Late Call

by Angus Wilson

  Of all the hundred embarrassments the joke caused Sylvia, the uppermost was the thought that Arthur was getting senile, else he would never have made a feeble joke like that, even a year ago. Her second anxiety was lest Mrs. Hoppner might feel that the joke made any reference to her present condition. But mercifully Mrs. Hoppner, though still restless, looked quite blank; not so her husband, whose sallow cheeks had flushed with the pink of annoyance or embarrassment or probably of both. He clearly understood English slang a good deal better than his wife.

  “Oh, Arthur, really.” But he did not hear.

  “I will say that for your chaps, they all roared with laughter. They’ve got a great sense of humour, the Yanks. Second best to the English. But this brigadier bloke, of course, didn’t like being laughed at by his own mob. So he turned on me sharp, ‘To what do you attribute your famous guards’ parade order then, Major?’, he asked, ‘plum pudding?’ Well, if there was to be any leg-pulling, I was going to be the one to do it. ‘No,’ I said, ‘the British army marches on their spotted dick.’ Of course they’d never heard of spotted dick so the joke fell flat. But to show there was no ill feeling I promised to send them one.”

  “It’s a sort of light suet pudding with raisins,” Sylvia explained. If he had to tell the story at least it should be understood.

  “Oh, really?” Mrs. Hoppner looked so unhappy Sylvia nearly said, “You’re excused.” Arthur was impatient.

  “Yes, yes, yes, we don’t want to listen to pages of old Mother Beeton’s Cook Book. As soon as I got back to Brigade Headquarters 1 wired to my old aunt—Mrs. Calvert and I hadn’t then entered the holy state—and told her to send me one of her best spotted dicks. Of course parcels took a bit of time to travel then. We were fighting a war, you know. Anyway as soon as the thing arrived, I bunged it off to this brigadier at the American Headquarters—’With Major Cal vert’s compliments.’ Didn’t hear anything for weeks. Then one day the colonel sent for me. ‘What’s this?’ he said, ‘Will you thank Major Calvert for the spotted dick? I guess we understand very well now how the British Army comes to march on its stomach. Another spotted dick or two and we’ll be hard bellied enough to do the same.’ The damned thing had been travelling for weeks of course and then they’d eaten it cold. Anyway the long and short of it was, I wasn’t sent on any more diplomatic missions. Which goes to show that only a bloody fool thinks he can pull the leg of an American.”

  Mr. Hoppner burst into roars of laughter, “Well, you certainly can tell a story against yourself, old timer,” he said. And Mrs. Hoppner, who perhaps hadn’t followed very well, said,

  “Oh, spotted dick! Oh lord! Isn’t that the British for you!”

  Even Sylvia, who had heard the story so often, could see the charm of the twinkle in Arthur’s eye as he sat back. Then Mr. Hoppner was impelled to order two brandies for the men and a crème de menthe and a crème de cacao for the ladies. In fact it was Arthur who insisted on paying for them.

  “No no, we’re hosts here. The missus and I’ll drink you out of house and bourbon or whatever the bloody stuff’s called when we come your way.”

  When the drinks arrived Mrs. Hoppner said, “Excuse me, please,” and slipped away and didn’t return to drink her crème de cacao. Sylvia dared not swallow its creamy richness on top of the sugary heaviness of her own crème de menthe. She felt quite depressed at an expense they could ill afford wasted on people that they would never see again. When Arthur and Mr. Hoppner reached the exchange of addresses stage, she could not bring herself to join in. She fell into silence.

  Arthur said, “We’re off to live with my son in Carshall, one of these New Towns. You ought to see it. I don’t know what I think, myself, but it’s one of England’s showpieces. My son’s a big pot in the school world; writes all these how-to-do-it books. He’d be honoured to entertain you and your missus.”

  Back in their carriage, Arthur was quite short with her. “A fine advertisement you are for Anglo-American friendship.” However, the encounter had put him in very good spirits. He was full of it when the family met them at Carshall old town station in Harold’s new Zephyr. He couldn’t listen to any of the family news, despite all Sylvia’s hints. “Charming people with pots of money. He’s one of these American tycoons. I made them laugh a bit. It’s all a question of give and take.” In the end Harold said a little crossly,

  “They sound fascinating people.” However he was clearly struck with Arthur’s eupeptic mood. “The old man seems on top of the world, Mother,” he said when they were alone together, “I’m glad for your sake.”

