Late Call

by Angus Wilson

  “Modernised!” Harold gave a snort.

  “Well, they concentrated on the public rooms, you know. The lounge was re-done in contemporary ten years ago. And then putting in the Lobster Pot Bar cost such a lot even though it was all fish nets and anchors. The kitchens didn’t matter so much really. The guests never see them. And we’ve never had any trouble getting Spanish and Portuguese. Before that it was Hungarians and Italians. There’s always somebody wanting to come to England to learn, isn’t there? Apart from the Irish, I mean.”

  Harold looked at her. “You’re like Rip Van Winkle, Mother .... Now, we must concentrate on the job in hand. What do you do with the autotimer? Think now, Sylvia.” He’d never used her Christian name; and although it was meant to be some kind of a joke, she felt most uncomfortable. However she must try to play up to him. Some vague, long-forgotten memory of school came back to her: it spelt “catch”. She would not be caught. She said,

  “I don’t need it at all, do I? Because we’re not going out.” She really felt pleased with herself and she smiled. She hoped the face Harold pulled was one of mock sternness.

  “Wrong.”

  “But you explained about the clock yesterday. It starts the meal and turns it off when you’re out. I remember.” She felt near to tears.

  “And I did explain another little thing to you: this pinger timer that warns you when the meal is ready when you’re in.”

  “Oh, of course. I’d forgotten. The little bell. The ringer timer.”

  “Well, no, Mother. I did explain that too. Neither Beth nor I particularly cared for a loud bell in the house, so we had the telephone and the autotimer fitted with muted pingers instead of ringers.”

  “I don’t know whether I shall hear it in that case, Harold. I’m not deaf you know, but I don’t exactly hear as I used to. Not that it matters. I don’t think I should need it. I’ve got a very good sense of time.”

  Harold sighed.

  “As I explained, it’s a five hour pinger.”

  At that moment Arthur shuffled into the kitchen in his bedroom slippers. He’d established his daily wear for “The Sycamores” now—pyjama coat under a cardigan, grey flannel trousers hanging elephant-like at the seat and tied with an old pyjama cord, and bedroom slippers.

  “Bloody racing cancelled at Wincanton, but down at Kempton Diocletian won the last race by a short head,” he announced, “thirty-three to one when the betting closed. What a turn-up for the book!” He had not for many years expected Sylvia to be interested in his nightly relays of the sports results, he was not, therefore, put off by Harold’s blank expression. But once he’d made his announcement he was happy enough to hear the household news of the day.

  “How’s your Mother getting on with all this electric lark?” he asked.

  “Harold’s showing me how to use the five hour pinger timer.”

  “Pinger!” Arthur guffawed until a fit of choking brought tears to his eyes. “Pinger Ponger, the town’s dead wronger,” he said. When nobody laughed, he looked cross, “Five hours! I don’t want to wait five bloody hours for my grub, thank you.”

  “Oh, Arthur! Don’t be so silly. Of course dinner won’t take that long to cook. The clock hasn’t anything to do with five hours. That’s just its name, isn’t it, Harold?” She saw from her son’s expression that she was mistaken again.

  Harold, as though to mark his mother’s greater culpability in error, said,

  “You’re going to have a half grilled chicken to yourself, Dad.”

  Arthur took the treat lightly.

  “Good. Don’t forget the Worcester Sauce. But what I’m looking for now is a bottle of beer. It’s a bloody awful substitute for my evening pint, but if I toddle down to the local on these icy roads I’m liable to fall arse over tip.”

  Really Sylvia thought, he made it sound like a world catastrophe. Harold was quick to throw open the door of the huge refrigerator.

  “There you are, Dad. Help yourself.”

  After a good deal of muttering, Arthur selected a bottle of Whitbread’s. “Why the hell you don’t put all this stuff outside in the frost, I don’t know, Harold, if your aim is to freeze the taste out of it.”

  “Oughtn’t we to warm the plates, Harold?” Sylvia pulled out the drawer at the bottom of the cooker. She added proudly,

  “Look, Dad, all this space for plates.”

  “Very nice. Where do you keep the beer mugs, Harold?”

