No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  ‘But you always like to have me in London for the first rehearsals, darling.’

  ‘I said, the flat’s too small for children.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but while Christopher has these nightmares I am not going to leave them down at Sunningdale.’

  ‘What on earth do we pay Nanny for?’

  ‘What she can do. But she can’t dispel Christopher’s nightmares.’

  ‘We all had nightmares at 52. I can’t remember the Countess doing a lot of dispelling.’

  ‘I don’t suppose so, darling. She was probably in them all.’

  He hated her to talk of the Countess; it made her seem petty. And the Countess’s hand had touched his as he had lunched her at the Ivy last Friday. ‘So, it’s Shakespeare now,’ she had said. ‘And you could have been playing in that very funny French Without Tears which everyone says is going to run for years. Debbie should have been a schoolmistress.’ She had looked extraordinarily elegant and slim; he had really enjoyed her evident delight with the whitebait. He got up and poured himself out a brandy.

  ‘I’m not going to be able to do it. So you’d better make up your mind to that. Oh, I’ll give a performance, but I just don’t connect. What is the connexion between a pompous ass and a wretch groaning in hell?’

  And all her answers were Nigel’s.

  ‘After all, darling, the Elizabethans weren’t exactly tender about lunatics. They thought them funny. And in a sort of way I suppose they are. Surely, Malvolio’s a kind of “humour”. He’s not meant to be filled out or anything.’ And she went on, ‘Oh, no, darling, I’m sure you can’t apply all that modern psychology to Shakespeare. You’re looking for consistency, but he gives us something much more, he gives us poetry.’

  ‘You mean he couldn’t create character?’

  ‘Oh, really, darling, I’m not going to …’

  So they read the whole play through together. And she took great trouble going over every Malvolio speech with him, trying to show how it all fused on the language level. At last:

  ‘Well, try giving it love, darling,’ she said.

  She was near tears, lie knew, but he refused to relent. He would not now be faced with this problem if it were not for her ambitious approval.

  ‘I don’t see … and I don’t see,’ he said, ‘That’s all there is to it. How can I give love to such a self-centred, time-serving old bore? I don’t have that much love in me.’

  When she got up from her chair the first signs of her slightly swelling belly caught his attention. By the New Year there would be swollen legs again, he thought, and her face would acquire that look of a perpetual cold. Indeed it was so now as she turned at the door. She was crying.

  ‘Well, why don’t you try self-love?’ she asked, ‘You’ve got enough of that and to spare.’

  *

  And was Marcus, too, Mary Clough asked, going all political, becoming, in fact, a bore? And Rex Clough who’d never liked him remarked, it wasn’t exactly the sort of arrest they’d all been expecting for him sooner or later, was it? Andrew Crosby-Grieves, whose Matthew Smith Marcus had refused for the exhibition, asked whether the whole thing, arrest and all, wasn’t just a stunt. I mean surely, he said, weren’t his parents circus performers before Jack picked him up? I mean isn’t he the most terrific exhibitionist? I mean look at those awful baroque objects, nobody who really cared about painting in a serious way would have that Magnasco, would they? And Beatrix and Simon Dickerby, who adored the Marie Laurencin and the Cocteau drawings, asked surely the Picassos and Legers meant that he and Jack must be Communists, or were they wrong? Lady Westerton asked herself, would it be a mistake to go to this year’s green ball? Jews and tapettes and being arrested and so on. She would hardly know how to justify her presence there to Colonel Deniston. Not, of course, that he would know – he never went into society except to address meetings. But the Ribbentrops might hear of it. Damn! Social life was gettin’ less instead of more easy as she herself got older and more tired.

  But, perhaps, all their friends would have agreed with the Countess had they known and heard her, though some would have hesitated to use the word. ‘Really, Billy,’ she cried when she read it in The Times under the heading ‘Hooligans in Bermondsey’, ‘I can’t bear it. How could a son of mine be so common?’

