No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  Rupert found a voice that seemed to come from far off-mellow, caressing, with a touch of acceptant chuckle.

  ‘Well, I suppose … life’s full of rum necessities. All right.’

  ‘Thank you. I promise I’ll support you if she goes too far.’

  ‘I’m not going to bed with her, if that’s what you mean, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘I should hope not. For the Lord’s sake don’t try anything like that. She’s a tremendous prude is our Alma. Kharma and Christian Science and heaven knows what. Sex is just an untrue thought to her.’

  ‘But Ronnie Rice implied …’

  ‘Ah! I should have warned you. Never believe a word Ronnie says. For all that hearty cricketing manner he’s a shameless old gossip.’

  It was only when he had begun to put on his makeup that Rupert’s anger returned. He went straight along to Alma’s dressing-room and walked in without knocking. She was lying on her daybed with her eyes closed, thinking of blue, no doubt. He stood over her.

  ‘You had absolutely no right to ring up Gerald behind my back. We agreed to discuss it all on Saturday. I’m not willing to give way. You know very well the play can only work if we’re true to it. I’m grateful to you for all that I’ve learnt from you in the last months, but I’m not going to learn to fake things. You know that this play could be my big chance, you also know that you could wreck it. It’s up to you. But so long as I’m playing it I’m not going to sweeten the end.’

  She had opened her eyes as he started to speak and he expected a tirade but she only stared at him. When he finished she swallowed once or twice as though considering, then she spoke in a voice of artificial gaiety.

  ‘Oh, my dear boy. Don’t let us sugar things over. Not after that pathetic spectacle. A great, almost a terrible woman she was. But how could you tell that, who only see her now when the terror has gone soft and pappy. Poor Beyton! But I’ve been waiting and hoping for this from you. We’ll give Error its innings. My dear, I’ve caught that awful cricketing language from Ronnie at his most boring. I only wanted to know whether you cared enough to stand up for your own views. But, thank God for it, you’re big enough.’

  She held out her long elegant hand to him.

  ‘So be it,’ she said in a comradely voice; ‘we’ll go all out for the hard bitter ending.’

  He bent down to kiss her hand, but then he decided to kiss her cheek.

  ‘Thank you, Alma. You’re a darling,’ he said, and then he found himself kissing her passionately on the mouth. She seemed to push him away for a few minutes but then she held him. He felt like a victorious army gone berserk.

  That night he almost overplayed the wastepaper basket business just to show her who had won. But the applause was still terrific. Gerald after the show appeared puzzled and apprehensive, but Alma settled that.

  ‘It all works so beautifully, Gerald, now that this boy understands what I want.’

  They were settling, all three, into the plushy comfort of the hired car that took her back to the Adelphi hotel each night.

  ‘He’s a very clever boy,’ she said, and she emphasized each word by tapping his cheek.

  It was the beginning of their highly successful partnership on and off stage.

  *

  P. S. was asleep in his pram on the front step. The soft down on his veined little head flashed gold when, from moment to moment, the sun’s rays caught it as the breeze blew the fringe of the pram’s hood. Of course children are often golden before their hair gradually darkens, but with herself for a mother P. S. might well keep his little golden fleece. He had Hugh’s rather small mouth, and the comforter accentuated it. By the corner of the privet hedge where the builders had left their debris Senior and Middleman were constructing something from the lumps of solidified cement and the broken bricks. Sukey, who was pegging the washing on the line, asked,

  ‘Is that the Tower of London?’ She spoke softly, for P. S. was going through a phase of light sleeping in the daytime.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Senior in his gruff voice, ‘it’s a bungalow just like ours. Only it’s got a proper name. It’s called Thomas.’

  ‘Domus isn’t a proper name, darling, it’s Latin for house.’

  ‘What is Latin?’ asked Middleman. He was hardly at all babyish in his speech.

  ‘Latin is what Daddy teaches,’ Senior said proudly, ‘He’s going to teach it to me when I’m bigger.’

  ‘Well, maybe.’ Sukey smiled as she always did when she modified the children’s statements in a way that they couldn’t understand.

