No Laughing Matter

by Angus Wilson

  ‘I really don’t know. He should be back for dinner. I’ll just ask….’ He called to Dempster, ‘Yes, he’s dining in. Yes, of course. I’ll say it’s urgent Is there something I can do? No, no, of course. I’m sure he’ll ring you at once.’

  There had been no need for her to snub; he had only offered out of politeness. The world seemed made up of those who wish to involve one and those who bite for fear one should. He wrote on the pad: ‘Your sister Gladys rang. Will you telephone her urgently. She seemed in rather a fuss.’ Then, running for cover, he added, ‘Do come to Hansi Münzer’s studio about 11 p.m. At 50, Rossetti Studios. G. D. de Mort.’ It was the sign they put out to one another when either was in sexual danger; Marcus had never let him down. He folded the note and gave it to Dempster and ordered the car.

  *

  Marcus walked around the studio, staring at each canvas in turn and passing quickly on to the next. Within the interlaced lines of thick, three-dimensional, black paint laid on with a palette knife were contained what appeared to be random forms in gamboge, acid green, magenta, and dirty mustard. Pyramids, minarets, domes, steeples were to be noted in some of the paintings, others appeared to be inadequate representations of the Fifth Avenue skyline. For the rest the blotches of colour recalled only the most disagreeable modern stained glass windows. Going up close to one canvas he saw clearly that some of the ‘dirty’ colours were due merely to the running of one paint into another. In one place a curious pig’s bristle of hairs protruded from the sticky black paint in which they were embedded.

  He said, ‘That’s an effect, certainly. Little moustaches!’, and sat down on a high stool, one of whose legs was propped on a pile of books. The studio was very cold; he drew his overcoat round him and held it together at his neck with one hand as though it was a woman’s fur coat. Hansi who had been explaining his work in a nervous, rapid chatter ever since Marcus had arrived, stopped for a moment when he spoke and gave him a terrified look. Marcus, interested in the pleasure this look gave him, gazed at the floor. Jack had now reached the last canvas on which a number of what to Marcus’ eye could only be birds’ tails – hens’ perhaps – and feathers generally were picked out in thick white paint.

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said, and then, standing back a few paces, ‘Oh, yes. This I like.’

  ‘Study number Twenty-Four. The buildings – all these cathedrals and so, even the skyscrapers which in numbers fifteen to twenty-three replaced them, no longer appear. The persona of the dream has passed beyond this stage, what will I say? of earthly ambitions, the soul has soared. Even the spires, the towers, the penis is no longer important.’

  Although Hansi’s rounded eyes were quite solemn, he gave a little, apparently involuntary giggle.

  Marcus said: ‘No more wet dreams?’

  Jack quickly interposed: ‘And these feathers? No, of course, that doesn’t matter. I like the solid construction of this. And the colour has a richness, a variation …’

  But Hansi was not to be deflected. ‘We are now in the world of birds. The dream has taken the persona out into, I think you say, etherized regions. Many of what seem feathers are clouds. And water also. We are once more in the Beginning. In your English it is the Firmament. Before individuality and the sexual difference. The soul is now freed. The dream liberates the prisoners. Sleep has become space. Do you see I no longer have the thick line of the dream’s apport? The figures fly out of the frame. The stained glass window of the churches is no longer needed. Faith, Religion, which I mock in the earthbound dream, are dissolved in the void. Pain, too, the twisted limbs, all that is now unnecessary. The soul has been incorporated into itself, into its mass of feathers. Could you say bird time has come?’

  ‘Bed time, I think,’ Marcus said and he got up.

  ‘Oh, so soon?’

  ‘Look, Hansi,’ Jack said, ‘I shall want to see them again. But Study eight, is it? Yes, and the last three studies. These particularly appeal to me. I think Rouault’s influence in some of the earlier work is unfortunate …’

  ‘I use the Rouault device solely as irony, you see.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean. But from a plastic point of view which I’m afraid is all that really interests me…. Anyway in those last studies I see painterly qualities which I miss elsewhere and I’m afraid in the last analysis those are my concern. Plastic values.’

