No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  And yet how the limestone, the marsh mud and the desert sand drew her to them! For every human assertion there are hundreds of inanimate negations. It was those, their stillness, their quiet, their non-existence which she so desperately needed. They were the other side of life, the nothing side, denying which everything was an empty boast, a silly whistling in the dark. She was not in love with easeful death, not at all, if that meant surrendering to the grave’s embrace, but she did need the refreshment of negation, the refreshment of bare dead rock if she were to have the strength, the endurance to receive human noises. The great tenor arias that she would hear in humanity’s defence in Paris, how to bear their inevitable vulgarities? The small, private noises, sharp and astringent that she perhaps or Mr E. M. Forster might contribute, how to bear their occasional cosiness? How to endure the millions that exulted in the boastful, empty lies that came from Nuremburg and Bayreuth and Rome? Or the little dirty cheapening talk of everybody everyday? For these she must keep her imagination frighteningly yet deadly clean with the non-human – with the snow blowing through centuries in the icy blizzards of Antarctica, with the sand collecting endlessly in the Gobi desert. But Mouse who had died amid such refreshment would have urged her to snap back at the world. This she would not do, comfortable, easy though it would be, delighted though the world was to be snapped at. Relying upon that other side, that clean, inanimate world to be there when she needed it, she would return as warmly as she could to men and their doings, and offer them if not certain love, at least the devotion of all her will. She would start to build once more upon these new foundations. The name of Geneviève Rocquetin had brought memories that pressed.

  She got up from the deck chair and returned to her cabin. Undressing, she put on her pyjamas, took a fresh exercise book, got into bed, unscrewed her fountain pen and wrote: ‘Andrée (Geneviève’s sister Adèle, Sukey as she used to be at Cromer before she knew her vocation was marriage) living near Aigues Mortes (that Château of the Rocquetins) has a life divided since girlhood between the marshes (those hours of my riding in the Camargue, the egrets white against the black cypresses, suddenly coming on the flamingoes, the popping sound of crabs bubbling below the mud surface) and the frigid Protestant haute bourgeoisie of Nîmes and round about (Madame Pipard, “Ours is the clean France, Mademoiselle Matthews. In more than three centuries – Monarchy, Empire, Republic, what does it matter? The others have got their hands dirty”). Reacting against this glacial social world of her parents, she becomes friendly with …’

  When Douglas returned she was busily writing. Seeing that he was ready for her attention, she made some rough note – ‘a continual dialogue between Andrée alone on the marshes and Andrée, the dutiful daughter, the secret mistress of Patrick, the secret diary writer, is the only solvent of the absurd beauty of life (satirical scenes) and the futile need for death (the solitary scenes). Being alive means a responsibility to solve this.’ Then she added quickly, ‘Much of the solitary Camargue nature side to be treated with irony too, a young girl’s first reactions to Nature, to God, etc. Almost a compendium of the absurdities of nineteenth-century romanticism. On the other hand the full felt tragedy of this ridiculous, dead, ingrown, provincial Protestantism. Balance on both sides so that life isn’t mocked.’

  ‘We leave for Rijeka in five minutes. I wish you’d seen the Cathedral. It was benediction. The singing was surprisingly good.’

  ‘I’ve started a scheme for a new novel.’

  ‘I know. I saw. You were bound to. It was the only thing. But don’t suppose I don’t realize the courage it’s taken. I could smash that MacCarthy’s jaw.’

  Naked he lay beside her, taking from her her book and her pen. He held her and kissed her. She couldn’t respond immediately. With Ralph she’d always been able to; he could touch her physically as though she were controlled by an electric button, but then with Ralph daily married life had been an unloving blank. Douglas was so good to her, made her days so happy that at these times she owed him sincerity.

  ‘All this is only a substitute, you know.’

  ‘Good Lord, yes,’ he took it for teasing, ‘I’m well aware. Close your eyes and think of Robert Taylor.’

  She couldn’t carry sincerity on into cruelty, so she made no further remark, but with pleasure, almost with excitement, she responded.