  ‘Keep an eye on P. S., senior. I’m just going to get Daddy and Mr Plowright their eleven o’clock tea. If you come with me, Middleman, you can get a cake each for yourself and Senior.’

  ‘Oh, can’t I come, Mummy? Can’t I come? He’ll choose the wrong thing.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I bet you will.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Sssh! Both of you. You’ll wake P. S.’ Sukey rebuked them with a smile. ‘Anyway you don’t know what there is.’

  ‘What is there?’

  ‘There’s Queen cakes which are still hot. And there’s raspberry fingers that I made on Monday. Now you’re in a fix aren’t you? Which is it to be?’

  She watched with enchantment the pantomime of solemn frowns and pursing of the lips that accompanied her sons’ choice.

  ‘Can’t I have both?’

  ‘No, you can’t, you monster of greed. Now, hurry up or the Middleman will choose for you.’

  Horrified, Senior said urgently, ‘Raspberry fingers.’

  ‘So icing sugar wins over freshness.’ Taking her second son’s little hand, she went laughing into the bungalow.

  When she came into the sitting-room-cum-study Hugh and Mr Plowright had spread exam papers all over the floor. Mr Plowright jumped up as soon as she entered and offered to take the tray from her; and, when she refused he still stood up, fingering his tie – as a gesture of respect, perhaps, but no, probably only out of nervousness.

  ‘I think we can allow “a big African bird” for ostrich for the juniors,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Oh, yes. We’re marking the general knowledge, Mrs Pascoe. We’re nearly finished.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I must drink my tea and go. I’ve got to put the stew on and then Senior tore a hole in his knickers climbing a fence yesterday. I’m not sure I like them going up Toad Lane by themselves.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry….’ Hugh came out of his papers but she smiled him back to them.

  ‘I was only talking to myself, dear. Have one of the Queen cakes, Mr Plowright. I made them this morning.’

  And, of course, what does the ridiculous man do but drop the raspberry finger he’d picked up and take a Queen cake instead.

  ‘Ooh er jolly delicious, Mrs Pascoe.’

  She’d hardly done this imitation in her own mind before he said it, and with his teeth all protruding in a jolly smile. She thought for a second how Margaret or any of the family for that matter would laugh at her imitation of him, but she never did it aloud because Hugh didn’t like one to make fun of friends. And Mr Plowright counted as a close friend. Anyway, the children liked him, and he hadn’t got a wife whom she would be expected to visit or ask to the house. No, on the whole, Hugh was very good really in not cluttering the house up with a lot of strangers. Moved by his goodness she went over to him and put her arm round his shoulders.

  ‘Anything amusing this term, darling?’ she asked, for the General Knowledge Exam always produced some howlers Hugh liked to tell her.

  ‘Plowright has a good one.’

  While she was thinking that Hugh could never forbear trying to show his friend to her to the best advantage Mr Plowright had told his joke which was something to do with Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. It could hardly have been unsuitable coming from him so she laughed loudly; indeed she suddenly felt rather warm towards the boring little man because he made Hugh happy, and, supposing it had not been
he, Hugh might have become friends with the Great Man. And then, she could hardly bear to imagine it, she would have been taken up by the Great Lady, which would have meant going up to the School House at the word of command.

  Hugh said, ‘Fitchett thinks that the Guadalquivir is a kind of tropical jelly. Something to do with guavas, I suppose.’

  They all laughed. With the Great Lady it would be jokes like that all the time, if they weren’t talking about the boys, or worse still parents. As it was she really only got involved with the school on Sports Day, Play Day, and the match against St Hildebrand’s. As for those dreadful termly dinner parties, she still had P. S. as an excuse. And yet Hugh, who had it all day from nine to seven, still wanted to bring Plowright back to the bungalow. But men were a tribe apart.

  ‘Wichelo’s become very highbrow,’ Mr Plowright said. ‘Name one living author. Margaret Matthews is his choice. Who on earth can have told him of her?’

  Hugh chuckled. ‘I expect his parents have got on to the fact that she’s Sukey’s sister.’

  ‘Oh, I am most frightfully sorry, Mrs Pascoe.’

