No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  Ronnie, as always when the play was mentioned, shivered and said literally, ‘Brr!’

  ‘So how can there be an atmosphere of love?’ Alma asked them.

  ‘They’ve applauded the horrid ugly play loudly enough and filled the theatre,’ Rupert said.

  ‘No, darling, they’ve come to see me and they’ve applauded me. Oh, I don’t mean they haven’t had a lot else to applaud. Darling Ronnie who’s the most wonderful, dependable actor who never puts a foot wrong. Yes, you are, Ronnie. You’re always too modest. And Hope … I thought tonight, Hope dear, when you came on in the second act looking so perfectly lovely, that there ought to have been a round of applause just for that. And they’ve the excitement of the critics’ famous new find – Rupert Matthews. But now, darling, I’m going to talk to you seriously about those little bits of fussy business you’ve started putting in. They’ll be a disaster with the London critics. That you can be sure of. What you did to that poor play’s ending tonight! Surely, you can see that this is a moment of agony. She’s been rotten, God knows, and hard and thoughtless. It’s a horrid, cruel play. But at this moment the author does rise above his cynicism a little.’

  She explained the play to them with characteristic little fluttering gestures of her left hand swivelling on a rigidly held wrist, emphasizing the important climaxes with nods of her head.

  ‘It’s a terrible moment for her when she sees that even her spineless, spoilt son has turned against her. The audience is riveted. They despise and dislike her, the author and I have seen to that. But then suddenly they can’t help pitying her. And we must play on that, Rupert, for all we’re worth. That moment of pity is the only excuse the play has. And you, dear boy, what do you do? What does he do? Hope, Ronnie, I appeal to you! He moves a wastepaper basket. The whole tension, the whole tension that both of us, Rupert, for up to this point you sustain the awful young man’s odiousness beautifully, the whole tension is broken by that stupid move of the wastepaper basket.’

  ‘But Alma, darling – I move the wastepaper basket as a deliberate refusal to take your misery seriously. We fixed all that with Gerald in Edinburgh.’

  ‘You may have done, darling, I never did. I should never have agreed to such a thing. One of the things you’ll learn as you have more experience in the theatre is that we have very solemn obligations to our authors. Now, here’s this play, it’s cruel and clever and modern and everything else, but this young man has had one moment of tremendous insight into a woman’s essential loneliness. We can’t whatever we do let him down there. The London critics will be quick enough to see that the whole thing’s brittle, but if we can really put over that moment of sincerity, who knows, when the cleverness has worn off, we may be responsible for launching a new, a more solid Maugham. But we won’t if you move wastepaper baskets.’

  ‘But if I don’t I shall appear to be accepting my mother’s emotions at her own false valuation. We argued all that out with Gerald.’

  ‘You and Gerald never stop arguing. And it’s all very clever, no doubt. But I know one thing. And that is that you can’t fool around with a moment of sincerity. Audiences can tell. I felt it tonight. The applause was there, but the moment had been missed as surely as if you’d fluffed the lines.’

  He was about to argue further, then, catching Hope’s eye, he said, ‘I’ll think it all through again.’

  ‘And now, darlings, I’m going to send you all off to bed. Apart from tomorrow night’s performance, we’ve all got to be very amusing and loving for Nina’s tea party tomorrow. Nina McKinley was a very great actress. Please, all of you remember that; now she’s old. Beyton’s a darling too, and very handsome. If she wanted to marry a peer she couldn’t have done better. Oh, dear, if our clever author could meet a few real aristocrats like Beyton, what much better and nicer plays he would write.’