  At midnight she woke to the wind outside the porthole and to Douglas’ light breathing. But these Protestants from Nîmes would speak in French. All her main gift for dialogue would be valueless. The whole novel, she saw, was an absurdity.

  *

  Rupert came in from the stable yard invigorated, warm, pleased with everything, although a little breathless. He took off his top boots and left them in the passage, but his trousers still shed a few flakes of mud, some sawdust on to the parquet floor when he came into the living room. He carried a heavy basket of logs and, bending down, set it beside the already blazing open fire. When he stood up his shoulders in their peat smelling tweed still seemed a little bowed.

  Deborah’s aunt remarked on it: ‘You’re not holding yourself so straight as a year ago.’

  ‘I’m not as young as I was a year ago, Aunt Annabel.’ And then before she could reply, ‘I am very old. Oi be one undred and foive come Martinmas, In the archives of Vladivostok is certificate. Born seventeen hundred eighty-five. How much is? One hundred fifty. Then I’m one hundred fifty. But nothing appen to me. Not even Emperor Napoleon. I sit in my chair. When is Emperor coming? I ask. Emperor is not coming. Emperor doesn’t come. In Vladivostok nothing ever appen.’

  He sat back dejected, on the pouf. Aunt Annabel laughed a little nervously, but at that moment Debbie, holding little Tanya by the hand, came in through the French window.

  ‘Have you done all that sawing? Bless you, darling. The moorhens are on the pond again.’

  Tanya said, ‘Boorpen.’

  Rupert snatched her up in his arms.

  ‘Oh, by garnd be ko to Bosgow? By garnd be, Darnyer?

  ‘He’s been like this all the morning, Debbie. Sausages for breakfast, that’s what it is, I can see. You should never feed men meat before luncheon, my dear.’

  Rupert gave a lion’s roar. Deborah, seeing Tanya’s lip tremble, took her from her father’s arms and set her on the floor.

  ‘Daddy’s happy,’ but as the lip still trembled she quickly took the Teddy Bear from the piano top where someone had left it and gave it to the child. Then she knelt on the rug, throwing logs on to the fire.

  Tanya cooed over the woollen animal.

  ‘He’s the real Rupert, isn’t he? Now if you appeared in the Daily Express everyday, darling, like Rupert the Bear, you might receive some respect from your daughter.’

  Rupert lifted his wife from her kneeling position. She put her arms round him and he kissed her, working his lips against hers until she broke away, patting her hair, pulling down her tweed skirt.

  ‘Oh, the Sundays are wonderful!’ she cried. ‘Dear, loveable Jimmy Agate. I could kneel down and kiss his shoes.’

  ‘My dear, the peculiar things you say.’

  ‘Well, if what our Doris says and she’s not one to tell a lie, the peeculiar things dear Mr Agate does.’

  ‘Apart from the delicate presence of your Aunt Annabel, I will not have the greatest dramatic critic of our time besmirched. That’s rather a good word, Aunt Annabel, isn’t it? Besmirched. Besmirched or be-any thing else in this house. The man who can write “Never has the meaning of Chekhov’s play come over so completely to me as in Rupert Matthews’ performance of the brother Andrey. Watch him in the last act as he comes up for the third time clutching that depressing pram and goes down for ever to the insensitive scolding of his vixenish wife. For this is what The Three Sisters is about – drowning. And seldom have I see an actor drown so piteously and yet so comically as Mr Matthews – an Andrey that combines the pathos of Dan Leno with the loveable absurdity of Mr Pooter.”’

  ‘Darling! Really! To have learnt it all off
by heart. At least you might have fluffed a line here or there out of modesty. And do remember when Willie comes that some of the critics haven’t been all that favourable to the production.’

  ‘Some of the critics have been bloody well right. When I think how often I’ve argued, and so have Beatrix and Stella about the pace of Act III. But no, “Act III goes down into smoke and ashes with the fire. It ends on a brown note. Its colour is brown.” We were lucky the whole audience wasn’t browned off. With Beatrix and Stella going down a key or two and piu lento as the last words of the act die away. “That’s only a rumour. We’ll be left quite alone then…. Olia! Well? Olia darling, I do respect the Baron.”’ Rupert’s voice became slower and more suety until it came out a mere trickle of shaky deep notes. ‘Poor Stella! She said once to Willie at rehearsal, “Darling, why do I have to go into the bass register when I agree to marry the Baron? I know she isn’t awfully happy about it, but I don’t see why she had to change her sex.” But you know what Willie is, he just ignored it and at his most schoolmasterly he said, “Very nice, Stella, very nice. Beautifully brown.” Beatrix got the giggles and hiccoughed. “I’m terribly sorry, Willie,” she told him, “I oughtn’t to have had the Brown Windsor Soup for lunch. But I thought it might help.” Oh, there were rows!’ he ended, shaking his head like an old gossiping charwoman.

  ‘Of course there were, darling. There always are. It’s all the rows and bitching that I miss most since I left the theatre to become a loving wife and mother. Anyway no rows today. You deserve an absolutely wonderful Sunday.’

  ‘What I believe I do deserve is pink champagne. What about a glass of bubbly, Aunt Annabel, before the others come?’

  ‘Well,’ said Aunt Annabel looking at her watch, ‘since it’s after eleven, yes. But who are the others?’

  ‘Oooh, my dear,’ Rupert in an old pansy pro’s voice, ‘we must ave er in the play. She’s the playwright’s dream. Can’t you imagine. Act I. Everything ready for the exposition, but how to make it natural? Then up speaks Aunt Annabel, “Who are the others?” and we’re off.’

  ‘You’d have made an absolutely enchanting actress, Auntie.’ Debbie bent down and kissed the nape of her aunt’s grey shingle. ‘And as to who the others are – well, there’s Rupert’s producer Willie Carter who’s got a weekend cottage nearby at Ascot and he’s bringing a party. God knows who they may be….’

  ‘Behold,’ said Rupert’s voice, loud and clear, ‘one black haired trollop of uncertain age and dubious morals. Come in. Don’t bother to knock.’

  ‘Trollop, darling, yes, and four years older than you. But I’ve got where I am entirely by talent. Not that you haven’t talent too, Rupert. Your wonderful notices, darling,’ she kissed him.’ We’ve been making waxen images of you all morning, And we’ve run out of pins. Debbie dear, I’m just taking him down a peg. Actually he deserves every word. How can he be so moving and so absurd at the same time?’

  ‘It’s the great clown’s art,’ Rupert struck a posture, ‘I had it from Grimaldi’s fancy bit on her death bed. Champagne, Stella darling?’ And he kissed her.

  Debbie looked rather worriedly at Willie. ‘Well, we are all rather pleased,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, dear,’ Willie answered. ‘I’m not going to contradict you. You thought I was going to bitch Rupert, didn’t you, lovely? Just because he got the plum notices? Well, I’m not. He gives a very nice performance, as the old ladies were saying between chocolates last night in the Upper Circle. “I always say Rupert Matthews gives a very nice performance.” And you thought I was going to bitch, Debbie Matthews. Somebody always thinks I’m going to bitch,’ he told Aunt Annabel. ‘Introduce, dear.’

  The blond young man who had come with Willie said, ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘Carry your spear in Henry Five and you’ll find out,’ Willie gave a little snigger which he seemed to realize cut him off from the others, for he said again to Debbie, ‘Introduce, dear.’

  There were introductions all round.

  ‘Stella played Irena, Auntie. You’re terribly good, Stella. And the bit where you and the baron can’t speak before the duel. So touching, darling! I honestly was crying. But then I’m one of Willie’s toothless matinée ladies at heart.’

  ‘Nonsense, you’re just a loyal wee wifie.’

  The blond young man said: ‘Perhaps everyone thinks you’re going to bitch, Willie, because you bark so much before you bite.’

  Rupert, perhaps to ward off any scene, asked the blond in a specially loud, man to man voice: ‘What’s your college?’

  But Willie replied for the boy: ‘He’s doing PPE. Whatever that may be. It sounds very un-housetrained.’

  The young man disregarded him: ‘I’m at Merton, actually.’

