by Angus Wilson
Rupert thought of the months ahead of him. He would start in a Christmas season at Liverpool and then on to Edinburgh with a repertory of As You Like It, The Merchant, The Dream, Monsieur Beaucaire, Ghosts and The Rivals. Perhaps he would have two lines in The Merchant, and two in Monsieur Beaucaire at the most, but he would double perhaps in As You Like It. Even though Stratford had finished, Lady Benson had said, they would carry on, though poetry and religion were like dead in this futuristic world. And then there was always Spanish flu – the boon of understudies. Resolutely he decided to give notice at the office in the morning. They would be glad to see the last of him. Moving his lips and his eyebrows in suitable notice-giving manner, he suddenly said aloud, ‘I shall not easily forget the months that I have spent here.’
Surprised, THE JUDGE brushed aside such unsolicited gratitude. Then as Quentin he leaned forward with his elbows on the table and compelled their attention by his suddenly menacing gaze – hawk’s, eagle’s, stout Cortes’s, Father Bernard Vaughan’s, Elmer Gantry’s. ‘All this sounds very nice, very comfortable, very warming to our little vanities. Everyone else is to blame. Only, unfortunately for us, it isn’t so. The most rotten part of this rotten set-up is us. Yes, you all and me. Especially me.’
Margaret thought: as Robin Carmichael grew older he fell into the habit of making the most disagreeable sound. He called it “thundering”. With shame she stored the passage away for future use. Sukey blushed because the pitch of Quentin’s voice suggested that they had all failed him, and Gladys shifted in her seat because she understood that she could not have been pulling her weight. ‘I’m a lazy great porpoise,’ she announced. Rupert reddened with prepared anger, for his brother might be about to demand sacrifices. Marcus was just embarrassed.
‘We’ve all enjoyed ourselves very much being funny or witty or whatever we like to call our performance at their expense. But we’ve never considered for a moment that we have only ourselves to blame. We’ve taken it for granted that the system which has produced them will work for us, only decently of course, because we’re such decent people. Well, it won’t. Or at any rate not for much longer. Crumbs from rich men’s tables, or rich widows’ or rich spinsters’ for that matter, just won’t be falling our way or anybody’s soon. And so the quicker we make up our minds to depend on ourselves the better.’
‘Self reliance,’ said MISS MARGARET MOUSE. ‘Can I hear aright?’
‘You can call it what you choose. But it’s not the old cut-throat selfishness. Cooperation.’
‘Each for all and all for each,’ said Marcus.
‘Not a bad idea,’ his eldest brother told him, ‘Though hardly for the same aims as the Three Musketeers.’
‘They couldn’t be really,’ said Marcus, ‘because we don’t know any cardinals to frustrate.’
Quentin frowned, and the others straightened themselves, Rupert withdrawing his chair a little from where Marcus sat.
‘If our despised parents in their decadence can take action, then surely …’
‘Do you mean,’ asked Sukey, ‘that we should make our peace with Granny and Aunt Mouse? For they will tomorrow, I’m sure.’
‘Yes,’ said Margaret, ‘Mother in a new hat to Mouse’s club, and father on his own to Ladbroke Grove to make it just the two of them together, like it used to be before he married.’
‘Well after all,’ said Rupert, ‘now the kittens have gone …’
Quentin put his face into his hands and gave a groan. ‘We cannot compromise,’ he said, ‘That’s their rotten system, parasites on parasites. For God’s sake don’t let us add to it. Let’s get on with the delousing. I’m the most to blame, for I have had a chance to stop still in the last months and to read and to consider. And then before that I …’
They sat listening now as he spoke of the trenches and the War. Everyone knew that it was his or her duty to do so.