  “Oh, he’s impossible, quite impossible,” Sylvia immediately regretted saying it. She was determined not to let her troubles with Arthur impinge on Harold’s life; and then again Harold received her answer with a frown that seemed almost as much directed at her as at her information.

  “Well, we won’t let you upset yourself here. You can relax here, Mother. Although, of course, we shall make use of you. You can’t give up a lifetime of being made use of all in a day!” And he laughed to show that he was teasing her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Trees Without Leaves

  IF SHE could judge from her first morning at “The Sycamores”, Sylvia felt that she would never be made use of again.

  She woke to a gentle tap on her door. The bright yellow of the room bewildered her. Then she saw the typewritten notice signed by Beth, it read, ‘To all bed-makers. Remember that you have to lie on it.’ Now she recalled Harold’s remarks the previous night, “I only hope Beth’s choice of mustard with white isn’t going to prove too much for you, Mother. It wasn’t altogether intended to be lived with for life.” Arthur had looked round the room quizzically, taking in the hard yellow curtains and carpet.

  “Rather hot stuff, isn’t it?”

  “My dear Dad, if there’s anything you don’t like, it goes out. It’s your room. Though as far as I can remember you were never very choosy about how Mother’s rooms were furnished.”

  “Oh, Dad’ll be all right with the yellow. He isn’t going to have any hangovers here, anyway.”

  “How do you know what I am going to have or what I’m not going to have?” Arthur had fallen in with her teasing note, but Harold had still seemed not quite happy.

  “I’ve left the minimum of furniture in here so that you can have plenty of space for your own stuff when it arrives.”

  Looking at the little black tubular chairs with yellow seats, she had wondered if that was what he’d meant by minimum. She’d hardly dare to try her weight on them. “It’s very nice, dear. I don’t know how we shall live up to it. Do you, Dad?”

  “Oh, we’ll live up to it all right. Your Mother’s as pleased as punch with it really, Harold. And so am I.”

  Harold had gone away happy. After he’d gone, Arthur had grumbled for the whole half hour it took him to get to bed. “Like a bloody tart’s room.”

  Now he was snoring happily. Before she answered the knocking, she got out of bed and shook him. His snoring embarrassed her so in front of people. “Wake up, Arthur, it’s after nine.” Then, “Come in,” she called.

  “What the bloody hell . . .” Arthur was beginning, when Judy came in with a breakfast tray. What a pretty neat little girl she was, Sylvia thought. Arthur said, “Ah! How’s my pretty little granddaughter this morning?”

  “Breakfast in bed!”

  “Well it’s a Sunday, Gran. And anyway Dad thought you would be tired after the journey.” She arranged the special little clip on the bed tables. “Three-minute eggs. I hope that’s right.”

  “Just right, Judy. But I ought to have been downstairs getting breakfast for all of you. After all, you’re working the whole week.”

  “Yes, you don’t want to spoil your grandmother, you know. I never have.” Judy didn’t smile. Harold said she was studying hard in order to go to University. Sylvia only hoped she wasn’t overworking; her little, finely-shaped face was very pale.

  “I’m sorry about this awful jelly
marmalade. But that’s Mark’s terrible taste. When I do breakfast you’ll get proper Oxford marmalade.” She was very much the little lady, Sylvia thought, even at seventeen; whatever she said, just about marmalade and that, she made it sound quite grand. “Bon appétit,” Judy said and went out of the room, but not before Arthur had farted loudly.

  Sylvia decided to say nothing. She didn’t want to nag Arthur, and then, even if she did tell him off, as likely as not he’d only do it the more. She concentrated on her breakfast; everything was so neat and dainty—a special litde pink china tea set for her and Arthur’s a blue one, the toast was wrapped in a paper doyley, and the eggs had little covers of pink and blue suede. Arthur couldn’t get his off, it was fitted so tightly to the egg cup.

  “Buggering nonsense!” And then when she’d got out of bed and taken the egg cover off for him, “I’ve never seen such bloody fiddle faddle.” His egg proved to be very lightly boiled; the yolk ran down the sides of the egg cup. “I can’t eat this dribbling muck.”

