by Angus Wilson
‘Oh, I don’t know. That’s what Mr Coppings …’
‘Yes, you do, dear. It’s the right thing at the moment. And Benny would have wanted you to do the right thing.’
Gladys was silent, then she said, ‘Well, as long as he’s not got his back to the engine. He couldn’t bear to have his back to the engine.’ And she laughed so loudly that Doris had to hold the receiver away from her ear.
*
‘Mummy, I’m absolutely sure it’s the right thing for him to do.’ Looking at her mother across the little luncheon table at Fortnum’s Tanya wondered how to tell her not to wear those sort of Osbert Lancaster smart hats. ‘You can’t possibly go to Hollywood with him this winter. It’d be bad enough his not being at Christopher’s wedding, with the Ambassador there and possibly Princess Alexandra, but the profession’s a sort of excuse, everybody excuses film stars. But if you’re not there as well! Poor Christopher! Senhora Serraoes just won’t forgive.’
‘But, darling, if he goes on his own he’s terrified that he’ll start drinking again and the studio have already said …’
‘I think he’s right. That’s why I’m sure he ought to take this Len Farrer offer. You can keep an eye on him here. Anyway it’s time he did stage work again. He can’t go on doing V.C.s and diplomats and war heroes in those silly films for ever. And it isn’t as if he needed all that money now. You’ve got all of us off your hands. Christopher’s going to be terribly rich. And now Timmy’s gone to Hambro’s …’
‘But, Tanya darling, it’s such an awful play. No poetry, no real theatre and all about such dreary people – mostly lorry drivers; it’s all in a horrible little café on the Great North Road. And there’s a girl from a reformatory, at least I think she is, and a boy who makes long speeches.’
‘Heavens! Daddy won’t be very good as a lorry driver.’
‘No. Your Father’s to be the only gent in it – a Wing Commander who’s down on his luck and tries to seduce this awful girl. I can’t think why. It’s all terribly unreal.’
‘Oh, Mummy, really! Just because it isn’t the Noël Coward world you grew up in or S.W.1. I think it’s terribly exciting really, his wanting Daddy to play. Because everybody’s saying how these new plays could be really good if only some of the best older actors played in them. And now Daddy’ll steal a march on all the Knights. Of course, a lot of it’s silly show-off. But it’s new and that’s what people want. Len Farrer got wonderful notices for his first – almost as good as Look Back in Anger. I can’t think why it wasn’t transferred.’
‘But we can’t think why he wants Rupert. We gather from his agent’s letter that he saw all Rupert’s films in the years after the war. He must have been in arms. But then we can’t tell whether he means this Wing Commander to be a sort of bad egg or what. He’s obviously meant to be a gent, though it’s so unreal.’
‘Well if he’s a gent you can bet he’s meant to be everything that’s awful. That’s one of their troubles, they simply can’t get class out of their heads. But then if people like Daddy play in these plays, as Ian said – he told me by the way to tell you he was all for it – the whole thing will get broadened and away from all these dreary layabout types.’
‘Well, I shall urge him then, darling, to see the young man.’
‘Yes. And tell him whatever he does not to crawl to him. They’re awful, snotty little creatures, but they’re terrifically keen on guts.’
Rupert had suggested that they should meet at the Garrick, but Len Farrer would have none of this. He would come, with his agent, to the Salisbury. And there they met. The noise, the unfamiliarity and the crush put Rupert at once out of ease; but he liked the young chap – he was simpler than he’d expected, with a boyish grin and a very honest North Country accent. The astonishing thing was that he really did know all those old films – The Day the Engine Cut Out, Safe Return, Incident in Kuwait, Busted Flush and the rest of them – and could quote from them too. ‘You simply don’t know the mess I’m in, Tuppence. Lying has become my second nature.’ ‘It’s not very easy to believe in religion and all that when the good ‘uns don’t come back, and the bad ‘uns like me have seven lives,’ ‘Four Kings, von Epp. Can your Führer beat that?’ – these seemed to be his favourites which he repeated again and again, raising his beer glass in a toast, standing with one knee up on his chair, generally posturing and delivering them in various dialect accents but particularly in a clipped parody of Rupert’s own voice in those roles. Rupert supposed it was all a send up and began to tell him how they had guyed the terrible stuff on the sets. But there was something in the young man’s eye that stopped him.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said, ‘I don’t think I knew what cad or gent meant, but you had me in tears in the one and nine’s. I even forgot to try to get my hand up Marlene Johnson’s skirt. Lovely nosh! I don’t think I’d have forgotten to grope her for any man except Rupert Matthews. Now I can’t say fairer than that, can I?’