  ‘You don’t have to be. Although Meg isn’t as vinegary as those books of hers suggest. We have an aunt, a tremendous poseur, who always encouraged her to be the clever one of the family, and now of course these literary critics…. But I’m hopeful she’ll marry and settle down. If she doesn’t get too much into the arty set.

  ‘Sukey thinks marriage the cure for everything. Actually I thought the little story she based on our wedding party was very cleverly done.’

  ‘He just says that, Mr Plowright, because he doesn’t want to admit how annoyed he was. He was quite right to be furious. The whole thing was complete nonsense. To begin with she made Hugh a curate. Hugh who always tries to cut school prayers when he can! And then she talks down about Hugh’s family as though I ought to have married into the aristocracy or something. Imagine me with broad acres and faithful retainers! It’s such nonsense because my parents never knew where the next penny was coming from.’

  ‘I suppose if one knew a lot of these writers, even chaps like Galsworthy or Hugh Walpole, one would be surprised how they’d twisted facts.’

  ‘I never have time for reading, so I don’t know, but I can’t believe they make things more depressing than they really are, like Meg does. It’s so pointless. There’s a story of hers about a visit we all made as children to that Exhibition at Earl’s Court. It was a completely perfect day. You know how children love exhibitions and we saw real cowboys and went on the big wheel. Oh, all sorts of delights! And glorious sunshine. Everything glittering. The big wheel shining high up against a blue sky. The prettiest of Japanese lanterns swinging in the breeze. I can remember now seeing an ostrich swallow a stone, it seemed as though the great lump would never finish its journey down that long neck …’

  ‘You should have been the writer, Mrs Pascoe.’

  ‘That’s what I tell her, Plowright.’

  ‘And how do you think I should find time to write? The children would thank me. No. But what I meant was that all Meg can find to say is, “And then it rained.” That’s how she ends the story – “And then it rained.” In fact it was very dramatic. A great black and yellow thunder cloud …’

  But now P. S. had woken and was crying.

  ‘Good heavens! Whatever did you get me on to all that dead and buried nonsense for on a busy morning. Coming, angel, coming!’

  When she had persuaded P. S. to sleep again and had put on the stew, she sat by the pram, mending Senior’s knickers and watching her two boys at play. Senior had all the patience, setting one piece of brick on top of another, however often it fell off, but Middleman had the ideas.

  ‘This will do for the bicycle shed. We can put the boot cupboard here. We must have a fence to stop the neighbours seeing in.’

  Hugh and Mr Plo wright came through the front door, talking loudly.

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Mr Plowright, ‘that if the Third are ready for Algebra they’re ready for their Latin grammar. I’ll back you up at the meeting if you say so, Hugh.’

  It was kind and typical of him to be on Hugh’s side, but he spoke so loudly that she had, frowning, to say ‘Ssh!’ She pointed to the pram to soften her admonition. Mr Plowright went over to the two boys.

  ‘I’ve got a few more of this celebrity set for you. Let’s see. What have we got here? Sir Thomas Lipton, C. B. Fry, The Aga Khan. That’s rather a good caricature. And lastly the great Steve. I wonder whose colours those are he’s wearing.’

  Senior was really trying to listen, although he obviously wanted to get on with building his bungalow, Middleman took no notice. But the silly little man wouldn’t stop.

  ‘I had a feeling I’d got Dean Inge in a packet the other day. Have I given you the Gloomy Dean already, John?’

  Senior was blushing; he hated to be asked questions he didn’t understand. Sukey felt that she must intervene.

  ‘Just give them to me, Mr Plowright, will you? They’ll like them so much later on, but they’re a bit young for them yet.’

  The Gloomy Dean indeed! and, of course, the wretched little man nearly fell over.

  ‘Oh, I say. I’m er most frightfully sorry. I just thought they might be interested …’

  She would have reassured him if his protestations hadn’t woken up the Postscript.