  But when later they were downstairs, it was, “Very nice breakfast, Harold.”

  “Oh, it was Mark’s doing. First Sunday in the month you know.” They didn’t know, but Sylvia said,

  “Oh, Mark, you shouldn’t have. A young man cooking for me.” Mark only scowled at her from beneath his fringe—the boy was so odd he quite scared her.

  “Yes, you ought to have seen your grandmother, sitting up in bed all la-di-da like a Holywood film star.”

  Harold had seemed rather impatient; now his face brightened. “I’m afraid your social examples are a bit out of date, Dad. There’s rather a good article here on the decline of the Holywood star.” He picked up The Observer and read a long article to them. While he was reading, the three grandchildren got up and left the sitting-room. Before he’d finished Arthur had picked up The Sunday Express and was reading the sports news. Sylvia, left alone as the audience tried very hard to concentrate on what Harold read. But two things worried her: the clock said after half past ten—surely she ought to be getting on with something; and then she really didn’t know anything about what Harold was reading —she only went to the cinema once in a blue moon nowadays; all the names had changed, supposing he asked her a question. But he didn’t. When he had finished reading the article, he said, “This only confirms what I’ve been saying for some time. More vulgarised popular taste, increasingly remote minority culture. The polarisation of the two cultures, in fact.”

  Mark had returned and was oiling a hinge on a side table, “The two cultures doesn’t mean that at all, Dad. It means science and the arts.”

  “I’m perfectly well aware of that. Words are for use, not for labelling as museum specimens. Anyway, don’t bring oil cans into the sitting room.”

  Mark flushed red, but went on with his task, muttering “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.”

  “As so often happens,” Harold said, “the little microcosm of our world down here reflects very accurately the country at large. We have no cinema at Carshall. If you and Dad want westerns or horror films, you’ll have to go to Carshall old town, I believe. On the other hand, the Film Society flourishes. They show the classics that we all knew before the war—Earth, Potemkin, Mother, and that sort of thing, Mother ....”

  “Mother, Mother,” Mark mumbled.

  “And the post-war stuff—Italian, Swedish, Japanese.”

  “Japanese? I shouldn’t know what to make of that, I’m sure, Harold.”

  “Well, come along some time and give it a trial. The Seven Samurai, wonderful blood-curdling Lyceum melodrama stuff. You’d love it, Dad.”

  “No thanks, old boy. The tele’s good enough for me.” Arthur was but half listening.

  “Oh, Dad,” Sylvia said, “ you used to be such a picture goer. Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette Macdonald.”

  “I go a good deal to the Film Society,” Harold announced.

  “Remote minority culture,” Mark murmured.

  Harold laughed. “You take your beastly oil can out of the sitting room.”

  Mark laughed back. “Why should I?”

  His father’s mood changed. “Because your mother wouldn’t have permitted it.” Mark blushed scarlet, snatched up the oil can and walked out of the room, slamming the door.

  “Well, there it is,” Harold put down The Observer, “all these chaps with the right names have strings to pull, but they have very little to say that I couldn’t have said better for them. Or many others like me, of course.”

  Sylvia, still troubled by Mark’s violent departure waited a few minutes, then she said, “Well, I musn’t sit here idling, Harold. If you and Judy can just show me what needs doing, I can get on.”

  “There’s nothing for you to do, Mother. Judy’s cook today.” Before Sylvia could protest, Judy herself came into the room.

  “Will you all prepare to eat at half-past one?”

  Harold stroked his toothbrush moustache with his index finger and looked at his daughter quizzically. “I was just telling your grandmother that you were cook today. You couldn’t have dressed more appropriately to impress her with your capacities.”

  Judy was now wearing a hacking coat and riding breeches.

  “Caroline Ogilvie is going to let me take Punch out after lunch.”

  ’’Caroline Ogilvie, whoever she may be, no doubt lunches. We low common people have dinner. Don’t we, Mother?” For a moment Sylvia could not understand what he meant—all her life of hotel managing she had eaten lunch—so she smiled.

  Harold got up from his armchair.

