No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  But Clifford’s saving graces remained forever unrecorded, for Margaret’s attention was distracted by a young girl’s cries. Looking up, she saw on the farther side of their path a girl of twelve or so – one of the goat-seeking children whom they had encountered previously. It was impossible to tell from her nasal accent and patois speech what was wrong, but she clearly required help. The day seemed fated to be one of interruptions and tediums, so Margaret, climbing over the rocks and through the undergrowth with some difficulty, followed the girl’s lead, sometimes helped by her hand. At last they came in the growing heat to a widely spreading old fig tree. Here stood a small boy of nine or so, whom Margaret remembered to have seen with the girl before. At once both children pointed to the ground and there to her horror Margaret saw a brood of young snakes lying basking on the dead leaves and leaf mould. At first she wondered if some child had been bitten and tried to recall stories of Mouse about first aid for snake bite, but at last she understood that the children were offering to sell her the snakes. To her frightened disgust, when she had made her refusal perfectly clear the young boy began to beat the small delicately marked coils with his goatherd’s stick, and, within seconds both children were dancing barefooted like African savages, reducing the dying snakes to a squalid pulp. Margaret turned and fled. Hysteria overtook her, she was tripped by the undergrowth once or twice, cut her hand and bruised her knee before she returned tearful to the sandy hollow. Her book lay open as she had left it. Fear that Clifford’s toothache had been a more serious symptom than they had thought, conscientious anxiety that she had mocked him, both determined her to return to the town. I shall meet him on the way, she thought, and all will be all right again. She picked up her book. Beneath her own writing, she read in his, ‘The tooth extraction was bloody. The man is a maniac. How pleased you will be. Seriously I don’t see how we can maintain a real relationship if I (and other human beings) are. so totally unreal to you that you can love them when they’re with you and write this sort of thing when they’re away an hour from you. I apologize for thinking that your upbringing had any advantages, it has clearly left you without the confidence to make any deep and sustained relationship in life. You have not commented on the selfishness of my ambition, but one of the side effects of the male dominance that you so dislike and which I know to be natural is that I do not intend to be saddled with a neurotic wife. Best of luck with your stories for which you have got very great talent. I’m going back to Aix. Thank you for everything.’

  Her first anger was for his total lack of humour, her second for her own selfish frivolity. For two days she stayed on at the hotel divided between these furies; then she telephoned to him. At last he agreed to pass a night with her at an hotel in Marseilles. Perhaps it was an insufficient remedy for a deep malady but they parted next day, agreeing to be good friends.

  The only permanent legacy he left to her was that she always remembered that Corneille was a Norman ‘qui patoisait’, whatever that implied socially in seventeenth-century France.

  *

  Letting the curls of his wig fall around his shoulders, Marcus unpeeled one layer of disguise, changing from Lady Caroline Lamb’s vengeful page to the lady herself. He had taken off the page’s neckcloth and embroidered livery coat, and lay on the big bed, naked to the navel below which an orange sash was wound. This, with his baggy pink Turkish trousers, were presumed to be Lady Caroline’s somewhat extravagant idea of a page’s uniform.

  ‘I don’t think Mary Clough either attractive or intelligent,’ he said, and, shaking his Turkish slippers from his feet on to the floor, he curled his legs up on to the bed.

  ‘No. But then you’re not qualified by nature to judge either the attractions of women, or intelligence.’ Jack took off his full-bottomed wig to rid the reproof of the triviality of travesty. Yet in eighteenth-century undress and in his controlled anger he seemed much more like the vitriolic Mr Pope than he had when rather clumsily fox trotting at the ball.

  ‘And you, of course, are a connoisseur of cunt.’

  ‘No. I simply don’t find it necessary to sum up the qualities of my friends. That someone is a friend naturally means that he or she is attractive, intelligent and so on.’

  ‘Don’t sum up! You’re the biggest set of gossip mongers I’ve ever met.’

  ‘I should hope so. We’re not politicians or public servants trained to avoid reality. My friends are people. Their concerns are humane.’

