Late Call

by Angus Wilson

  “Now, Arthur, you know you’ll be happy at Harold’s. You like the local there. And the buses are easy. Harold wrote that some Mr. Cranston wants you to make up a four at bridge. They’re only afraid they don’t play a good enough game for you.”

  “How do these blighters guess these things? They’re bloody right every time.” But he was pleased. A few moments later: “Now if we’d had Len to go to,” but before he had finished his sentence, he was asleep and snoring.

  Len to go to! He knew as well as she did that Len would never have had a home of his own. Anyway, before Len had been killed, he and his dad had fought every time they met. And then, after the telegram came, for months Arthur had carried on about it in public—”my youngest’s given his life for his country. ‘If what Winnie says on the radio’s right, Dad, I’ve got to go,’ he said. And he went”—until she had burned with shame. First of all, Len would never have listened to Churchill; Bing Time more likely. Then he hadn’t gone, they’d come for him; and then, again, he’d been killed when he wanted to live, and surely that was enough without using him for a show. “If we’d had Len to go to . . .” You couldn’t be cosy with Arthur without his building it up into something false; he just hadn’t got the truth in him, as the Bible said.

  Stale rows leading nowhere; intimacy that did not signify. Yet in novels you read of family feuds that went deep enough to kill young love for ever, and that the brush of a hand roused tenderness enough to mend the fiercest quarrel. But books and life were not the same; there was no sense in expecting such a thing.

  Arthur wore his greenish gabardine raincoat over his sandy-coloured tweed jacket, his grey flannel trousers were always hitched so high, revealing his suspenders above his thick grey woollen socks. One thing he still did with patient care was to polish his light-brown leather brogues. He carried his ashplant and his old reddish sandy tweed cap. Sylvia was happy with her beige nylons and her black suede shoes. She was wearing her new dress and jacket of mulberry bouclé rayon with a bow at the neck and a black patent leather belt; her big black patent leather bag wouldn’t stay shut; her hat was a darker, wine-red ruched ribbon. Did the dress clash with the hat? She had never been sure since she had bought them. But they were both nice warm colours. Her beaver lamb coat was old now, but still serviceable.

  She had woken to her usual overcrowded day of chores, and she had known a full five minutes of confusion as the day gradually changed into a whole diary of blank pages—her new life. This shifting, swirling prospect had left her quite fuddled, otherwise she would have taken better precautions to keep Arthur from talking to strangers on the train. It was indeed folly, her own, she realised even as she did it, to distract him from the sporting pages of the newspaper she had bought for him, by suggesting a move to the restaurant car.

  First, of course, he would be bound to chaff the waiter about the food—”This chicken must have crossed the road a bloody few times.” “This must be the cheese that beat the Derby favourite by a short head in ‘31”, and so on. The waiter’s laugh, she expected, would grow more and more hollow, as Arthur’s chaffing grew louder and more condescending. But all this she was prepared for. What she hadn’t bargained for were Mr. and Mrs. Lionel G. Hoppner who sat down opposite them at the table. Mr. Hoppner looked at the menu and said, “May I make so bold as to ask what you folks advise?” And Mrs. Hoppner added, with a smile that banished any suggestions of egotism, “We don’t care too much for fried foods.” After that they were all four soon on naming terms. When Sylvia knew that they were Americans she heaved a sigh of relief. Lots of people didn’t like Americans; most of the retired people who were residents in the many hotels she had worked in were anti-American—but then the poor old things were jealous, they couldn’t afford to travel or keep young like American visitors do. No, so long as no questions of their children’s diet or fear of being cheated over tips were involved, Americans were perfect guests. Of course, sometimes, they talked too much when you were busy supervising the bed-making in the morning or doing the flowers, for example. But still nobody had to listen to them; they were quite content if you put on an interested face. And at this moment Sylvia thanked God that the Hoppners were Americans, for only Americans would feel free enough to silence Arthur. Everything indeed looked promising.

  “We’re certainly delighted with the improvement in British services. There seems to be a new spirit abroad in this country since we were here in the fall of ‘58. On that vacation Mrs. Hoppner coined a new phrase, ‘If it’s British, it’s likely to be off’. Or rather I think your cockneys say ‘awf’.”