  “I said last night I would initiate you into the mysteries of the household, but I’m wondering, in view of the weather reports, whether we shouldn’t go out and have a look at the Calvert Estate instead,” he smiled at the absurdity of the phrase. “If the weathermen are right—and at last they seem to have some scientific accuracy—we’re in for a deep freeze from tomorrow which may well keep you indoors for a while, Mother.”

  “I’m not an invalid, dear.”

  “No, but we’re going to treat you like one for a bit. But this morning we could take a chance. It’s quite warm once you get out of the wind.”

  “Oh dear. Have I got as old as that? That’s just the phrase I always used to say to all the old residents.”

  Harold ignored the remark. “Tell the boys they’re wanted to show their grandmother the family demesne, Judy.” Once again he laughed, then turning to his father. “Are you coming, Dad?” Arthur, buried in Huddersfield v. Arsenal, was impervious to Harold’s voice, so Sylvia touched his shoulder,

  “Harold wants to show us the garden, Arthur.” She gave him a look to urge acceptance.

  “Oh, all right. I don’t mind a toddle round the family estate.”

  The joke didn’t seem to make Harold laugh when Dad made it.

  When, all wrapped up, they assembled on the front lawn, Harold pointed out the main features of the architecture. “Ashlar blocks, you see, give it strength. And the white weather boarding preserves the local character. I’m all for picture windows, aren’t you, Mother?” Sylvia didn’t really know what to say about it— parts looked quite pretty and old-fashioned like a farmhouse, and other parts looked quite light and airy and modern.

  “It’s very unique, isn’t it, Harold?”

  “It’s a ranch-type house,” he said.

  “There you are, Sylvia, you’ll be expected to round up a couple of steers before breakfast. Your grandmother’s a bit heavy for rodeo.” You could see the boys found Arthur’s chaffing to their taste, for they both laughed, but when they saw that she wasn’t smiling, they stopped. Sylvia quickly laughed to put them at their ease. They must have thought she was hurt by Arthur’s leg-pulling, how could she explain that it was years since she’d listened to him? And anyhow she was busy thinking of what she was meant to say. It was easy enough for Arthur, he was already established as the old clown, but she was supposed to make comments. Luckily Harold was too busy talking to expect more than the fewest words.r />
  “Yes, ranches for the Carshall tycoons. They were built to try to persuade our industrial executives to stay in the community. But, of course, they prefer to buy up the local rectories and manor houses. However, there’s enough of us to fill them. Being rather small fry compared to the millionaires of Texas and Arizona, we actually live all the year round in ours. And there’s a slight difference in acreage,” Harold pointed mockingly round the small garden, “a matter of a few tens of thousands of acres difference. But be that as it may, we are the local tycoons, As tycoonish, I’m glad to say, as Carshall New Town intends to accommodate. Among them your ever-loving son, the textbook tycoon.”

  “Can we place your order for genuine feelthy books, Modom? Sex in the schoolroom, that’s one of our most successful tides. Or the Head and his Harem.”

  “Calvert’s corrupters. Guaranteed a dirty word on every page-”

  Harold appeared to take his sons’ teasing very well. Indeed it looked as though he was more annoyed than pleased when Judy sprang to his defence.

  “I suppose you think you’re the mostest being clever about Daddy’s books. Well, at least school-teaching is an educated profession.”

  “Thank you, Judy, for that testimony of status. But I think I’ll belong to the modern world of electronic engineers and fabric designers rather than pretend to gentility with family solicitors and private school headmasters.”

  Judy snapped back at her father, “Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that being a secondary school-master was a real profession. Anyway, talk of pretension! What about describing Ray as a fabrics designer? He’s in the rag trade.” She began to dance round the garden calling out, “Ray’s in the rag trade! Ray’s in the rag trade!” Sylvia was glad to see that she could be such a nice, unaffected schoolgirl. She’d be so pretty with her shoulder-length blonde hair and slim figure if it weren’t for her mouth, such an unhappy, missish mouth, like Beth’s, if it were not too mother-in-lawish to think it. Now her brothers were chasing her, more like kids than twenty-year-olds. Such an odd contrast, Ray so good-looking and Mark such a freak. No doubt at all Beth’s strictness when they were small had not made the children one jot less lively, quite the opposite it seemed. It just showed one should not judge what one didn’t understand. Clever people like Beth and Harold knew better.