No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  Gladys lifted him up, all five foot five, and pressed him to her plump bosom. ‘Oh yes, they would in the small hours.’

  ‘When their energy is highest,’ Margaret said in a dark ominous voice.

  ‘And ours is lowest,’ Sukey remarked as a matter of fact.

  ‘For the small hours are their time,’ ended Rupert in the falsetto genteel tones of a pantomime fairy queen.

  Gladys, puffing, set the struggling Marcus down on the floor.

  Quentin gave the boy a light tap on his bottom. ‘Off to bed with you!’

  The others all looked at their eldest brother. He seemed to be one of them again. And all, except Rupert, who was to sleep there in the fug and debris, filed out of the nursery.

  *

  At half past midnight, negotiating with uncertainty both the door and the step of the taxi, conscious with some lust but a good deal more nervousness of a peroxide-haired tart hovering a door or two away, he overtipped the taxi driver. ‘Dear old London,’ he said, ‘You’d never know she’d taken such a plastering.’ The driver – though clearly the chap was a cockney – drove off without reply. Counting-mounting the front steps and relievedly-wistfully ignoring the tart, he added, for his own benefit, ‘London, thou art of cities a per se.’ The lock he found ill fitted to the key, but, by great care and concentration, he joined the two. He let himself into the house, remembering the argument at the Club, moving as man’s talk will from wines and France to women and poetry – ‘I have been faithful to thee’ – and, at last, to God, does He exist, and if so, which of all the inspired chaps were right about him. Now as he came through the hall to the stairs, he saw clearly how he should have ended the evening’s argument (great horsehair chairs and balloon glasses of Martell) ‘Give me a lever,’ he said, lifting his handsome head determinedly, ‘and I will raise the world.’ But nobody gave – no one had ever given him that lever; hence he cherished a sense of pathos.

  Gladys, by instinct, turned gingerly in her too narrow bed, knew at once, with a moment’s intense panic, the step on the stairs. Then relaxing her solid limbs, she let herself out of the nightmare memory by means of a now familiar comic vision. Like a Punch drawing she saw it; herself, enormous in boxing kit, her gloved hand raised by the ref, he, the little white slug, flat on the canvas, stars rising from his forehead, and beneath the words ‘A knockout.’

  ‘What’s wrong? Is my little girl too grown up for a good night kiss?’

  She had pushed him, and he had fallen, sprawling over the pile of trunks. He had begun to cry.

  ‘God forgive me, I am drunk.’ Raising himself by one arm, he had smiled his old, bleary Daddy’s smile. ‘Promise me something, Glad Eyes. Promise me never to let this put you off … well, the real thing. Don’t punish me too much. Promise me that. In time to come there’ll be heaps of decent chaps after you.’

  At least he’d never call her Glad Eyes again. And Daddy dear, you foul little beast, there have been heaps of decent chaps, and I haven’t been put off men, even when something as beastly as you ‘happened’ to me. Anyway, men! Who wants ‘men’? I have a man so wonderful that even if you really knew what ‘decent’ meant, it still wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He doesn’t have to be ‘decent’, he’s above your ‘decent’ chaps. He has so much strength and power and he’s not afraid to love. He’s made his life for himself and so, unlike you, you lazy little fraud, he’s not too scared to face his feelings. As, with increasing anger, the perspiration began to run down her neck and breasts, she felt Alfred’s arm come round her shoulder, his hand patting her cheek. ‘My darling girl, you must never let things that are past have any hold over you. That’s fatal in life, if you want to be one of the world’s big people. And you can be, Gladys – sweet Gladys.’

  So that for you, Billy Pop, billygoat of fathers, bleating and ruttish, women don’t all have to be your little grateful Gladeyes, nor like her turned tigress by your failure, a mock tigress to be mocked. If the world was just little Gladeyes and her you could sit tight in your cosy chair at your important looking, useless desk and laugh at women, God bless them, dear ladies. But it isn’t going to be like that now. We shall be bosses just like you (if you ever had been one that is), not bossy, but doing the job, running the show and running it well. Deserving a man like Alfred who’s a natural boss himself. Equal partners – no claims made. If it seemed far off, well there was Alfred’s help, and Alfred’s arms. Relaxing, cradled in them, Gladys, soft Gladys sank softly back to sleep. And the hard bed she lay on didn’t matter, she knew, one damn.

