No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  ‘At rising forty, Alf! Don’t be silly. No honestly. If you would only just slack off a little. You’ve provided for Doris. You’ve no need to work so hard.’

  He took her hand. ‘Don’t nag, Glad. I’m doing the job that excites me most. There are big possibilities. How can I stand aside and let them go by? But you do help me, Glad, you know, in times like this, when things get on top of me, just by chattering away.’

  ‘Well! If that’s all I do.’

  Yet she felt delighted. She described to him the chances at the Sale; she told him of her luck in identifying the Harlequin.

  ‘And Sylvia has a rich lady from Detroit if we can secure her the Louis Seize marqueterie table.’

  At Sylvia’s name as usual he made a face, but this time since he was so happy, a droll rather than a glum one.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Alf. You can’t sulk about a three year old snub. And she’s proved to be the greatest asset to me. You wouldn’t have been paid back if it hadn’t been for her efficiency. When I think how nearly I sent old Ahrendt away with that medieval woodcarving of his. If it hadn’t been for Sylvia …’

  But two mentions of her name proved too many, or else he had not liked to be reminded of having been repaid – it had been their nearest moment to a serious quarrel. Anyhow he began to frown, so she decided to tell him of the Ahrendt possible luck, it was such a happy ending fairy story that it couldn’t possibly fail to cheer people up.

  ‘But you mustn’t mention it to anyone, Alf, in case it doesn’t prove to be genuine. I think the excitement might kill Mrs Ahrendt. She’s very frail.’

  ‘My dear girl, you can’t get anywhere in the City if you talk out of turn. How much would it be worth if it was by this chap?’

  ‘About ten thousand pounds.’

  ‘A nice little pile of spondulicks.’

  ‘It would mean the difference of life and death to those poor old things, I think. It can’t be right, Alf, for us to sit by and let that dreadful little man push wretched people around in that way. And as the old boy said to me, “We were the lucky ones that got away, Miss Matthews.’”

  ‘My dear girl, whatever you do, don’t start a lot of war talk. The market’s only just bearing up as it is.’

  ‘War! It’s simply a question of decency, Alf.’

  He patted her hand: ‘You’re a good girl. Well let’s drink to good luck for your Yids.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look, I’ve got ‘Look, I’ve to phone a man. Cut down to the course and lay me a tenner on Archimandrite. But don’t take less than a hundred to eight.’

  The race had been run and Archimandrite had come in second, before he returned.

  ‘It’s all right, darling. I backed it both ways for you.’

  But his renewed gloom had other business causes.

  ‘Prestley’s ratting on his previous offers. He’s got war nerves. Some fool called Vansittart has been saying that we’ve got to have a showdown with Germany. And Prestley’s impressed just because the chap’s been an ambassador or something. These politicians! Lecturing other countries all the time. Why can’t they get on with the job of running England properly? No wonder a lot of these unemployed chaps are putting on black shirts. Get business going. Give men jobs, not the dole. Then you can start lecturing Hitler about how he should treat his Yids, though even then you’d much better mind your own business.’

  Carefully making no answer she gave him his tote card. ‘Go and get your money, darling. And then why don’t we go back to the Rutland Arms? You ought to have a rest before Sylvia comes. Otherwise you two will row the whole evening.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of seeing the stuck-up bitch. I’ve got to get back to London.’

  ‘Oh, Alfred! I’d so looked forward to tomorrow. You’ve never been to a sale with me. And you were looking forward to it, too. I know you were.’

  ‘My dear girl, I only happen to have the most important business deal of my whole career in the balance …’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so pompous. You get worse and worse. It wouldn’t hurt you to give one day to doing what I want.’

  ‘I’m afraid, you know, Gladys, that you’ve always had things far too much your own way. Now if you’d known what it is never to have had anything you wanted in life like Doris …’ But he stopped, for in her anger Gladys seemed about to hit him with her shooting stick.

  ‘Damn you, Alfred.’ And she spoke so softly and casually that she frightened him. ‘After twenty years to treat me like this.’

  ‘Oh, go to hell.’ He walked off.

