No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  Nor was he crying now. Most of his tension and anger appeared to have vanished as he became absorbed in telling his experience. He laid his head back on the pillow. Jack sat on the side of the bed and stroked Marcus’s cheek with the back of his hand.

  ‘Poor Sweet!’ he said, ‘By the way, I’ve managed to buy the Modigliani portrait of Bakst for you. Though why I should encourage you to have any father figures before me, I don’t know. If any man tries to insult you again, I’ll kill him. All the same,’ he went on, ‘that major did have an eye for the essentials.’

  PARENTS AT PLAY

  A lesson in Lamarckian survival

  The dining-room of the residence of William Matthews Esq., gentleman and author, at about half past three of an autumn afternoon in the year 1925. The room, though clearly originally furnished to give an air of warmth, of opulence worn with gentlemanly ease, and of solid but not heavy comfort, has now acquired, through years of over indulgence on an insufficient income, an appearance of draughty penury, ill concealed shabbiness and vague but pervasive discomfort. For those with sharp eyes and noses, stains, mildew and stale gravy have taken possession of the room. Centre, the long mahogany dining table is set out with plates of sandwiches and biscuits; tumblers, whisky and siphons of soda adorn the sideboard; seven chairs are placed at the table: it is clear that company is expected, but not for a formal meal.

  *

  Enter by door to right – WILLIAM MATTHEWS aged 55, a small man, once boyish, pink and cherubic, but now a trifle motheaten, harassed and with an incontestable air of slyness difficult exactly to pin down. He is dressed in well wornt weeds and floppy bow tie and carries a vaguely ‘artistic’ old shapeless green homburg hat. He might be a minor portrait painter, aland agent to an indigent nobleman, an amateur antiquarian, the harassed tutor of the unruly son of a millionaire, or an Asquithian liberal candidate for a safe Conservative rural constituency. He is, in fact, an unsuccessful author, who maintains himself by a diminishing private income and an even more diminishing stock of journalistic small change. A moralist would soon label him self-indulgent, weak, evasive and lazy. In fact, by far the most interesting feature of his character is the highly developed cunning by which over the years he has survived the disaster the moralists have predicted for him. To this survival, of course, the snobbish reverence of the English tradesman towards paraded gentility has greatly contributed.

  *

  After him follows his eldest son QUENTIN MATTHEWS aged 27. He is a tall, very thin man who appears from moment to moment as a young man prematurely aged and embittered by pain and failure, and as a middle-aged man with the boyish smile and movements of some one in whose breast hope springs eternally, if a little fatuously. He is, in fact, a journalist and newspaper columnist who has in a few months had sensational success with his trenchant, hard hitting attacks on the government’s supine industrial policy – sensational success, that is, with in the very limited circles of I.L.P., Fabian, S.D.F., and various minute groups of Marxist and anarchist eaders, but as this is the only world that at the moment he recognizes, he feels his power to be infinite. His butcher blue shirt, chrome yellow tie and the mop of fair hair through which he runs his fingers when excited, have become a well known feature of most left wing platforms during the last months and he clearly speaks in ordinary conversation as though address ing a meeting. Nevertheless, despite this air of theatricality, Quentin Matthews is a young man to bereckoned with, for he has the disconcerting habit, hardly known among politicians, industrialists, trade unionists and other men of action, of on occasion actually doing the things which he has announced that he is going to do.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS [going at once to the sideboard and the drinks]: It seems unsuitable to be offering my own son a drink in my own house. But until such time as you have all finally decided that it would be impractical and unethical for me to live on my own property and with my own wife, have a whisky.

  QUENTIN [ignoring the offer]: By the way, in relation to any economic agreement that you and mother may reach, I think it only fair to point out that while the survival of private property into 1940 at the latest is highly problematical, the continued toleration of run-down housing whether by the landlord’s negligence or because of his inadequate capital funds, is something that will hardly continue into the next decade.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: Oh, my dear boy, I’m far more of a socialist than you think. If the government want to do up this house, I’ve no intention of objecting. Of course if it becomes your mother’s, I can’t say. Women are so much more snobbish about these things.

