Towards the End of the Morning

by Michael Frayn

  Gawain roused himself from his daze.

  ‘Don’t repeat your jokes, Damian,’ he said coldly.

  Damian sat down slowly in his place, completely silenced by the rebuke, staring at Gawain as if he was trying to understand the thought-processes which had led up to it.

  ‘Marriage is something which I must say I’m strongly in favour of,’ said Dyson with comfortable good humour, cutting himself another sliver of meat off the joint. ‘I think everybody should marry. Marry anybody. No nonsense about waiting for your one and only soul-mate to show up. It’s the state of marriage that counts.’

  ‘Not peating my jokes,’ said Damian softly, gazing at his brother.

  ‘That’s a stupid thing to say to anyone, John,’ said Jannie. ‘A bad marriage is much worse than no marriage at all.’

  ‘Not peating my jokes,’ said Damian, slightly more loudly.

  ‘Adaptation to the idea of marriage,’ said Dyson; ‘that’s the only thing that counts.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ said Gawain to Damian. ‘You’re repeating your jokes.’

  ‘Not peating my jokes.’

  ‘You’ve only got to look around you at the marriages of people we know,’ said Jannie, ‘to see that’s not true.’

  ‘Damian’s repeating his jokes again.’

  ‘Not peating my jokes!’

  ‘Good God, Jannie, think about it statistically! How many marriageable girls does a man meet? Or vice versa? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? All right, say a hundred . . .’

  ‘Damian is repeating his jokes, isn’t he, Daddy?’

  ‘. . . of whom we think in our romantic way that one and only one is the ideal mate. All right. Now the population of the world is 3,000 million. Divide by two for members of the opposite sex – 1,500 million . . .’

  ‘You know this is preposterous, John. You’re just being deliberately irritating.’

  ‘Not peating my jokes, am I, Mummy?’

  ‘. . . so pro rata, even by our own romantic criteria for singling out just one girl from the hundred we meet, there must be at least 15 million members of the opposite sex in the world who would make an ideal mate . . . ! What the hell is it, Gawain?’

  ‘Damian’s repeating his jokes, Daddy.’

  ‘John, you’re just trying to be shocking,’ said Jannie. ‘What do you think, Tessa?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Day’s repeating his jo-okes!’

  ‘Not peating!’

  ‘. . . about marriage . . . ?’

  ‘Day’s repeating his jo-okes!’

  ‘Not peating! Not peating! Not peating!’

  ‘. . . Oh . . . very much like to . . .’

  ‘Like to what?’ shouted Dyson. ‘Shut up, Damian.’

  ‘Daddy, Damian can’t say “repeat”, can he?’

  ‘. . . get married . . .’

  ‘Are you? Shut up, Damian – I mean, Gawain! Well, congratulations!’

  ‘I CAN say peat!’

  ‘. . . thoroughly recommend it . . .’ shouted Dyson.

  ‘Damian’s going to cry-y!’

  ‘. . . haven’t had children . . . really lived . . . do you think, Bob?’

  ‘Look, Daddy, Damian’s crying!’

  When everyone moved out of the kitchen into the living-room after lunch, leaving Jannie to put the coffee on, Bob lingered behind with her, savouring the sudden calm. He felt something like battle-fatigue – a great desire to lie down on the ground with his hands over his ears and take no further part in the war. He remembered now; he always felt the same by this stage of every visit he made to the Dysons’ house in the daytime, while the children were about. Between visits nature obliterated the memory of them, in the same way that it expunged the dread of battle and the pain of childbirth, so that war and childbirth and social visits to the Dysons could continue.

  ‘I like Tessa very much indeed, Bob,’ said Jannie, lighting the gas and stacking plates.

  ‘Do you?’ said Bob, too worn down to think of any intelligent reply. ‘Good, good.’

  ‘You are serious about her, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Jannie, could I possibly borrow a couple of aspirins? I’ve got rather a headache coming on.’

  ‘I think the aspirins are in the cupboard with the spice jars. She’s very much in love with you, Bob. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. This cupboard?’