  ‘If he can’t understand “painterly qualities”, I don’t suppose he’ll understand the magic formula,’ Marcus said. ‘Anyway, don’t lie, Jack. You know that these paintings are as good as worthless. Why do you have to lie?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Markie …’

  ‘Oh, no please, Marcus, if you don’t like the paintings, you must give your reasons.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, don’t worry. I shall. To begin with, all this stuff is entirely derivative – faces from Munch, buildings from Chirico and what you call irony of Rouault is just bad, imitation Rouault. Personally if you were another Munch or Chirico I shouldn’t care a fuck because I’m not interested in a lot of modish illustrations to dream books. But your trouble is that you can’t paint. You’re simply not competent to do what in any case, I think, would be a waste of a real painter’s time. It’s as bad as that.’

  For a moment it looked as though Hansi might cry, then the yellow brown of his downy cheeks turned to crimson.

  ‘You think because I’m a pretty boy that I can’t have a vision, a soul. That I am pretending what I don’t believe.’

  Marcus stared at him. ‘I did at first. But I see now that you really do believe all this nonsense. It seems a waste of a pretty face. But then think of all those pretty women who go to fake mediums. Anyhow it doesn’t matter how silly people are, they can be as uneducated and stupid as I am – kitchenmaid standard – but if they can paint, it doesn’t matter what nonsense they talk. But you can’t paint.’

  Jack took Marcus ‘arm.’ Come on. You’ve behaved abominably enough. I am very sorry, Hansi. I’ll come some other time. As she’s said, she’s an uneducated, silly girl and she’s better in bed.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure,’ Hansi said and he laughed for the first time, not coyly but scornfully.

  Gliding past the coffee stall at Hyde Park Corner, where the Rolls nearly ran down a sad, haunted-faced, red nosed clubman who was cruising a guardsman, Marcus, brought out of the hostile silence by the car’s jolting, said:

  ‘All right, he’s a Jewish refugee and he’s h.s. and we must …’

  ‘For God’s sake, shut up. You queen it at charity exhibitions for refugee children like Mademoiselle Miséricorde and make a fool of yourself carrying banners about God knows what and you haven’t the charity to say a word of kindness to …’

  ‘Look, Jack, I’m completely uneducated and, for all you’ve told me otherwise, not particularly intelligent, but I’ve got one thing I know about – painting. You’ve helped me to it, but I’ve got a much clearer eye than you have and more sense of spatial relationships. It’s the only thing I’ve got and I’m not going to tell lies about it for any purpose whatsoever. Nor let you do so. You can give that little lemur half of all you’ve got if you like, but you’re not going to buy even one of his ghastly canvas ruins. There are plenty of nice men with no knowledge and no taste who’ll listen to all that rubbish for hours just for the sake of his beaux yeux but…. Anyway, I was jealous. You know that.’

  Jack leaned his head back on a cushion; he still looked disdainful but the taut muscles of his jaw relaxed. Marcus could feel the body beside him softening, he pressed his thigh against Jack’s.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sick of all this nobleness and pity and half the time one’s just being taken in. Just to luxuriate in a bit of baroque nonsense before war overtakes this country of bankers’ Georgian and horse brass Tudor and bungalows. But what’s the good, everything luxuriantly baroque – Würzburg, Salzburg, Rome, Murcia – is in the hands of swine.’

  ‘We could go to Mexico and Brazil after we’ve settled the paintings in with Peggy in Ne
w York.’

  Marcus burst out laughing. ‘Oh, I should love that, darling. Once we’ve seen that they’ve “settled down” at school. It could be a “second honeymoon”.’

  It had been so long since they had come into the house together laughing that Jack, seeing the telephone pad, did not want to break the mood by asking Marcus if he had rung Gladys. Marcus, remembering that, leaving angrily for Hansi’s Studio, he had not, decided to do so the next morning.