  A FIRM CLEAR WOMAN’S VOICE OUTSIDE THE DOOR: What things, Billy?

  [Enter CLARA MATTHEWS, a good looking woman on the edge of fifty. The short skirts, flat chests and slim hips fashionable at the time suit her well. She has legs of which any girl might be proud. With her Eton crop she might indeed be a boy from that school playing the heroine in a house play. But no boy ever had such wxoman’s instinct for getting her own way by a devious, illogical and seemingly irrelevant course of words and action as Mrs Matthews. With her children, in particular, she has the great advantage that, having brought them up to expect her to act with consistent selfishness and egotism, they are always totally disarmed when she seeks the same ends by sudden shows of generosity and concern for others. She has made her entry carefully, flanked by her younger sons – on her right, RUPERT MATTHEWS, 25‚ tall, fair, handsome. Dressed in lilac Oxford bags and a bronze high-necked sweater, he looks too theatrical to be taken for a successful young actor, but those who know the limitless ‘hammy’ qualities of the contemporary theatre will have rightly reasoned that no one could look so actorish without being in fact an actor. Being an actor, however, of our own day, and not of the vulgar, robust era of Irving or Tree, he has all the necessary manners of a gentleman, i.e. he makes a good deal of play with lighting cigarettes for himself and his mother, moves chairs very ‘realistically’, speaks with a clipped accent as though unwilling to communicate in words and generally follows the vogue of our contemporary actor-knights, that ‘realistic’ apparatus of manners which the English with their infallible gift for the trivial and inessential have made their special heritage from the great art of Ibsen. However, since, with the social shake-up consequent upon England’s pyrrhic victory in 1918, ‘gentlemen’ in general take their manners from the stage, RUPERT MATTHEWS is well on the way to being as successful a gentleman as an actor. His brother MARCUS‚ who supports CLARA MATTHEWS on her left, is with in a month or two of 21 or manhood. His good looks, however, are of the kind that do not give promise of the masculinity demanded conventionally in our own day of those who call themselves men; nor do his wide skirt-like pleated trousers, tight black coat and tighter black double waistcoat assist his masculinity. His short black Valentino side whiskers bring out the Spanish in him, but again not somehow the Spanish man. His intermediate type has never perhaps found a satisfactory social niche since Saint Paul, interpreting Jesus Christ’s social revolutionary views in the light of his own peculiar sexual temperament, brought to an end the long-lived sexual morality of the Romano-Hellenic world. In 1925 he stands between the national scapegoatism of Oscar Wilde and the national obsessive attention of the later decades. Given England, he has no choice but to be ‘artistic’; but a certain firmness of chin and fierceness of eye, not unlike his mother’s, suggest that MARCUS MATTHEWS will demand a more important role in our capitalist society than the artist’s.]

  CLARA MATTHEWS: What thing, Billy, are women more snobbish about?

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: Quentin tells me that the Government will step in and do up our home, my dear. Someone from the Home Office perhaps. [He laughs delightedly at his own joke.]

  CLARA MATTHEWS: What a revolting idea! Some dreadful little town clerk choosing my wallpapers. Over my dead body. If that’s your socialism, Quentin, I can soon tell you it won’t work. Taste is a matter of fashion and whoever heard of town clerks being in the fashion? Not that I don’t want to see this
dining-room re-done. I can’t quite make up my mind …

  RUPERT: I think it should be beige. Tallu’s new flat is entirely beige.

  MARCUS: Beige is hardly new, is it? Now Lady Melchett has done something so amusing with her small drawing-room. It’s all sand pink and off white.

  CLARA MATTHEWS [looking in turn with admiration at her sons]: Well, at least Rupert and Marcus have learned something by going out into the world. Now what you think you’re doing, Quentin, giving up that most suitable job in Oxford, I can’t imagine. What are you doing?

  QUENTIN: As a matter of fact I’ve just been asked to do a series of articles for the Daily News.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS [now, in his turn, impressed]: the Daily News, eh? I used to know old Callcott there, but I should think …

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Dead, of course, bound to be. No one has made so many influential friends who die easily as your father. Articles about what, anyway, Quentin?

  QUENTIN: About the unemployed, mother. Even you, I suppose, may have heard of them.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Even I! Why I’m almost an expert on unemployment. I’ve lived with your father for twenty-five years. Now there’s something for your father to do. He can help you with your articles. I’m sure nobody knows more about the subject than he does.

  QUENTIN MATTHEWS: This happens to be a serious subject, Mother. Some of the men in the Rhondda have been unemployed since the war ended. There’s a real danger that they’ll become unemployable.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Then your father is the man to write the articles. But enough about why you’ve been so silly as to leave Oxford. We’re met here because after all these years I have got to leave your father. While you children were young and needed a home, a mother, a nominal father, then I was prepared to make any sacrifices, I was prepared …

  RUPERT: As you know, Mother, for many years, we’ve all thought …

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Don’t interrupt me, Rupert. You’re not playing the lead here. Now, at last, I can’t go on. Physical brutality, desertion, infidelity with the lowest of the low …

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: She was from a very respectable family in Tooting.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Tooting! You could hardly sink lower, Billy.

  [They both share in laughter at this.] It isn’t even picturesque like Stepney and Whitechapel. And how can you eat sandwiches at a time like this?

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: They’re very good sandwiches, my dear. They make me realize what I’m missing without Regan’s cooking …

  CLARA MATTHEWS: You must pay some price, I suppose, for acting like a brute. However, I’m glad you like them. The children won’t appreciate them. They’ve never known the difference between blinis and bully beef. But I told Regan – foie gras and smoked salmon. After all, we don’t bring twenty-five years of marriage to an end every day. Give me a foie gras. Well, as I say, brutality, desertion, adultery. I suppose even the English Law won’t ask for more.

  QUENTIN: I think you have every ground for divorce, Mother …

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Divorce! My dear Quentin, I’m not a Bolshevik woman commissar. Nor a low comedy actress [looks at Rupert] nor a God knows what [looks at Marcus]. No, I don’t intend to end my days as a notorious divorcée, however little my children care. I want you to arrange a legal separation for me. Unless, of course, I might later meet someone responsible and distinguished to pass the evening of my days with. In which case I should look to you boys to see that it was all regularized. But the important thing is the financial settlement and that’s where you can help. Let’s hear what settlement you children propose so that your father and I can live separately without too much diminution of the little standards we’ve tried to build up to do credit to our successful children.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: A very sound point, my dear. You’re all doing so well now, you can’t afford shabby genteel parents. It only proves what I’ve always said, that the more you neglect children the better they’ll fare later on.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Don’t be absurd, Billy. We’ve never neglected the children. We taught them early to be adult and responsible and as a result they’re responsible adults. Now what exactly do you all propose, Quentin?

  QUENTIN: Well. First of all we want to make it perfectly clear that we’re not taking sides. I’ve made some notes here about the usual form of bourgeois separation settlements …

  [Curtain as he speaks. When the curtain rises again it is clear that the financial consultations are over.]

  QUENTIN: I suspect that that’s as fair a settlement as we shall devise. I think Mother would be wise to have certain clauses written in that would protect her from Father’s importunities in the event of Aunt Mouse leaving her any considerable legacy. The women’s suffrage movement largely completed the emancipation of the bourgeoisie from the last vestiges of feudalism, but woman has kept some of the subordination of a chattel even under enlightened capitalism.

