No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  As they came out the sun shone suddenly for a moment over distant Oxford. Only Marian remarked on it.

  ‘So you’re never going to be a scholar again, only a gipsy,’ she said and smiled amusedly as she saw the others look down on the ground or away from her. Quentin realized how ill-suited she would be to lead them in his absence. Valerie pulled off her tamoshanter, rolled it up and put it in her mackintosh pocket, then taking off the mackintosh she folded it neatly over her arm.

  ‘I dare say you don’t want testimonials from your students, but you can’t surely give up all teaching with your talent for making people think for themselves.’

  This time he returned her smile. ‘Not the talent most commended at the Universities.’

  ‘Not here, perhaps,’ she cried, ‘But join Ballard at Ruskin. Or in London. Good heavens, to work under Harold Laski! Just think! Or at Manchester.’

  ‘No. I don’t want any of it.’

  The man from Balliol said, ‘Of course, freelance journalism will leave you time for WEA work.’

  ‘No! No!’ cried Quentin, ‘that’s extensionism. For God’s sake let us confine the plague while we can.’

  The blurred wave of his hand seemed to suggest that the centre of infection lay somewhere around Tom Tower, now hidden in thick grey rain clouds.

  ‘I shall give courses at the Labour Colleges if they want me. There one can teach as one likes.’

  ‘As they like,’ said Marian quietly.

  ‘University teaching within the present class framework of education must end in perversion or sterility.’

  ‘But – laying the seeds for socialist infiltration in the higher levels of the bureaucracy?’ Seymour asked.

  ‘That’s an evolutionary illusion. In any case, whatever you stuff into their heads here, the machine will corrupt them three years after they’ve gone down. Besides I want to test all this theory against the facts of industrial life.’

  ‘Empiricism,’ said Marian, ‘a grave if not infantile disorder.’

  He noticed with gratitude that Valerie didn’t laugh with the others. Even so, despite the fact that they were rapidly being swallowed up by the growing domestication of large houses with drives and gardens and shrubberies that sucked them back gradually into urban life, he felt isolated on an empty bare hillside. A sudden cold breeze blowing his mackintosh tightly round his thighs made him conscious of his legs, his body; he knew himself naked, scrawny and damaged before the world at large, before the great city stretched out there, sophisticated, sure of itself and unfriendly.

  Hitting with his stick at the well-trimmed hedges of the large gardens they passed he sought to draw all his companions in with a net of words, that, rescuing them from their withdrawal, he might gather them around him again, a warm screen to keep off the blasts.

  ‘It takes a tough bourgeois background to resist this soft, insidious, misty charm, to see through the bonhomous invitation to join the club, and the cold heart, the indifference to a rotten world’s pains that lie behind courteous passing of the port. You’ve all had warm family backgrounds. Oh I know that the genteel poverty of mine is a feeble joke beside the poverty you’ve known as the norm of daily life. But your homes were warm with necessary generosity, the neighbourliness that’s born of no hope. I was farmed out, you know, pretty early to an indulgent grandmother. But the family existed all right with the unusual pretences of bourgeois family morality spread so thin that the cold heart and the ruthless claw showed through all the time.’

  A few large drops of rain were falling but he could feel that he was holding them, for no one hurried or protested about the coming storm.

  ‘That’s why it’s so much easier for me to renounce Oxford and all her false works.’

  Ballard said, ‘Ruskin’s hardly part of the club. However, maybe you’re right. I like to believe that what I enjoy here is not part of …’

  Marian interrupted, ‘You mean, Quentin, that we’re snobs.’ And she added, ‘Not that my family ever was poor.’

  The rain coming faster now seemed to find some gap through which to strike him, cold and sharp.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said, ‘it’s me, Marian, who’s the snob. Always seeking some argument or other to advance my rotten gentility, to make me out superior. No, Ballard, you’re right. You can make Oxford accept you on your own terms. But I can’t. I must get away or be damned.’