  *

  One o’clock. Turning the corner, away from the late tram’s clatter, an Aussie and a Canadian, desperately home-sick, were sick into the gutter. Out of the shadow came the peroxide tart Trixie and bubsy dark French Fifi and all four together, arms linked, made off down the street, singing, ‘Jazzing around, painting the town … after they’ve seen Paree!’, pausing only for the Aussie to be sick once more, into the area of No. 52.

  Quentin woke crying. All music, all singing, all out of tune singing, all drunken out of tune singing still brought proportionately these shameful tears dribbling slowly down his cheeks, as the fat slow tears had plopped noisily, disgustingly upon the hospital sheets, in the weak, muzzy-headed days after his second go of dysentery. And every tune still bawled at him as then. ‘There’s a long long night of waiting until my dreams all come true.’ But his shame for this weakness was at least so strong that, in fighting it, he only glimpsed the fearful memories that lay behind the tunes. Never again, never again should men be crippled and blinded by talk and boasts and lies, never again made weak as women to weep at sugary songs. He tried to stretch, but in Rupert’s bed his long legs had no room to uncoil; nor indeed surely nowadays could Rupert’s. And Marcus in the corner in some sort of homemade cot! Well, all that sort of crippling also must go. Whoever or whatever it meant fighting. To hell with England, Home and Beauty if they got in the way. To this he, like others, would lend all his tested strength and discipline and trained intelligence. And, do not forget, you Parents, Brasshats and Hard Faced Men that we don’t believe a bloody word you say. Spitting out the words half aloud, he savoured the hardness of them, and, dried and thinned almostto leather and bone, he fell into firm sleep on the hard mattress in the narrow bed.

  *

  Half past one, tense, bitter, yet weeping, she had refused his escort, and now unaccustomedly but quite firmly she opened for herself the door of a taxi with her long, elegant white gloved hand. The breeze caught her gold embroidered black evening cape for a moment. It billowed outwards and she shivered. Rapidly she paid the fare, and refusing a demand for more, cut short the unequal wrangle by taking out of her silver gilt evening bag her silver police whistle. She had hardly put it to her lips before the taxi had gone. Even so small a triumph made her for a moment forget her terrible mixed grief and rage. She walked up the front steps quite gaily. Only the usual temptation to slam the front door made her remember how angry, how desperate she was. Yet to enjoy a banged door brought an intolerable risk of facing in her terrible mood anyone, anyone at all who might wake, but worst of possibilities – Billy, woken from sleep in the bed in his dressing-room. She took off her silver dancing shoes and carried them in one hand as she mounted the stairs.

  But however gently you come, my darling, however softly you tread, my love, I shall hear your bitch’s steps. Rupert counted them as she climbed the two flights to her bedroom, heard the door click to and bitter-sweet smiled to think how, undressing, she would caress her own body where her lover’s hands had stroked. Good luck to her, since the white slug had never given her what she needed. And damn her too for cheapening the name of mother. Sensing the shape of his own limbs in the bed – hard calves and thighs, long legs, small hips, hard flat belly and wide shoulders, and now a proud erection – he thought how at last he was grown her equal in beauty, and soon (for the last shall be first) would outstrip her, aged, haggard and dried. Meanwhile they were almost a perfect
match. ‘Lord, Sir, to think my great lubberly son should grow into such a one as you, as pleasing and wanton a young fellow as a gentlewoman (somewhat past the spring time) could wish to keep her out of the draughts on a cold December night…. But the triumph of the evening was Mr Rupert Matthews’s playing of the young bully lover; it was a rare theatrical experience to watch the man grow from the boy as the evening progressed, even his frame seemed to fill out, and his step to announce an ever firmer resolution. Miss Madge Titheradge brought her usual experienced playing to the part of the older desperate mistress, but it was Mr Matthews’s evening. There was an autumn pathos in Miss Doris Keane’s ageing actress, warming herself sensually in the last rays of love’s sunshine, but Mr Matthews as the young musician, anxious to free himself from a hopeless passion, determined not to act caddishly towards the woman whose infatuation is strangling him, gave us the more terrible pathos of spring in his portrayal of youth’s first realization that life will not always allow us to be noble.’