  *

  The daffodil, fishy-tasting soup was delicious and even more the bread soaked in it, but the pieces of fish were glutinous lumps attached to long, menacing bones. In the best bouillabaisse langouste meat was used, Madame told her, ‘mais ça serait en supplément.’ So, despite the wonderfully favourable exchange, Margaret had commanded the inferior, non-crustaceous variety. What she had not bargained for were the griping pains that began when she was sitting far out on the jetty that afternoon about four. At first she relied on the absorbing problem of disguising, without cheating, the heroine’s blindness until the end of the short story in such a way that the reader would say, ‘But, of course, why ever didn’t I realize that?’ The problem absorbed her, but insufficiently to prevent the sudden spasms from doubling her up; then strange muscular twinges made her shiver, she sweated now not just from the delicious heat of the sun but with some burning fever. Simple caution told her she must get back to the hotel, especially when nausea added a second danger. She thought of GRANNY M.’s favourite ‘penny wise, pound foolish’ and wondered if the French said, ‘centime sage, franc fou,’ when suddenly she knew by sensation the meaning of that unattractive expression ‘it kept me running all night’. Of the two outré garments she had chosen for her Mediterranean visit – two garments which caused such looks of disapproval among the many respectable blackclad widows of the little town – the wide beach pyjamas rather than the flapping sandals impeded her as she ran back along the cobbled quaystone to the hotel. Her great floppy straw hat she had to carry attached by its elastic to her arm to prevent it from blowing away. She rushed past Madame in her glass-enclosed desk and past young M. Roger all napkins and smiles at the salle-à-manger door, she clattered up the stone stairs and was halfway down the tiled passage towards the cupboard-sized cabinet at the end, when from the other converging passage stepped this tall young man with curly black hair and a pipe. An agonizing new spasm made her run quickly enough to reach the door just as he was about to lift its winged-shaped brass handle. She had no time for blushes and politeness; to his ‘je vous en prie, Mademoiselle’ she merely replied by pulling the door open so that he was wedged against the wall, then, shutting herself in, she loudly clamped the bolt. She could hear, as he moved away down the passage, that he was overcome with laughter.

  She was indeed kept ‘running all night’, but by lunch time the next day she felt restored enough to occupy her table. She supposed that the other place laid there was for show (Sunday lunch, as she had learned last week, was a very showy, crowded time when the pensionnaires had to wait patiently to be served). As usual the thread that tied the paper envelop
e containing her serviette had become complicatedly knotted, she bent her head down to give it her full concentration, when M. Roger said, ‘Cela ne froisse pas Mademoiselle. Elle connait bien la maison.’ And there, of course, hesitating to seat himself opposite to her, was him. It was her turn now to say,’ Je vous en prie’; indeed she must, for every place in the room was taken by Sunday visitors from Marseilles or Toulon and, though Madame and M. Roger had been ‘lovely’ to her, she knew that their love would hardly survive her losing them custom.

  As though to reward her for her complaisance M. Roger, after whispering with Madame, brought her rouget (specialité de la maison as well as supplément) instead of the pension fare of sardine and olives. To combine gratitude with excuse, and both with the request (on a busy dimanche) for a special plain omelette, made heavy demands on the emotional pantomime with which she eked out her merely serviceable French, and required a more full declaration of the state of her health than she would otherwise have given, in fact a frank statement of her suffering from diarrhoea. As she said it she became aware that the young man was trying not to smile. There was nothing else for it but to make a joke – waving her hand in his direction, ‘comme Monsieur connait très bien,’ she said. However imperfect the French, he caught the echo and gave her a little mock affirmative bow of the head. It was M. Roger who looked bewildered and at this they both at once burst into laughter. That was how it all began.

  Looking back on it, Margaret could find no other than this hackneyed expression to fit the events of those hot September weeks. For if ‘all’ suggested more than indeed occurred, it was in fact her first real affair. She’d been in love of one sort or another innumerable times, or so it seemed; and then in this last two years since the success of the Carmichael stories ‘more’ had happened once or twice – a literary agent exploring her body with feverish fumbling hands when she was squiffy at a crush, passionate embraces from a married host at a weekend house party, a young Jewish painter almost staying the night at her tiny bachelor flat – but this was the first affair that had meant anything.