Rupert thought, well even if he is tight, one can’t help liking him.
It was left to the agent to ask Rupert how he felt about the part and he found it hard to answer, for Len was immediately seized with a nervous impatience that made him drum on the table, whistle pop tunes, get up and greet people at the bar. When at last he’d been persuaded to remain still, Rupert said: ‘I suppose this chap I’m to play is the waste stuff that gets left over when any system, any old order breaks up. Your young hero, by the way, has got a lesson or two to learn out of life, but I like his guts. And all he feels, I take it, is that the sooner Lane and his type are swept under the carpet …’
But Len had gone to fill up their glasses. When he came back, he said, ‘But you’ve played him, man, again and again. He’s Lance Graham, and Gerald Thurston, and that chap who forged the cheque in Hotel Register. No “systems” and shit like that.’
Rupert said, ‘I was working from the outside in. He thinks himself a chap who could have been something, if he’d had luck. Luck is his weak spot. Or rather putting everything down to luck.’
Len said, ‘Did you ever see this done?’ And he began to play the Bolero with a knife on his cheese plate; then he suddenly frowned and said, ‘Sorry, please go on.’
Rupert remembered Tanya’s advice, ‘Very well. But try not to be rude and childish.’ He said it with a friendly grin. ‘And to some extent,’ he went on, ‘the luck thing holds for those who believe it Your play is too good to be black and white. Lane may be sweepings now, but you extend him great compassion and the actor …’
But Len had risen and, swaying slightly, fought his way to the gents. They waited ten minutes. Then the agent went to seek him, but it seemed that he had gone.
Book Five
1967
‘And will you wear those violet trousers and that black leather coat to Gladys’s?’ Sukey asked.
‘Shouldn’t think so. Portugal will be about 80 degrees, I should think. Oh, you mean will I have a suit? Yes, I’ve got an absolutely super one for all the rich people we’re going to cadge beds and baths off.’
‘Oh, Gladys isn’t at all stuffy, and not really rich, only comfortably off. She’s fun. Or used to be. I haven’t seen her for years.’ Sukey crashed the gear. ‘These wretched gears. They just aren’t any good in these new cars.’
Adam, looking at her gouty little hand where the wedding ring bit into a chalky finger, made no comment.
‘Adam, I expect you know all about it. But don’t wear too bright colours when you go to Marcus’s. In case he gets wrong ideas. You know what I mean.’
The full throttle noise he made was probably affirmative, but she was left uncertain if she had spoken out of turn. The silence was long. At last Adam, gulping, said, ‘Please thank Grandpa again for the money. It was super.’
‘My dear, I wish it had been more. I don’t like you going so far on so little. Senegal, did you say? I don’t even know where it is. I must look it up on the map. But do you really think you can hitch lifts all that way?’
‘I’m surprised at Tanya letting Lucilla go. Debbie’s always so correct. Or was the few times I’ve met her. You know how actors and actresses are. Wanting to be ladies and gents.’ She gave a little laugh that turned into a dry cough.
‘Oh, Lucilla’s parents are in Scotland. Shooting and all that. They’re terribly snobbish and boring. She only had to get round her grandmother. Apparently she’s a bit silly.’
‘But that is Debbie.’
‘Oh, well, I don’t know, Lucilla said. Her husband’s some sort of actor.’
‘But of course he is. He’s my brother Rupert. Your great uncle. You must have seen his films after the war.’
‘Well, hardly, Gran. Apparently he isn’t much good.’
When they got to the by-pass Sukey had to concentrate on the traffic, so that when Adam asked if she still did her weekly broadcasts she didn’t answer immediately. As they came into the city she said, ‘No. Even the local rag’s gone over to your kitchen sink. Some young man writes articles there about the Bristol dockside pubs and the sailors’ slang at Plymouth.’