  Later that evening when she and Sylvia were halfway through their roast pork and cauliflower au gratin, she was called to the telephone. He spoke from London.

  ‘You must forgive me, kiddie. I’ve been worried to death. But I’ve seen Prestley personally. I think he’s going to play ball.’

  When Gladys returned to the dining-room, Sylvia said: ‘That’s better. I like you to look happy.’

  Gladys knew that it was true. Sylvia really liked her. So many women did. And she liked them, too, cared what happened to women, but she never let them into her life.

  ‘Oh, no, Hugh, it would be quite impossible in term time.’

  She stared across the front garden over to the distant golf links for a moment while she particularized her objection to suit her husband’s schoolmasterly love of fact.

  ‘Your mother will be staying here for one thing.’

  ‘Mother’s visit will only overlap by one day, and that can surely be got round.’

  She had gone back to sewing the stripes on Middleman’s uniform.

  ‘I’m so glad he’s got his Cert A. He’s corps mad at the moment and it means the world to him.’

  He spoke mumblingly with his pipe in his mouth, and, as so often in the holidays, completely slumped in his deckchair.

  ‘God save us,’ she supposed him to say, ‘it may mean the world to more …’ but his mumbling died away.

  He was sulking, she felt, because she hadn’t discussed this ridiculous proposition. She looked instinctively for one of the boys to call on to distract him, but as so often this summer holidays they were all out. If she and Hugh were to be left together like this much in the years to come! Now there was something for God to save them from! They were never cut out to be Darby and Joan.

  ‘Well,’ for the best thing was to carry straight on, with Senior being head of the sixth and Victor ludorum and so on, I do like Middleman to have a look in.’

  ‘He won the fives cup.’

  ‘Yes, despised fives! You know I felt quite ashamed, Hugh, with this term’s mag. If it wasn’t Pascoe I on one page it was Pascoe II on the other. I told them both that they’d better watch out because when Pascoe III comes along next year, they won’t get another look in.’

  ‘There won’t be a Pascoe I by the time that P. S. gets there.’

  ‘No,’ she took it quite calmly. ‘I must remember to look out a secondhand armchair for Senior’s room. After all he’ll be our lodger when he’s articled, and lodgers always expect armchairs.’ She waited for him to laugh, then, ‘I said that about the magazine on purpose when P. S. was present. I’m doing all I can to get him excited about going to Radley, but, of course, he’s been so happy here. What a wise move it was, Hugh. The best decision we ever made.’ When he didn’t reply, ‘Where else would you have found a golf course to suit you like this one?’

  He didn’t reply directly even to that.

  ‘Yes, the Carvers have certainly done a good job on P. S.,’ he said.

  Sukey put down her sewing and patted his hand.

  ‘Darling, only you could fall into an unconscious pun like that. Making him sound like a little joint of meat.’ She took her hand away. ‘The great thing was getting him away from that terrible Great Man of yours. But you’re right. Even if Daisy Carver will never set the world on fire, she’s got a basically kind nature. And P. S. is the sort of boy who sees straight through any surface silliness to the kindness beneath.’

  He p
icked up an ant that was running across The Forsyte Saga which lay on the lawn, paused with it between his forefinger and thumb, then set it down to scuttle away in the clover infested grass.

  ‘Couldn’t you see your way to repaying her kindness by having Frau Liebermann here?’

  ‘Oh, really, Hugh. Filling the house with old women during the boys’ holidays!’

  ‘I think they’re always very glad to see Mother.’

  ‘Oh, of course they are. They’re loving, beautifully behaved boys. If we so much as mentioned this Frau what’s her name, they’d urge us to have her here. But I won’t have them traded on. They only have one summer holiday in a year.’

  ‘Sukey darling, Frau Liebermann hasn’t seen her small son Arnold for two years. Also it’s very uncertain whether her husband or her elder boy will ever get out of Germany.’

  ‘Don’t start exaggerating, Hugh. You and James Carver have accepted I don’t know how many Jewish refugee children free at the school this year alone. And quite right too. But that does show that it’s not all that difficult for them to get out. That awful man’s only too pleased to get rid of them, I believe. Besides the last thing she’ll want is to have a whole mass of people round her when she sees her boy again after so long. I know how I should feel if it was P. S. And a household like ours too that’s so full of incomprehensible family jokes.’

