by Angus Wilson
She was woken by the pressure of Judy’s elbow. Ray was still talking. She concentrated very hard on his words. Likeable unlikeable, Harold had said this Jimmie Porter was; but she couldn’t recognise Ray in the part, because whatever Ray said was done to please and now he seemed to shout his words and look grim as though he were imitating Mark, except of course that Mark mumbled.
“That old bitch should be dead! ... I said she’s an old bitch, and should be dead!” It was about the girl’s mother that Ray was speaking, but only the boy Cliff said anything to check him. The girl seemed too intent on her ironing to stand up for her mother. And then terrible words came pouring out of Ray’s mouth, as though the comic things Arthur said about worms and a dose of salts had got mixed up with the dreadful brutal things he also said in his rages.
“I say she ought to be dead,” Ray shouted. “My God those worms will need a good dose of salts the day they get through her! Oh, what a belly ache you’ve got coming to you, my little wormy ones! Alison’s mother is on the way!” There was a shocked drawing in of breath from some of the audience and nervous titters from others; but then that’s how it had been all through. No one appeared to feel, as she did, that the blackness of night had closed in quite suddenly. She tried to attend carefully to the rest of the scene, but across her vision there ran and stumbled and fell a line of fat naked old women—some haggard and ancient as witches, others with rouge and peroxide hair and earrings—and in their eyes was the uncomprehending terror of cows going to the knacker’s yard. In the background she could hear Ray’s voice ranting on with its endless jeering. She knew who they were—Jewesses that she had read of going to the gas chamber; yet it seemed only a terrible story when she had just read it in The Dispatch. And now suddenly Ray’s voice came through as tenderly as when he explained the mysteries of the kitchen to her. “It’s Hugh’s Mum. She’s had a stroke .... I think she’s dying .... It doesn’t make any sense at all.”
She sat through the act and on through the interval with its silly chatter and nervous, tittering questions about the play, through the offers of coffee and of cup ices; but she was intent to reconcile these two voices of Ray’s—or, of course, not really his, but of this Jimmie Porter’s—the brutal and the tender. She could find no answer. Perhaps this was what Harold meant by “likeable and unlikeable”; but it seemed to be beyond a question of liking. She listened throughout the play and the voice came again to her in tenderness and yet again in brutal jeering—was it just that sometimes this Jimmie Porter loved himself and that sometimes he hated himself? So much of the time he seemed to be talking to himself and not to the other characters. That might be so, but it didn’t really concern her. All the talk about squirrels and bears, the way that Ray didn’t seem quite real in the part when playing with the two girls, yet came alive in all the back chat with Cliff—none of this had to do with her; these were things that concerned the young people, imaginary characters or real actors. For her there were only certain words that mattered: “She thought that Hugh’s mother was a deprived and ignorant old woman who said all the wrong things in the wrong places, who couldn’t be taken seriously”, or over and over again, “Oh, what a bellyache you’ve got coming. . . . Allison’s mother is on the way.”
At last it was finished amid loud clapping, although there were here and there glum disapproving faces, and the ostentatious departure of a few of the audience allowed Harold to smile amusedly before beginning his speech of thanks.
Sylvia made herself listen carefully to every word he said, though they came to her through a muffling fog of horror. He spoke most professionally, with a quiet humour, and little unexpected pauses that kept people on their toes.
“... I am naturally pleased to think that a Carshall audience, despite all appearances to the contrary, has the intelligence required to appreciate a play of this calibre. But then a producer should never make the mistake of judging his audience by the sheepish expression on their faces. ... I am not going to single out any of the cast who have so nobly fought out the battles of their generation for you this evening. But I will say that if any of the younger members of the audience felt that there was a touch of the square about everything, that is the fault of the producer, who as you all know is an old square, and not of the actors who are one and all hip. Oh, excuse me, Tom, I had forgotten you. Thanks to Tom Staddon for suggesting in his playing of the colonel that some of the oldsters are neither as bad nor as dumb as they seem. I should however like to say a word about why I chose this particular play for performance in Carshall, because, as many of you know, I fought a few battles to get it put on. For me the whole thing centres round young Jimmie Porter. You may hate him, you may love him—and judging from the sounds of the audience tonight CarshalPs verdict inclines to thumbs down—but you can’t deny that he brings you all alive. I shan’t say anything about tonight’s performance of Jimmie, as you may have guessed from the programme the casting of this part was a disgraceful piece of nepotism. I would just add, like every parent who ever got up in the witness box—’You may not believe it, but he’s a good boy at home.’ So much for the actor, but what about the role Jimmie Porter? Disgraceful you say; wordy young do nothing; brutal young cad. As a headmaster I should like to say, please go away and think a little about the world we’ve made for Jimmie—yes, you and I, sir, so respectable and levelheaded—a world that has nothing to offer to a generous, intelligent, warm-hearted young chap like that, a world that has soured and embittered him. But isn’t everything done for them, you will say? That’s just it, as any secondary schoolmaster can tell you, the nice neat England we’ve built doesn’t leave any room for participation. It tells you to take your bit of welfare from the experts on a plate and be thankful for it. But not in the New Towns, you’ll say; not in Carshall. We’ve got a new hopeful young world here of uncrowded leisure-ful happy living. We’ve got a cause to fight for—something that Jimmie couldn’t find in his squalid cramped surroundings. Yes, we have. But, for God’s sake, let us remember that New Town living, like anything else that’s worth having, has to be fought for by alertness, by caring. We have a first-rate administration here, but even the best of administrations can err. If any of you believe, as I do, that Goodchild’s meadow, that expression of the country running through the town, is an integral part of Carshall’s way of life, then don’t just sit on your hands and hope for the best, or grumble over your pint at the local. Get out, and say or write what you think. We have, as I said, a fine administration, but they need your voices and mine—the voices of the people who live here—to make sure that the ideal of the New Towns, the ideal on which Carshall was founded, shall not be forgotten and neglected through reasons of expediency, or economy, or so-called commonsense. Carshall is a place where we all look forward in confident hope. Don’t let us through funk or laziness allow it to become a place where we have to look back in anger. Thank you.”
