No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  ‘Good Heavens! We’ve never had stage people.’ As though to soften this, she added, ‘But British films have always been the best, Rupert, look at George Arliss. Senior and I went three times to his Disraeli.’

  Margaret said, ‘In Cairo we never get more than a third class company doing Lonsdale and the cinemas are flea pits.’

  Marcus said, ‘I adored the cinemas in Ceylon,’ but he didn’t explain why.

  ‘We must get on,’ Sukey told them, ‘I think I’ll have to call Gladys down. And where can Quentin have got to? I’ve only taken at the hotel for one night. I see now that I could have saved money and stayed here.’

  The big-framed, gaunt-faced woman with heavy, sagging breasts and a fuzz of greying hair (ex-Resistance fighter? Labour mayor? stage star’s dresser?) sat on the improvised bed on which had been piled all the mass of stuff from the lumber room and the nursery cupboard. She was so high up from the ground that her legs swung in the air and her left shoe fell off her foot on to the floor. It gave her a further excuse for remaining there, for if she bent down too far these days she suffered a giddy spell. Not that she felt happy in the little cupboard room. Really, they had had no right to stick her in a hole like this with no dressing table and insufficient blankets; and then to charge her rent. And a mass of housework, too, after working at that stuffy Food Ministry all day. She had been lodger, breadwinner, servant, everything except daughter. Everything, or almost. She could feel Billy Pop’s – what did they call it in novels? – ‘hot breath’ upon her now. As that comedian who dressed up as a woman used to say, ‘believe me, girls, it wasn’t quelques fleurs.’ No, it had been disgusting, horrible. Then a rumbling laugh came up from her stomach. Oh fuck that for a lark! Not after the cells at Holloway, lovey. Don’t come the duchess, dear. Only one lace blouse, dearie? What about Apron, dowlas, for work; badge, arm, red band; boots, ordinary; cape, serge blue and cap, storm, to wear with; chemise, calico; dress, blue denim; knickers, calico; nightgown, calico; petticoat, calico; shoes, black strap; stays, grey lace up; stockings, black woollen? And a bucket, a Bible and a hard, hard bed. As to Father’s little ways, there’d been Goddard and Parker and Darling and Avory and more girls than she could remember who’d been kinder to their drunken, fumbling pas than she had. And grandpas, too, in the fat girl’s case – ‘it stood up proper lovely for is seventy-eight years. If it adn’t been for is tickly beard ….’ And she’d laughed with the others until the tears had run and the wardresses gave them hell.

  But it was no good, she could no longer be honest to that nightmare world. She must judge by the standards of her own world, of all of them assembled downstairs (Oh, how could she face them all together?) and of the girls in the pool. And by these standards the awful parents had done very badly. But, as she turned her head, something glittered for a moment on the top of the piled up trunks – a piece of mica. It must be the sheet that went over Alf’s photo in that old frame. She took it and rubbed it against her cheek. The room was full of his love and her love. She could hardly bear it, for, after she’d come out he’d got her the job and now he wanted it on the old footing – at her age and with her hag’s face, and he, as she’d always hoped, on his way to the top of the tree. Take and give, take and give; that’s what their lives had been. But they couldn’t go on with it now – at their age, a couple of right Charlies they’d look. No! Marriage and a villa, that’s what she needed. But to give him up … oh, what should she do? Slinging her bucket bag over her shoulder, she went down to face them.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘I was terribly lucky. A friend got me an interview at the War Office. And they put me in the typists’ pool. There was no money involved, you see, so nobody looked into my swimming record.’

  Sukey began busily to stack up the empty cups.

  Marcus said: ‘I’m sure you floated through the whole job deliriously. Better than I could have done. All those typists! But then mixed bathing isn’t for me at all.’

  Rupert said: ‘We thought of getting Tanya into the War Office, but her call-up wasn’t due until two weeks after V.J. day, thank the Lord.’

  Margaret took Gladys’s hand and said, ‘Darling, it is lovely to see you.’

  A silence so long followed that Gladys thought she would fall through the floor. Her cheeks burned, she shifted from leg to leg. At last she said, almost before she’d noticed it, ‘I’m going to marry a Mr Murkins. Mr Ebenezer Murkins. But he’s called Benny, I’m glad to say. And he’s my boss.’

