No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  *

  ‘Surely ’tis so, you ought to know. Any time’s kissing time.’ Alcolom gaily she sang, a faint but true contralto to his Ali, a caressing yet tremulous tenor. ‘Youth is the time for loving, so poets always say.’ She hit the keys in angry discord.

  ‘Damn them, damn them, Rupert. But they’re right, darling boy. Even this silly song tells me I’m being a fool.’

  ‘Oh no, Contessa. Surely ’tis so. You ought to know. Any time’s kissing time.’

  ‘Not for me, Rupert, not for me. I know I’ve always seemed young to all of you. I’ve tried to be. I didn’t want you to have a frump for a mother. But I’m not any longer. My kissing time’s over. Oh, don’t let’s cry over it. It happens to every woman. And it’s not the end of the world, they say.’

  ‘How can I speak, Contessa? But surely no world could end because of Milton. We owe him a debt for christening Billy Pop, but surely …’

  ‘I can’t have you talk to me about it, Rupert. Your own Mother. It isn’t proper. But then I’ve lost the right to stop you. Billy and I have made you all grow up too quickly. But I have so terribly needed sweetness, Rupert. And you haven’t always, all of you …’

  ‘Well, we could hardly give you what Milton …’

  ‘Oh, my dear Boy! You’ve grown so cynical, but it’s true. And poor Milton – he was a common little man but he was rather sweet to me.’

  ‘Poor Contessa,’ he kissed her forehead, ‘I suppose that’s how love is. A cruel thing. But very simple.’

  ‘Simple! Oh Rupert, how much you’ve to learn. It’s cunning, cunning, darling heart, cunning all the time. It’s two people and one of them’s going to be hurt. That absurd little Yank thought he’d got me on a string, but I played him like a fish, Rupert. And now that it amuses me I’ve thrown him back into the Atlantic where he belongs. Don’t think I’m grieving for him, my dear. I wept for a moment for my lost youth, but not for him. I long ago learned to treat empty trifles for what they are. You’ll have to learn to do the same, Rupert. One’s either born into this world as a conqueror or one’s not. You and I were. But it isn’t simple, darling heart. It’s a battle, a very old battle. In which we conquerors don’t get hurt. The casualties are the little things, people like that red-haired girl you brought back here. Mona or Myrtle or something absurd. But you’ll be a Conqueror. You’re like me, dear boy. You carry your head high. Where were we? B flat. “Love has no charm, no meaning ’till man has reached his prime.” Oh, that’s horribly true, darling heart, I’m afraid, though youth can never believe it. There! Sensible poets at last.’

  *

  They had no more to do now than to wait for luncheon to be cooked. Regan sat at the kitchen table poring over the News of the World, running a licked finger along the lines of print. Sukey just sat. She wanted to mend the boys ‘things, but she was determined to apologize, and she feared that if she started on a new task she would make it an excuse not to speak. She had done the unforgivable thing of insulting a servant, someone who couldn’t answer back. No matter how good her intentions, she had not respected the pride of someone who had served them loyally and faithfully since they had been children, there was no possible way out of it but a direct unshirking apology. It was what she would expect of her own children.’ They have their responsibilities to us,’ she told her children, the oldest boy in his snotty’s uniform on leave from Dartmouth, the eldest girl in her first evening dress (white) home for the hols, and all the smaller ones, on and on, to a rather indefinite blur, ‘but we have even greater responsibilities to them.’

  ‘Regan, I’m very sorry I spoke to you like that. I hope you will forgive me.’

  ‘Ah, you take em all too seriously, Miss Sukey. It was the left luggage ticket that done for im, you know. They couldn’t identify on burned legs alone. Not to satisfy the jury.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Regan, when we were little, I don’t know what would have happened to us. From the very start they had no intention of being real parents at all.’

  ‘Met in Eastbourne. Quite the young lady she was. And she didn’t know im two days, before she was out there in is bungalow.’

  ‘From the very start. No intention at all.’