  Out on the terrace at Beyton, after admiring the heavenly roses and the quite glorious peacocks (how mad people were to be superstitious about any of God’s creatures, especially birds so lovely) Alma gathered rather more than three quarters of the Beyton’s houseparty around her to form her court. She told them how Lady Macbeth had to be played from a tiny, tiny little piece of hardness somewhere deep inside you, because, when anyone obstinately refuses to reflect God and all the beauty he has given us, hardness is all that is left – a little nugget of hardened will, a tiny patch of darkness that refuses to reflect the light. But for herself, she told them, she always preferred to play in comedy, for when the comic spirit came to life on the stage, it was like ships flashing signals to one another across the sea, signals of laughter and happiness, so that she fed the audience with her vitality and they fed her back with their laughter. Playing in a successful comedy run one often seemed to need less food because of this feeding back and forth. And then more seriously she told them of those mysterious times when she had known for certain that the fun and the happiness she was giving out had been sustaining some particularly poor, unhappy love-starved soul in the audience; and how these intuitions had always been confirmed later. It was such things that made all the hard work seem worthwhile, for acting was, of course, mainly hard work – as old John Hare had taught her, thank goodness, work and work again, then work again. Here she broke off to tell Rupert that he ought not to be standing there idle.

  ‘You’ve heard all my stories before,’ she said. ‘Besides now that you are a celebrity you have to sing for your supper. Good Heavens, here you are in the same company as the great Nina McKinley and you’re not hanging on every word she says! Go and listen. That’s theatre history. She’s the giant. We, God help us, are the pygmies.’

  Ronnie Rice was telling Lady Beyton of his century in the Actors v. Authors in the first year of peace.

  ‘I hadn’t touched a bat the whole time I was in Mespot and yet I played like an angel. I haven’t topped thirty-five since. Cricket’s a mysterious game.’

  Lady Beyton gave him a mysterious smile, but she seemed pleased to change her devotee. To worship, Rupert found, was not altogether physically easy, for Lady Beyton, though flat and square as a playing card, was very short – the top of her head just above his crutch. Yet it was not a simple bend one must make to talk to her, for she held the world off with a very large square bosom. This was not all, for she wore an enormous floppy, rose-decked hat, the brim of which, from his height, appeared to be resting on her bosom. He took a step back, bent forward, then sideways, and from this agonizing position he confronted a very very old enamelled face out of which stared wildly two very round cornflower blue eyes. He took a listening position, but he was soon to learn that he was a courtier at a much more ancient court than Alma’s, one with different courtesy books.

  ‘Have you been looked after?’ she asked. ‘Good. The fig jam is our only real boast at Beyton. The trees are very old. Andrew’s great grandfather brought them back from the foot of Vesuvius. And they’ve always thanked us for rescuing them from lava by bearing profusely. Now I want to know all about you. The young man the critics are raving about.’

  There was no mockery in her voice, which indeed was all on one note, and her eyes begged for some message from the world outside to one so old.

  As Rupert talked, he felt increasingly aware of the difference of these two generations – Alma’s so claiming, so loquaciously uncertain, Nina McKinley’s the great age of theatrical certainty, of kings and queens for all their ham and rabbits on the stage (or perhaps because of them). The great eyes looked up at him. Occasionally the famous voice said, ‘Oh, that’s so clearly put’ or ‘if you act as well as you talk, young man, you’ll go far.’ Quite soon he hardly felt the crick that had come into his back from bending so low.

  ‘And now, what of this part? What are you making of that?’ she asked abruptly while he was still speaking so that he wondered if he had been talking too much; but it was clear from her eager eyes that it was just an old woman’s impatience to keep up to date. All that he had forborne to say to Alma, all the points that he ha
d left for Gerald to make at rehearsals, all that Hope or Ronnie would have been bored to hear, he now poured out to this famous yet sympathetic woman.

  ‘Technically it’s superb melodrama and many of the lines are really witty. But, of course, it’s not a great play. Only it is something absolutely fresh. Part of a new willingness to say what we really think, to face the fact that there’s something rotten about the smart set and that there’s a real hatred between the generations nowadays. Maugham got near to some of it with Our Betters and, of course, The Vortex; last year was a real break through. But I think Before the Weekend is better because it’s truer and more bitter. More how my generation feels,’ he added with a boyish laugh, for he didn’t want to seem pompous, ‘And above all it’s got a great fat part for me.’

  He stopped, for really he was doing all the talking. There was a silence for a moment and Lady Beyton still stared at him as though to make sure that he had finished.