  This was the feeling of Ted and Madge, for they asked what did he want to get mixed up with that lot for? Black shirts! Madge said, well who cared about them? That was what she wanted to know. Let them march if they were so daft. But blocking up the streets, throwing crackers at poor dumb horses, shouting and screaming so that baby damn near cried herself into a fit, jostling poor old Mrs Barnaby at no. 40 when she was coming back from the Church Hall, what sort of behaviour was that? And Ted said, too, did they think the South of the River boys didn’t know how to take care of themselves? Coming in like that, a lot of foreigners! A bloke he knew had shown him where it said in the Daily Mail – wait a minute he’d got the cutting – ‘a large number of men of swarthy complexion, some wearing clothes of obviously foreign cut’ – well, all right, who asked them? Yids from Stepney and Whitechapel! As to Black Shirts, ignore the buggers. What did you do mixing up with them excepting putting yourself on a level with their lot? Well, wasn’t it true? They weren’t clever, Madge said, but they knew better than to behave like a lot of kids. Well, hadn’t he? Honestly. Go on, own up. All right, Ted said, so the Blackshirts did want to clear the Yids out. Well, that was the Yids’ business, wasn’t it? They’ll help each other right enough. Everybody knew that. Yes, said Madge, and she asked, what have they done for you, Markie, anyway? At that moment Ted gave Marcus a come on, lustful, knowing look that changed almost at once to contemptuous hatred (were they the same look at one and the same time was the question that remained in Marcus’ mind for years to come). Yeah, answer that one. Go on, what have they done for you? He owes every bloody thing to a Jew. He’d have to lick the bloody rabbi’s arse if his jewboy pansy friend told him to. I don’t know, Madge said, refilling the family teapot, that’s between you and him, Ted. I don’t want to hear about it. I’ve always been pleased to see you, Markie, you know that. And like you’ve said it’s a bit of warmth and home for you away from that ladida lot. But what I can’t make out is what you think of us, making us the talk of the Mansions, with Mrs Dyer saying that was your posh friend wasn’t it that used that language? Arthur’s been so good always, but what does he think of us, he said to me, when he eard, mixing us up with that lot?

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think of you,’ Marcus said, for he knew the answer to this one, ‘you’re so steeped in the cosy warm fug you’ve made here you can’t tell the smell of tea from pee.’

  Madge trembled, the tea pot lid rattled. ‘You leave Dad out of this. Shame! Just because e can’t hold is water.’ She went to the old man crouched over the cooking stove, and patted his arm. ‘That’s all right, Dad, that’s all right.’

  That she’d taken directly his unconscious slight gave Marcus the giggles. Ted was on his feet at once, but Marcus was nimble enough to receive only a glancing blow from Ted’s fist. It was as much his fear of Ted’s rage as his fury with them that drove Marcus from the room and clattering down the cold stone stairs into the fresh, cold air of Tooley Street. When he put up his hand to pat his hair into place he realized that his ear was bleeding.

  But it was only a few days before the questions caught up with him again. ‘Mr Crupper on the telephone, Sir’, and ‘Mr Crupper rang. He will ring again at six’ on the bedside pad. And ‘Mrs Crupper rang, Sir. She seemed a little worried.’ And hardly legible notes, ‘I’m sorry, Markie, and I can’t say more. You don’t know how much your friendship …’ and again, ‘If I’d been like some of them but all I want is to see you. I went to the flat and saw no one had been and the man at your end says not at home.’ And Madge wrote, ‘Let bygones be byegones. Ted doesn’t seem the same. Little Stanley sends this picture of Uncle Markie.’ And he did – yellow and red chalk scrawls on a torn
piece of lined paper. And once Jack, raising his eyebrows: ‘Do you have to keep your young man on the end of the line? It makes me feel a little like the suburban father with the latch key daughter, I think that’s what they’re called. I know what’ll happen, it always does with suburban fathers, it will end up by my having to be “awfully good pals” with him. And I don’t at all want that. Also it is a nuisance for the servants. Also you’re getting a little old, my dear, to be a latch key or any other sort of daughter. Also it’s not very kind to the young man.’ But Marcus told him to go to hell. And not at home, I am not at home. And indeed he hardly ever was. For the exhibition had to be arranged.