‘… but ghastly although the whole thing was – something I can’t and never shall be able to speak about – it didn’t happen out of nowhere.’ Sukey tried to stretch her legs without interrupting. ‘It came from, the diplomacy of secret treaties by frightened men who didn’t understand the world around them. It came from the natural result of years of Grandfather Matthews’ …’ Margaret quickly wrote something in her pocket diary, then, tucking the little book under her knee, she looked absorbed. ‘… who now saw that it was the time if his income was to increase to send Grandfather Rickard to fight a heroic battle. And, of course, – ’Gladys stared ahead, but her lips were counting (hours before she saw Alfred? pounds necessary to start out on her own?) ‘… if he were wounded there was always great grandfather Rickard, the surgeon, to cut him up and patch him up if he could. Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m not thinking of myself and my famous hero’s wound. Eight millions were killed, let alone the wounded.’ Only just audible at moments was the hum of Rupert’s ‘Any time’s Kissing Time.’ ‘And of course I don’t just mean Grandfather Matthews but Grandpère Mathieu and Grossvater Matthäus and all the rest of them. The thing was the logical outcome….’ Marcus twisted the duster aigret into a feather boa. Quentin laid his arms upon the table, the palms of his hands flat on the wooden surface, UP-Jenkins, smashems, nothing hidden. He seemed to relax, then speaking suddenly in a whisper, he said, ‘And I, God help me! (but he won’t) dictated to you who had asked me for help. No, that’s not true. I came in as Mr Panacea, a President Woodrow Wilson whom nobody had invited. And my fourteen points were not like his something to offer us a ray of hope, but an encouragement to you all to fight the same old wars, the tedious pointless battles that have shaken this family to its decaying old roots ever since I can remember. I, who should above all have known better than to have suggested that the old world of alliances, and counter alliances, secret treaties and open pacts, in short of balance of power, could lead to a positive result, could lead to anything but war and wicked waste.’
They were still now, as his voice grew louder, staring at him fixedly, Sukey’s neck even suffused with red. Only Marcus moved once or twice, knocking his knees together rapidly, whatever emotion had roused in him having made its greatest impression upon his bladder. Quentin sat back and smoked his pipe. As he did so, he looked for a moment frightened as though, losing their attention, he might be left all alone. Then, wreathed in infernal smoke, his thin face creased to reveal Mr Punch, the Imp of Lincoln. ‘Good God! as if it mattered. As if any of you mattered, or less a still broken down skeleton like myself, fit only to hang in the wind and let the bones rattle to scare the birds away.’
The sudden change in his features, the fierceness with which he spat out his words, above all the cackling contemptuous laughter with which he accompanied them now at last compelled attention. ‘I’ve seen enough rotting, green corpses and young flesh that had barely time to live to suppose that it matters what happens to the clever young Matthews kids who’ve had a hard deal, especially to the soap box orator, know-nothing, returned hero, Quentin Matthews.’
Margaret tried to look away but her brother’s tufted eyebrow, as he looked sardonically through the curls and loops of his satanic smoke rings, held her. Sukey tried to think of something else – the family, her own future children, England, the Quantock Hills, the North Sea waves breaking against the cliffs at Cromer – anything by which she could be justified, but as they all failed she waited with fear for his next words. Gladys saw only Quentin’s eyes where points of light danced and glittered in mockery of all her hopes – Alfred was an old lecher, their love a hole-in-the-corner squalor, herself a fat bladder of lard for a clown to burst as a joke on an ass’s head. Rupert wanted to give forth in rivalry, to howl, ‘Blow winds and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!’ or to volley forth, ‘You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate,’ but he knew as his brother’s voice lashed him that however he swelled his chest there would come forth no tenor Caruso, he would drown no stage with tears, for his croaking would show him to be not Rupert of Hentzau but the bullfrog Prince. Marcus’ dark
eyes stared, yet not as usual ikon-like from a varnished yellow skin, but more ghostly, like holes in a white sheet on All Hallows’ Eve.
‘If we rotted and stank like the wretches who are sleeping out tonight in ditches or under the Adelphi arches, what would it matter?’
As they now sat without stir or sound, he stretched his legs a little, relaxing before he sprang at them again with flash and cackle. But into this short silence came a noise they had not heard for six years or more, a sound that had not ventured even to vie with the zeppelins and the anti-aircraft fire. Marcus began to scream. He was shaking with hysteric sobbing: ‘The kittens are dead, the kittens are dead.’
At first they were silenced by surprise. Then Gladys, big sister with the longest memory, bent across Rupert and smacked her little brother hard on each cheek, first with the palm and then with the back of her hand. When his screaming subsided in a choking struggle to recover his breath, ‘He’s only a kid. It’s been a long day for him. This hasn’t happened for years,’ she said in explanation to her elder brother, Quentin.
