Late Call

by Angus Wilson

  After Sylvia had told her how good she thought the set tea was, she couldn’t resist asking if they were always as quiet as this at that time of the year.

  “We don’t do a big tea trade in the winter. It’s not the tourist season. Although you’d be surprised how many casual visitors we do get for the night. I mean apart from regular business representatives.”

  They discussed the difficulties of providing for casual visitors. The manageress was amazed at someone understanding the position so well, so that Sylvia had to tell her how she herself was in the trade, or had been up to a couple of months ago. The manageress—Mrs. Thwaites her name was, her husband had been killed in the Battle of Britain—wasn’t sure how far she would care for seaside work, with all those children in summer, and only the regular old residents in the winter. Sylvia had to say that she never had any difficulty; she loved young people about the hotel, the noisier the better. The old residents, it was true, could be a bit more difficult, but you had to remember that the poor old things were often very lonely. Mrs. Thwaites then complained about the servants you got today; she didn’t think foreigners really ever understood how we did things in England. But Sylvia didn’t agree at all; she’d found them very quick to learn and real hard workers, which—perhaps she was old-fashioned—was what she admired. Mrs. Thwaites yawned, “Well, speed on the day of robots, I say.” There was a short silence, but Sylvia didn’t want to let the conversation lapse. “Do you do much catering for weddings and big parties?”

  The manageress must have heard some noise in the hall.

  “Excuse me a moment.”

  It was a quarter of an hour or so before she came back.

  “The reception always need supervision, but I needn’t tell you that. You were saying?”

  Sylvia repeated her question. “Oh yes, we do most of the parties for the directors and senior executives in the New Town. There’s nowhere of the right kind in that terrible place, of course.”

  So Sylvia decided not to tell her that she was living at Harold’s, and then even she could hear voices in the hall. “Don’t let me keep you, I know what a nuisance gossiping visitors can be.”

  Mrs. Thwaites smiled. “How rare to meet a customer who understands.”

  Sylvia told her what a treat it had been to talk to someone in the trade. She had stayed so late that the shops in the New Town were closed and she had to return without Mark’s ravioli.

  At supper Harold frowned at his spaghetti bolognese. “I thought you were giving us ravioli, Mark.”

  “It’s the same sugo.”

  “Yes, but not the same pasta. I’d looked forward to ravioli. I don’t know what the rest of the company think, but I suggest we pass a vote of censure on the cook for a culpable, misleading menu.”

  It was not for Sylvia to comment on this vote, for she and Arthur were eating liver and bacon, but she did feel it necessary to explain that it was her fault and why.

  Harold was amazed. “Old Carshall! Apart from occasionally using the station, I don’t believe I’ve been there for six years. Some idiot at the County Council wanted me to give a lunch last year at the Crown for a visiting group of educationists from Yugoslavia. I refused to lend myself to that sort of vulgar deception. If our school meals are good enough for the boys and the staff, they’re good enough for visiting V.I.P.s. I was amused in fact to find that the British Council chap who came down with them thoroughly agreed with me.” He was smiling now, but as he forked up another twist of spaghetti. “Old Carshall! What on earth did you find to do there? Really, Mother, if you’re going on country jaunts, I think we must hand the shopping back to the boys.”

  “Why is spaghetti ever so much nicer than ravioli?” Judy asked.

  “All that has nothing to do with it. The fact is that if your Gran . . .”

  But Harold was called away by the telephone’s ring. As head of the house, he liked to answer the telephone. Ten minutes passed before he returned. Red in the face, he pushed his plate of now cold spaghetti away from him.

  “That telephone call concerned you, Judy.”

  Sylvia wondered if the girl had been expelled from school or something, he spoke so grimly.

  “Your headmistress apparently feels that your chances of a distinguished career are put in grievous peril by your proposed appearance as Helena in your father’s production of Look Back in Anger.”

  “Oh, Daddy! How absolutely mad! She really is! I mean . . . Lots of people think she’s going right round the bend. Apparently ever so many of her family were completely crazy. And they say ...”

  “Who says all this, Judy?”

  “Well, I mean, Mrs. Ogilvie, Caroline’s mother, says that she’s the most unsuitable headmistress.”