  And then the Cloughs and Andrew Crosby-Grieves and the Dickerbys had not been the only voices. Of all unexpected people, two days after his appearance in court, Jane Farquhar telephoned – she and her husband Bobby kept Farquhar’s Gallery in Bruton Street and although they didn’t often have anything worth buying it was there that, passing one windy, wet day three Easters ago, he’d walked in and found the greeny blue Gris still life. So that when she said, we just wanted to say how much we admired you, it was you, wasn’t it in Bermondsey, he’d been rather pleased to say, yes. And this exchange had led to dinner at the Farquhars’ little Eighteen-fortyish house off Gloucester Road, which provided surprisingly pleasant décor and food, since it turned out that they were much to the Left and rather political. When they heard how he came to be at Bermondsey Jane said, oh, of course, I should have guessed. But his heart’s in the right place, Bobby observed. Oh, so is Samuel Hoare’s no doubt. Or Ernie Bevin’s. No, said her husband, not Ernie Bevin’s. Shall we take on his education, Bobby? she asked. Is he educable? Bobby countered. It was, perhaps, because their little teasing act annoyed him that he determined to take up their challenge. We don’t really like you very much, Jane said, but your money would be immensely useful. And then you’re not stupid. As the internal contradictions of capitalism become more evident, many of the more intelligent, the less indoctrinated bourgeois recognize the inevitable outcome of the negation, she remarked. Everything she said sounded not so much angry as coldly hostile.

  After his warm bath of tea and pee Marcus found such coldness cleansing. And then again to have one’s emotional, impulsive actions of one afternoon placed in the perspective of world politics was flattering to the ego. He told them of this reaction as a joke against himself, as maliciously as he could manage, but Jane made no comment and Bobby commented, as often, with a loud braying laugh. So he handed himself over to their expert cleansing – expert after all, for Jane, it seemed, was a member of the Communist Party and Bobby was only not so for some tactical political reason difficult to comprehend. The cleansing certainly was cold – hard on the bottom in draughty halls, cruel to the feet in wet outdoor meetings, daunting to the attention with long speeches in fusty, hot rooms, yet wonderfully inspiriting. For the first time in his life people had taken him as an object, coldly, dispassionately but with evident seriousness, and had related him and his actions to a system that comprehended the whole world, all the past and all the future. He was part now of an historic process. He was asked simply to accept the very harsh unpalatable things that historical inevitability had in store for him, his class, his money, and his interests. Everything, indeed, that Jane said to him was harsh. No one had spoken to him so since the Countess in the nursery; and when Marcus pointed this out to Jane, she merely tossed Freud (one of his few acquired non-aesthetic pieces of culture) into the dustbin with other contemptible idealist ideologies of a capitalist world in decline.

  *

  Middleman, home for half-term, asked: ‘Has violence ever settled anything? What sort of people do we make ourselves if we answer force with force?’

  Hugh said, ‘That’s all very well. But there comes a point, always has done throughout the history of civilization …’

  But civilization seemed especially to annoy Middleman, so that, wriggling on the sofa, he upset a box of chocolates on to the floor, yet he went on talking as he gathered them up.

  ‘Civilization! That seems to me pretty complacent, Dad. Isn’t what’s happening in Germany our fault as well, isn’t the whole of what you call civilization smeared by it? And won’t it be, so long as men can’t find a non-violent technique?’

  ‘They that perish by the sword, eh?’ Hugh asked – he was puzzled, for Middleman had shown no other symptom of the usual religious phase – ‘Of course, I’ve every respect for Dick Sheppard and these chaps. Though there are other interpretations of those sayings of our Lord, you know, old man.’

  ‘I’m not a Christian!’ Middleman was really irritable now.

  Sukey, looking up from the writing desk where she was doing the overseas Christmas cards, said reprovingly: ‘Now, darling …’

  ‘It’s a question of how we’re to evolve.’

  ‘As to that,’ Senior said grandly (he’d matured so much since he’d been articled) ‘I suppose you mean the survival of the fittest …’

  ‘Oh, not Darwinian stuff! There’s a deeper psychological level at which humanity has evolved. It’s a question of techniques of supra-consciousness.’

  ‘My sainted aunt!’ cried Hugh.

  Senior smiled across at his Father in compassionate humour over the polysyllables. Coming to the old boy’s assistance, he said:

  ‘Oh, Nietzsche and the superman!’