  ‘Pulling to pieces Lady Westerton.’

  ‘Lavinia Westerton is only doubtfully human. Anyway, only people who have no capacity for friendship talk vaguely about speaking ill of no one.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t very humane of Monty Golding to make fun of me because I mixed up Masoch or whatever he’s called with the Italian painter.’

  ‘First of all you’re using the word humane in a loose colloquial sense that is hardly helpful.’ Jack tightened his thin lips. His delicate, bony Jewish face, his wide nostrilled nose, suited the eighteenth-century undress if not exactly the role of Pope. Marcus knew that this precision, this pedantry were meant to try him; he only hoped that Jack didn’t know how nearly they exasperated him. ‘Secondly your confusion of Sacher Masoch with Massaccio led to some ludicrous misapprehensions which it would have been affected not to pursue. Instead of primping and pouting you might have assisted in furthering the joke as you very well could have done if you’d tried.’

  ‘And what about Mary’s pouting? I suppose that was aesthetic disgust.’

  Jack was clearly set upon aggravation, for he did not immediately answer the question. He stared instead at the Bakst drawings he had given Marcus on his birthday.

  ‘I can’t remember why you wanted these.’

  ‘Because they’re the prettiest pictures I can think of. And the most decorative. Also for good or ill I first saw you magnificent in your box from my gallery seat at Sleeping Beauty. Years before you picked me up at the Coliseum.’

  ‘You said,’ Jack left it, ‘but sentiment apart you should have a good painting in here. After all, it was you who chose the Delaunay and the Gris still life. In six months you’ve improved the collection enormously.’

  ‘Thank you. But I don’t want the good pictures in here. I just want fun things like the Bakst. Gorgeous. To go with my wonderful, vulgar, ornate bed. Oh, how I wallow in it after years of 52.’

  ‘I’m not sure that it’s quite decent for you to wallow in my parents’ bed. And they not so long cold. To return. If Monty wasn’t disgusted with you, I was. Vulgar malice and spite! You sounded just like your awful mother. And to Mary who’s always been so civil to you.’

  ‘Civil! It’s impossible to tell with your friends whether they like one or hate one.’

  ‘Being my friends they’re naturally disposed to like you, as you should them. Anyway all this hangover of lack of self-confidence. It isn’t much of a compliment to our six months together.’

  ‘If only Monty hadn’t got on to that bloody story of Margaret’s.’

  ‘Your sister’s stories are limited but they have real merit. They appealed to Monty. He praised them. Surely it’s as simple as that.’

  ‘It isn’t simple at all. I’ve suffered from that awful wedding story of Margaret’s before now. It always upsets me when people talk about it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so tiresome, Mark. A work of art is a work of art. That’s what Monty was talking about. Nobody knew it was by a sister of yours. Or would have cared if they had. Now that is gossip. Anyway it was only because you’d been sitting there ever since the dancing finished, looking like a very pretty constipated chinchilla that Mary out of misplaced kindness asked what you thought about it. You’re very decorative my dear, but … And why couldn’t you have just said it was written by your sister and that you thought it false and left it at that, if you wanted to? “I don’t think you and I are ever likely to know much about weddings, Miss Clough.’”

  Jack’s imitation, Marcus knew, caught exactly his own priss
y, high pitched petulance.

  ‘Poor Mary! You knew bloody well that Oliver had just walked out on her after all these years. And to marry some flapper. It was foul of you, Mark, and cheap. And it hurt her.’

  ‘There wouldn’t have been much point in saying it if it hadn’t. Anyway, shall I tell you why I didn’t rush to claim Margaret for my sister? Perhaps it’ll make you and your friends a little less quick to sum human beings up in phrases.” So mysteriously lost for hours of the night among London’s bright lights…. Oh, so enjoying his winged arabesques and pas de chat.” You see, I know the passage off by heart. It was easy enough for Margaret and all the rest of them to fancy me as “flitting from flower to flower”. They’d left home. Do you want to know what I was doing lost among London’s bright lights? I was flitting from one sordid old man to another trying to sell my bum. How disgusting! Not yet seventeen! Well, I couldn’t always get extra work at the film studios, that’s why. And when I couldn’t and Regan was drunk or the Countess was in a rage, I didn’t get enough to eat.’