  But Harold was intent on instructing his mother, “Well, and what do you do now?”

  Sylvia’s pride was broken. She could not think.

  “You’ve forgotten your warm drawer switch, of course.”

  Arthur roared with laughter.

  “You musn’t do that, Sylvia. Whatever you do in this weather, keep your drawers warm. That’s very good. What do the Yanks say? Hot pants! I don’t know that I like them as a nation, but you have to give it to them every time when it comes to slang.” He had found a mug and was pouring out his beer. “Got a bloody-great head on it, this stuff, hasn’t it?” and he left the kitchen.

  Harold pressed his lips, “The old man’s a bit crude at times, isn’t he. Well, we’ve got an hour to kill before we grill the chicken. Do you feel up to a general run through the whole works?”

  It seemed to Sylvia at that moment that perhaps Harold was enjoying all this as much as she was not, despite his very reasonable impatience; but the idea was as absurd as ... as Harold in a frilled apron, and she dismissed them both from her mind as effects of the temperature of the house—it was so beautifully warm, almost stuffy—upon her too pressing blood stream.

  “Now show me how to work the washer. Look, here’s a pile of Judy’s stuff, panties and things. You can demonstrate on those. Serve my lady bountiful right for leaving them about.”

  “But I said I would wash them for her. She was going to do them when she came in, but she’s so busy studying.”

  “Oh! She’s not out with her grand friends then. The frost has saved the fox no doubt.”

  Sylvia looked out into the blackness. “They don’t hunt at night, Harold dear.” Some things she did know about.

  “Well,” said her son, crossly, “now’s your chance to wash the stuff.”

  For a moment Sylvia felt herself flushing with annoyance. He was really so absurdly inconsiderate, as bad as his father. Seven in the evening wasn’t a time for doing washing. However, she controlled herself and did as she was asked. While the clothes floated round like some crazy fish in an aquarium, Harold pointed out the special virtues of their machine. As he was speaking Mark rushed in, seized one of the many glass jars from the white shelves and took out a packet of biscuits.

  “I shan’t be in to supper, Dad.”

  “Why not?”

  “Evening school.”

  “I thought we were agreed that we’d fixed supper time to suit evening classes.”

  “Yes; well, it doesn’t.”

  “Kindly be civil, Mark. And truthful. You’re trying to fit in some meeting to save the world from devastation before you go to the Tech. That’s it, isn’t it? My dear boy, can’t you tell me? We can agree to disagree, surely.”

  Mark did not answer.

  “Do you always wash your frillies at supper time, Gran?”

  Sylvia started to laugh, but Mark’s frown was so severe that she stopped.

  “Those happen to be Judy’s that milady had left for her grandmother to do.”

  “She’s studying hard, Harold.”

  “When she’s got a few moments off from hobnobbing with the county.”

  “Oh, if that’s the sort of stink she likes, let her breathe it, Dad. Anyway what are you doing in here?”

  “Giving your grandmother a few lessons in the basic principles on which electric gadgets work.”

  “Oh, take no notice of him, Gran. Just push the knob you like and hope for the best. Don’t let him treat you to his little hobbies. We never do. The great student of social trends! Bugger the principles of
electricity. As if he understood them anyway.”

  “Not that language before your grandmother, please, old man. As I was saying, Mother, the great advantage of a smooth sided agitator is . ...”

  His words were drowned by Mark’s raucous laughter. “Smooth-sided agitator! You’ve said it! Don’t you trust him, lady. You does what you wants how you wants.”

  When Mark had gone, Harold said, “It’s been the greatest happiness to me that young Mark should have turned out such a rebel.” But Sylvia thought that he looked depressed.

  “What about a glass of sherry?”

  “Oh, not for me, dear,” she thought how dearly she would have loved her evening gin and it.

  “Well then, one to keep your instructor company. He who talks too much and too fast.”

  As they sat with their glasses, Harold said:

  “Well, there it is Mother. The safety valve that Beth in her wisdom found for all the ill-gotten gains the textbooks have brought us.”

  He waved his arm around the room with its walls of dark green (Forest Green he said it was called, but that didn’t make it less dingy—kitchens ought to be bright—cream or primrose) and its array of shining white shelves and machines.