  ‘The pool attendant?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘No, much grander! Head of Establishments they call it. He’s due to retire anyway next year. So he’s not a young hot-head. But then I’m not in my first flush either. His other wife – she’s dead of course, he’s no Turk – used to what he calls entertain a good deal in their home in Weybridge, but, as he said, all things considering I wouldn’t want to entertain a lot. And all things considering, he’s right. So we’re going to live in the country – a cottage not too far from Romsey Abbey. He likes looking at the New Forest ponies.’

  ‘You make him sound like the leech gatherer,’ Margaret said. ‘You know, very simple.’

  ‘Oh, no, he looks quite distinguished. Like a sort of colonel. But, as he says, ponies won’t be enough to keep a handsome girl like me out of mischief. Yes, he honestly means it. In his eyes I’m sweet seventeen, but full in figure. It’s hard to resist. And he’s so kind and a good sport too. I keep him in fits. I told him it’s too late to breed Murkins, so I’d better breed dogs. And now he’d got it into his head that I should. I don’t know which breed easily and which don’t. You’re the country one, Sukey, what kind do you think I should choose? I think bulldogs, don’t you? Then they’ll all grow up to look like their mistress.’

  She stuck out her lower jaw so that her stubby teeth glared at them, and when she pushed down her head on to her chest the baggy skin of her face and neck formed a hundred pouches. It was startlingly like and they were in fits. Under cover of the laughter Margaret whispered:

  ‘Darling, I am so pleased. I thought you might go on beating your head against a brick wall,’ but Gladys did not appear to hear her.

  But it was all right, for Murkins reminded Marcus of the Honourable Mrs Pitditch-Perkins. Looking down at his feet, he waved a vaguely senile hand. ‘Shoo, shoo,’ he cried. Margaret got it in one, ‘The Honourable Mrs P.P.! Oh, how the Countess adored that story! Oh, Glad, do!’ But Regan the Podge had already begun:

  REGAN THE PODGE: Cats rahnd yer legs orl the time in this kitchin! Mind you, the Honourable Mrs Pitditch-Perkins knew ow to deal with them. You know, Mum, my little rondyvoo with the nobility.

  [MARCUS THE COUNTESS gives an expectant, amused glance to the company at large.]

  REGAN THE PODGE: Poor old thing, she was as blind as a bat! And a good deal more forgetful.

  MARCUS THE COUNTESS: Are bats forgetful, Billy?

  RUPERT THE BILLY POP: Oh, yes, my dear. That’s why they can’t ever make up their minds whether they are birds or mammals.

  [He laughs uproariously.]

  MARCUS THE COUNTESS: Don’t be coarse. Go on, Regan.

  REGAN THE PODGE: Well, down she come one evenin. Bird of paradise in er air. All spangles and uncovered mutton. But er knickers was down to er ankles. Ah – But the poor old thing was quick enough: ‘You’re heah, General, and Sir Marmaduke, on my right. Oh, shoo, shoo, pussy!’ And then she steps out of em. I was ready for it, corse. I whips em up. ‘I’ll take Fluff down to the kitchin, Mum,’ I says.

  MARCUS THE COUNTESS: Oh, listen to that, children! Isn’t it an adorable story? The aristocracy like the cockneys are never at a loss.

  OLD GRANNY SUKEY [her upper dentures rushing forward into the fray in innocent absurdity]: Oh dear me! The things that happen. Will most certainly’ll never forgive me. But it does remind me so of when you were a little boy. You couldn’t have been more than two or three. Not tall enough anyway to reach the lock on the door for yourself. So when you went to the smalles
t room you used to take your knickers off and hang them outside on the door knob. [She goes into a great gale of spluttering, spitting laughter.]

  RUPERT THE BILLY POP: And very proper, too, it showed a nice Victorian sense of privacy with a proper eighteenth-century contempt for prudery.

  MARCUS THE COUNTESS: It showed very early your total egotism, Billy. Pretty it would look if everybody …

  RUPERT THE BILLY POP: But I am not everybody …

  MISS MARGARET MOUSE: You should have done as the Altai people do in the South Eastern Taurus Mountains, William. I employed them as bearers on my ’08 expedition. We had no sooner pitched tents than they all crouched about on the rocks performing their natural functions. When I remonstrated with the headman, he expressed great surprise. Did I not notice how they all covered their heads first? They couldn’t see what they were doing, so how could it be indecent? That would be in keeping, William, with your attitude to the rest of the world …

  But Marcus protested, ‘No, Margaret, you’ve made it up. Who are the Altai, anyway? I don’t believe they exist.’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘Oh, fibs, Mag,’ Sukey cried.