  *

  It took Quentin many whiskies – many more than he could bloody well afford – to wash the taste of all that high-minded naïveté at the service of all that Party bad faith out of his mouth. He had always been apart from the others, even in the old days of 52 – they’d lived and wallowed in all the parents’ squalid, rubbishy dramas, while he – well at least the old lady’s solid Ladbroke Grove comfort had given him a sense of proportion. And now there they were, Margaret and Rupert, high minded, artistic, the theatre, the new interesting novel, God! and successful, while he … all the same if the comrades had their way, or more likely when Chamberlain and the City of London had finally done selling the pass, and Hitler’s filthy mob took over, he’d be joined with them once more – behind barbed wire. Intellectuals all, God help us! And Marcus, too, no doubt, since Roehm and Fräulein Heines lost the toss. All this muck, he thought, looking round the King’s Cross pub, will have joined the blackshirts. And, he supposed, his dear sister Sukey; the last time he’d seen her she had been a proper hard-faced county cow, whose flaxen hairs would well become a Mosley or a Hitler Mädchen. He felt randy as hell but he hadn’t even got the price of a quick screw in this pox ridden, sodding area. There was hardly an honest man in this city that wasn’t a fool – a few that the comrades labelled Trotskyites perhaps – Franz Borkenau, or Eduard Konze, foreigners both of them; all the rest were on one filthy side or the other, out to use what could be a warm, matey, lifegiving world for their own cold, sterile ends. Well, he’d stood apart, and told the truth. And God help him, now he hadn’t even got a hole to stuff. Whisky tears, he told himself. He’d better get back to bed before he passed out stone cold among these bastards who’d probably take even his gold watch – the one the old lady had given him, God bless her shocking old rentier soul. As he came out of the pub some fucker was singing about Jesus and Bethlehem.

  ‘One of the Old Contemptibles, Sir. God bless you, Sir. I can see you was through it with the rest of us, back of Wipers.’

  Blast, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Very cautiously treading the long, long trail that lay winding before him, keeping near the railings, avoiding (grand danger de mort) – our cause, our poor bloody cause, I fear is dying – he turned the corner of the square by the pillar box. There were two of them in the darkness where the street lamp had failed; and both spoke a thick County Cork.

  ‘Is it you that was with the Reds today shouting for the bastards in Spain who’ve blasphemed the Mother of God?’

  Atrocities, he thought, I could tell them about atrocities on both sides – poor little, red faced Mohn trying to check human evil by his decent little Scandinavian slide-rule. He remembered his neat little article, all finished, sealed and addressed; something to make Dodo laugh in Dulwich or Dorking – hush, dear, that’s just Daddy laughing in his den. As he pulled out the letter and pushed it into the slit the slighter one with the choker tried to nudge his arm to make him drop it. He walked on, but they skipped round in front of him before he could reach the next lamp.

  ‘Aren’t you Q. J. bleedin’ Matthews?’

  ‘I’m Judas bloody Iscariot.’

  ‘He’s Matthews all right. The dirty Red! Look now at his sodden, drunken face. And him spittin’ on the Host from what Terence says.’

  ‘Yes, and pukin’ all over his room for daycent women to clear up.’

  ‘I think we’ll fix him. Shall we fix him? Shall we fix you?’

  They seemed such feeble little runts of unemployed, of lumpen rubbish, to be afraid of, but he was, for he couldn’t force his arms from the grip of the slight one. And the other now smashed into his jaw, his eyes, his nose. He could feel the warm blood, oily in his throat, he spat out a tooth. But as they leaned him against the railings the stars clashed together and gave way to a swirling dark red; he vomited. He could faintly hear them cursing as they went through his empty pockets. Someone tore away his watch from its fob. Something sent waves of pain swelling up from his balls to his guts. As he slid down the railings to fall with a smack on his face on the pavement he could just hear faraway running footsteps.

  *

  At the sound of her running upstairs to the bedroom Douglas, syphoning soda into his bedtime whisky, sat down again to wait her jubilant, victorious entry. So she’d beaten Hitler! When she appeared, still dressed for the street but now carrying her dressing case, he guessed that it was better than that.

  ‘A breakthrough?’ he asked.

  She nodded, smiling. ‘Something in Rupert’s performance tonight gave it to me.’

  ‘That ass?’

  ‘He’s a much better actor than we’ve ever realized. You won’t mind being without the car for the next few days, darling?’

  ‘Of course not. But it’ll be so cold at the cottage.’

  ‘Oh that! I’ll manage.’

  He got up and kissed her. ‘I’m so awfully pleased, darling.’