  Middleman groaned, ‘Supra not super! Oh, Lord, trying to explain in this household!’

  ‘I’m sorry we’re not highbrow enough for Your Professorship,’ Hugh was the schoolboy.

  Hearing the tone, Sukey looked around to catch P. S.’s eye. They always shared amusement when the three big boys or men (for it was the same thing really) got on to these discussions. But this time the small boy didn’t return her glance.

  ‘Middleman’s got it all out of someone called Gerald Heard,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen him reading it.’

  ‘Well, Gerald Heard, whoever he may be, won’t stop England acting when she knows it’s necessary’ – Senior since he was articled, was no longer a conventional schoolboy, more a man of the world – ‘We’ve never hurried, you know, but then …’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ P. S.’s breaking voice in his excitement shot up to a high falsetto.

  Sukey was distracted from her Christmas cards. It was not like P. S. to get involved in such arguments.

  ‘Shall I send any special message to the MacVities?’ she asked. The boys went on talking, so she repeated the question, ‘Any message for the MacVities?’

  Hugh, catching the urgency of her voice, came to. ‘Christmas cards already, darling?’

  ‘Well my dear, I’m not sending air mail to all these abroads. I have to start early.’

  But their sons were now in full swing. Trying another tack, Sukey called to the Frau, though, looking at her huddled in a fur coat on an early and warm November night almost made her too annoyed to speak – if she thought they had money to throw away on fires for show!

  ‘Have you any friends in Australia or New Zealand, Frau Liebermann?’

  But the woman only looked up from the Sunday paper and smiled in a vague, irritating way. Thank the Lord this temporary matron business was nearly over. Early in the New Year she was to go to a Quaker guest house as manageress. Reminding herself of how competent the tiresome woman was said to be in the school she said, giving due, ‘Think of all the Quakers who are going to be more comfortable next year just because of Frau Liebermann’s ministrations.’

  Only Hugh was left to comment.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  For the boys were only plunged in further debate and Frau Liebermann did not look up again from the Sunday Times.

  *

  Matthias Birnbaum’s thin lips set in an even more severe expression than usual when I asked him this question. ‘The Goat Girl or the Seesaw Boy on the London Stage?’ No, I don’t think that. To begin with I don’t feel that English children perhaps have the same power of fancy that our ch
ildren do in Germany. Then your English theatre does not, I think, have the techniques required to present works that are not conventional. Also, to speak frankly I have no very high opinion of the English translators!’ I began to feel that not much was right with this poor benighted island of ours. ‘But if,’ I suggested, ‘the proceeds were to go to the funds for refugees from your country.’ ‘Ah, that is a different matter. At the moment all artists must accept some sacrifices of their art so that Art may not disappear forever from the earth. Especially,’ and here a small twinkle came into the large, dark eyes, the gaunt features relaxed for a second into a smile, though even so rather a wintry gleam, ‘especially if the funds were to go to the aid of the many little children.’ It was clear that if anything touches this famous children’s writer in his exile from his native land it is the vast audience of German children who have worshipped for so long The Goat Girl and the Seesaw Boy. Yet to an English eye, Herr Birnbaum is hardly the jovial Santa Claus type. But now it was time for me to go and so he made clear. I was not to escape without one more well aimed thrust at our way of living. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘Miss Lander, why does the famous English civilization not extend to double windows in wintertime?’ and he shivered, although outside on Hampstead Heath the November sun shone with an almost spring-like gentleness.’

  *

  Frau Liebermann felt herself grow warmer as she read. Dear, good, Matthias Birnbaum on whose books they had all grown up, who had left the Homeland simply in protest – for Hitler in his cunning had ignored that this great, loved man was half-Jewish – who therefore could speak some home truths to their well meaning but arrogant, insular hosts. Tears filled her eyes as she thought of him here in England. Perhaps he would help her to get Herbert and Sigmund away. Perhaps he would shame all these people into action. She started to read the article again. ‘With his piercing dark eyes, his great height, his commanding forehead and his mane of white hair, Matthias Birnbaum is all that we English….’ But ‘we English’ made reading impossible – these stupid Pascoe boys were shouting at one another now.