Muriel Bartley rose from her seat and called out “Good old Harold!” then leaning down she whispered to Sylvia, “I bet it was an afterthought, but he’s put the cat among the pigeons all right.” Indeed many members of the audience were silent; and some few had left at intervals throughout the speech. The big pots in the front row clapped, but sedately. And then, as Sylvia was folding her fur coat around her and Judy was collecting her scarf and bag, the heavy bald-headed man whom Muriel Bartley had named as Jock Parsons rose amid calls from the bald heads and tight corsages around him of “Ssh!” and “Speech!”
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Jock Parsons began, “it’s not normal, I know, for the audience to reply to the producer’s speech of thanks. But this is not quite an ordinary occasion. So as the Town’s P.R.O. I’m going to reply for you. We have been given a fine performance of a remarkable play—a play which, whatever some of us may think of its characters and its language, comes, as Harold Calvert has rightly said, to challenge any easy self-satisfaction that we may happen to feel. Although I am sure we’re not more self-satisfied in Carshall than in th
e rest of the country . . .” Sylvia had lost some of his words because Muriel Bartley was whispering, “We are, of course, we are. He knows it.” “As Public Relations Officer here, and I know that our General Manager agrees with me, spontaneous cultural activities like tonight’s production—I don’t mean of course that we should want to look back in anger every evening—are the sort of things that make our job on the Corporation here so rewarding. The houses are here, the factories are here, the shops are here, the gardens are here. But it’s in the dance hall and in the community centre and in the Ten Pin Hall, and in the amateur theatre, that people get up and sing. And only by your response can we know that the whole thing’s working. I said that a show like this happened spontaneously. But of course, it doesn’t. In this particular case, we owe the evening’s entertainment to the determination and hard work of Harold Calvert. There is always a lot of talk about the difficult relations between the County Council and the Corporation. It is said that the New Towns have been saddled with a lot of County Council red tape. Well, there may be some truth in that; but so long as the County Council goes on sending us headmasters like Harold Calvert who really care for Carshall and what happens to it, I for one shall thank the Lord for the County Council. But since our friend has raised the subject of Goodchild’s meadow, I feel I must just correct what he said—for in this matter I’m afraid an employee of the County Council, however loyal a Carshallite, can’t quite know all the facts as we of the Corporation do. The decision about Goodchild’s meadow when it’s made, will be made at the Ministry level. Of course, we hope and I believe we can expect that that decision will reflect the interests and wishes of the residents of Carshall, will not depart from the spirit that actuated the founding of the New Towns, but it is a decision which inevitably involves a mass of legal, economic and administrative elements that cannot be decided, that should not be decided in the emotion of public controversy or debate. . . .” Mr. Parsons paused for breath. The first notes of “God Save the Queen” came fortissimo from the radiogram at a nod from Harold. Immediately he made a pantomime of apology for the interruption and gestured to stop the music; but he had achieved his purpose, many of the audience were already standing, and the Public Relations Officer refused the offer to proceed with a shake of his head. As they stood bunched in loyal homage, Muriel Bartley whispered “Good Old Harold”, and Judy said under her breath, “I knew Daddy would win.”
The two speeches had caused a sensation that threatened to put even the controversy about John Osborne’s play in the shade. Muriel Bartley could talk of nothing else as she drove Sylvia home. Sylvia debated with herself whether Harold had done himself harm or not, and, mingled with her misgivings for her son, went a running calculation of the number of sausage rolls and cakes and sandwiches she had provided for the coming party. But both the unfamiliar, half-comprehended anxiety and the familiar domestic concern were muddled sequences of thought, for through them all the time she could feel the shame of Jimmie Porter’s foot kicking at her naked buttocks as he had at the cistern in that squalid little room and could hear him calling in his jeering, mock Northern accent, “Can you hear me, mother?”