  “Now, for pity’s sake, Lionel, don’t get going on one of your awful burlesques” she put her hand on her husband’s. “Save it for the Bob Hope Show, darling.” They smiled at each other in happy content. “No, but what Lionel says is true you know. Something has happened to Britain. Now, when we were here in ‘58, if you wanted room service you had to ...” And so they went on: each tried to out-talk the other, yet each had obviously learnt over the years how to give the other a chance. Sylvia only feared that people in the carriage might be staring at such a noisy table, but still so long as Arthur was not the centre of the attention . . . she felt free to look at what interested her—the badly-cleaned cutlery, the stained table-cloth, the slopped soup plates.

  It was Mrs. Hoppner’s meat that set Arthur talking. “That muck’s no good to you. You asked for it rare, didn’t you? Not that charred rubbish. Waiter! Waiter! The lady asked to have her beef underdone. Yes, I know she said ‘rare’, but that happens to be what Americans call ‘underdone’, and the sooner our famous British Railways get wise to the modern world a little, the sooner we British taxpayers may find ourselves out of the red.”

  Despite Mrs. Hoppner’s protests, her beef was taken away; and, indeed, to Sylvia’s surprise she seemed pleased rather than annoyed at Arthur’s fussing.

  “Why, thank you, sir, you’re very kind.”

  “It’s a pleasure, my dear lady, a pleasure.” After that he got going on slang. It was one of his favourite topics. “I’m a cockney, born within the sound of Bow Bells. Now I bet if I was to say that your trouble and strife was well worth another butcher’s hook, you’d think I was off my chump, wouldn’t you?” Mr. Hoppner said, no, he was familiar with those phrases and he translated the compliment to his wife who said,

  “Well, butcher’s hook is certainly a strange kind of compliment.”

  Encouraged, Arthur told them of “apples and pears”, “pot and pan”, “plates of meat” and so on. Sylvia’s muscles grew more tense, her smile more fixed. She dreaded, as always, that some genuine cockney might chime in who was really fluent in rhyming slang; and more absurdly that Arthur’s birth certificate would suddenly be flourished before the company—”Arthur Calvert: Date of Birth July 7th 1888. Place of Birth: Southampton.” And then she imagined Bow Bells would ring mockingly as they slunk away—like in a tele-play.

  But, of course, it didn’t matter really. Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner were smiling away, as though they’d been given a complimentary ticket to a Punch and Judy show. Some people at the table across the gangway had been brought into the audience by Arthur’s showmanship and carrying tones. Indeed Sylvia heard a man’s voice whispering loudly to the Hoppners, “You may not realise it, but you’re getting a private view of the genuine old England in our friend here.”

  Sylvia could not bear to look up to identify this patronising voice; but she told herself that if Arthur didn’t mind being treated like a performing seal, there was no reason for her to be embarrassed.

  And then suddenly of course he did mind. Whether it was Mr. Hoppner’s “Could you just give us a few moments, old timer, while we order our dessert?” or whether it was Mrs. Hoppner saying could he speak a little softer, she guessed it must be this noisy railroad, but her head . . . anyhow Sylvia could tell from the tone of Arthur’s voice that he was working towards a row. “The best thing, I may say, apart from your pretty women, that has come out of God’s ow
n country has been your slang.” He smiled down the gangway at the English passengers. Sylvia pretended to be looking for her handkerchief in her handbag. He gave the Hoppner’s a number of examples of their national slang that particularly pleased him such as, “Baby, you’re all wet”. Mr. Hoppner remarked that he had not heard some of the expressions since he was in knee pants. Mrs. Hoppner added that she guessed that they came from way before her time. Arthur again winked at the English party across the gangway and said, “Sez you.” For a moment Mrs. Hoppner froze into silence. Sylvia fixed her attention on the countryside passing outside the carriage window.

  “Look how the river’s swollen, Arthur”, and “Four weeks to Christmas and they’re lifting the beet.”

  In this Arthur saw only a fresh opening to draw the Hoppners back into the conversation.