  “Everything from the deep-freeze down to the mixer was Beth’s choice.”

  And that was the real cause of her depression, as it had been every evening. How could she listen to him when she was wondering desperately whether the moment had come, the moment she had known must come ever since she and Arthur had accepted his invitation to live there, the moment of intimacy between them when they must talk of Beth, of her long and cruel cancerous illness, of his agony, of the children’s loss.

  Every evening as Harold had held forth, her attention had been driven from his funny, kind, prosy ways to thoughts of Beth; every evening she had tried to forget her daughter-in-law’s brusquerie and hardness and remember only her courage and efficiency; but these qualities so quickly became mixed up together, good and bad going round like the panties and bras in the spin dryer, the cups and saucers in the washing-up machine. How could she talk and what could she say? But there was no need, Harold was in full spate.

  “Beth saw at once that as we’d got to spend this textbook money, the best thing was to use it to rationalise the sort of chores that don’t really enrich life. You see, Mother, neither of us was a conspicuous spender or a notable saver; nor did we want the children to be. The truth is that Beth and I are misfits in the affluent society. Or rather Beth was.” He corrected himself so casually, that, for a moment she did not realise what he had said; then, although she tried to feel for him, she could only think how Beth would have hated to be a subject for social embarrassment, especially before her mother-in-law—not that it was the sort of old joke about mothers-in-law; no, they got on all right, when the family used to come to the hotel at Christmas—but almost as strangers, related strangers. With such dead feelings about the dead how could she start their little intimate talk?

  In any case, she was given no opportunity, for Harold bumbled on in his eulogy of Beth. “Mind you, she was no slave to labour-saving devices. Beth always had taste. No mayonnaise was ever made in a mixer in this house . . . .” And, “She had an infinite capacity for patience, she never seemed tired. After a whole day on the bench, with cases that rent her heart and wore out her patience she still gave the rice six separate rinsings—there was never any starch left in Beth’s rice . . . .”

  How to speak through such a flow? How to lead him away from all these little everyday things on to the tragic loss so that he could talk it out of himself as the old folks used to say? Suddenly the black night outside, the heat, the dark green walls, the white machines, all closed in on her. The washing-up machine, the quick grill, the deep freeze, the cooker, the spin dryer, and all the other white monsters stood in line against the green wall like so many marble tombstones. It only wanted the crematorium oven. Beth’s memorials? Beth’s grave? She looked round for some escape from this enveloping whiteness but only a tiny angry red eye glared at her from the smooth white surface warning her off sacred ground that was not hers, off a dead woman’s home. She felt herself shrinking away to nothing as Harold filled the air with the blaring trumpets of praise.

  She shook herself for a moment to recover from her giddy spell. It was this central heating. Luckily Harold had not noticed. She told herself not to be morbid. As though in answer to this injunction, the door opened and Ray appeared. Ray was always a tonic. With his fair curly hair and his wonderful smile he was like Owen Nares that she used to queue for in the old days—only up-to-date, of course, more like one of the pop singers, but never grubby. And so full of fun, too; last back from work in the evenings, yet never tired, always off out somewhere.

  “Where is it tonight, Ray?” she asked. In only these few days, she already felt that she could talk to him as she could not to the others.

  “Works dance,” he made a grimace. “Dawncing with awah Directah’s wife. Come along, love, and be Twistatulle’s dancing grandmother.” He sniffed the air, “Goulash! And I’m missing it! If I’d known you were Hungarian, Gran, I’d have practised my czardas.” He did a step or two with a pretence tambourine and ribbons.

  When Sylvia had stopped laughing, she said, “/ haven’t made it. It’s your father. He’s showing me how to use all these wonderful gadgets. Only I’m so slow to learn.”

  Ray’s large eyes narrowed as he looked at his father.

  “You’ve been holding forth again, Dad. I know the look. Word drunk, that’s him. Father, dear Father, come home from the soap box. The Principells of Electricitah.”

  Sylvia looked sideways at Harold to see if he was taking it all right; but she needn’t have worried. No one could be offended with Ray. He said everything with such a smile and, even with his father, he gave him such laughing looks. You could tell what a flirt he must be with the girls.

  “Never you worry, Gran. I know all the magic words to charm the monsters. I’ll bring my wand along and teach you all the spells tomorrow night. Anyway these monsters will be out of date in a year. So that for you.” He made a rude gesture with two fingers at the cooker. “You’re dismissed,” he said to Harold. “Gran’s beginning a new course from tomorrow night and it will all be done by flair.”

  “That’s all very well for you ex-art school blokes,” Harold laughed. “You can use mumbo jumbo. The artist’s intuition! But your Grandmother’s never studied art.”

  “She doesn’t need to. She’s a picture all to herself. Aren’t you, lovey?” Ray bent down and kissed Sylvia and she didn’t even feel a bit silly. “Well, that’s settled,” he said. “Six thirty in the kitchen and the password’s spaghetti bolognese. How do I look?”

  Sylvia surveyed in turn his well-pressed dark suit, shining white shirt and short blue overcoat with fur collar and double cuffs. “You look really smart, Ray,” and then because she felt that she knew this grandson, “Lucky her!” Ray frowned slightly, then smiled again,

  “Ah! You mean awah deah Directah’s wife. ‘What’s this I hear, Calvert, you and my Monah eloping.’ ‘It’s no good, sir, I won’t take a quid less than five hundred for the job.’ ‘Thank you, my boy. Cheap at the price to get her off my hands.’“

  His imitations were so funny he had them both roaring although Harold disguised his laughter by fiddling with his moustache. He looked sternly at his son’s feet.

  “Those elastic-sided shoes look more like a children’s dancing class to me. I suppose you dandies have given up the Italian style altogether.”

  Once again Ray looked at his father with narrowed eyes, then turning to Sylvia,

  “There you are, Gran. Where else would you get a father like him? Up to all the latest styles.”

  “I liked the Italian style,” Harold announced.

  Ray patted him on the shoulder as he left them. “I know you did, Dad. Always almost with it.”

  Sylvia couldn’t quite tell what he meant.

  “He’s a go
od lad, isn’t he, Mother? Anybody else with all that charm would have been spoilt years ago. There isn’t an activity here he doesn’t take part in—sports, dancing, acting, the lot. Of course, he has a natural ease. I watch him walk into a room sometimes, and then I think what an effort it always cost his mother or me to go out to parties.”

  “Arthur’s got it,” Sylvia said.

  Harold frowned. “Yes,” he looked very solemn. “All these tools. They can only be judged by how we use them,” and he started the roto-roast turning.

  In the following days Ray took her in hand. But the fact remained that even when with Ray’s easy, jollying along tuition she had in a few days become mistress of all the electronic monsters, she still felt herself of no real use to the household. They clearly didn’t like the old-fashioned English cooking that was all she knew, and even that came back to her somewhat hazily, for it was many years since she’d cooked except in staff emergencies. She’d have to learn from them to do what they could do better. But learn she must, for she’d always believed, always would, that the men of the family, the breadwinners must have things just as they like them. That was the only reason that she saw to it that Arthur sometimes had the things he fancied so that he could forget now and again that he’d not been the real wage earner for so many years.

  It was just such an attempt to keep up Arthur’s morale that led to all the trouble over the central heating.

  She had been reading Leslie Gericault’s new novel all the afternoon; but somehow she hadn’t liked it as much as most of hers. It was about Miss Clitheroe, the old spinster in the village, who appeared so simple, but was really so wise, and solved all the villagers’ problems for them. She liked the Miss Clitheroe books as a rule because the old girl said such funny things in an old-fashioned way. But this one was different, not so good as the others. In it Miss Clitheroe had a sort of heart attack and, although of course in the end Doctor Manly, the old village G.P., said that there was no real reason to worry, he did add that we must all remember that we are none of us getting any younger. Sylvia had found it hard to finish the book. The piece about it on the cover said, “In Miss Clitheroe’s New Neighbours, Leslie Gericault gives a further dimension to life in Pensworth-cum-Astbury. To her wonderful true life vignettes of everyday village comedy she has added a new note—a note of gentle gravity.” Sylvia wished she had not.