The party was not altogether an easy one. The cast sat together. You could tell they felt it all a bit of an anti-climax. Of course, for the first quarter of an hour people went up and congratulated them. Lorna Milton said, “I’m not praising you, Ray. This is enough of a Calvert jamboree without that. In any case I thought you and Terry hogged the stage. No, I’m going all out for the girls. Jolly good, Priscilla! Jolly good, June! Though I don’t believe for a minute that two pretty girls like you would tie yourselves with an oik like him.” But Chris Milton, for once, didn’t altogether agree with his wife. “No, no, Jimmie Porter was the only one who was trying to express himself. I suppose it’s square of me, but if only he had played some instrument that called for a bit of team work. Not the trumpet.” Muriel was full of praise for them—they really had put the cat among the pigeons. But it was Sally Bulmer who gave them the most attention. “Good for you, Ray. I didn’t know you had the guts. Mr. Sunshine willing to play the unpopular. And as for you, Pris, you put up a good exhibition of battle by ironing. But what was this good-looking lout doing sitting around the house?” She dug Terry Knowles in the ribs. “What a household! Oh! It’s a clever enough play. But a decent social worker could have cleared up the whole mess in a day and a half.” Harold came in for a good deal of the praise, but that soon shifted from the play to his battle with Mr. Parsons.
Sylvia, seeing the cast sitting on their own, was a little worried. She made herself remember little things that each of them had done on the stage, and although it cost her a lot, saved her praise of Ray to the last. “I thought that was very good, Miss White”— Priscilla off stage was a nice-looking blonde girl, not at all embittered or sad looking—”when you came back in the last act. You stood at the door and I think all the audience felt the drama of it.” “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Calvert. Mr. Calvert’s going to be furious with me. I stood there much longer than he told me. But I didn’t see why the men should hog all the attention.” “We did not, did we, Ray?” “They did, didn’t they, June?” “I must say I rather think you did, Terry.” June was as prim in real life as she was playing Helena. “Well, we can’t help it if we got all the attention, can we Terry?” “Oh, it was quite a male beauty chorus, of course.” “It was the acting, you slut. Isn’t she a slut, Ray? You ought to have bashed her bonk a real good one.” “I tell you what, boyo, we’ll do the whole play again without the girls.” “Oh, so that’s how it is. Come on, June. . . .” “We’ll meet you birds after the show’s over, won’t we Ray?” “You’ll be lucky, Terry Knowles.”
It was all fun with shrieks of laughter. But there was a little crossness too; but then of course they were overtired. Sylvia, if she did not altogether understand the causes of the strain, could sense it; but she could see no way of assisting beyond giving her share of praise and then stoking up the guests’ energies with food and drink so that they could reach boiling point, subside and go home as soon as possible. She succeeded admirably, for the last guests had shouted themselves hoarse and left by a quarter past midnight when Arthur returned from cards at the Cranstons’.
“Well, I hear I missed a bloody good show. Congratulations, Harold, old boy. And not only on this L.ook Back in Anger stunt. What’s more important, I hear you fought a couple of rounds with that pompous ass Jock Parsons, and everyone seems to think you won on points. Good lad!”
“How did you hear all this, Dad?” Harold was smiling.
“Ah! Muriel Bartley looked in as we were playing our last rubber.”
“You don’t want to believe all Muriel says. She’s partisan. But I think I did give them the sense that they won’t necessarily have everything their own way.”
“Good lad!”
“After all, there are times, I think, Dad, when tact is only another name for cowardice.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never practised either.”
The heat and smoke of the room threatened to turn Sylvia’s exhaustion into giddy sickness. She moved to retire to bed.
“Well, what did you make of it all, Sylvia?” Arthur winked at Harold. Sylvia realised that she had said nothing to Harold in praise of his production; she felt a desperate need to make some communication to him.
“I think I did understand what you meant, Harold, about that boy. His being likeable and unlikeable, I mean. But it wasn’t really for him to say that the one old woman shouldn’t have died or that the other would be better dead. They were human beings. . . .”
She could see that he didn’t understand what she was talking about and that she had entirely failed to reach him; but she could do no more now, shut in by the heat and the smoke. She had to escape or fall. As she stood for a moment in the purer, cooler air of the hall to regain her balance, she heard him speaking.
“The old lady’s getting a bit out of touch these days isn’t she, Dad?”
“I don’t believe you kids ever realised how difficult your mother can be.”
She waited for Harold’s answer to his father and, when none came, she dragged her heavy body upstairs to bed.
CHAPTER FIVE
New Leaves
IT WAS the second time that Sylvia had been caught by Renee Cranston in Melling. This time they met face to face outside the self-service store; but Renee only said, “Well, you certainly are a rare bird these days. Keeping all right? Cheerio!” and flashing her bright smile was gone. Sylvia couldn’t tell whether she imagined a hurt look in that cheeky bird’s eye or not. In any case she was too resigned to worry. She had rationalised the shopping now to once a week in the Town Centre and three quick tootles to the Melling shops. The quarter hour’s rush shopping in Melling was almost over; soon she would be home to pack Arthur off to the British Legion and the bookies, and to begin a long day of nothing at “The Sycamores”. Or not really nothing, for there was always the tele and books, and then she was determined to see that she had a proper lie down on her bed each afternoon as the doctor had recommended. After all, she had retired from work because she was an invalid, and it was absurd to start getting steamed up now just because she had to lead an invalid’s life.