  “My missus was country born and bred. You want to go to her if you like the up in the morning early lark. Give me the good old London pavements.” Mrs. Hoppner received the information with a cold smile and a little bow, but Mr. Hoppner, not wishing perhaps to include Sylvia in any snubbing, said,

  “I certainly would like to see more of the English countryside. Mrs. Hoppner and I usually visit at Scarborough, Yorkshire, where she has a cousin; but otherwise London about does it all for us. What part of the country are you from?”

  Sylvia told him, Suffolk, but added that she had not lived in the real country since she was a girl.

  “No,” Arthur took it up, “we’ve been too busy running the hotel industry of the country. We’re the people who’ve been putting England on the tourist map. In fact, if you’d met us on any day before today, we’d have offered you free board and lodging at the Ritz or the Savoy, whichever you preferred. And bob’s your uncle. As it is you’ll have to doss down at the Hilton. And like it! No, but seriously this is a big day for my wife. Her first day of freedom after running some of the finest seaside hotels in the country for longer than I’d like to say in front of her. And running them damned well too. I can say so, because she’s done the major part of the work all the time. I’m very good at getting in the way.”

  The Hoppners murmured their dissent. Sylvia could feel them thawing again. With luck they would all leave the table now without a row. She loosened her belt a little with her thumbs, but she did not dare to relax. If Arthur really got going he was bound to land them in some embarrassing lie or other.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve been a bit under the weather for some years, dicky lungs. The Huns had a spot of poison gas they wanted to get rid of in ‘17 and I took a basinful of it.” The Hoppners’ murmur became reverent. “The wife has got the business head. She saw the red light in time. We’ve got these Butlin people over here, you know. Holiday camps instead of hotels. Bloody awful things if you ask me. But nobody is asking me. Apparently today’s public like them. Anyhow Mrs. Calvert got out of the business just at the right time and at a very nice price.”

  Sylvia intervened, to cut him short. “I wasn’t the proprietress really. I was the manageress.” He retreated at once into sulky silence, and even the Hoppners punished her insensitivity with close attention to their apple charlottes. She should have done it more tactfully, she knew; but better a sulky Arthur than one who made a public fool of himself. He would get over it, she thought, and buried herself in a copy of the local rag she’d brought to show Harold. There it was—a short paragraph announcing their departure from Eastsea. “Mr. and Mrs. A. Culver leave Eastsea this week after fifteen years’ residence in the town. Visitors to the Palmeira Court Hotel where Mrs. Culver was for many years manageress will miss her friendly attentions. Mr. Culver was a well-known and popular figure at local sporting events. We wish them happiness and good health in their retirement.”

  She remembered that Arthur had not yet seen it and thought the reference might restore his good spirits. “Look, dear.”

  Reluctantly he put on his horn-rimmed spectacles.

  “Culver? Who the hell’s that?”

  “It’s a mistake, dear.”

  “So I should bloody well think. I’ll write them such a stinker they’ll never get up again. Culver after all these years!”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Arthur. We’re not important people.”

  “You’d sit down under any damned insults, I do really believe.” He was beginning to shout.

  “Let’s go back to the carriage, shall we, dear?” But they stayed, of course. He wanted his coffee and he wanted attention. He had crumpled the Eastsea Advertiser into a ball in his anger, so she turned to the Daily Mail. Answer to last week’s puzzle; it is probably easier to answer the question by eliminating those whom you would not save. First, sorry for her, the Captain’s wife will have to go overboard. She’s fifty-five. Her children are all grown up. She’s not particularly bright, she doesn’t even get on very well with the Captain. In fact their relations if anything rock the boat. In any case she’s had her life. Not so easy to decide with the men. And for the other women, they are all under thirty. If the ominous radio messages picked up by the Dauntless just before the explosion was correct, then those girls may be the only hope for the future survival of the human race .... No point in reading answers to puzzles you’d never seen, so she looked at the woman’s page. There were two articles; how to plan your Christmas office party, and “giving a new look to Santa”. In default of something better she was about to turn to the news pages when she heard Arthur say:

  “I’d like to tell you a story that may interest you as an American, of something that happened to me near Poperinghe in the winter of seventeen/eighteen. Or are you like most of the younger generation, bored stiff with a war that took place before the flood?”

  “Younger generation!” said Mrs. Hoppner. “This is certainly your day, Lionel.”

  “I don’t know about that, Alice, I wasn’t even in first grade when World War One ended. But yes, do go on, please. I respect and esteem the veterans of those faraway campaigns.”

  Sylvia could see that he was wanting Arthur to acknowledge his teasing smile, but she could have told him that Arthur never noticed any chaffing but his own.

  “I was acting major at the time and not acting too badly for an ex-ranker either, let me tell you. I’d just come back from Blighty leave after the spot of gas I told you about earlier. Look, here’s the certificate of disability I still have to carry around with me.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner examined the grubby paper with the attentive concentration Sylvia had seen from strangers so many hundreds of times. If only she could send the certificate to the cleaners with his suits, she thought. And “have to carry around” anyway, who said he had to? Then ashamed of herself,

  “Captain Calvert oughtn’t to spend the winters in England with the bronchitis he gets, but there, you’re a hero one minute and forgotten the next in this world.” Arthur was evidently pleased. He carefully replaced his certificate in his inside breast pocket.

  “Ah well, we can’t ask the public to have too long a memory. There’s been a whole generation of new heroes since then. Mrs. Calvert and I had the tragedy of losing our youngest in the last war.” But his little dark eyes were twinkling impatiently to get back to his story. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was living like a gentleman for once back at brigade headquarters. The colonel sent for me. La-di-da sort of chap he was, all Eton and Oxford, but I got on all right with him ‘Calvert,’ he said, ‘ you’re something of a diplomat. I want you to go over and represent the brigade at a dinner in the Yankee officers’ mess.’ Mind you, that was no compliment to the Yanks. Catch that la-di-da lot sending a low fellow like me to dine with any of their own pals. However, I wasn’t going to refuse the chance of a good blow-out, and orders is orders. So I went.”

  Sylvia became conscious of a subdued restlessness on the part of Mrs. Hoppner. She probably wanted to retire, yes, that was it. One lady can always tell that sort of thing about another. She wondered now how she could hurry Arthur on without angering him. But at least he’d re
ached the American mess. She had heard the story a hundred times, but of course he never told it in exactly the same form, which meant that she couldn’t relax and be sure that there would be no offence.

  “I shall never forget it. We had some awful thing called pumpkin pie. There was one chap turned to me and said, ‘Well, Major, I reckon, guess and calculate you never had a pumpkin pie before.’“ Arthur’s imitation of an American accent was not good, yet to Sylvia’s ear it had an embarrassingly grotesque echo of a voice she had heard only recently. Then she realised that Mr. Hoppner was as restless as his wife. But Arthur was in full flow. “ ‘I certainly never have,’ I said, ‘if you lads live on this stuff, the American Army’ll soon be gone with the wind.’“

  “Pardon me,” Mr. Hoppner interjected, “that best seller didn’t appear until around 1936.”

  Arthur ignored the correction. “He was some sort of brigadier and he didn’t like it at all. He said, ‘It’s one of the customary dishes of the United States, Major.’“ Sylvia had to laugh because Arthur sounded so like Mr. Hoppner when he had been offended; but she tried to make amends.

  “I think Mr. and Mrs.” she mumbled the name because it always worried her to say strangers’ names in a public place, unless, of course, she was in charge of things, “want to go, Arthur.”

  “I guess we ought to get our check, honey.”

  “Yes, if you will excuse us, sir.”

  But Arthur wouldn’t. “No no, laddie. You can wait a few moments to hear the) end of an old sweat’s story. Well, as I was saying this brigadier blighter or whatever he was, you can never tell with Yank officers, had got right up on his high horse. But I’ve never been a respecter of persons. I believe in the old French saying ‘Toujours la tack’. So I simply said very quietly, ‘Thank you very much for the information, sir. Now I understand why your poor blighters all march on parade as though they wanted to pump ship. It’s the effect no doubt of the pump ship pie! ‘ For not to be crude, that was what the filthy stuff looked like.”