  ‘Well, you mustn’t let them fob you off with a mingy part like that again. Who’s your agent? He’s the one to blame. But never mind, the critics have noticed you. That’s the main thing. My daughter was telling me before you arrived. She read something out to me about you from the Morning Post. I don’t go to the theatre now much myself because I’m a bit deaf. And they put on so many unpleasant things. Mothers and sons drunk and shouting abuse at each other, and now I hear it’s sons blackmailing their mothers. They’ll get nobody to come to see such things, of course.’

  For a moment he was nonplussed, but then he thought that since once she had been so great, it would be monstrous to agree with her like a small child.

  He raised his voice, ‘I think it depends on your experience,’ he said. ‘My own family is a very racketty one. I don’t believe my parents ever cared for their children. And so I suppose we’ve never really loved them. Certainly my mother’s been far worse at times than any Lady Manningtree …’

  Now that she heard she cut in impatiently, ‘Oh, dear, Oh dear. That is bad. For an actor too. I used to rely so much on coming home to a hot supper and everything laid out for me by my dear mother. This poor boy,’ she told Alma who came across to them saying loudly that she must pay her respects, ‘This poor boy has been telling me about his home. No family life at all.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he has,’ Alma said. ‘We all know his hard luck story. But you mustn’t be so proud of your awful upbringing, Rupert. We all suffer agonies when we’re young. Children have an extra sense that makes them so vulnerable. I can remember now as well as anything my own mother coming downstairs with a telegram in her hand – I couldn’t have been more than three at the time, all frills and bows as I stood at the bottom of the stairs watching her – I’m doing it again now as I tell you. She seemed to come so slowly. And every step as she came nearer was like a little death for me because I could see that my darling mother was suffering. Of course I didn’t know that the telegram was to tell her of her own mother’s death. I didn’t even know what a telegram was. But I could feel her suffering in every tiny bone of my body.’

  Lady Beyton put her hand on Alma’s. ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ she said laughing. ‘Not one word. You were always a great fibber. And now you’ve got this clever, handsome young man for your lead. That’s just what we all need as we get on. Young blood.’

  Alma shouted angrily, ‘He’s had a lot too much praise. He’s still got a great deal to learn. Now if you want hope from the young, look at that pretty girl, Hope Merriman.’

  Once again Lady Beyton patted her hand, laughing loudly. ‘And your puns,’ she said and she winked at Rupert. ‘They’ve given him a rotten part, he says. You must bully your agent. Tell him to get you into The Three Musketeers. They’re sure to revive. You’re taller than Lewis Waller of course. But you’d make a fine D’Artagnan.’

  ‘D’Artagnan!’ Alma laughed her scorn loudly enough to make even Lady Beyton jump. ‘D’Artagnan has to have fire and gaiety. When D’Artagnan comes on the stage every woman in the house knows that a man has come among them. This boy’s got a long way to go yet before he can play D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan isn’t just a question of clever ideas about wastepaper baskets.’

  Rupert felt too angry to remain even within earshot. Although in his rage he could see nothing he pretended to be looking at the flower-beds and so wandered away on his own into a shrubbery. The evergreen bushes and his own sense of isolation reminded him that he was in a prettyish kind of little wilderness. ‘I send no compliments to your mother’ he said aloud, and hearing Margaret answering with delighted laughter he realized to his surprise that his detestable, forever renounced past had for once brought him relief. He sat down on a wooden seat that encircled a huge beech tree. ‘I am seriously displeased,’ he said aloud a number of times, trying to assess what emphasis would most completely crush Alma Grayson. After the last attempt Ronnie Rice’s voice interrupted.

  ‘And so is somebody else, old boy. I’ve been sent by Alma to tell you to return at once to the glittering throng or forever be accounted one of the lesser breed.’

  ‘Damn her. Damn her blasted impertinence. What’s she picking on me like this for?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea, old boy. In any case I shouldn’t think of being mixed up in it.’

  ‘If you know, you ought to tell me. If she continues like this, there’ll be a row and that won’t help the play.’