  CHARMIAN: It was that moment in the dressing-room when you suddenly looked at me and saw that I was almost an old woman, that was the moment that you fell out of love with me, wasn’t it, Derek? Answer me, wasn’t it?

  DEREK: Don’t torture yourself, Charmian.

  CHARMIAN: Answer me. How dare you treat me like a child? You’re insolent.

  DEREK: I shall always love you, Charmian. Always. I have told you so a hundred times.

  CHARMIAN: Yes, as you do your Mother.

  DEREK: God forgive me, no. Not like that. My Mother left me with my heart frozen. And you with your love and your experience have warmed it into life again. That I shall always remember …

  ‘And we in the theatre that night will always remember Mr Rupert Matthews’ … Mr Rupert Matthews … Mr Rupert Matthews, a handsome, passionate Romeo stepped on to the stage and on to a banana skin and fell on his arse, the silly sod! Pleased by his own sudden self-mockery, Rupert fell into a sweet sleep, cocooned in his blankets on the nursery floor.

  *

  Half past two. And down the road she comes. With a too ral, too ral, aye, does your Ma know you’re out? Swing, swing, how the bleeding pavements swing. Steady, me little cock sparrer. Hold on to the railing. Whoops she goes! All to feed the fishes. Christ, what’s that? There he comes, my own little Bobby, swinging his truncheon, helmet and all. Smash his helmet over his bloody nose, crying, ‘Wotcher, cock?’ Only she didn’t; holding herself very refined and speaking all la di da, ‘Goodnaite, constable,’ she said. And all the answer clatter, clank echoing down the empty street. Blasted swine couldn’t have the manners to reply, eh? Oh absolutelah, don’t cher know? Archibald? Certainly not. With his hand in his pocket too on duty. Ma, look at Charlie, whoops, ees at it again. Not that she’d say no, herself. What about it, cock, lend us the end of your finger? But they wouldn’t lend you a sausage, not one of them, the bleeders. Not if your name was Henrietta Stoker, mother unknown, probably titled, six years with the Honourable Mrs Pitditch-Perkins, French cooking trained with Monsieur Jooles what had been at the Savoy. Oh, Lord, up she comes! Oh Jesus help me, Jesus help me, Let me to thy bosom fly, While the gathering waters roll … yes, and five years going to the Stockwell High Road Sunday School. Treated like dirt by the lot of them. Regan do this, Regan do that. Lend us a quid, Regan. Regan, darling, have you got a pound handy? My name’s Henrietta, I’ll thank you. Forty-six. Forty-eight. Tradesmen owed everywhere, the guvnor boozed everynight, and she can’t keep her legs shut. Oh, the yanks are coming, the yanks are coming. Well, they came every night up that street. Fifty-two. Home in port. Who says there’s not a God to answer prayers? Oh, who done that? One of them filthy tarts most like. On the steps of our home too. Filthy trollopy lot. If that constable done his job instead of…. Oh, if Madam were to see. This is the home of Mr and Mrs William Matthews. And the young ladies. Their eldest a Major and wounded but not decorated. And Master Rupert, handsome as Lewis Waller, handsomer. And Master Marcus that goes to Westminster School regular or nearly. And they call me their old Regan, bless their hearts. A regular old cockney I am and one of the family. Make them laugh a caution sometimes. Oh Ria she’s a toff, darn’t she look immensikoff, and they all shouted, waatch Ria!