  ‘Oh, drat it, Miss Sukey. Talk never stopped the fire of London nor brought the boys back to Blighty, them that was killed. Intentions is easy enough, but doin’s more difficult. When I first come to er, she was carrying Miss Gladys. And a better mother you never see. Nor an appier couple. Eed just ad is little stories out and everything in the garden was lovely. Then more and more come till it was you lot, the twins. And it about broke them. They adent the money anywhere. Then the old lady takes Master Quentin. She never forgave im for that. To let is boy go like that without so much as a finger raised – Stoker, she said to me, I don’t want nothin more to do with im. But e made er. I don’t blame im. It was is right. All the same when Markie come, e was born in ate. As far as love from er goes, Master Marcus was better born dead. “No intentions.” I’ve no patience with you. Intentions they ad from the start and good ones. As good as any of yours, Miss Sukey, with all your ideas aving fifteen kids and raisin them as easy as cuttin butter. But intentions need a bit of splosh to back em up. And that they adent got, not to live as their fancy told em.’

  ‘But thousands of poor people are wonderful parents, Regan.’

  ‘Ah, so they say; well, I’ve lived where they’re very poor and I never seen it. You don’t want to believe all you’re told.’

  She turned back to the newspaper. ‘It seems er sister ad seen it all in the cards only the week before she go down to Eastbourne. Everythin. Right down to the boilin of the ead.’

  *

  ‘Any time’s kissing time.’ Her jaunty humming mixed with Rupert’s caressing high notes to make Marcus shudder. He put down his paint brush. He rolled Haroun Al Raschid’s palace into a ball and threw it across the threadbare hearthrug into the broken wicker basket.’ Not all the perfumes of Arabia will expunge that sickly noise.’

  As Ali’s voice against Alcolom’s, so the sucking of Quentin’s pipe against the popping gas fire. Sunk deep into the old nursery basket chair, his knees crouched high as a lectern for agreed wages and workers’ management councils, Quentin spoke from far away, from a decent world of shared profits and consultations at every level. Gravely the Man Mountain addressed the odd Lilliputian (was he perhaps going to prove artistic? The craftsman has an honoured role).

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he asked with formal politeness.

  His brother’s young subaltern courtesy was like a kissed hand to Marcus’s irritation. ‘Only,’ he said smiling, ‘that terrible sugary song. And happy Quentin not to hear Chu Chin Chow.’

  ‘I’m tone deaf, added to which I need to know this book for prelims, added to which it’s one of the books which may change the face of everything.’

  ‘It ought to change its own face first. I’ve never seen such a horrible mud green little book. Like slime off a crocodile’s back.’

  ‘I’m more interested in the contents of books than their covers to be quite honest, Mark.’

  ‘If you really don’t care what books look like I should think you’d better not be quite so honest about it. Ugly books ought not to be allowed.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But there are more important things to get rid of first. Ugly conditions of life, wars.’

  ‘I can’t see why you have to connect them. Anyway we had all this conversation with Tucker in form the other day after Thucydides. Wars and plagues are worth it to have Praxiteles.’

  ‘I didn’t think we had much Praxiteles.’

  ‘I meant then, as you jolly well know. Anyway, I don’t care much about Praxiteles. I mean just a way of living – like Louis Quatorze and Lorenzo de Medici …’

  ‘And men torn in four by horses and half the population dying before they are your age and hundreds crowded into hulks and dying of thirst before they reach the slave plantations.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it
any less important to have Michelangelo or the gardens at Versailles. Anyway history shows you can’t change human nature. Mr Tucker said so. What are you proposing to do about it?’

  ‘Let human nature try to change itself, that’s all. Try this out, for instance.’ He slapped his book.

  ‘Self Government In Industry? I can’t think of anything more awful. All I want is idleness. Anyone can govern me who likes as long as I can be idle and have time to live an elegant life.’

  ‘Like Billy Pop?’

  ‘Billy Pop! A nice idleness he’s got. See No Evil Monkeys on his desk.’

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘What’s wrong with whimsical, machine-made plaster cast monkeys painted chocolate and squashed plum! And you talk about altering the world! You’ll make something like those terrible Bolshies.’

  ‘Don’t believe everything you see in the Daily Mail. Why are the Bolsheviks awful?’

  ‘You think I’m going to say because they’ve killed a lot of countesses. Well, I’m not. It’s because the ballet which is the one really new and exciting and beautiful thing we’ve created these days had to leave Russia.’

  ‘Who said?

  ‘Nobody has to say it. It’s obvious. That’s why they’re in France, that’s why they’re coming to London. And when they do, I mean to go to Sleeping Beauty twenty four times at least. And Scheherazade, if it’s done, a hundred times. Which is something to thank Lenin for.’

  *

  ‘You don’t know how I ached, darling one, for some beauty in my life after all those corridors and dormitories and hideous clothes and nuns. An author. And an author who had a house and an independence. An independence! That’s what he told me, Rupert! It makes me laugh now to remember how I thought it would all be a miracle of beauty. I’ve tried all I can with this dreadful house. Especially here in the drawing-room. You do like my room, darling heart, don’t you? Oh, Rupert, I saw such wonderful new lampshades last week. Like great turbans. So exciting and new. Ballet russe, really. Oh, Rupert, I do hope you’ll always care for beautiful things like I do. But you will. You’re indecently beautiful for a young man. Do you know that, darling? And you will cram hard at your languages and go to those awful night classes, and give up this silly amateur acting and these awful Myrtles and Monas. Rupert the overseas manager. Does it sound very pompous and grand to you, dear Boy? Never mind. Be a bit grand for my sake. You’ve got to be rich. I need beauty so much, and beauty needs money. Billy will never make any. So I’ve only got you to rely on.’

  *

  Actually, Quentin said, the dilemma isn’t such a real one as would appear. Before you’re an old man the problem’s going to be how to provide for people’s leisure. All the disagreeable jobs will be done by machines. The problem of the forties and fifties will be education for leisure. That’s where you aesthetes will come in. I see, said Marcus, meanwhile I’ve got to stay on at school and get School Cert. and Higher Cert, and everything else so as to be sure of a job. Doing the Medea. It’s all very confusing, isn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t think the Medea was such a two-purposes education.

  I think you’re living in the past, Regan. Things are changing. A lot of board-school boys can get quite a lot of schooling nowadays if they want to. What with night schools and so on. The old ignorance is disappearing. Oh, we was ignorant all right, Miss Sukey. But we ad our bit of fun. And we knew ow to come in out of the rain. We wouldn’t ave ad our eads boiled. Not owever good lookin e was.

  Any time’s kissing time. If you must be in these terrible amateur productions I do wish you could choose something a little less monotonous. I promise you, Countess, very soon no more amateur theatricals. There’s a dear boy. Once in a way, if you must. Perhaps. The Chocolate Soldier. You’d look so much more handsome as a hussar. But not too often, they take up so much time. Precious time when you ought to be at night classes getting on. I shan’t be any more. I’m going to be a professional. Professional what? An actor. The only sort of pro a man can be. Oh, Rupert, don’t be so absurd. Have you any idea of what it would be like? Paid a pittance and cheap theatrical digs. The selfishness, the vanity of it, Rupert. Just because you’re passable looking. How many become famous do you think out of the thousands of silly boys who join the back row of the chorus every year? And at least they can sing. You, my dear boy, hoot like an owl. I don’t intend to listen to such conceited nonsense. And now let’s play something pretty. Here you are. ‘At seventeen he’s got it oh so badly with eyes of a tender blue. At twenty-four he’s flirting oh so madly with eyes of a different hue.’ I hope you won’t wait until twenty-four to find something better than that Myrna. Not that her eyes were blue. Green cat’s eyes like all redheads. And she had a cast in one of them. I did think you’d have better taste. A professional actor! You won’t get far if your leading ladies look like that. She won’t make you money.