  ‘Ah, now, for the sake of the side of course, that’s quite a different matter. I don’t know, mind you, but as a shrewd guess, I think she’s needled because you haven’t told her the old bedtime story.’

  ‘But I couldn’t possibly. She must be over fifty. It’d be a kind of incest.’

  ‘All right, keep your wool on, old boy. Anyhow you’ve rather yourself to blame. It isn’t as though you haven’t kept stoking the fire under her kettle.’

  ‘But she’s the sort of woman one naturally flirts with.’

  ‘Nothing natural about it as far as I can see. You asked my diagnosis and I’ve given it. That’s her usual trouble.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid she won’t get any relief from me.’

  As they moved back towards the terrace Rice whistled, then, ‘To be Alma Grayson’s leading man may not be a sinecure but it’s not to be sneezed at, you know.’

  But, whether because of the pollen from the flower-beds or not, that was exactly what Rupert then did very loudly.

  Every head on the terrace turned towards him, and among them to Rupert’s great surprise was that of their producer Gerald Crace. Alma threw out her arms to the assembled company.

  ‘And now we know that our juvenile lead hasn’t drowned himself in the lake because I don’t love him, we can face tonight’s audience without fear of disaster. Darling Nina, you’ve chosen the better part.’ She waved one hand towards the park, the other towards the Wyatt mansion,’ To live with such dignity and beauty.’

  Perhaps Lady Beyton thought that the allusion was to her husband who, panama in hand, was hovering around Alma; at any rate she produced an unexpected, vulgar chuckle. She put her old, ringed hand on Rupert’s arm.

  ‘You haven’t done too badly for yourself, Alma.’

  Alma turned to Lord Beyton and at the top of her voice said, ‘I’d no idea she’d got so deaf. Almost nothing gets over now, does it?’

  Lady Beyton moved away, over her shoulder she gave her husband his orders. ‘See they all get into their right cars, Andrew.’

  Alma sought to pass it over by an account of how she would spend her next hour.

  ‘Fingers and wrists quite loose,’ she told Lord Beyton, ‘and the mind absolutely receptive…. I fill my thoughts with a colour. But it must be a positive colour like blue.’

  Rupert found that he was to travel with Gerald in his touring Wolseley, but before he could put his foot on the step, Lord Beyton drew him on one side.

  ‘A word of advice. If you’re going to marry one of the stars, as they call them now, you must get the upper hand early on.’
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  *

  Gerald asked, ‘Well, what are we going to do about it?’

  Rupert was uncertain enough of what he was talking about that he felt it fair to assume an expression of ignorance.

  ‘Alma. She was on to me by trunk call for half an hour at half past midnight. You’re ruining the magnificent curtain, you’re keeping the audience away, you and I have been sophisticated and clever with something natural and lovely and sincere. In short we’ve ballsed up her big moment and blowed if she’ll stand it.’

  To give himself time to control his emotions, Rupert said casually, ‘Ah, the wastepaper basket.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Gerald shuddered, ‘That rather silly combination of words came over the telephone to me fifty times between half past twelve and one this morning. And I went on saying them over in my head until three. Have you heard three such words repeated like that? Well, they sound damned silly.’

  ‘The bitch! Shunting us off to bed and then telephoning – But anyway you and I had agreed. You said yourself we can’t afford any sentimentalization with a play like this. It’s telling a new truth …’

  ‘Indeed, yes. But what we also can’t afford is to do without Alma.’

  ‘You mean that she’s actually threatened … but that’s nonsense, she’s under contract.’

  ‘Only pre-London with options. Her agents are very tough. In any case if she goes to the management …’

  ‘But you’re the producer.’

  ‘My first production for them? Oh, we can fight her. But it could be a very nasty shambles for us. If you could manage to look a bit touched by Lady Manningtree’s naked fight against the world’s cruelty, help to give old Alma the one moment when the audience loves her …’

  ‘But they’re not meant to.’

  ‘Perhaps the w.p.b. is a little bit obvious. Yes, that’s what I suggest cutting.’

  ‘And if I refuse.’

  ‘I don’t see how I could support you against her.’