  ‘If Mags says they do, they do,’ Rupert announced.

  But Gladys said, ‘Let’s take her shoes off and tickle her feet. If she yells, she’s lying. If she doesn’t …’

  ‘No, no!’ Margaret was convulsed with laughter which set all the others off.

  The man with the thin, high cheekboned, supercilious face had quite a paunch which made him look in all like a clown stuffed with a bolster. (Had he come for the rent? in plain clothes to question them? Or was he the Unknown Warrior?) He paid off his taxi irritably, walked up the front steps uncertainly, but when he heard the mixed excited voices and uncontrolled laughter from the front room he almost turned and walked away. If there was any group from which he felt quite estranged – and, in fact, he felt so about almost all groups – it was the strident baying of an upper-middle-class cocktail party which could make the London streets more savagely lonely to the outsider than any other sound. He pushed the half open front door fiercely and clattered into the hall. This house, its laughters and tears, had never had anything to do with him.

  They had quietened into suppressed giggles by the time he came into the room.

  Sukey said, ‘We couldn’t write to you, old man. We had no address. That’s why we did it through Dumfrey and Corstall.’

  Gladys said, ‘You’ve grown a pot, Quentin.’

  ‘I heard your wonderful Coventry broadcast. I was in a sergeants’ mess in Delhi. They all sat quite silent. Everybody up to then had been playing for easy tears over it, you know. But you, dear boy … Well, it made putting over scenes from Henry Five that evening up hill work, I can tell you. Did you always have that voice register?’

  ‘Your Dunkirk description,’ said Margaret, ‘was the only thing we heard in Egypt that made it alive without patronizing. And your interviews with all those people!’

  ‘Yes, Hugh thought of substituting the Q. J. Matthews broadcasts for the Sabatini he was reading to the boys, but then you stopped …’

  ‘You didn’t hear me on the Hamburg and Dresden raids, did you? And the Hiroshima tape got unaccountably burned. Those would have cheered the national morale.’

  Marcus, who had been squatting by the bookcase, sorting through old volumes, stood up and half turned towards his brother.

  ‘You’re among those against war?’ he asked.

  ‘War? Why the hell? A good time is had by all. We produce wars to all tastes, you know. Even the intellectuals, this time. With cultured Mr Roosevelt and the Hutchinson Soviet novelists. Are you going to any cultured Congresses in Eastern Europe, Margaret? I should move fast. The wonderful spirit’s wearing a little thin. Of course, Hiroshima was a bit hard to swallow, but then Mr Truman’s a bit of a rough diamond, isn’t he?’

  Sukey mouthed ‘Drunk’ to Gladys. ‘Well, you’ve got your government now, old man, at any rate,’ she said aloud.

  ‘My? Oh, you mean the Woolton pie’s turned pink. But a man can’t live by pie alone, Sukey. Didn’t you know that? Though I daresay at Pascoe’s Dotheboys Hall …’

  ‘Oh, stop it, Quentin,’ Margaret cried, ‘Of course it’s all a mess, but think of all the reconstruction there is to be done. Good heavens, with your knowledge of housing, you could do more for this country than …’

  ‘Oh, by all means give them all two-bedroomed bungalows and an Austin Ten and, if our dear allies are very kind with Lease Lend, who knows perhaps to every man a refrigerator. But don’t ask me to take part in the big swindle, Margaret. I’ve been four years in secret political warwork, I’m not going to spend another four in open political peace-work. Absolute power, my dear …’

  ‘Oh, politicians, of course. But us, the ordinary people surely we have a …’

  ‘You the ordinary people! But I find it hard to remember that the intellectuals think of Attlee’s and Ernie Bevin’s as their government. Anyhow you must lengthen your sights – we live in stirring times, my dear. I’m going to see Justice in person. I’m off to Nuremberg to watch the world dispose of its guilt by hanging a lot of motheaten crooks and psychopaths. There’s nothing I like more than the spectacle of Justice. His majesty’s judges and the rule of law – it’s the one thing England can still hope to export in a cold world of shrinking markets. And after that there should be unlimited fun seeing the starry-eyed fit old Uncle Joe into a new brotherhood of nations. That’s going to be really good. So let’s get this house sold and realize a bit of cash as soon as possible. Oh, but I forgot, ‘he cried,’ Please excuse me. You were all down Memory Lane, no doubt, judging by the laughter as I came in.’

