Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  Hold on, though. Not so fast. Is this still me or isn’t it? Is this the Earl of Each telling the world he’s Sir Alfred Upward? No, no, everything’s changed – I’m old Fred himself in this arrangement of things! This is Sir Alfred Upward saying he’s Sir Alfred Upward.

  In which case … In which case where do we stand? Where do I stand? Nowhere, evidently! I seem to have dropped out of the picture completely. In any case Fred’s always answering the phone as things are and saying ‘Upward here’. So nothing’s changed at all!

  Who’s on the other end of the phone, anyway? Me, in all probability!

  By which, of course, I mean the Earl of Each.

  *

  I realise that these reflections will be of little interest to others. I raised the matter once with Nippy. We were sitting quietly on the terrace after dinner one warm summer evening, enjoying the scent of the tobacco plants. I felt an unusual sense of quiet understanding between us. ‘My love,’ I said, ‘has it ever occurred to you that if things were not as they are, and I were not who I am, then you in your turn would not be who you are?’ She didn’t reply. I had the impression that she was thinking about it, though. She is not greatly given to abstract thought, so I tried to put the matter in more concrete terms. ‘Suppose, for the sake of argument,’ I said, ‘that I were Alfred Upward. Then you, my love, would be Lady Upward instead of Lady Each.’ Another silence ensued. But all she said at the end of it was: ‘I think Henry needs worming.’

  I tried to discuss it once with Shandon. We were in the butts at Wiggy’s, and the birds were remarkably sparse. I put it very simply, in terms of which gun was in whose hands. ‘Well, Pot,’ said Shandon, ‘you always were the brains of the family So I don’t think you can be this gun, because I’m pretty sure there’s not much in the way of brains lurking about over here.’

  Curious that it doesn’t strike other people, too. After all, the consequences of my being the Earl of Each are almost as considerable for Nippy and Shandon as they are for me. They reach out to our children, and our children’s children. They go on down the generations, for ever and ever.

  *

  I am the Earl of Each. And then again, I am the Earl of Each. But every now and then, when my thoughts run very deep, I find yet another cause for wonder – that I am the Earl of Each.

  Is this less surprising than the first two things, or even more so? But this deep I cannot think for long without fear of never coming to the surface again.

  *

  Another plunge into deep waters!

  If it is against long odds that I am the Earl of Each, how much longer are the odds against the Earl of Each being me.

  I’m not making a muddle here, am I? I’m not simply recogitating the same cogitation that I’ve cogitated before?

  I don’t believe so. After all, there would have been an Earl of Each sitting here in front of the fire in the morning-room now whenever my dear mother and father had seen fit to begin their eldest son. He might have been a month older than me, or a month younger. He might been a completely different age altogether, and an inch shorter, with darker hair and a less ruddy complexion. He would still have been the Earl of Each, if he was my father’s son.

  But he wouldn’t have been me.

  For the Earl of Each to be me, the actual fellow who as it happens is indeed sitting here now and cogitating these particular cogitations, then there was only one night in all the years that my parents were married that would serve. I believe this lengthens the odds by another five or six thousand times.

  Good God, once again.

  Supposing my father had gone up to the House that day, as he sometimes did when some measure relating to land drainage or bloodstock was under discussion, and had stayed overnight at his club! The fellow sitting in this chair now, the present Earl of Each, would have been another fellow altogether!

  I feel decidedly peculiar at the thought.

  Yes, Henry, well may you look at me like that! Well may you speculate!

  Enough!

  Come on, dog – a turn around the lake before lunch.

  Let us hold on to one absolute and unfailing certainty, Henry, amidst all the dark seas of speculation and conjecture. Let us plant our colours in this one thought and never strike them: that I, old dog of mine, that I, I, am the Earl of Each.

  (2000)

  Comedy of viewers

  Thank you, BBC Television! (runs a letter which Mrs Ada Vacancy has asked me to use my influence to get published in Radio Times.) What a grand job you’re doing bringing culture to people like me! (Perhaps I should explain that though my father was a Featherhead, I am connected on my mother’s side with the Easeleigh-Boreables of Bournemouth.)