  “Then Mrs. Ogilvie, Caroline’s mother, ought to be ashamed of herself. There are many things over which I cross swords with Miss Castle, but we heads of schools have quite enough difficulties without uninformed parents wilfully undermining our authority. Miss Castle had a quite remarkable university record.”

  “Oh, I know she’s brilliant at biology and botany and all the rest of it. But as a headmistress! Well, I mean to begin with she has absolutely no social manner. You should have seen her when Lady Anthea Warren came to give the prizes. ‘Girls’—you know how she speaks with her teeth out for an airing—’Lady Warren has come here . . .’ Lady Warren! Wasn’t it awful?”

  “I don’t know quite what issue of Tatler etiquette you’re trying to teach us, Judy, but in any case it has nothing to do with the point. Miss Castle believes that rehearsals for the play are not advisable in your A level year. That must be enough. It’s inconvenient, but it’s not irreparable. Luckily we’ve only had the read through and one rehearsal.”

  “But, Daddy! You said you wanted me in it. You said I was the only person round here who could play Helena.”

  “I said that there were certain affinities between the egregiously priggish Helena and yourself that made for type casting. But this sort of thing can’t possibly interfere with your A levels.”

  “But I don’t want to go to a university anyway. And you don’t want me to go. Just because I happen to be good at languages.”

  “That’s not true, Judy. I have my views about the present dilution of the universities and I have a right to them, I suppose. Also, looking at some of my brighter pupils and thinking how much more they would benefit from a university education than the stuffed geese of the grammar schools, I have my doubts about the infallibility of the examination system. All that doesn’t mean that I should for one minute stand in the way of my daughter’s getting to the university, if her headmistress believes she’s the right material.”

  “But Mummy didn’t want me to go.”

  Harold banged on the table so that the spoons and forks jumped.

  “You will kindly never say that again, Judy. Whatever she may have thought, your mother was the most generous-minded woman living.”

  Judy burst into tears.

  “Don’t worry, Judykins. You’ll be the belle of the ball wherever you go.”

  Judy didn’t even look up at him. Since the bathroom incident, she had avoided her grandfather. He got up from his chair, “Well, if we’re to get three rubbers in tonight, I must be toddling. Excuse me, Harold, old lad.”

  Harold grunted at his father’s departure. “I’m sorry, Judy, if you’re disappointed. Of course I should have liked you in the play. But such disappointments are a part of life, you know.”

  Judy sat red-faced and tense.

  Sylvia asked: “What’s the play about, Harold dear?”

  Harold laughed. “To be honest it’s strictly not for the mums. It concerns one Jimmie Porter, the most likeable unlikeable youngster whoever wanted to set the world to rights if he knew how. The part’s a natural one for our Mark.”

  Mark looked down into his suede jacket and said, “Who isn’t, by the way, going to be able to play it after all.”

  Harold stood up. “Did I really hear what I thought
I heard?”

  “I’m afraid so, Dad.”

  Harold sat for a few seconds in silence, save for shaking his head in refusal of either fruit or cheese that Ray offered him. Sylvia noticed that his hands were trembling.

  “Oh, I shall be so sorry not to see you, Mark dear, on the boards.”

  Mark had taken an apple and he filled his mouth with carefully peeled quarters each time he spoke. Sylvia had to strain to understand him.

  “Well, you won’t, I’m afraid, Gran. You’ll probably have old Ray here instead.”

  “Oh no, she won’t! I’ve never looked back and what’s more I’m never angry. Besides, there’s a lot of smooching with our Priscilla. And that can’t. . .”

  Harold interrupted in a loud voice, clipping each word with restrained fury. “May I enquire your reasons for evading your commitment?”

  Mark continued to talk to his brother. “Oh, most of the time Jimmie Porter beats her up. And then Terry Knowles is playing the friend Cliff. He’s almost as important as the wife. You ought to do it, really, Ray. You’d have fun.”

  Sylvia could tell how anxious he was to persuade Ray; she’d never seen his usual scowl turn to such a lively grin.

  All the plates and spoons and forks jumped for a second time as Harold brought his fist down heavily upon the table.

  “I want an answer, Mark.” Then he gave an answer himself. “I’m not unreasonable, you know. If it’s the evening classes, well, of course, I must accept it. But I thought we’d fixed all that when we scheduled the rehearsals. . . .”