  Marcus was crying now; not with the old hysterical screaming of his boyhood. Tears ran slowly down his face, but his hands were shaking. His anger was as great as Jack’s had been. Jack went over and tried to put a hand on his shoulder, but Marcus pushed him away.

  ‘All right,’ Jack said, rather wearily, ‘Tell.’

  He sat back in a little tub chair, one leg thrown over the other, finger tips of one hand pressed against those of the other.

  ‘You bloody judge,’ Marcus said, but nevertheless he began to talk.

  ‘I don’t think you can imagine what 52 was like after I left school. At first there were my fashion drawings. But then as every paper from Vogue down sent them back I gradually knew that all that was a sort of dream. One woman was nice enough to write and what she said seemed to sum it all up, “Your designs show a nice sense of fantasy, but you appear to be living in a vacuum.” I was. I just used to sit and think about sex all day. Not that I don’t think about it most of the time now. It was the only thing to do. 52 really had become an awful house. The Countess had no one else to pick on but me and then she’d got the change coming on, so she was at her bloodiest anyway. That probably made me put on what she called effeminate airs just to spite her. I was supposed to have an allowance until a job came along. Billy Pop did give me ten bob once. In return I was to help with the housekeeping. I must say there wasn’t much to do. Arrange some daffodils for the Countess and then I used to do the shopping, when there was any money to shop with or we’d got credit again at the Army and Navy Stores. What I must have looked like among all those colonel’s wives and admirals’ widows at the grocery counter! A boy of sixteen. I put red on my cheeks and my lips from my paintbox, and sometimes blue on my eyelids. And then I had a sort of grey sombrero that I’d bought second hand in Soho, and I used to stop all the time in front of shop windows and tuck my gorgeous black curls in on the other side. And my walk! I took so many little delicate steps that the muscles of my thighs used to get cramp. Of course all the men who sold flowers or newspapers down at Victoria used to call out after me, “Look at Angela,” “Puss, Puss, puss.” Terrific dishes some of them were! Anyway the more they called the more I did the nance. I was terrified of them, of course. Partly because I was hoping they would pick me up and partly because I honestly thought they might knock me down. Once when I’d pinned a small bunch of violets on to my overcoat a man came up and said, “Bloody little pouff? They ought to poleaxe the lot of you.” I was so scared I peed myself, but I only put on a more queeny act. I held the collar of my overcoat together as though it was the sables the Grandduchess had smuggled out of Vladivostok. I just longed to be noticed. It didn’t matter how.

  ‘Then of course, lots of the boys at the agency and down at the studio at Cricklewood when I did extra work were just the same. You should have seen us tripping over our togas in Ben Hur. I became used to picking up people then if there wasn’t any work going at the Agency. It was in Windmill Street when the awful little man put his head through the hatch and said, “No work at the studios today, boys.” There I was right on top of Piccadilly so there wasn’t much else I could do. At first of course I just got myself picked up, having tea or a poached egg at the big Lyons and other cafés round there. But later I started trolling, though I never went up West specially for it at night until I was eighteen at least. At first I used to take them back to 52. For some reason I was terrified of going to strange houses. And I used to make awful social conversation – you know, “Yes, those are all my father’s books. He’s tremendously learned,” or “I’m afraid my room’s a bit old fashioned, but I’m hoping to do it up myself soon. Scarlet and black or something amusing.” Can you imagine? When there was only one thing in their minds. However I must say most of them were very kind and polite. I think they were bewildered, poor things. You see I looked more than my age and they probably thought I was an old pro who would take them back to some squalid bedsitter near the station. One or two just took off and fled when they knew it was my parents’ house. And then once I was lying there, hoping it would be over quickly. I’d shut my eyes because it was so painful. And when I opened them the door was very slightly ajar and I looked straight into her eyes. Of course she was gone in a second. But I know it happened. The man – a huge great brute of a Scotsman – hadn’t seen a thing. So I said nothing, but I don’t know how I ever had the courage to get him down those stairs and out of the house. For some reason I thought she’d gone for a policeman. I was an awfully daft mixture of sophistication and childishness. The only sign she showed was when I gave her money that week. We didn’t even pretend about allowances by then, but I often earned two or three pounds in the week what with film work and the clients, and I always gave her a pound or thirty shillings. This time she threw the notes on the drawing-room floor with her most tragedy queen look. “How dare you offer me that filthy money?” and so on. Of course I should have had it out with her then and there, but I was too scared. I just picked up the money and spent it all on seats for Giselle. But after that I had to take my courage in both hands and go back with them.