  Your production of A Comedy of Errors this week was ‘just the ticket!’ It ran for six-and-a-half minutes by my clock before a single word of Shakespeare was spoken, and my husband and I enjoyed every second.

  Of course, all good things must come to an end, and eventually we had to face up to it and suffer ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous Shakespeare’, to coin a phrase! But a word of praise to the actors. Some of their amusing antics between the bouts of literature that followed were highly diverting. They quite ‘saved’ the evening, and as I said to my husband, ‘They may be “classical” actors, but some of them are almost good enough for the pantomime in Newcastle!’ Which coming from me is praise indeed! (I mean of course Newcastle-under-Lyme, where my mother was born.)

  But my ‘first prize’ I reserve for the ‘back-room boys’ who allowed us to see the audience from time to time when things got too bad. There must be many people like myself who now switch on all the cultural programmes on BBC Television in the hope of a glimpse of the audience. I acquired a taste for ‘audience-viewing’ during the lessons which Mr H. Trevor-Roper gave recently on the subject of (I think) ‘History,’ and I must confess I have become something of an addict!

  Of course, addiction to anything can be carried too far! I don’t agree with some people who complain bitterly that the ‘natural breaks’ between one picture of the audience and the next are too long. I think these breaks give one a chance to get back to one’s ironing!

  Perhaps your readers would be interested to know how we arrange our viewing in this house. First we turn the set on in good time for it to warm up before the cultural programme begins. We watch the preliminary antics or trumpet voluntaries – which we love! – and then we turn the sound down. I go out into the kitchen while my husband sits watching the set and listening to the wireless.

  As soon as anything of note occurs, he calls me. ‘Quick!’ he says. ‘Breakdown!’ Or it might be someone forgetting his ‘lines,’ or even occasionally someone who has had ‘one over the eight!’

  We enjoy all these diversions. But we like the pictures of the audience best of all. They seem such nice, ordinary people – nothing ‘stuck up’ or ‘special’ about them at all. What I particularly appreciate is that they’re not fussing about doing something all the time, like the majority of the people one sees on the television! Most of the time they’re just sitting there quietly, so that one has a chance to take them in and see them as they really are.

  Of course, I’m always looking out to see if I can see anyone I know! In one of Mr H. Trevor-Roper’s lessons I saw a young woman who looked exactly like a housemaid I had for a time after the First World War called Susan Hargreaves. I was so surprised that I called out ‘Well! Susan Hargreaves!’ My husband dryly pointed out that Susan would be over 60 now!

  ‘It’s all right, she couldn’t hear me,’ I said. ‘The sound’s turned down.’

  How we laughed over that!

  Seriously, though, ‘audience-viewing’ does give one a chance to see how ordinary folk can ‘keep smiling’ in the most difficult conditions. A dreary lecture seems to bring out the best in people, just as the war did, and I often hope that some of our national Jeremiahs are looking in and seeing these wonderful young people doing their best keep their chins up. It always brings a lump
to my throat.

  Alas, there are sometimes one or two ‘black sheep’ in the audience who ‘let the side down.’ In that scene in The Comedy of Errors in which seven people were sitting in the stalls smiling slightly, with a gentleman on the extreme left who looked exactly like the late Duke of Kent, there was a man in a spotted bow tie who kept laughing in rather a suggestive way. It gave the unfortunate impression that some of Shakespeare’s poetry was not so much ‘immortal’ as ‘immoral’!

  I wonder if I might ask your advice in a personal, matter? I should like to ‘break into’ television audiences! I am 76, but still young and adventurous in outlook. I realise it is a career which would call for great dedication and a lot of hard work, but I am not quite a beginner – I have nearly 50 years’ experience of working in the audiences of various provincial ‘reps’ behind me. I know enough not to expect to star in something like The Comedy of Errors overnight!

  I should add that my husband has given his blessing to the project.