  Rupert appeared to have nothing to say to this. But Willie explained to Deborah the backgrounds of his young men:

  ‘Mr Garner,’ he said indicating the blond, ‘and Mr Peploe,’ he indicated a speechless dark young man in a blue suit and horn rimmed spectacles, ‘are respectively President and Secretary of the OUDS. They’ve come over from Oxford because I might, if they’re very good, produce Henry the Fifth for them.’

  ‘You will be producing Henry the Fifth for us,’ said the blond, ‘and it’d better be good.’

  ‘He’s the privileged one, dear. He’s been at it all morning. It’s chronic,’ Stella whispered loudly to Debbie.

  Willie glared at her. ‘When all you pampered players were tucked into bed at Oxford, I had to go to the young men’s smoking concert. The loo lewdery! The lavatorial levity! My dear, I nearly died of boredom. But these two were some compensation. They did a completely splendid Jack and Cis together. Do,’ he said to the young men, ‘the jealous lady doesn’t believe.’

  To oblige, the blond stuck out his upper teeth and waved his arm soldier wise in a Courtneidge gesture; the dark young man did no more than remove his spectacles and stick out his lower jaw. Although Willie clapped his hands, none of the professionals seemed very entertained. But Aunt Annabel found it very amusing. She laughed loudly.

  ‘What a marvellous imitation of Jack Hulbert,’ she said.

  The blond young man was ready to sulk, but luckily at that moment some business neighbours arrived – Mr Packer all Savile Row tweeds, Mrs Packer all tweeds, Jacqmar scarves and diamond rings.

  ‘Rupert, we thought you were marvellous. Honestly I can hardly bear to look at you. I keep seeing that poor little man pushing the pram. And yet one laughed.’

  Rupert, introducing, explained that the excellencies belonged to Willie, the producer.

  ‘Ah, so you’re the producer!’ Mr Packer cried, ‘Congratulations! Though I must say that, as with conductors, I rather wonder what it is the producer does.’

  ‘Willie would love to tell you,’ Debbie said, but Mr Packer had walked over to Rupert.

  ‘You were very good, you know, you blighter! It’s not the sort of thing I’d have gone to in the ordinary way. Too much talk. Strictly between the two of us I found all that Russian gloom very irritating. But you did something with it all as soon as you came on. Especially pushing that pram. Useless, wet sort of fellow,’ he lowered his voice, ‘Wanted kicking up the arse. But you made me feel sorry for the chap, though I wouldn’t have employed him as an office boy. That’s what I call great acting.’

  Rupert was about to answer this praise, but Mr Packer changed the subject, or rather, as so often, he resumed his analysis of their last game of golf.

  ‘I ought never to have risked the brassie. If I’d have used the spoon I’d have had the ball clear away down through the gulley and on to the apron. But …’

  Rupert caught Debbie’s eye. They exchanged their social look. All Sunningdale golf and weekend host, he settled down to listen to Packer, while Debbie, re-filling everyone’s glass, assembled the rest of the party at Willie’s feet – almost a class in production, she thought.

  Yet, for Rupert work was always more magnetic than play. Again and a
gain his attention strayed to The Three Sisters conversation. At last he gave up listening to his neighbour with anything more than his eyes.

  ‘The most difficult part in tempo and in colour,’ Willie was telling them, ‘is Anfisa. It’s a perfect Tchekov paradox that the only positive value in the play should be embodied in an eighty year old peasant woman. And even she isn’t positive in the first two acts, just old. Then …’

  ‘Oh, the old servant,’ Mrs Packer said, ‘I did think she was well acted.’

  ‘Mmmm. She wasn’t as bad as the critics made out, but…’

  ‘I feel a bit guilty about that,’ Rupert joined in, ‘Maybe Alma could have done it, but …’

  ‘Alma Grayson! Of course she couldn’t. She’d have been terrible. She’d have given it a sort of false spiritual thing,’ Stella said.

  ‘Well that’s what I felt and what I told Willie, but all the same I do feel a bit guilty.’

  ‘Very touching and proper, Rupert, but unnecessary. I make my own casting decisions. She’s played in rubbish far too long. She’d have patronized Anfisa. And that would have been fatal.’