  “It isn’t the evening classes. Anyway, if I’m a natural for Jimmie Porter, I’m not going to be cast for Room at the Top as well, you know. No, the local committee’s chosen me to go to this unity discussion with the 100 people. The dates clash.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mark! I’ve never been against you following lost causes, but you’ve said yourself again and again that you C.N.D. people and the 100 group can never agree.”

  “Yes. I still doubt it, but I’m afraid you believe only in unlost lost causes, Dad, just as you believe in likeable unlikeable youngsters. That was your phrase, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, this is too easy, boyo.” Ray appealed to Mark.

  “Mark isn’t in it and it’s the end of the world. But anybody can play Helena, I suppose.” Judy ran out of the room.

  “If you work that girl up much more, Dad, she’ll die of starvation. She takes most of her meals at the run now.”

  Harold ignored Ray. “I’m waiting to know your serious reasons for letting me down, Mark.”

  “Such disappointments are a part of life. Isn’t that it, Dad?” He swallowed his last piece of apple and was gone.

  Sylvia didn’t know after supper whether to stay with Harold or go up to her room, but, as everyone had left him, she decided to remain downstairs. She would have liked the tele-play—”something just plain funny, and a bit saucy into the bargain for those who want to get the taste of the kitchen sink out of their mouths” the TV Times said about it. But Harold didn’t look in the mood for anything funny, let alone saucy. She had no library book, so she looked on Harold’s shelves. They were mostly educational books, and that, but she found a volume of murder trials which would do to pass the time away, although she wasn’t a great detective story fan.

  “You won’t like that, Mother.” But when she began to replace the book, “Oh, read what you like, please.”

  The trial part was difficult to read—all those questions and answers. But then she got absorbed in it; Sydney Fox it was. The way he and that old mother of his went from hotel to hotel, running up bills and then doing a moonlight flit. Of course, she’d come across cases like it once or twice. But nothing as bad as this. She felt quite angry that the proprietors and manageresses didn’t catch up with them—a couple of rogues. And then suddenly the story took on a terrifying intensity. The stout old mother with her white hair and rosy cheeks and her fur coat, and the son so softly spoken, so adoring. You could see what was going to happen as the net closed in on him—the one cornered rat turning on the other. She read of the insuring of the old woman’s life and she became so afraid for her that she had to put the book by. In Bournemouth it was—she remembered the hotel quite well, more a boarding house really. Harold was busy writing on the backs of old envelopes; he seemed absorbed and more relaxed. And then the paraffined paper burning the bedroom; the old woman’s heavy body, only her underclothes on, no night clothes, just the one dress and the fur coat all she had in the world, and the sheets she lay in all pee-ed on. At the very end of his tether, what could the loving son do but sell the old woman for the best money he could get for her? The question she had conjured up from the book presented itself so unexpectedly, so directly to Sylvia that she shivered, Ht a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Harold looked up.

  “Well! I’ve recast it. Ray to replace Mark, June Mackie to do Helena. It’s not typecasting this time, but so much more room for an interpretative production. I was being lazy.” He laid down his notes. “Do you know, Mother, I often think of something old Len used to say. ‘Harold needs a bit of a setback to make him show what he can do.’ Old Len understood us far better than we realised.”

  Sylvia couldn’t remember Len’s saying it, but she answered, “Yes, he did, dear.” She could not help thinking how convenient dead Len was to Arthur and Harold.

  The school hall was very large, yet the first night audience filled it, although the small metal chairs had been packed together as tightly as possible. Sylvia felt herself overflowing at both sides on to Judy and to Muriel Bartley. Arms and thighs were pressed as closely as in the rush hour London Tube.

  “Harold’s got his audience all right.” To Sylvia’s discomfort Muriel’s voice attracted as much public attention as her make-up. “It’s disgraceful that he wasn’t allowed the Community Centre. I gave them a good dressing down at the Corporation Offices. But half the trouble’s been the C.A.D.S. themselves. They’ve never given him real backing. Not enough fat parts it seems.”