‘Oh God!’
She thought he was trying to sympathize, so she said, ‘Oh, I don’t mind, though I can’t think who reads them. No one we know. But there are so many newcomers. Anyway I’ve got so much to do. I’m still on the Bench, you know. And I’m district head of the W.I. And then my religion means a lot to me.’
His first ‘I know’ was almost inaudible; repairing this, he almost shouted.
‘Yes, I know, Gran.’
‘I wish your Grandfather had more to do. He potters so. However he’s got his old Forsytes on television now.’
Having seen Adam off, she drove straight to the Cathedral. She felt, as always when she entered from the sunlight into the cool, dark depths of the nave, a quicker heart beat, a feverish excitement. She passed down the north side of the ambulatory and stopped as usual to read the moving panegyric to the poor burned young mother: Rachel Charlotte O’Brien who seeing the flames communicating to her infant, all regard to her own safety lost in the more powerful consideration of saving her child, rushing out of the room, preserved its life at the sacrifice of her own.
If Sense, Good Humour and a Taste Refined,
With all that ever graced a Female Mind,
If the Fond Mother and the Faithful Wife
May Claim one Tender, sympathising sigh …
She smiled at the solemn words, but they were good for her pride. However long she worked at being a good wife, good mother and a good citizen she would never be praised in such terms. But once in the Lady Chapel she was oblivious to all – tombs of dead Tudor justices, modern stained glass, a woman turning over the leaves of the Prayer Book. Kneeling down, she said the Lord’s Prayer, then her favourite collect, and then, mouthing the words, but taking great care to be silent, she began to tell God how ‘P. S. and I decided to walk to Porlock that afternoon, haven’t I ever told you? Well, of all the embarrassing things I was suddenly taken short. So there was nothing to do but to ring the bell of this old dilapidated rectory – all covered in ivy, you know. Well, we waited and rang again and then we heard a scream and shuffling footsteps in the corridor and then nothing more, however much we rang. In the end I had to go in the bushes, which served me right for putting on airs. But P. S. made the most brilliant horror stories up about it. Murders and heaven knows what. I am sure he’d have been a writer. Like his grandfather or his aunt. But really good.’ She stopped for a moment to wonder perhaps if he were a writer now. But the whole business about after-life was so hazy; and, to tell the truth, she was so close to P. S. that she didn’t wish to think of any other reunion. Who knew what was to come? She remembered one of the absurd horror stories which P. S. had invented out of that occasion and she told it now to God … well, who knew really what it was all about? It was a mystery. But she felt much happier now that she spoke to God again, and much closer to P. S. She ended as always by asking God to forgive her for having turned away from Him in those years after P. S. was killed, but He had seemed to have broken His side of the bargain. Then she just let herself feel at peace with P. S. again, got up, dusted her tweed skirt, put half a crown in the box and set off hastily, for she was due at the Hospital Book Service Committee at half past three.
*
Debbie would have been horrified to hear herself described as silly. She had adopted a scatty manner, that was all. As she said, ‘she really couldn’t be expected to go on remembering everything for the rest of her life’, and people seemed to find the manner amusing. Rupert sometimes said it reminded him of the Countess, but only when he intended to annoy her.
Now she said, ‘How is your grandmother, Adam? Still living in caravans and picking berries? Oh, she used to, I can assure you. Once when Rupert was playing at the Bristol Old Vic we went to see her and she rushed us off at once on to the moors to gather those things some people make horrid jam with. I tore a new coat on the briars and I remember she was frightfully brave about it. Do give Adam the drinks he wants, Lucilla. He’s grown so tall since I last saw him. And go in and see your grandfather. Remember to speak to him about his notices. Isn’t it wonderful, proper plays coming on again? Imagine how happy the public’s going to be. And all the good people too. Rupert’s playing with Ralph and darling John and Peggy this time. What about that, Adam? Happy days are here again! Maybe, don’t mention the notices, unless he does, because one of the awful critics – nobody knows their names even except for funny Harold Hobson whom I rather love – but one of them, not H. H., said something about Rupert’s performance being all technique. Well, of course he would, wouldn’t he, Adam? I mean they’ve never seen any real acting so they’re dazzled. But Rupert’s moping a bit. Actually I think he feels it not playing the brother again, but he’s doing the little one whose wife’s unfaithful and puts on a nose, so what could be better? I wept buckets. Go in and see him and stop him moping.’
But Rupert didn’t mope. He didn’t even, though Lucilla had warned Adam, appear at all fuddled.
‘Senegal? Now wait a minute. Yes! I entertained the Free French at Dakar. Ghastly hole. We did scenes from Molière,’ he paused. ‘It couldn’t have been more disastrous. Our French was too good.’ His face lit up when they both laughed. He still remembered, he felt, what made the young laugh. ‘You may find my sister Margaret at Marcus’s. She wanders around those North African countries. Well, of course, you’ll know her work, Adam, as you’re doing English. Oh, you should. Her last novels have leaned a little too much on technique for my taste, but she used to be wonderful value as a girl. Get her to tell you some of the nonsense our parents got up to. Yes, I suppose you’d call her a “writer’s writer” now.’ Then he gave Lucilla five ten pound notes, ‘Buy yourself some sun-glasses, darling. The glare at Dakar’s terrible.’ The gift appeared to free him. He leaned back in his armchair and smiled at them wistfully. ‘I suppose your grandmother’s been telling you that I’m good in The Three Sisters. I’m not. I am not disastrous but I’m not good. I’ve been away from the theatre for too long. Perhaps I could have been good once though. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter too much because life is kindly arranged for us. As we get older we don’t distinguish very greatly between what could have been and what is.’
Adam’s long neck went red. Lucilla stood quite motionless in her black patent leather suit, like an unwound robot. As soon as Rupert finished, she kissed him on the cheek. He got up and held out his hand to Adam, whom Lucilla had to nudge.
‘Go on,’ she said, ‘You’re meant to shake hands.’
*
They’d arrived looking like the remains of a cat’s dinner, but with a bath and a change they seemed quite presentable, though like all these young people, completely weird. She couldn’t tell what The Lot were thinking of them, because as a rule one of the topics along with Traitor
Wilson and the terrible trippers and the filth on the stage and the rotten way the Portuguese would tax foreign cars, and how Portuguese maids, though willing enough, were so dumb, was the Young of Today and how ghastly they were. But these weren’t really Beatniks – they hadn’t any beards or guitars and, so far as she could tell, they didn’t take drugs, though what drugs looked like she didn’t know, although at least three who had been inside with her were there for peddling cocaine. There had been two tricky moments: one, when old Roddy Buckell had started snickering over his handlebars at what the pretty red-haired girl’s (she seemed to be Lucilla, who’d written, but it was so confusing) very mini skirt revealed, and the tall, pansied-up boy (who surely must be Sukey’s eldest boy’s kid) had got a bit shirty. The second, when the other girl, who wore an arty skirt, suddenly began to sing – in Basque and then in Breton, it seemed, though God knew why. The Lot had just gone on shouting and helping themselves to drink. The other three kids had remained quite silent like in church except for producing a sort of humming chorus but they didn’t seem to care that no one listened. Actually that wasn’t quite true, for luckily Fay Kingston had been there who fancied herself as a highbrow. She’d clapped when the girl finished and said that she had a lovely little natural voice that would repay training.
But now it was getting on for midnight, the kids looked dead beat and The Lot were getting out of hand. Old Roddy had got Sue Barnwell against the dining-room door and Gawd knew what his hands were doing; Marian was likely to be sick as usual by the look of her; and that Polish major chap had put his hand up Fay’s skirt (no less). The tall boy and the pretty girl had disappeared, but the arty girl and the boy with the gig lamps that they called Humpy (she hadn’t known where to look when they’d said it, for he’d actually got a slight hump) were staring as though The Lot were animals behind bars. It was pretty sickening, for Sue was the youngest and she wouldn’t see forty again. She didn’t know whether to be more annoyed by the elders’ exhibition before youth or by youth’s supercilious gaze. Anyway it was time to put an end to the fun.