  He could not quite tell what effect his words had upon them, and a moment later the rain pelted down so hard that they must run for such shelter as they could get beneath some overgrown ornamental hollies at the entrance to a rich man’s drive. As they stood there silent, Quentin felt a hand on his forearm. Looking up, he saw her fresh face, her cheeks red from the wind, her dark eyes glittering like the rain drops that ran down in streams from her sopping black fringe.

  ‘You’ve done the right thing,’ Valerie whispered.

  *

  ‘Oh, you’ve done the right thing all right!’ Doreen cried. With tears and rain at once pouring down her face, with her scraped-back lively yellow hair now dark and dead with water, she seemed to look more than ever for the pity due to someone saved from drowning. ‘Oh, yes, you’ve done the right thing. But how can I bear it if I can’t be sure that you’ve done it because you love me?’

  As she spoke she levered herself up a little from the floor of the barn by her hands; then sinking back, she beat upon the hard ground until her palms were bruised and scratched. Quentin took off his knapsack and clambering down beside her from the sacks of chickenfood on which he stood, held her in his arms and kissed her mouth until her crying was silenced. Then, forcing his tongue in, he pulled her towards him fiercely, yet he knew that his hands were still stroking her back with a gentle controlled touch. Pressing himself against her thigh he noted with relief that, despite her hysteria, he was stiffening. But as his left hand moved round to her breasts, she pulled herself away and lay back, her head upon the sacks, her eyes closed.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Oh, of course. I suppose. Good God, I don’t want to doubt you. I love you so much,’ she began to cry again.

  He sat back on his haunches. ‘Why then do you refuse to believe me?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Yes, I do. When we made the mistake, you couldn’t hide your shock from me. You talked about our marrying as though it was some inevitability that you’d learnt from a Victorian novel’

  ‘My darling, how anyone can do such good work on Bentham and have such a sick Romantic imagination, I …’

  ‘No, no, Quentin, please. Don’t act. I know what I’ve just said is true. Your face went white and sickened when I told you. And then came the conventional words. There was no connexion between them.’

  ‘All right. I was shocked. You don’t seem to understand. Of course, I don’t believe in it, but the old conventions have their hold on us. You are in statu pupilarii, you know.’

  She motioned impatiently.

  ‘Oh, I know they’ve no right to farm out pretty girls to young research fellows. Even with chaperones in the shape of hideous girls like Hilary Notcutt.’

  ‘That isn’t what frightened you, You know it wasn’t.’

  ‘All right. It was all kinds of shock. I was unprepared, tho’ it was my own monstrous carelessness. I’ve so many plans, there’s so much that needs doing, I don’t leave much room for personal revolutions. And then perhaps I did feel a bit of a hero of a three decker novel! But now it’s all digested. Surely you can see how I want you. I’m not going to live this hole-in-the-corner existence any longer, creeping down to Herefordshire, meeting in a barn and even now, who knows whether those awful women on your reading party or some busybody farmer’s wife may have seen us? You must let me announce our engagement.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, you must give me time to think about today, about …’

  ‘Whether you believe me. Oh, for heaven’s sake.’

  But she was crying again.

  ‘You know what, Doreen, you’re working too hard, m
y girl. I want a beautiful body, not an emaciated corpse.’

  And when she still sobbed, he started to sing in an imitation cockney. ‘Oh, comrades all, come rally round, our cause I fear is dying.’ He nudged her, ‘Come on, comrade.’ And singing with him she began to laugh.

  ‘What a blasphemous way to bring me to my senses,’ she said, but she continued laughing so that her face lost its haggard, hysterical pinched look. The pressure of erection was becoming intolerable, and he put her hand on his crutch.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I promise I won’t let you run any …’ But he saw he was talking too much and felt in his pocket for the proof of safety he had brought with him.

  The Principal of her college telephoned him with the story before he saw it in the Oxford Mail so that he was forced at once to produce a moderate seemly grief.

  ‘It is very tragic. She seemed so full of life. And then I can’t help thinking of her brilliance. She had a real chance of getting a first.’

  ‘I’m so very much afraid that this was the cause. We women, you know, alas, are taking a long time to learn a sense of proportion,’ the Principal said.

  When, then, a week later her parents visiting the college to pack up her things called in at his rooms, he was able to control the incredible vitality that seemed to have possessed him since her suicide.

  ‘My husband will never forgive me,’ Mrs Collett said, ‘for wanting Doreen to come up here. But she was so clever and it was something I’d missed.’

  ‘No man has a right to blame his wife for serious decisions,’ said Colonel Collett. ‘That’s the first rule of marriage. But then I’m old fashioned.’

  Quentin got up and offered them sherry, and, when they refused, he walked over to his pipe rack and took out a new pipe.

  Coming back across the room, ‘She was very happy with her work. That I am sure of. As far as a tutor can tell.’

  He sat down and began to light his pipe, then stopped, asking Mrs Collett’s permission. When this was accorded he said between suckings and lighting of matches, ‘I don’t feel that you should think you did wrong in letting her come to Oxford. At least that’s my judgement.’ He added the comment, ‘She paid the temperamental price that most clever girls still pay in our society.’

  He got up and collected an ashtray from his desk. He could hardly control his enormous sense of energy.

  ‘If she’d been frustrated she would have been much more unhappy.’

  He could see that even Mrs Collett thought him jumpy; Colonel Collett looked at the end of endurance.

  ‘Well, whatever it may be for men,’ he said, ‘I’m certain it is no atmosphere for girls.’

  As they left Quentin knew that he hadn’t been able to help them, yet the energy in him almost escaped into a jig.

  *

  As they approached Oxford Quentin found Valerie’s nearness at once so exciting and so intolerable that he talked without cessation – about his famous luncheon with the Webbs, about the Spartacists, about state railway finances in France, about the new town hall in Oslo, about Cobbett, about Hyndman, about Sorel, about the plans for creating some new school of modern subjects to offset Greats, about his interview with Horrabin and the articles he would do for ‘Plebs’. As they came under the Railway Bridge, excited as always nowadays by halflight, he brushed against her, but before she could respond he abruptly excused himself from accompanying the women and Ballard in the direction of Worcester, and kept on with Seymour past the castle.

  Seymour said, ‘What a bunch of egoists we are. I’m afraid we didn’t show up in a very good light. Not a word about how serious this is for you.’

  ‘Oh, I think I’ve made it plain that I couldn’t have stuck an academic life.’

  ‘All the same, it’s a big wrench. And how are you going to live on what the reviews will pay?’

  ‘I can live on tea and bread and dripping, thank the Lord, with the greatest of ease.’

  It was true. Even when his scout had woken him this morning to porridge and kidneys and Oxford marmalade, he had known that, though he could hardly look out into the Quad without crying, one thing he would never miss would be scouts and High Table and medlars with the port.

  Seymour said, ‘Well, you can add this unction to your soul. There’s not one of us, however big we talk, who’d have the courage to give it up …’

  But Quentin did not answer. When they reached Carfax, he went away with no more recognition of the young man than a curt nod. In the Cornmarket the shopgirls were pouring out of Elliston and Cavell’s store after their day’s work. He sniffed their cheap scents, their underlying women’s smell, their bright chatter, their tight short skirts, their faces mysterious under their bellshaped hats, the glitter of their odd bits of cheap jewellery. One girl in a blue woollen tammy turned back and smiled at him – cheeky blackcurrant eyes. He smiled back.

  ‘Good evening, Sir,’ she said, giggling to temper the address, but he froze. The bloody social system of this stinking country! And he had been about to join the exploiters. Suddenly he felt that far worse than a pound or two left on the dressing table would be his emotional exploitation, to use that slim healthy body to purge his own disorders. Disgusted with himself he turned off down Market Street to his college. Here in the Corn he could only feed his randiness. Better go back to his rooms and sit on it.