  People were chattering all around them. Sylvia only hoped they wouldn’t whisper during the play—it was such an important occasion for Harold, and, of course for Ray, too, but he’d take everything in his stride, as he had taken on this part at such short notice. These local things were always more social occasions for the audience. Judy and Muriel Bartley kept on drawing her attention to people whom she’d never seen before. It seemed rude to turn and stare at strangers, indeed she could hardly do so at all, without swaying three or four people along from her in the row, so crushed were they all; yet she hesitated to remove her fur coat which enveloped both her neighbours, for the hall, so packed to immobility, was yet vibrant with mysterious draughts from its many exit doors and long metal windows. Whenever she did look round it seemed to her that people were whispering and pointing her out; and so, no doubt, they were, for Harold was a big local man, this was his big day, and she was his mother, seen in public for the first time. Such a sense of being watched from behind did not make it easier to sit in the second row and give the full attention she was sure this play would need. But once the lights were down ... If only nobody asked her what she thought of it all afterwards; but she would be too busy seeing that the little party went well, and this time it really was all her own, for everyone had been too busy to give her a hand.

  “So our Harold’s pulled it off. Chris and I are delighted.” And as if to echo his wife’s declaration, Chris Milton burst into a general coverage of laughter. “Our poor little art show drew twenty-four. But then we can’t shock them into coming can we, Chris!” She didn’t look at Sylvia, thank heaven, for they’d never had their little natter and Sylvia had hidden from her in the Arcade once or twice in Carshall. She began to worry about how much she had offended Lorna Milton, but Muriel Hartley’s loud voice kept her from thinking.

  “No, I’m afraid you’re right there, Mrs. Milton. I did wonder this time, Mr. Milton, whether you aren’t guiding them a bit too much with t
heir art work. Oh, I know you wouldn’t do it consciously, but this year’s show did lack that sort of smack in the eye that the kids’ imagination usually gives us.”

  Sylvia could tell from the little beads of moisture that had gathered on Muriel’s shiny mauve eyelids and at the corners of her cyclamen lips that she was working up for a row. She turned away from such troubles to Judy, sitting so neat and quiet in her first black evening dress. Now Judy deserved a medal if anyone did, taking her disappointment so well!

  “Isn’t that your friend Caroline, dear? She looks so pretty . . . well, not perhaps pretty, but handsome. Cherry’s certainly her colour. Is that material marocain, do you suppose? I can’t see well enough from here.”

  Judy screwed her handkerchief up into a ball. “Oh, I do think Mrs. Ogilvie or one of them might have come with her, whatever they think of the play. After all, Daddy’s doing something really important. . . .”

  On the other side Muriel Hartley’s voice had risen high—you could tell now that she was cockney. “Oh, it’s nothing to do with me! If you want to judge all that’s been done here in fifteen years from a six months’ residence . . . Anyhow, shush! Here are the big pots!” She dismissed the Mutons and turned to Sylvia. “That’s the General Manager, Colonel Rigby, and his wife. And the thin one is Jock Parsons, the P.R.O. This is a triumphant turnout for Harold all right.”

  Sylvia had only time to see a flurry of bald heads and tight corsages with carnations pinned to them before the house lights went down and the curtain with its strange design of young men with hooves playing the pipes—all drawn and painted by the boys —rose to reveal such an ugly little sloping room and Ray, wearing old jeans, was talking.

  Truth to tell she couldn’t follow it very well, although Ray and the other boy were very funny about the newspapers, and the way they larked about with each other was very natural. She couldn’t quite get what sort of people they were; the room was so shabby and yet they talked so well—Ray had ever so many lines and said them beautifully, of course, if a bit loud—probably they were students. The heat from the flood lights was intense, she wished she had taken off her coat; and then the girl spoke her lines rather monotonously; and that iron going backwards and forwards. Harold had produced it very well, you could see that; yet surely he should have made the girl throw herself into the part more, have got her to move away every now and again from that ironing board. As it was everything was so lively when the boys were doing their bits, but the talk between Ray and the girl seemed a bit dead. No doubt it was because Harold knew the girl would move awkwardly that he’d kept her stuck in one place. He’d been talking the other evening about the difficulties of position and movement with amateurs. Yet what with the hot lights and no pretty clothes to look at and Ray’s shouting all the time a bit on one note and the iron going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards ....