Fast sentences.
etc etc etc (Methuen edition page 8)
Not much help, I agree. There's another
mention of Nabokov on the next page where Nick speaks of footballers'
underpants, and later where Humbert gets a look in.
More to the point, in 'Speak, Memory'
VN does go on to mention 'the stinging shot, the lucky save, its
protracted tingle', which suggests he may indeed have kept those gloves
in the hip pocket of his shorts (or had very thin and ineffective ones).