  The singing disgusted Sukey before she was fully awake enough to distinguish what it was. Well, living in this sordid little street they had no need to worry about neighbours. It was to be hoped that all the family would be wakened by it, by their beloved cockney character, whose filthy hands and drunken breath they appreciated so much all over their food. At least from what she learned at the cookery school, although with fees unpaid she was little more than a scullion to Miss Lampson, she could occasionally prepare a clean, healthy meal at home when that drunken old creature had taken herself off for the evening. French cooking! Horrible, rich, greasy stuff, and unpatriotic too with butter from heaven knew where and hoarded sugar. Really sometimes she’d thought of telling the police about the dirty old creature, if it hadn’t been that the family would be involved. But, of course, the family wouldn’t be involved – not them, at any rate. They’d he black that they knew nothing of it and let the dirty old wretch go to prison for them, for their greed. And suddenly she found herself sobbing uncontrollably. She buried her face in the pillow so as not to wake Margaret. Margaret who understood people and would put Regan into a book as a comic cockney charwoman, but who did not wake up when the poor, dreadful old thing came lost and stumbling down the area steps, singing some ghastly tune once recognizable no doubt when a girl, all ostrich feathers and boa, she’d sung it up in the gallery, but now the tuneless dirge of a drunken old crone. Sukey’s limbs began to tremble and totter as she felt Regan’s must do, lost and stumbling, on the scrapheap. The physical sense of being Regan disgusted her. It was this that she couldn’t stand any longer in this sordid home, this terrible pity to no purpose, pity for people who were on the scrapheap, in the dustbins, the drunken, dirty old Regan, and him rambling and maudlin in the evenings to forget failure, and her in her rage for the loss of her body’s youth. She wanted to give love and pity where it could be used, where it could make things grow. To a real family where you never felt alone. To a husband with his life before him, to children asking to be shaped, to plants, to animals, small animals. She thought of the kittens that she had watched sleeping under the stairs before she came to bed, her kittens, the kittens she had rescued, and from the memory of their curled-up innocence she found herself stepping out through the french windows and across the lawn, followed by small things of all kinds and down into the kitchen garden to cut the lettuces for tea, and then, putting on gumboots and jackets and scarves in the lobby, to set off in the frosty moonlight to aid the cowman at calving time. Reverently competent with the newborn calves, practical with the sensible cowman, she turned to receive the faithful parlourmaid’s message— ‘The master says, Madam, will you be long?’ Oh, he who can’t be left alone! Turning, she went back in smiling woman’s conspiracy with Ada (yes that would be her name) to the house. Smiling, she snuggled over on to her side and slept, the little ones of all kinds following.

  *

  Four o’clock, the Aussie at No. 51 woke from a drunken sleep to find French Fifi going through his pockets. Leaning across the bed he hit her once very hard with the flat of his hand across her face. Her scream rang out across the street.

  Marcus woke suddenly, soldered tight with terror, powerless to move or utter. Yet surely it was his own scream that had woken him. For some seconds the gipsy’s dark, bony laughter still menaced him, and around her the soft grey mist sweetly offered him escape to treacherous safety. Then the threat of her raised arm faded before he could tell what horrid club she held above him. But the fading nightmare did not at once release him; he could not so soon turn his head to assure himself of his bunk’s familiar safety. At last the wheezy breathing of his stranger brother lying across the room in Rupert’s bed relaxed his muscles. He followed the beams of moonlight to where they bathed Granny M.�
��s old screen of varnished scrap work in a shiny pool. In the sudden light he could distinguish nothing, but knew the two splashes of red for the robin in the top left-hand corner and the bunch of cherries in the bottom right. How the robin had changed for him over the years. At first just a robin who visited a wren. Then in turn, a robber robin (straight from Grimm), a robin rag and bone boy (slum chum he sometimes dreamed of), a Regency roué robin (straight from the Scarlet Pimpernel) and now again – parody of a Victorian screen Robin – the robin who visited crippled little Jenny Wren who would never grow quite strong enough to quit the nest. From these scraps of colour in the colour scraps he followed the cold light back again to the window, where, reflected on the ceiling, it revealed, in all their now fading outlines, the Double Hooded Crow and the Woman with the Club Foot – visitors that had appeared when the cistern above had burst a week before his sixth birthday. The chain of stories these two shapes unfolded was longer and far more intricate than the sagas of the screen, for here he commanded all, source and ballad too, so that the Crow in certain lights could become the Bearded Emperor and the Woman’s Club Foot turn into a Mermaid’s Tail. But as so often, now he put childish tales aside and dwelt only upon the forms themselves, making wilder and wilder arabesques, ever more involuted spirals, draping the room in sables and furs and crimson velvets, adorning it with domes and minarets, until at last it was Scheherazade’s room and not his own at all, except that there in the centre of the gorgeous East he sat, cross-legged, round eyed (a page, a mommet, Scheherazade herself, slave-master-mistress) crowned absurdly, fantastically, wonderfully with a vast jewelled tiara almost his own height again; and there, like Venice, he held all this splendour, this gaiety, this nonsense in fee. Until he could build his own world, the familiar ugliness of 52 must be his plasticine. Stretching his small thin legs and arms, feeling his own wiriness against the hard wire mattress of the small bunk bed, he turned on his side to meet whatever the nightmare world had ready for him.