  *

  ‘This way,’ Alfred said, as they passed through the turnstiles. It was his invariable announcement on their arrival at any new place of note – and in the last two years they had visited so many, mainly in England, though they had also passed four blissful days in Bruges and Ghent. After three years of prudently confining their meetings to her small flat the sense of being in the open had proved a wonderful stimulant. He was so well groomed, handsome and mature; and herself, she truly believed, not disgracing him – always well turned out (good gloves, good shoes, good stockings), fine figure (if not to fashion’s taste, yet to his) at any rate what he said a young lady should be. Which was all that mattered. If they could not enjoy social life together, they could at least look all that society could require. Anywhere, they had finally settled, that was not enclosed, any open space where face to face meetings could be evaded. The decision ruled out museums or art galleries or concert halls ‘for which relief Gladys said ’much thanks’. Freedom was what they sought. Yet Gladys knew that half her pleasure lay in having come back full circle to the conspiratorial scenes of their first hastily snatched, clandestine meetings on Blackheath, or Putney Heath or Wimbledon Common – before she had finally left home for a place of her own.

  ‘When in doubt,’ Alfred said, ‘always follow the crowds.’

  And so they mixed with the main stream of Sunday visitors moving towards some sort of pond or lake or something.

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if it was a business decision, Alfred. You forget that I’ve heard you on the dangers of investing money that way. “The butler told the bishop, and the bishop told the barmaid, and the barmaid told her boss. And that’s how bucket shops were born.”’ She laughed.

  ‘Did I make that up? I’d forgotten. It’s rather good.’ He took her arm to help her avoid one of the protruding patches of grass that got in the way of the gravel. ‘Winding paths here, aren’t they? That’s business. I shouldn’t be in doubt there. But relaxation means relaxation for me, not losing my way and landing up miles from anywhere. When Doris and I were first married she was always being told of plays to go to. As a result we nearly always spent a boring evening. Often in half-empty theatres. Then I took over. I just went to the Keith Prowse ticket agency people and asked what was the best thing on. If they only had two seats left, we always found it was something worth going to. That’s one of the saving graces of Doris’s illness, we neither of us need pretend we want to go out in the evenings.’

  The houses were of glass and the sun’s reflection on them shone like a ball of fire; the blaze caught Gladys’ eye for a moment but happily she was not easily distracted from
her pleasure in being with him. And they were walking now on the pleasant, familiar paving stone surface of the terrace.

  ‘What do you do on the evenings when you’re on your own, Gladys?’

  She realized that he had never asked her before; they seldom spoke of empty time, there was so much to say about their busy days …

  ‘Well, thank goodness there are only five.’

  He took her arm and squeezed it. She knew that he felt the same secure happiness that she did.

  ‘And Wednesdays I usually stay late at the Agency. Then Fridays I go out to Clapham to go over the books with Larkin. I was right, by the way, he’s hardworking and good. Tuesdays and Sundays I’m with you. Other nights I’m often very tired. By the time I’ve eaten and had a long hot bath, I’m only fit really to take a book to bed and sleep over it.’

  He put his arm round her shoulders and stroked the firm smooth flesh under the silk.

  ‘To love a happy woman. It’s a miracle. Really it is, darling.’

  ‘Oh, it isn’t all roses. I try to spend one evening a week at 52.’

  ‘I don’t see why. After all you’ve told me of that bastard, your father.’

  ‘You mustn’t remember that, Alfred. I don’t. I’ve tried to chuck out all that awful past. And mostly I’ve succeeded. They’re merely a day to day problem to me now. But just at this moment when Marcus has finally left home, they are in such a mess.’

  ‘You do enough. Good Lord, at your age! You’re already making them an allowance.’

  ‘Sort of. Driblets. I daren’t trust them with more. Tho’ it’s worse really. As a result, of course, they bleed all of us now. I’m so afraid they’ll worry Marcus. Just because he’s secretary to a rich man doesn’t mean he’s got money to spare.’

  ‘They’re impossible. You should cut off from them completely. In any case there’s no love lost between them. I can’t think why they don’t separate.’