  MARCUS: I suppose that the Countess will only be happy if she knows that Billy Pop is living in some kind of decency. Every woman’s first concern must be for her man.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: How very curious! Marcus of all people is the only one who shows any understanding.

  MARCUS: That’s the advantage of being a ‘God knows what’, darling. They have their special insights.

  QUENTIN [interrupting impatiently]: I think we’d better leave it to the two of them to talk it over.

  RUPERT: Yes, let’s all go up to the nursery and regress for a quarter of an hour.

  [Exeunt children. WILLIAM MATTHEWS helps himself to another whisky.]

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Oh, I do hope you won’t take to drink, Billy, on your own [she waits impatiently for a few seconds]. Well, you might at least offer me one.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: I thought you wanted to be independent [however he helps her to a whisky and soda and lights her cigarette].

  CLARA MATTHEWS: I want men always to be chivalrous to me.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: I doubt if most men will respect a separated woman. I only hope I don’t hear too much about their insults, or I shall find myself involved in a lot of fights. And I’m getting rather old for that.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: It would have been better if you had stood up to other men sometimes instead of hitting a defenceless woman.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: Don’t reproach me with that again. You know that I was disgustingly drunk, Cootie.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Cootie! You can’t get round me that way, Billy. You haven’t called me that since our honeymoon. And what about that awful woman?

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS [pathetically]: Awful she was! She soaked herself in cheap scent. Though I still say she’d made herself some very smart hats. But that scent! Ugh! The lower classes, you know, Cootie, scent themselves to disguise, not like us to enhance.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Oh, poor Billy! How you must have hated that. I will say you’ve always been fastidious. But we must be practical. What about this scheme of the children’s?

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: An appalling impertinence if you ask me! However I suppose if we sell the house we’ve always lived in we can afford a couple of bijou flats – I believe there are such things. What worries me is what’s to happen to Regan?

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Regan! But she’ll come with me of course. How could I dress without her? And then nobody else can cook delicious meals for someone who’s banting.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: I doubt if you could cope with her drunkenness in a small flat. You need a man for that. Besides my digestion has been ruined since I left here. Have you ever been served with undercooked fish?

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Oh you! A man can always eat at his club.

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: No, I can’t. I’ve just been asked to resign. So many of these new members make such a fuss about card debts. I suppose they think it gives them the claim to be called gentlemen.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Oh, Billy. We’d better go and talk to Regan. She’s so sensible.

  [They leave the room. A few seconds later their three sons return. They appear surprised at the empty

&
nbsp; room, however they seat themselves at the table. They have hardly sat down when their parents return arm in arm, looking a very smart and gay young couple.]

  CLARA MATTHEWS: If you children want to have supper here, you may. Regan will knock you up something. Your father’s going to take me out to the Maison Basque. Only a little spoiling can help me after all I’ve been through today.

  RUPERT: Now if you’ve been silly, Countess …

  QUENTIN: We haven’t got time to waste, Mother …

  MARCUS: Oh, really, it’s too tiresome …

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Don’t say anything more children, please. For your own sakes. I was sparing you any allusion to the awful way in which you’ve worked on an unhappy woman’s feelings. To come between your father and me after twenty-five years!

  QUENTIN: Now, understand, Mother, if you go back on this we shall never intervene again, whatever Father does …

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: That’s quite enough of that, my boy. You’ve bullied your mother enough. I daresay you all meant very well. Yours is a hard generation. They say the war’s responsible for that. So I’m not going to point out to you that you’ve ignored some of the deepest and finest instincts in the human race. But …

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Oh, come along, Billy, I’m ravenous. By the way, did you say that dreadful woman made hats?

  WILLIAM MATTHEWS: Yes, she’s a very clever milliner.

  CLARA MATTHEWS: Oh, Billy. And you’re a very clever man. Just when Miss Millington’s died so inconveniently after all these years. Really, children, to try to separate me from a man who’s clever enough to find a new milliner for me just by walking out of the house.