  Do the figures add up? You lucky girl. They never have for me. I wanted to talk to you, Podge. I needed to talk to a woman. The twins’ll be more sympathetic than I am. Not about this. The twins are virgins. Virgins are always prudes. They’re bound to be. Especially where other women are concerned. But you won’t be. I don’t know what you mean. Oh, that. Oh! I’m not making any judgments. It’s just what I’ve sensed. Remember I’m a man as well as an artist, and a man who’s lived. I shan’t say forgive me if I’m wrong, for I’m paying you a compliment. Virginity’s a tight, ungenerous state of affairs. Anyway I’m appealing to you for your understanding of another woman. Another woman? Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear about it, Father. I’m the last one to be your confidante. My dear girl, as if I should. No, the woman’s your mother. She’s going to be so desperately unhappy in these next weeks and she’ll need another woman’s understanding. We may not have liked him but he meant youth to her. And there won’t be another. I don’t think I want to hear what you have to say about the Countess. Now you are punishing me, Podge. That and the fact that I can do so little for her. Almost nothing. She needs the illusion of youth and I’m not good at supplying illusions. I thought perhaps I could give her the bright lights and the jazz that would help her to forget. The Piccadilly Hotel and blue trout. Did you know that she’s like an excited child when she can net her own blue trout? I confess I shall get pleasure myself from, seeing that again. It’ll take £10, Podge.

  ‘On their daughter’s entry, the Carmichael parents instinctively doubled the fierceness of their battle. “Oh to be mean about money.” “You leave me no money to be mean about.” Elizabeth just walked on and out through the further door which she closed behind her with her usual distant politeness. For a moment Sophie and James continued their exchange, then as Sophie was screaming, “Money for cigars, of course – but you can’t find even ten pounds for your wife,” she caught her husband’s eye. In a moment both were in fits of laughter. They laughed until they were forced to sit on the sofa, holding their sides. “Oh the sidey little prig.” “Putting us in our places,” Sophie answered. They could hardly speak for laughter. Then, “Darling,” Sophie asked, “Howcan the young be so solemn?”’ Through a palimpsest of ink and straying hair Margaret began to see some shape emerge from her ardent, sweating labours of imagination. At least between the elder Carmichaels stretched now a line of communication. The first of the more complex strands was woven.

  Ten pounds, ten simple pounds, three rubbers at three, a hundred up, partner, on the first rubber, and four hundred on the second, and game and third rubber to us, partner, three hundred up and two fifty for the rubber at five shillings a hundred, that’s (sums are so difficult to the tired head, so hard and refractory like a brick wall to the literary imagination) and an unexpected bonus declared on the Rubber Bearing shares, have to inform you that your quarterly balance stands at three hundred and thirty three pounds fourteen and sevenpence, no reason at all why not three quid or even ten quid on, know you aren’t a racing man Matthews, but put your shirt on Meg Merrilees, as a humble admirer and imitator of the great laird
of Abbotsford can hardly refuse a tip, fifty to one, five hundred pounds, here you are, Podge, your bread has come back over the waters quite a sizeable loaf and your mother can net blue trout until her arm aches, but everything depends on that first ten pounds, ten little sovereigns, I wish I had ten quid, two hundred quid, two hundred and fifty, in a box, a black box. Getting, getting, we lay waste our powers. The power of the word. A small beginning, that was all he asked – to use his eyes and ears each day on the familiar, to find all heaven in a shell. (Or was it a petal? or again a rainbow? But a rainbow was less easily come by.)

  As he passed the dining-room door (if he couldn’t be sure of ten pounds then at least there would be pheasant) he heard the mewing of the kittens. Helping himself to sherry from the cut-glass decanter on the mahogany sideboard, bending with one moment’s acute giddiness and an aching knee (art is no easy mistress) he examined against the scarlet velvet the exact colours of the small animals, and as usual the artist’s true eye applied to the simple, the ordinary, the wayside pimpernel revealed a miracle: the black on the flanks of the black and white kitten was in truth a rusty red, and there where the fur was thickest on the tail a cockfeather bottle green, but where black patches ran down its small feet they proved the darkest prussian blue. As for the ginger kitten it was to careful scrutiny a blend of apricot, yes and, by Jove, rose pink. With canvas and paints the miracle could at once be recorded, but as it was the details could only be stored away – if he but had a writers’ notebook, the entry would go under K for kitten – to await inclusion in the wider vision. Nevertheless detail was the thing, art was a simplification, a selection and an exactitude. The tortoiseshell kitten mewed loudly. Poor little devils, Billy Pop said aloud. Then straightening up, he felt refreshed. A moment’s compassion is worth volumes of theory to a writer.