  ‘Perhaps we should try to make ourselves a little easier to understand.’

  ‘Darling, you said that just like Margaret. You’ll have to write books and be praised for your ironic style, or whatever it is they say about Mag.’

  She saw that he had begun to suck the knuckles of his right hand.

  ‘You’re annoyed with me. Of course, if the poor woman had nowhere else to go …’

  ‘She hasn’t, Sukey, that’s the point.’

  ‘She was invited to the schoolhouse to be with her boy. And very well it would suit. There’s only James and Daisy Carver there. And James speaks German which is more than any of us do. It was Daisy’s idea and a very kind one. But now she suddenly has this absurd notion about going to France. That’s Daisy all over. Kindhearted and muddled. That sort of thing can be very selfish. And I’m not going to have the boys’ holiday sacrificed to it. What does she want to go to France for anyway? A great deal of all the trouble the world is in is due to French selfishness.’

  Hugh picked up his book.

  ‘That’s right, dear,’ she said, ‘You bury yourself in that awful old Soames. Why should you be worried with all this in the summer holidays? It’s very naughty of Daisy and I shall tell her so when I see her.’

  He closed the book and threw it angrily on to the grass again, but she took P. S.’s blazer from the basket beside her and held out each sleeve in turn to discover if any buttons were missing. He had put his fist into his mouth, but now he relaxed enough to withdraw it and to say:

  ‘Darling, a woman who’s been very kind to our son wants to go to France for a couple of weeks because she thinks it may be one of her last chances of travelling in the country she was educated in. She asks us to help her out of an obligation she’s already …’

  ‘Thinks it may be her last chance! Oh, I do think it’s wicked, all this war talk. Don’t they realize what war means? I saw my brother Quentin come back wounded. It isn’t a sort of game.’

  ‘No darling. You forget that I was in it …’

  ‘Well then, how can you …?’ she broke off in dismay at the irresponsibility of people.

  He was about to argue further, but in the end he decided in favour of Soames’s difficulties with Irene.

  Sukey had finished her mending and was reading over some old diaries she had kept from past family holidays when Hugh, looking up, said:

  ‘Why one wastes time on detective stories. His extraordinary sense of what people are like! I’d forgotten Winifred and Montague Dartie. They’re your parents to a tee. ‘Either Sukey’s inattention or the word he had used reminded him, for he said,’ Isn’t it time that Rose brought tea out to us?’

  ‘I told her to wait until the boys get back.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘They’ve gone on one of these treasure hunts. They’ll be ravenous when they get in.’

  ‘Surely they’ll have tea with some of their friends.’

  ‘Not while there’s my home-made marrow and ginger to come home to.’

  ‘Darling, this last year or two you have got very …’ but he changed his course in mid-stream, ‘How would you like to live in the West Country?’

  ‘Now that really is strange, Hugh. It almost would make one believe in second sight and all that, like Old Aunt Mouse. Here am I reading about that trip we all made to Cheddar Gorge in 1933 and you suddenly say that. And it’s not as if you’re the imaginative kind of person who would have psychic gifts.’

  He laughed: ‘I don’t quite know what that proves. But you haven’t answered my question – Would you like to live in the West Country?’

  ‘With a caravan and a Dartmoor pony! Darling, if you want to get away these holidays, you must just go. But I can’t leave Rose to housekeep for the boys. It’s too much for her. And they just don’t want to leave their beloved Kent. After all, now that they’re away half of the year …’ But Hugh began to pluck at the grass and she looked up at him, ‘Oh, Hugh, what have you got into your head? You haven’t gone back to that old dream of running your own school? And in the West Country! Just when we’ve got Senior articled with Jarvis in Canterbury. The holidays are always bad for you. You get restless with those wretched little boys to fuss about.’