  Yours truly, Ada Vacancy (Mrs)

  (1964)

  Composition for ten hands

  The admiration and respect which I feel for Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Robert Conquest, Edmund Crispin, Iain Hamilton, Anthony Hartley, Bernard Levin, Simon Raven, David Rees and Peregrine Worsthorne severally is as nothing to the awe in which I hold their corporate talent. They know whose side they are on in Vietnam, and have written in a body to The Times twice now to announce their verdict to the world.

  I wish I knew which side I was on. But I don’t; and the more I read about Vietnam, the less able I am to pick a team. No such indecision hinders Amis, Braine, Conquest, Crispin, Hamilton, Hartley, Levin, Raven, Rees and Worsthorne. ‘When all the lesser issues are cleared away,’ they asked themselves, ‘whose side are we on?’ And at once they replied: ‘Our answer must be that we unequivocally support America and her allies …’

  There was heartfelt relief in Washington, naturally, when the State Department found they had the unequivocal support of ten English men of letters. Weary troops in Vietnam took heart to learn that Amis, Braine, Conquest and Crispin were right there, but a short 7,000 miles behind them, not to mention Hamilton, Hartley and Levin, or Raven, Rees and Worsthorne.

  But then another letter appeared in The Times, penned by Brigid Brophy, Peter Buckman, Anthony Burgess, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Len Deighton, Gillian Freeman, B. S. Johnson, Julian Mitchell, John Mortimer, Alan Sillitoe and William Trevor, deploring the idea of unequivocal support for American policy in Vietnam.

  ‘… Considering the available information on this atrocious war,’ argued Brophy, Buckman, Burgess, Compton-Burnett, Deighton, Freeman, Johnson, Mitchell, Mortimer, Sillitoe and Trevor, ‘we do not believe that the policies of America and her allies are likely to bring about the peace which is earnestly desired by all.’

  The mood of elation in Washington slumped when this copy of The Times arrived. As the State Department’s statistical experts can scarcely have failed to notice, they have ten writers for them, and eleven against. And I have the impression that the writers who are opposed to American policy have on average written more books than the writers who are in favour of it. Which must count for something in Washington and Hanoi. Mustn’t it?

  But there are other teams of writers who have yet to speak – as I discovered at a little literary soirée the other night when I was introduced to K. D. Haddock, Walter Pinn, Pennington Pownall, O. J. Sprout, and Thorsten Trouncer.

  ‘What?’ I cried. ‘Not the K. D. Haddock, Walter Pinn, Pennington Pownall, O. J. Sprout and Thorsten Trouncer? The authors of that marvellous little letter on decimal coinage, and that very stylish missive against racial provocation in Fiji?’

  They blushed.

  ‘The same,’ they murmured.

  Well, I told them what a terrific admirer I was of their stuff – what a deeply personal style and individual view of the world I thought they had.

  ‘Whenever I come up against some rather tricky subject,’ I told them, ‘such as the wage-structure of the Bolivian tin industry, I always think to myself: “I wonder what Haddock, Pinn, Pownall, Sprout and Trouncer would say about that.”’

  They were very bucked.

  ‘We think we speak for all of us,’ they said, ‘when we say that we’re as pleased as a dog with two tails. If not five dogs with ten tails.’

  I asked them if they were working on another letter.

  ‘No,’ they said. ‘At the moment we’re working on a critical edition of the love-letters of Drossel, Gudney, Lidless and Nane, to Adbrow, Bantling, Cold-Brightman and Zimmer. It’s one of the great literary romances – in the end they married, and had twenty-three children.’

  Anyway, when they found out that I was Frayn, of Barnold, Brevis, Frayn, Frowder and Straithwaite, they were kind enough to say that they rather admired some of our work, too – particularly our Middlesex dialect stories, and our relentless opposition to the entry of Ireland into the Common Market.

  After a bit, of course, we got round to the problems facing writers today.

  ‘You can’t get over it,’ sighed Haddock, Pinn, Pownall, Sprout and Trouncer, ‘the days of the old one-man-band type of writer are pretty well over.’

  Barnold, Brevis, Frowder, Straithwaite and I agreed.

  ‘We mean,’ said Haddock, Pinn, Pownall, Sprout, and Trouncer, ‘we’d never have been able to make up our minds about decimal coinage in the way we did if there hadn’t been five of us.’

