No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  ‘To bother about our childish troubles after all you must have been through! The least you should be able to ask is reasonable comfort. But in this house! Are you sure there’s enough hot water there? I can boil some kettles in the nursery. Sukey and I did it last year when the Countess had her no-bath campaign on.’

  ‘No, no, that’s enough, thank you.’

  But to refuse anything might break what fragile links he had forged. To show intimacy, he began to unbutton his pyjama top. For a moment the girl’s eyes were riveted on him. Then she was gone. Too late he remembered angrily his shoulder wound. Looking down at the pale hairs fringing the shiny smooth-sided pink pit like an arsehole in the wrong place, he fell once more into his waking nightmares.

  *

  ‘You’re too thin, Margaret. The beast isn’t giving you enough to eat. She can’t be or you couldn’t get in here when I’m out of bed. Not even she can do that. There isn’t room for two in here.’

  ‘It’s the room that’s too thin, Gladys. They’ve no right to put you in this box room. What are all those great trunks, anyway? I do think at least that the place might have been cleared.’

  ‘Oh, they’re some old trunks of HER father’s that Mouse sent up from the country. They couldn’t possible be parted with, of course, although SHE’s never looked to see what’s in them. But as she said they do provide a washstand and dressing-table.’

  ‘Washstand and dressing-table!’

  ‘Well, there weren’t any before.’

  ‘And they have the cheek to charge you for it! What’s the good of you going to the Food Ministry place every day and having independence? You might as well be supposed to be still at school like Sukey and me.’

  ‘Oh, I save a bit for the future this way. Give us a chance. I don’t want to cut up ration cards forever.’

  ‘And now with The Plan it will all go on Marcus’s school fees. We’ve treated you like a burnt offering, Gladys.’

  ‘Well, the eldest girl, you know. Didn’t they all get smitten hip and thigh or something? Besides there’s more liberty here than in some of those ghastly digs. You should hear the girls at the office. Sally Shepstone has a notice in her room saying, “No wovens to be washed in the bathroom”. I ask you.’

  ‘No wovens! Gladys, I must make a note of that.’

  ‘How is the writing, Mag?’ Gladys touched her sister’s elbow, but the arm was at once withdrawn.

  ‘The Countess didn’t sleep last night and she wants absolute quiet until eleven.’

  ‘Oh, Mag, was she foul to you?’

  ‘Only fairly. She didn’t make me cry. She hasn’t managed that for two years now. I suppose with that awful Milton going back to America we’re bound to have a frightful Countess time.’

  Gladys didn’t answer.

  ‘You mustn’t stand up for her, Gladys.’

  ‘No, of course not. Only it must be rather hell for her. All the same she’ll have to put up with my ironing, if that counts as noise. I dropped jam on my organdie blouse and I must have it for dinner. It’s my only wearable daytime garment.’

  ‘You are a bit stingy. Surely you don’t have to save as carefully as that.’

  ‘The last two weeks I have. Billy Pop was trying to borrow off poor old Regan. The beast. So I had to step in.’

  ‘You lent to Billy Pop?’

  ‘Only a couple of quid.’

  ‘You lent to HIM?’

  ‘Well only to help keep up appearances.’

  ‘That’s just it Gladys, to help them keep up their appearances. You deserve to pay them to sleep in a box-room.’

  ‘Look here. It’s my money. So shut up and hop it, twin squit.’ But immediately she’d said it, Gladys felt her thighs pressing together with embarrassment and shame. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mag. I didn’t mean to talk elder sister stuff.’

  ‘You’re fat, foolish and faithless, Gladys.’ But Gladys could see from Margaret’s eyes that she wasn’t really altogether joking. ‘Honestly I want to pull my weight against them. The team can do with a heavyweight.’ She could hear her own gruff voice pleading absurdly like some schoolboy who asks to be let into the gang. Damn them, she thought, damn them, I am the eldest. Guying her part desperately, she leaned backwards, pretending to pull in a tug of war. She fell heavily on to the bed, her fat legs waving in the air. She sat up, red in the face, ‘What about that, Mag? Collapse of stout party.’

  But Margaret had gone.

  To where Rupert, with small hand mirror propped over the nursery basin, was busy lathering his chin. He turned at the sound of his sister’s footsteps, his body bowed with age, his beard of white lather stuck imperiously forward. With his right hand he waved the shaving brush, regally he addressed the heavens. ‘You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt-couriers to oak cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head!’ … His sister interrupted him.

  ‘Our present business is general woe. Sir, the countess your mother commands a general silence. She has slept but indifferent well.’

  Rupert threw off his senile posture. Towering above her, he was trembling with anger. He stamped hard on the floor. ‘Would it were not so, you are my mother,’ he shouted. They waited tor some reaction, then as Rupert seemed about to stamp again, Margaret intervened quickly.

  ‘Alas, he’s mad.’

  Her comic tone relaxed him. Absurdly he thrust out his slender chest bosomlike, and swelled his pale delicate face to a turkey cock’s trembling red.

  ‘Send no compliments to my mother. She deserves no such attention. I am seriously displeased.’

  ‘Displeased in this prettyish little kind of a wilderness.’ Margaret displayed the familiar nursery with a sweep of the hand equally familiar from their childhood theatricals. ‘Oh, Rupert, you’ve never done Lady Catherine before. I didn’t know you knew Jane Austen well enough.’

  ‘Just a matter of obliging the audience’s taste. If any other lady or gentleman has a request….’ He broke off and flung his arms round her neck. ‘Oh, how I love us all. But especially you, Mag, especially you.’

  He saw her wince, withdrew his arm, and plunged once more into pantomime of Billy Pop. ‘And so she shall have silence, bless her dear old heart. No one but me knows, Mag, what suffering the war has cost your mother. Yes, and the peace.’

  He was delighted with her delight, and he repeated with sugary solemnity, ‘and the peace, Mag, and the peace.’

  ‘You’ve been listening at keyholes.’

  ‘No, no, Billy Pop’s too easy.’

  *

  Margaret put her head round the boys ‘room and called,’ Marcus!’ Only Rupert’s bed, tumbled as Quentin had left it, confronted her. She walked to the corner of the room behind the large cupboard and looked over the partition of the ‘contraption’.

  ‘Oh, you’re there. Well, you’re not to make any noise.’

  ‘I can’t very well while I’m here, unless I drum on the boards and I gave up doing that years ago. It’s so boring. Anyway, Quentin says I’m to have a proper bed. It’s part of The Plan.’

  ‘The Countess’ll never agree. She’ll say what about sleep-walking?’

  ‘I haven’t slept walked or whatever it’s called for at least four years.’

  ‘The bunk bed your old Billy made for you all those years ago!’ Margaret said in the Billy Pop voice.

  ‘It’ll do for his coffin.’

  Margaret edged away from her brother’s place of sleep. ‘Well, you’re not to make any noise, SHE says so. SHE’S in one of her states.’

  Marcus made a face at her. ‘All right, grown up.’ He clambered agilely from his box bed and, running to the dressing-up trunk, he rummaged out a scarlet silk ribbon and a long necklace of red beads. The ribbon he tied round his head, sticking into its side an old feather duster for an aigrette. He threw the rope of wooden beads round his neck and shook his striped pyjama jacket off one shoulder. Catching sight of Margaret’s expression he said, ‘It is like the famous photograph, isn’t it?’ Before his sis
ter could comment, he thrust his bare shoulder forward, holding a long pencil in one hand to serve for the Countess’ cigarette holder, while his other hand toyed with the beads.

  ‘I’m blue, Milton,’ he cried, ‘Blue, dawling. You haven’t given me the lurv I need. Latelah.’

  Margaret’s face flushed as red as the ribbon and the beads he had chosen. Delighted, he took off the ribbon and beads and sat cross-legged on the ground as he had for Puck in last term’s photograph of the houseplay. Demurely he looked at her from under his long eyelashes.

  ‘It is like, Margaret, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. But you’re not to make any noise.’

  Completing the performance, ‘No lurv,’ he said, ‘Poor old bitch.’ Then his own dark cheeks flushed red as mulberries.

  Finally Margaret returned to her own room. Sukey was busy tidying up, but she immediately sat down in front of the dressing table and seemed absorbed in putting on her little coral earrings.

  ‘I don’t mind your tidying up, Sukey. Really, after all these years of sharing as if I hadn’t got used to it!’ Margaret laughed.

  Sukey avoided comment. ‘I shan’t be a jiffy, old thing. And then you’ll have the room to yourself for your famous meditations.’

  ‘Meditations! I have to mend a bit of broderie anglaise for the Countess.’ Margaret stared out of the window for a moment, then she turned. ‘You’ll have to be quiet. The horrible Milton’s gone and she’s in a terrible state. She looks a hundred, Sue. It must be awful having it at all if it makes you feel like that.’

  ‘It’s only temper. Anyway how could anyone let someone like that dreadful man kiss her?’

  ‘I think there was more.’

  Sukey didn’t answer.

  ‘Do you think you would want a man to ask for more, Sue? I mean being naked and so on.’

  ‘Oh, it would just happen, wouldn’t it? With the really right person.’

  ‘You mean like Billy Pop and her.’

  Sukey only said, ‘Then think how wonderful having babies.’

  ‘Like us?’

  ‘Mag, I don’t think we should talk about it. Just because they’ve made a horrible mess of things doesn’t mean we would.’

  Margaret sat down on her bed, made most neatly by her twin. ‘Probably with some men it would be lovely. Jimmie, for instance, if it was half as good as his kissing, and when he’s playing tennis you can see just how …’

  ‘Mag, your mind!’

  ‘Perhaps it’s yours. You don’t know what I was going to say. Anyway I’m sure you’ve thought of some boy in that way – Larry Hughes or Geoffrey Upcott.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘I bet you have. What about him?’ She waved a postcard.

  ‘Oh, Mag, don’t be silly. Owen Nares is just a crush. I’d love him as an escort, of course.’

  ‘An escort! Really, Sue. I’m not going to let you get away with that. What about Jon Crowe? I bet he has muscles like Tarzan.’

  Sukey saw her escape.

  ‘And what about Colonel Vivian. His muscles …’

  ‘Ugh, Sue. How can you? An old man like that! You might as well say the piano tuner.’

  ‘He has ginger hair in his ears.’

  ‘Or the baker’s roundsman.’

  ‘Oh, Mag, you can’t think of common people in that way.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. Well, what about Doctor Croker?’

  ‘Say ninety-nine. In that case, what about Mr Hargreaves?’

  ‘A little wider, please, Miss Matthews.’

  They both collapsed into giggles.

  ‘But seriously, Sue. She commands strict silence.’

  ‘Oh, she is the limit. She goes on exactly as though she was a real countess.’

  ‘That was the origin of the nickname, dear.’

  ‘Don’t be sarky, Mag. Anyway, I don’t think it was.’

  ‘What was it then?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Ask Rupert. He remembers everything to do with HER. She’s sort of sacred to him. Yet he sees through her completely. I can’t understand it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t try, Sue.’

  ‘But I like to think we all know what the other thinks.’

  ‘How very disagreeable!’

  ‘Why is it disagreeable? How can we be a team if we aren’t of one mind?’

  ‘We’re not a team, Sue. We’re a coalition. Like Mr Bonar Law and Mr Lloyd George. For limited practical purposes.’

  ‘Mag! How can you compare anyone you love to that awful Lloyd George? But you’re only talking for effect like you did in Miss Coulton’s English class. I know you are.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am. And, of course, we are all united. But it isn’t a thing to say. Rupert’s just as bad. You’re both so sloppy and unseemly sometimes. And Gladys too. It blurs the line and makes us seem like them. It’s much worse than talking about naked men. But I do love you, yes.’

  ‘Dear Mag.’ Sukey kissed her sister on the cheek. ‘I hate sloppiness too. Well, down to the infernal regions. I’ve been ordered to help Regan. Lunch must be on time with Granny M. and Dearest coming.’

  ‘Sue, we mustn’t put ourselves in the wrong today, whatever happens.’

  ‘Well, I can’t promise about noise, because old Regan loathes having me in the kitchen as much as I loathe being in the filthy place. She always clatters and bangs as much as she can to show her disapproval.’

  ‘You’ll have to stop her this morning. The Countess mustn’t be able to make any complaint against us if we’re going to speak out.’

  ‘Do you really mean us to? It’s easy enough for Quentin to say, but…’

  ‘You’re not funking it, Sue?’

  ‘Of course not. All right, I’ll suppress the horrible Regan even if I have to put her head in a saucepan.’

  ‘Yes, do, please. And see that the food’s just right. You know how greedy the old ladies are.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Sukey hooked her right hand little finger with Margaret’s.

  ‘Till lunch-time then.’

  *

  In the nursery, Marcus, acutely aware of being hungry, mixed a subtle peacock green in the paintbox lid and listened to the near silence of the house. The sensation carried a memory of a sensation that carried a memory of a sensation on and on back to his dimly remembered baby years. The periodic thump of Gladys’s iron in the next room sounded deadened and dull, Margaret muttering crossly over her sewing was a mere punctuation of Rupert’s continual whispering repetition of his words. Different actions each year, but the same actors producing the same subdued noises. And always, as long as he could remember, he had felt hungry.

  ‘Peaceful slumber meek and mild, meek and mild. Never would my nights be wild.’ No, blast it. ‘Peaceful slumber sweet and mild,’ Rupert said.

  ‘I expect you were thinking of Gentle Jesus. What is Chu Chin Chow about?’ Marcus asked, ‘It sounds nonsense.’

  ‘It is rather tripe. We’re only doing it because Morrison, the accountant, is a baritone and fancies himself as a comic. Myrtle James and I wanted to do something with really passionate scenes. Myrtle’s hot stuff, you know.’

  ‘Is that the young lady with red hair who came to tea with you and licked the butter off her fingers after eating a crumpet?’

  ‘Don’t cheek. In any case no one said she was a lady. She’s a typist. All the same she’s had a jolly hard time at home and she’s a good sort. Hot stuff too. If the Countess hadn’t been sitting there like a basilisk, I’d have asked her up here and I believe she’d have come too.’

  ‘Into the nursery? It wouldn’t have been very comfortable.’

  ‘No, into my room of course, you idiot.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Our room actually. I’m very glad you didn’t. She was soaked in a most disagreeable scent. I shouldn’t have been able to sleep.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have been able to sleep. People think it’s a pretty shocking state of affairs that I should have to share a bedroom with a schoolkid. Of co
urse I don’t usually let on. You can’t let the world know your business in a family like this. And then to be turned on to the nursery floor. At nineteen!’

  ‘You aren’t quite that yet, are you? I’m very hungry. But I’m sorry if sharing embarrasses you.’

  ‘I expect we all are, but it’s a special dinner today.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I shall get any more to eat even if you do. It’ll just be Sukey’s bread-and-butter pudding and there’s never enough even of that. You’d think they’d know that growing boys need feeding.’

  Rupert fished a bar of chocolate from his pocket and broke it in half. ‘You can have this if you like. But don’t make yourself sick. We mustn’t any of us be in the wrong today.’

  ‘Thank you very much. You needn’t worry. I’m never sick.’

  ‘You still wet the bed.’

  ‘You oughtn’t to mention that. Just because we share the same room ought to make you more respectful of privacy than ever.’

  ‘Oh, ought it?’ Rupert peered over his small brother’s shoulder. ‘That’s jolly good. I thought you were drawing those boring women’s dresses. What is it? Ali Baba for the pantomime?’

  ‘No. Strange as it may seem to you, I’m not still concerned with pantomimes. It’s Haroun Al Raschid’s palace.’

  ‘It would make a jolly good set for Chu Chin Chow. We might use it. Wait a minute, though, what’s all that going on up in the corner? That looks a bit thick.’

  Marcus giggled. ‘It’s the grand vizier in hot pursuit.’

  ‘And hot it looks! I hope you haven’t got a foul mind, Marcus Matthews. All the same I think I’ll take a closer squiz at those fleeing nymphs of the harem.’

  ‘They’re not nymphs. At least I don’t think so. Nymphs are always girls, aren’t they? Those are two beautiful boys. One’s my idea of a yummy boy called Rampion who’s up Grant’s. Of course, I’ve never seen him naked.’

  ‘You filthy little swine. Just you shut up. I should think you have got a foul mind. It’s worse than that, it’s like a sewer. I ought to punch your head. You’d better watch out. That kind of thinking can easily land you in the loony bin. It’s worse than playing with yourself. I’m not sure I oughtn’t to talk to Father about this.’