  ‘It’s not me that’s restless. It’s the world. I don’t want to worry you, and you must keep this to yourself. But James has had a serious hint from a high up chap in the War Office – General Tyler whose grandson was with us two years ago. He says that in the event of war the whole of Essex and Kent are likely to be in the line of German air attacks on London. Of course, we’ve had the odd parents worrying before but this is a bit more serious than that. Mind you he’s very keen to point out that it probably won’t come to war. But we must take it reasonably seriously because he ought not really to make his view public

  ‘I should think not indeed, spreading alarm!’

  ‘My dear girl, it’s only a warning. Prepared is …’

  ‘Well, then let them make their preparations without putting wretched mothers into agonies.’

  She took a pair of Middleman’s socks from the mending basket and began twisting them round her fingers to control her mounting misery. She looked to Hugh to see her distress and to reassure her, but he only stared at the ground. But then, answer to an unspoken prayer, to banish her anxieties and to end the horrid talk, the three boys came into view, just dimly through the thickness of the elder bushes, then their heads appearing above the wall, their bicycles invisible as they sailed in silhouette before the distant golf course.

  ‘Don’t say a word to the boys,’ Hugh said as they came whizzing and circling up the gravel path.

  ‘As if I should. I don’t want to hear any more about it myself. Well, did you win any prizes?’

  ‘I did, Mummy, I did.’ P. S. made figures of eight, wobbling precariously on the brink of the laurels, calling to them across the lawn, exulting in his success.

  Senior was too grand to notice this exhibition, but Middleman caught his Mother’s eye in affectionate amusement at the younger boy’s antics.

  ‘Jolly good!’ Sukey cried, but Hugh, seeing that Senior was going indoors, said quietly:

  ‘Tell Rose we’re ready for tea, will you, old man?’

  ‘Who was there, darling?’ Sukey asked Middleman.

  ‘Oh, John Beamish. And the Philpott girls have got a German boy staying. He was awful …’

  But P. S. was too excited to let the others describe what was, after all, his victory.

  ‘I bet you wouldn’t have got all the clues, Mummy. For instance,

  ‘To keep out Boney it succeeded.’

  �
�Let’s hope it won’t again be needed.’

  ‘Oh, that was an absolutely obvious one,’ said Middleman.

  ‘Mummy hasn’t got it.’

  But Mummy had clearly got something, for she was holding the old diary in her hand as though she would squeeze the past from it, and she was biting her lower lip. Hugh, glancing at her, said:

  ‘Could it be the Martello Tower, old man?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, Sir,’ P. S. cried. ‘Jolly good.’

  ‘Daddy, not “Sir”,’ Sukey said, and with this familiar correction she recovered some of her usual poise. ‘It’s not term time. Tell us some more clues. Yes, you and who else, Middleman?’ Then seeing her eldest son coming back from the house, she called to him, ‘Was that awful Eileen Dowsett there? And did she make eyes at you, darling?’ To Rose with the tea, she said: ‘Master Philip’s won the Treasure Hunt prize. What was it, by the way, P. S.? I hope Mrs Roeburn didn’t spend a lot of money. They’re very badly off. Oh, look, Rose has made jumbles. Now, is my marrow and ginger to your taste this year, my lord?’ she asked Senior. ‘Well, come on, give us some clues, P. S.’

  ‘How can I when you talk all the time? There was one jolly good one. How did it go? You know. That one,’ he nodded at his brother.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Senior said.

  ‘Yes. About you know what. I can’t say or I’ll give it away.’ P. S. looked very earnest. ‘Wait a minute, “Where the hangman’s gibbet stood”.’ His voice was the perfection of dramatic elocution, ‘There within the …’

  ‘Look, darling,’ Sukey cried, holding up Middleman’s corps jacket, ‘Is that what you meant me to do?’

  ‘Oh, Mummy!’ P. S. protested.

  But before Middleman could reply, Sukey had found a tear. ‘Oh, drat your old corps, darling, and I never saw it. Yes … hangman’s gibbet,’ she began to thread her needle.

  P. S. took a moment to recover from his annoyance at her fresh interruption. Hugh, to smooth the situation over, started to hum and then to sing, ‘And the soldiers dum dum dum dum said they’d rather sleep on thistles than wear the skirts that sister Susie sewed.’