‘Oh, Lord! I’m dreadfully sorry. It’s all my fault.’
‘No, no, old man,’ Sukey told him. ‘Really it isn’t. We all of us feel a bit all in, I think.’
‘A basin of nice smooth gruel, thin but not too thin,’ said Margaret, ‘That I could recommend. I’ll go down and make some Bovril.’
‘No, let me, Mr Woodhouse. You’ve got a rotten day ahead, I know,’ Rupert suggested.
‘Do you think Mr W. ever had rotten days?’
‘Yes, when doors were left open or governesses married.’ Chattering, they went downstairs together.
Marcus, wiping tears from his eyes, announced that he would go to bed.
‘Not a bad idea all round,’ Gladys counselled. ‘Monday’s always a bit of a let down.’
Later, seeking a mislaid handkerchief, she tapped on the nursery door after Rupert was in bed. She seldom spoke directly to this younger brother, but now, ‘I’m afraid we’ve missed the boat this time. Poor old Quentin meant to be a great captain.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Rupert spoke comfortably from under many blankets. ‘That Yank’s face when Marcus spat at him will always remain to cheer my weary hours.’
‘Yes, but you haven’t got an unpaid school bill, Rupert. Oh, I’m sorry old boy. I know you must be feeling rotten about giving up this acting job. Perhaps you won’t have to.’
‘I won’t. I’ve already given notice at the office.’
‘Oh, I say. We’ll have to see how everything works out, Rupert; I mean what Quentin and I can afford.’
‘Whatever you can or can’t afford, I can’t afford to miss this chance.’
‘You mean if Margaret and Sukey have to go on …’
Whatever happens I’m going to Liverpool. But it’ll all fit in. Life does. It’s more of a joke than we can see at the moment. You’ll learn, Gladys.’
Gladys looked down at her brother. ‘I’ve always thought you were a rotter,’ she said. He closed his eyes. ‘Just because you’re the maiden’s dream of love.’ But she paused at the door. ‘Said the ugly sister,’ she added and laughed to make it all a joke. ‘If you hear an elephant bedding down for the night, it’ll be me. Pleasant dreams.’ Thumping in mockery of her elephantine tread, she went to her room.
Sukey put down her emptied cup on to its saucer by the bedside. ‘If we’d used a spoonful of Bovril for the gravy,’ she announced, ‘instead of all that rich stuff, things might have gone differently. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep after dinner, and the poor little kitties would be still alive.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Margaret, trying to concentrate on her few nightly pages of Persuasion, ‘Perhaps it was the poor quack quack’s revenge for your eating him.’
There was a silence, so she put down the novel. ‘I’m sorry, Sukey. I think I’ve had as much of today as I can manage.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. Anyhow, I expect we shall look back at it all in years to come and smile.’
‘I hope,’ answered Margaret, ‘that I shall grow into a more pleasant woman than that.’
Through the darkness Marcus could hear Quentin trying to stretch in his cramped bed. ‘I’m very sorry, Markie. I’m afraid I upset you with all my talk. I wasn’t much use to any of you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You showed that you too have a sense of humour like the rest of us. It’s obligatory, you know, in this house. Only yours is of a fiercer brew than we’re used to.’
‘Well, whatever we decide tomorrow, today’s over. That’s one comfort.’
‘I see. I thought you at least had enjoyed yourself considerably, Quentin.’
From the sound of his brother’s body tautening Marcus could tell that his words had hurt. He lay awake for some time, for, when firing the arrow, he had forgotten that his brother had already an all but open hole in his shoulder.