  ‘That’s right – at the back. It would be terrible to hurt her in any way. Wouldn’t it, Bob?’

  ‘I suppose it would.’

  ‘You suppose it would?’

  ‘I mean, of course it would. May I take four, Jannie?’

  Tessa had subdued the two boys, Bob discovered with relief and admiration when he went out to the living-room. She was telling them a story, and they were sitting on either side of her on the sofa with their mouths hanging slightly open, Gawain meditatively fingering a lock of her long, dark hair, Damian staring at her and absently scratching his balls. Every now and then one of them would stand up on the sofa, and trample restlessly round like a dog resettling itself into its sleeping place. Bob sank into the scrunching springs of an old armchair, put a hand over his eyes, and watched them through his fingers. He was touched by the sight, and felt suddenly tender towards Tessa. If that feeling wasn’t love, what was? He had felt sour ever since her arrival – he could admit it to himself now – but simply because it had all happened so unexpectedly and confusedly. He liked life to be predictable and orderly. He liked to have time to think what he was going to feel about something before it happened.

  When Tessa went out of the room to see if she could help Jannie the boys turned to Bob at once with all their usual wildness, jumping up and down in his lap, punching him in the chest, and trying to pull off his shoes.

  ‘Ouch! Ouf! You would, would you?’ said Bob with as much avuncular bonhomie as he could force out of himself, feinting punches back at them, turning them upside down, and trying not to scream and double up when Damian trod on his genitals.

  ‘Just chuck them off if they’re a nuisance,’ said Dyson, stretched out in the least broken armchair with the Observer and the Sunday Times.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind them,’ said Bob, wedging his head against the back of the chair, so that the colossal thumping going on inside his skull didn’t shake it loose from its mountings. ‘Do I, men?’

  ‘Punch, punch, punch!’ cried Damian, finding Bob’s nose.

  ‘Do you read Brooks, Bob?’ asked Dyson.

  ‘You mean the estate agent? No – should I?’

  ‘I suppose you’ll be reading him now. The thing is, Bob, if I may give you some advice based on long and hard experience, not to start off by renting somewhere, if you can possibly avoid it.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Punch punch punch!’ said Damian.

  ‘You’re just wasting valuable years, renting. Buy something, and get on the escalator. Then at least you’re not slipping behind the field as prices go up.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Bash bash!’

  ‘And do be practical, Bob. So many people start off with some hazy idea of finding a little Georgian house in W.1 for £5,000. The thing to do, Bob, is to face up to the fact right from the beginning that it’s going to be something Victorian or Edwardian, and that it’s going to be in some slightly less fashionable postal district.’

  ‘I suppose so. Ugh! Gawain, that really hurt.’

  ‘I don’t know whether you know this area at all, Bob?’

  ‘Well, you know . . .’

  ‘Pinch pinch pinch!’

  ‘It’s got quite a lot to be said for it, Bob. For a start it’s got a village atmosphere which I must say we find rather agreeable. Well, you know, there are little corner shops which still have some sense of individuality about them. There’s a certain sense of community that you wouldn’t find somewhere like Chelsea or South Kensington. You’ve met our neighbours, Ecosse and Princess St George?’ />
  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then again, it’s on the Tube, or almost on the Tube. And, Bob, it’s an area that’s bound to go up.’

  ‘Bite bite.’

  ‘Definitely no biting, Damian. Yes, I remember your saying, John.’

  ‘Bound to. Must do, you see. Big, roomy houses – just right for expanding middle-class families. People have got to go somewhere. It absolutely must go up.’

  ‘I suppose it must.’

  ‘Snip snip – I’m a hairdresser!’

  ‘Do fling them off if they’re getting obstreperous, Bob. Anyway, I’ll get Jannie to look in the local agents and keep her ears open.’

  ‘Well – No, Gawain, let go! – thanks, John.’

  Bob lit the gas-fire and sank down on his bed without even taking his overcoat off.

  ‘You were very good with those children, Tess,’ he said, with his hand over his eyes.

  ‘It’s just a matter of being sensible,’ said Tessa, lighting the gas-stove and filling the kettle, without taking her overcoat off either. ‘Will scrambled eggs be all right tonight, Bob? They’re quite nice boys, but those silly people just let them run wild.’

  ‘I don’t think they really notice the noise themselves,’ said Bob, slightly irritated that she should presume to call them silly when they were after all his friends. ‘They’re hardened to it.’

  ‘I’m hardened to the noise that D and Baby make at home, but I don’t let them get away with it while I’m around.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a bit more difficult with children of your own.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t let them get away with it like that, all the same.’

  Bob reflected in silence for some moments.

  ‘Jannie likes you very much,’ he said finally. ‘She told me so.’

  Tessa broke three eggs into a bowl, frowning.

  ‘I’m not sure I like her all that much, Bob,’ she said. ‘I thought she was trying to marry you off.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Tess. That was just some silly misunderstanding at lunch.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Of course it was. Anyway, we’ve got wills of our own. There’s no need to let ourselves be rushed into anything, just because other people think it would be a good thing. It’s up to us, what we do, not anybody else. Isn’t that right, Tess?’

  Tessa said nothing. She beat up the eggs, splashed a drop or two on to the lapel of her overcoat and wiped it off carefully with her finger.

  ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I thought your friend Mrs Dyson was a little bit in love with you, to tell you the truth.’

  Bob sat up on the bed and gazed at her in astonishment.

  ‘She wants to marry me off to you,’ he said, ‘and she’s in love with me? What on earth are you talking about, Tess?’

  Tessa banged saucepans about irritably.

  ‘She thinks I wouldn’t be too much competition for her,’ she said, ‘because she thinks you’re not very much in love with me.’

  ‘She told you this?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s just what I think.’

  Bob picked up one of his bedside Vogues and withdrew into the world of the advertisements. One of them showed a pair of slim, naked legs, cut off a fraction of a millimetre below the groin, running through a meadow full of dewy grass and pale blue cornflowers. They advertised depilatory cream. He yearned for them, in all their innocence and simplicity, as if they were childhood.

  ‘What was all this about a house?’ asked Tessa.

  ‘Search me,’ said Bob.

  He slipped a peppermint into his mouth and curled up, gazing at the legs. If only he were attractive to women!

  Nine

  Dyson was invited to appear on television again. He and Bob were rushing to get a whole day’s work done before lunchtime, in order to get away for poor old Eddy’s funeral in the afternoon, when a woman called Samantha Lightbody rang from the BBC. She said she was terribly sorry to disturb him. She wasn’t disturbing him at all, said Dyson, swinging round in his chair and resting his elbow comfortably on the stacks of unsubbed copy and uncorrected proofs. She said she was sure she had rung at the worst possible moment – she always rang important people at the worst possible moment. The moment couldn’t have been better, said Dyson, taking another armful of stuff from the messenger.

  ‘The point is,’ said Samantha Lightbody, ‘I’m researching a programme about – well, it’s about race relations, I’m afraid. I know – yet another. Groan, groan, and all the rest of it. I hardly dare tell anyone.’

  ‘It sounds absolutely fascinating,’ said Dyson.

  ‘Well, we thought it could be quite fun if we got one or two really interesting new people like yourself to come along and take an entirely fresh look at the subject. I know you appear in programmes about race relations from time to time, but you’re not one of the usual old gang of faces that everyone’s sick of. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, could we possibly persuade you?’

  ‘Well,’ said Dyson luxuriantly, pressing the point of his pencil through the surface of a copy-pad, ‘I am rather heavily committed, of course. When is it?’

  ‘Friday the eighteenth, at seven o’clock, if that doesn’t seem too hopeless. It’s in a series called New Perspectives.’

  Dyson slowly turned over the empty pages of his diary.

  ‘I shall be away in the Persian Gulf that week,’ he said.

  ‘Oh dear . . .’

  ‘It’s a terrible bore, but something has cropped up out there. I don’t think I can really get out of it.’

  ‘So you can’t possibly do the programme?’