  ‘Even then I used to go into long social explanations. I can remember it happening on that occasion I wanted to tell you about. I’d tramped all the agencies from Oxford Circus to Villiers Street and back. And my poor old feet, dear, well Lor luv you. I’d relied on a call for more Roman citizens to cheer on Ramon Navarro. But no, they weren’t shooting that day. It couldn’t have been more tiresome for I wanted to go to Sylphides. Suddenly I saw this sort of dashing guards officer in Jermyn Street, a bit red in the face and corsetted, but still I’d known far worse. I stopped and looked in the window of the cheese shop. And which cheese was I going to buy and did I keep house for myself and was I musical? So I said, yes, I was, but I found it difficult to get the money to go to concerts, which was to make it clear to him the whole thing was rent. Well, you know all that, because that’s what I said when I met you that evening after Three Cornered Hat. And then, I can hear myself now – “I would so tremendously like to entertain you in my own studio.” Studio! ark at er. “But the awful thing is I still live with my people and so I’m afraid it’s rather out of the question.” So we went back to his place in Mortimer Square or somewhere like that behind Selfridges. Me talking all the way in the taxi, Didn’t he just adore Marie Tempest? And did he like the Impressionist painters? and Could I be right and was he in the army? And I was right. And he was called Major Mooney or Moody or something, and he got tremendously fatherly with me, and called me young feller me lad, and told me it was a damned shame to see a young chap with obvious artistic talent at a loose end and he was rather an artistic cuss himself despite the army and I must come with him to Covent Garden, did I like opera? But of course it didn’t stop him taking me straight up to the bedroom and making me strip.

  ‘All I ever wanted with them was to get it over, but the Major started a horrible catechism, what did most men expect from me? Who was the f
irst who’d done it to me? Had I had it from the front? I stood there naked and wished the floor would swallow me up. And then, as though sent from heaven, I saw a copy of Margaret’s book. So I tried to say casually, as though I was in the habit of saying such things in the nude, “Oh, I see you’ve got my sister’s book of stories. One or two are rather terrific, aren’t they? Actually she’s caught me rather well in that wedding story.” And posing with one hip stuck out in what I hoped seemed like Donatello’s David, I read aloud – “Oh, so enjoyed his winged arabesques and pas de chats”. I drawled it all quite brilliantly. I suppose I hoped to stop the major in his tracks. I certainly did. He stood quite still and stared. Then he walked to the bedroom door, opened it and whistled. A few moments later another major appeared, only thinner and more wooden looking. Then my major said tremendously formally, “Seymour Dunlop, my housemate.” Waving his hand at me – the Michelangelo made flesh – he said, “This silly little bitch has been lying like stink. Says Margaret Matthews is her sister.” “I don’t think,” Major Dunlop said, “Rotten little twerp.” “I didn’t bring you back here to hear snobbish rot and lies,” my major said, and picking up a hair brush he caught me a nasty blow on the buttocks, “That’s what’s interesting about you, or would be if you weren’t so spotty.” No don’t protest. It was probably true. I only got rid of that awful acne about six months before I met you. “Go to hell,” he said. “Get your things and get out of here. Back to the rectory.” I think trying to keep some dignity while I dressed and got out of that room was about the most awful moment of my life. I was determined not to cry.’