  ‘We were playing The Game,’ Margaret said, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘Some absurd old stories came back to us,’ Rupert explained.

  ‘You remember the laughs we used to have,’ Gladys told him.

  ‘I remember,’ Sukey said, ‘Granny M. saying that growing up meant looking back at oneself with a bit of kindly laughter. I must say I remember her very kindly.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, yes, that terrible day of the kittens. And Mother said that growing up meant marriage,’ Margaret recalled. ‘I remember the occasion so well. Heaven knows, strange union though it was, she kept her marriage going to the bitter end. So there must have been …’

  ‘The old boy knocked the nail on the head there,’ Rupert said, ‘Do you remember he said growing up meant companionship? I can’t imagine anyone but the Countess choosing such a companion, but then as one gets older one accepts other people’s choices …’

  ‘I think all that’s a bit soft,’ Gladys said, ‘I was terrified of her, of course, but it was Aunt Mouse’s advice that stuck in my mind – self reliance!’

  Marcus was sitting on the floor, his legs curled behind him, his face buried in a book. He looked up for a second.

  ‘Regan had a piece of advice specially for me all on my own. She told me not to mix with muck. If only she’d defined what muck was. It’s taken me years to learn. But she was perfectly right.’

  ‘So,’ Quentin said, rummaging in the sideboard cupboard, ‘I thought so. What a quick getaway our parents made.’ He brought out a decanter and poured himself a large neat whisky. ‘So,’ Well then, wherever they may be now, the clever, ill-treated, misunderstood sensitive young Matthews have forgiven them. That’s nice. Let me be the one to convey your verdicts, your merciful verdicts to – well, let’s not paint things in unpleasant colours, let’s not particularize geographically, be invidious about exact destinations – let’s say to the Judgement Seat. In fact let me sit on the Judgement Seat. Imagine me wearing the wig of one of His Majesty’s Judges, the Lord Chief Justice himself, why not?, and supplied with a copy of Das Kapital on which witnesses may be sworn and, of course – We, the People of the United States – the Court is impartial. Thus equipped, let me take the place of Jehovah himself, the Ancient of Days, with a long white beard down to my navel. Wi
lliam Ackerley Matthews, your sins are forgiven you. Clara Madeline Matthews, your sins are forgiven you. Maud Iseult Matthews, your sins are forgiven you. Florence Stanley Rickard, your sins are forgiven you. Henrietta Peebles Stoker, your sins are forgiven you. Give them all harps and haloes.’

  Sukey clicked in disapproval. Marcus quickly snatched up Sukey’s fox stole that lay across the sofa back and cast it stylishly round his shoulders.

  ‘Billy,’ he called, ‘Billy, is that God prosing away there, impertinently forgiving us all? Turn Him out of the house at once. Just because He’s always been out of all the fun and games is no reason why he should bring his great self-pitying clay feet in here, ruining my carpet …’

  Quentin stood over his young brother with his fist raised as though to smash him in the face, then he lowered it and went back to his seat. Marcus fussed with the fur about his neck, but he said no more.

  The silence was broken by Sukey the practical.

  ‘Well, the sooner we get everything sorted out the better. Supposing I do the nursery. Will you do the upstairs bedrooms, Gladys?’

  Gladys, the practised upon, rose with a smiling nod.

  ‘And Mag, will you go through Her things? You know about clothes. Quentin, will you pick out any books that are too good to go in job lots? And, Rupert, will you go through His things, please? And Marcus, you must know about wine by now, will you see if there’s anything special in the cellar?’

  But even she did not find the courage to ask for her fox fur stole to be restored to her. It was better, she thought, just to get on with things.

  II. 1956

  ‘It’s all dirty pink oleanders at the moment and the dusty remains of purple bougainvilleas. Though I do have a rather beautiful rare white one. You can’t think how one longs for anything white here in summer. But the Spring garden’s enchanting, because it’s all frightfully damp. Well, we can’t stay outside in this heat but I thought you’d like to see the Ocean. It is a heavenly view, isn’t it? But, Mary, why have you come here in July? It’s a mad moment.’