Book Three
1925–38
I. 1925
Oh! in the old days that was quite another thing. Time and time again when they’d had a more than usually violent row, when he’d been more than usually impossible, less than ever a husband to respect, something would snap in her and she would hit him. Nothing could excuse such a thing, of course, that she fully realized; nothing, that is, that others, outsiders, could understand – a sudden awful feebleness would ooze out of him. as he talked and talked, like cheap sawdust out of a cracked jack-in-the-box and there seemed no way out but to smash the rotten toy she’d been cheated into buying. Sometimes she would really hurt him, more than just physically; and then he would hide himself, locked in his study. But at other times he would play the spoilt child. Packing into his old cricket bag two pairs of socks and, God knows why, his black dress braces, he would walk out of the house, slamming the door, shouting as he went that he would bloody well never return, calling her names, adding the usual hope that his father was burning in hell for leaving the money tied up. For a few moments, of course, she would respond weepingly, distressedly to his going, for in these rows one got keyed up to take everything seriously. But then her sense of humour would break through, as often as not brought to life by Regan’s cockney common sense. ‘Ten past twelve,’ the old girl used to say, or whatever time it was, ‘e’ll be back in alf an hour. I’ll pop over to Overtons and get im a nice Dover sole. Don’t you worry, Madam. E’ll just fancy that when e comes in ungry.’ And sure enough, they’d hardly have time for a laugh over his previous dramatic exits before there he was back again, tail between his legs. Into his study to sulk, where Regan or one of the children would take him his grilled sole with a double lump of butter deliriously melting into the solid white flesh. And later, over a glass of sherry, neither of them would allude to it, or ever again. Unless, of course, laughter failed to ignite and her anger went on smouldering in rows with Regan, with Marcus, with Rupert, with any or all of them. In which case he might well come back from his little tempertrot not to find grilled sole but instead a tumbler or an ashtray or an old book flying through the air. But eventually even then it would be all China tea and Regan’s scones and Sukey sent round to Fuller’s for his favourite walnut layer cake, and everybody sorry for what they’d said, although a bit sorry for themselves.
That was the way they’d always lived, the kind of odd job lot they’d always been.
But now she stood in the dark little hall by the telephone, refusing to panic. He had been gone five days, had stormed out with one of these new expanding suitcases given him by Margaret for his birthday. And the cut across her upper lip where he had hit her still bled at intervals, not even witchhazel seemed to clear the yellow and black bruises around her eye. This time, too, Regan had brought no sole, played no consoling role. ‘I don’t want to fuss the children, Regan,’ she had said when she heard he was not back for dinner.’ Should ope not. They don’t come ere so often that you can afford to go makin use of em.’ Such a horrid bolshie spirit there was in the air, everywhere.
THE WEDDING (a Carmich
ael story)
‘The ironies of Miss Margaret Matthews’ stories expose our most cherished evasions.’
*
Mrs Culmer talked of Derek when he was small. ‘He was always neat and tidy, Miss Carmichael,’ she said, ‘Where the others collected just stamps, he had his chosen field. He couldn’t have been more than six when, “I shall only collect the stamps of Europe,” he said. “It’ll be harder but that will make it more interesting, won’t it, Mummy?’” And her head shook, was it with pride, was it with the unaccustomed champagne that gave quite a rose flush to her cheeks, white and wrinkled as old kid leather? Through the shimmering amber haze of the paradise feathers that surmounted the high crown of Mrs Culmer’s hat, Elisabeth had a misty, shimmering picture of the wedding party, a picture that jerked and trembled as the woman’s head suddenly swerved – like some of the early bioscopes that she could just remember. The Carmichael family on parade! Or rather, really, in hot pursuit! And, she had to admit, they made a most impressive showing, not that the Culmers – poor rabbit-toothed, popeyed warren – were an elusive quarry. Mr Culmer’s double chins wobbled as James told him stories of what Frank Harris had said to Leonard Smithers, leading him always to the brink of the sort of thing they did not say at 165 Mimosa Road, Dulwich, and then reprieving him with, ‘but Frank’s observations on women were never of the kind, you know, that can be uttered in the presence of ladies.’ From where she stood, Mr Culmer, a red turkey seen through his wife’s magnificent crest of exotic feathers, seemed to be literally gobbling his thanks for what he was spared from receiving. As for poor Derek himself, the happy bridegroom (and happy he should be, carrying off darling Jane), even in his wedding day ecstasy (and she gave him credit for some real ecstasy that day, for what man would not be seized with a spasm of divine fury who carried off Jane as his prize?) he paled a little before his new mother-in-law’s relentless pressure. He stood there, poor thing, champagne glass trembling ever so slightly in his hand (or was that the tremor imparted by his mother’s paradise feathers through which she saw him?), gazing hypnotically at Sophie’s emerald green shoes, her emerald green stockings showing below her elegant monkey-fur trimmed dress, and let himself be patronized into nothingness.