  ‘Oh, yes I think so. I mean, I shall be back from the Middle East on the seventeenth. It won’t affect us at all for the eighteenth. I just thought I should mention it.’

  ‘Oh, marvellous. That really is awfully kind of you. I know everyone here will be tremendously thrilled. I’ll get our contracts department to ring you about a fee.’

  Dyson sat back in his chair expansively.

  ‘You know the man you ought to get for this sort of programme?’ he suggested. ‘Lord Boddy.’

  ‘Oh, we have!’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘He’s one of the team. You know him, do you?’

  ‘Oh, I know Frank Boddy very well. Very well.’

  ‘I suppose it’s another of these tight little worlds, is it, the racial experts?’

  ‘Oh, pretty tight. Yes, pretty tight.’

  There was one small question nagging him which he asked just as Samantha Lightbody was ringing off.

  ‘Did you, as a matter of interest, happen to see me on The Human Angle last week?’

  ‘It’s an awful thing to have to admit,’ replied Samantha Lightbody, ‘but I’m afraid I missed it.’

  ‘Did anyone there see it?’

  ‘I’m not sure that they did. I’m terribly sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Dyson. ‘That’s quite all right.’

  Dyson scarcely had time to stride up and down the office that morning, lecturing Bob on the importance of television, but he was in great form all the same. Bob was too busy to notice, but Tessa was in the office, trying to keep out of everyone’s way and write a letter to her parents, and Dyson directed his surplus good humour at her. ‘It is rather naughty, you know, my lord,’ he would say into the phone; ‘I shall be coming after you with a big stick if the copy’s not here by tomorrow.’ And he would catch Tessa’s eye and make a humorous grimace, to show what he really thought about bishops. Tessa blushed at the sight.

  Bob would catch her eye in his turn as he telephoned. But each time he looked quickly away. He was embarrassed, she knew, because she was sitting at old Eddy Moulton’s desk, upon the top of which poor old Eddy had so recently laid down his head and died. She was sitting there because Dyson had invited her to, and Dyson had invited her to because there wasn’t anywhere else to sit. But at the sight of Bob’s expression she got up, blushing again, and walked about the room as if she were lookin
g for something. She stood by the window for some minutes, looking down into Hand and Ball Court, where an old tramp was feeling his way round the walls and trying not to catch people’s eye. She sympathized with his efforts. When she felt she could not naturally stand by the window any longer she went and inspected the gritty old review copies of books which had somehow collected over the years on the office shelves – Take Your Car to North Africa! Think Your Way to Good Health and Dynamic Living! The ABC of Practical Woodworking. National Debt or National Death? – The Bankers’ Plot Exposed. She took one or two of them down and turned the pages over, trying to persuade herself she was reading them. But the meanings of the words seemed to dart away from her like a shoal of minnows as she advanced upon them, and she felt more uneasy still. She would never catch up with the enormous range of reading which seemed to be taken for granted by Bob and his friends, never.

  ‘Tessa, Tessa, Tessa!’ said Dyson cheerfully, pressing his receiver rest down and then dialling another number. ‘Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I can’t bear people who walk up and down the room all the time.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Tessa. She blushed and went back to the chair in which old Eddy had died.

  ‘Are you happy, Tess?’ asked Bob, between calls.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tessa. ‘I’m going in a moment, anyway.’

  ‘Are you? Oh, all right.’

  ‘I just want to know whether you want me to go to Mr Moulton’s funeral with you.’

  Bob’s face went blank.

  ‘Hello,’ he said into the phone. ‘Canon Morley . . . ? It’s Mr Dyson’s office here. Look, this copy you phoned in; when you say, “I know only that I have a deeply satisfying face which shines with a radiance beyond the brightness of this world . . .” – should that be “faith”? And what about “. . . justifying God’s wheeze to man . . .”?’

  ‘Bob,’ said Tessa, when he had put the phone down again, ‘do you want me to come to the funeral or not?’

  ‘It’s up to you, Tess,’ said Bob. They were both speaking very quietly, so as not to disturb Dyson, who was still on the phone.