  ‘What we personally feel,’ said Barnold, Brevis, Frowder, Straithwaite and I, ‘is that if there were ten or eleven of us, as in the Amis outfit, or the Brophy concern, we might be able to stand back far enough from the details to come down clearly and unambiguously on one side or the other in Vietnam.’

  Because the truth is, of course, that today writers have got to merge and amalgamate to survive, just like everybody else. Big issues demand big thoughts; and big thoughts require big teams of thinkers.

  Anyway, we’re all going to write to The Times about it.

  (1967)

  Cottage industry

  The wonderful thing about having a country cottage, say our good friends Christopher and Lavinia Crumble, is that they can have their good friends (such as us) down for the weekend.

  ‘And the wonderful thing about having our friends down for the weekend,’ explains Lavinia, as they take our bags and show us our room, ‘is that we really have the chance to talk to them down here, away from all the mad rush of town life. Don’t we darling?’

  ‘We like to feel we’ve created a setting for the sort of relaxed house-party thing that used to be such an important part of the civilised way of life in the past,’ says Christopher. ‘Plain living and high thinking – that kind of thing. We find ourselves talking like mad down here. Don’t we, darling?’

  Apparently the place was absolutely derelict when they found it. All their friends thought they were crazy. But of course they got it for a song, and they did it all up themselves.

  ‘We really have put a tremendous amount of work into it. Haven’t we, darling?’

  ‘People think we’ve been spending our weekends idling about in the countryside. But we’ve scarcely had time to sit down! You really can’t imagine how much we’ve had to do. Can they, darling?’

  Apparently all the beams we can now see were covered with plaster and wallpaper when they moved in! The doorway we’ve just come through didn’t exist! The floor we’re now standing on was completely rotten! The whole house reeked of mildew! We can’t really appreciate its present condition, of course, not having seen it in its original state.

  ‘I mean, Christopher did have a tiny worry when we bought it that we might be doing local people out of a house. You know what Christopher’s like! But it was absolutely derelict …’

  ‘And of course what these people want is really some neat little two-up-and-two-down semi. Isn’t it, darling?’

  ‘And if we hadn’t done it up somebody else would have. Wouldn’t
they, darling?’

  ‘They’re not all as tender-hearted as we are. And we have put the most tremendous amount of work into the place.’

  Have we admired their view, they ask? Oh, God, the view – no, we haven’t. Admire, admire. Only six miles or so beyond that electricity sub-station, apparendy, is the Vale of Relpham, which Walter Bridmore mentions in one of his novels! The window-frame itself, it appears, is treated with Osterman’s ‘Windowjoy’ polyester window-frame sealer.

  They expect we’d like a wash etcetera after our journey. It seems terrible to interrupt our discussion of architecture and literature for anything so mundane as a wash etcetera. But there’s plenty for us to admire and meditate upon in the bathroom. Apparently Christopher did most of the plumbing himself, and is rather proud of his handiwork. And we’re to help ourselves to hot water as lavishly as we like, because they’ve installed a Supa-Heata, the literature about which we must remind them to give us before we go.

  Over lunch the conversation turns to the world of art.

  ‘Did you admire that old Agricultural Show poster in the loo?’ inquires Christopher. ‘We’re frightfully proud of it. Lavinia got it from a little man over in Market Strayborough. Didn’t you, darling?’

  ‘Of course, the loo’s our great triumph altogether. I found a little man in Morton Winchevers who built us the septic tank for about half what we’d have had to pay a big firm.’

  ‘And she found another little man practically next door to the little man in Market Strayborough who got hold of that Victorian pedestal and cistern for us. Lavinia’s got an absolute genius for getting hold of little men. Haven’t you, darling?’

  In the afternoon we go for a stroll, so that our hosts can point out various features of the locality of which they’re particularly proud, and introduce us to one or two marvellous locals we absolutely must meet, now that the Crumbles have succeeded by dint of hard work and perseverance in penetrating their natural rural reserve. The long grass in the meadows and the summery smell of the cow-parsley along the lanes put everyone in a gently reflective mood.