  Then he said no more, for he thought, I know it’s superstition but if I say any more it may turn out to be one of her false starts.

  ‘Ring Mrs Huskins tomorrow morning, Douglas, will you? Tell her I’ll want feeding there for let’s say a week. But not on any account to disturb me in the mornings. Just the shopping and dinner.’

  He suddenly remembered poor old plump Gladys – well, her loving pains would have to wait for a later occasion. Margaret’s work must come first.

  *

  ‘No. Not every penny on horses, Inspector. Some went on the dogs.’

  ‘Look, Miss Matthews, you’re not doing yourself any good by trying to be funny.’

  She wasn’t, it seemed, doing herself any good by any of her actions – her obstinacy, her slick readiness, her hauteur, her facetiousness. Or so they said but she knew that she was, for each day now that she was on bail, each day since her determined silence in the magistrate’s court, sympathy, kindness and pity were drying up around her. Already the Inspector had a hard glint in his eye and the policewoman grew more angular and sullen. Soon surely, as she poured out the same old lists of bookmakers, of courses, of tote bets and of runners, they would tire of the squalid story, cease to try to separate her genial person from her shabby actions, give in, leave her in peace. But now again:

  ‘You say that on October twelfth at Uttoxeter you lost two hundred pounds placed as a bet on Navarino in the two thirty race?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve told you before, and he’s still running for all I know.’

  ‘Don’t be impudent to the Inspector.’

  ‘That bet you say was placed with Clem Durrell, the bookmaker, on the course.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet Mr Durrell has no recollection whatsoever of your betting with him that day.’

  ‘I’m fat and forty, Inspector. Clem Durrell likes them frail and fifteen.’

  Oh, soon it would be over. But now that danger spot again – ‘Mrs Heathway in her deposition, though she clearly has no exact information to give, hints that you may have let yourself get into this situation on someone else’s behalf. If that’s so, Miss Matthews, you must …’

  ‘Sylvia Heathway is a very dear and old friend who would hint at anything which would exonerate me from my stupid, tomfool actions.’ Would he press on? No, he’d dropped it again, thank God. Two days to the trial. How she hated them all for being so kind. After all, she’d done the bloody thing; for whatever reason she’d deliberately cheated an old man and an old woman out of what would have given them badly needed security and decency. She tried to think of that guilt and that guilt only, for with it
s support, she should be able to push through her careful, unsupported story to the end. Alf turning up at the Magistrate’s court had nearly defeated her. She had sat in agonies, wondering whether he was about to speak, but he hadn’t. When she’d left with Marcus and Rupert who’d gone bail for her he’d come up with a bunch of chrysanthemums. She’d taken it and presented him as a business associate. Marcus and Rupert, of course, knew who he was, and, if they didn’t suspect, she could tell from his eyes that he thought they did. It had given her a few moments’ pleasure to feel so much in command of them all with her silence. Then she had said: ‘That’s very kind of you, Alf, but I want you to promise me not to associate yourself with all this. You have your …’ she had hesitated long enough to make him wonder, ‘your career to think of. And it’s not fair to Mrs Pritchard. After it’s all over, we’ll have a laugh.’

  She had turned away. For the rest she had just longed to be rid of them all, their kindness, their belief in her – Margaret talking to her for hours ‘to keep her mind off things’; Marcus suddenly blushing and saying, ‘My dear, I’m as keen on men as you are any day, but believe me, for God’s sake, there isn’t one that’s worth going to prison for’; Rupert for some reason calling her Big Sis and telling her how he played some Shakespeare part; even the Countess, on that awful visit to 52 over Christmas, cutting great thick steps of brown bread, ‘because you adored thin bread and butter as a girl’. Only with Billy Pop had she felt free to brush off these weakening human claims. He’d heard something. ‘My poor little girl, if I knew who this dirty dog was who’s got you into this mess I’d knock his block off.’ Looking down at him and his crutches, she had said, ‘A little late, Daddy, aren’t you? As always. ‘And Sukey’s letter, too, she had felt free to ignore –’ Oh, Gladys dear, Hugh and I have thought about your coming down here to be with us while you have this beastly waiting time but I can’t believe a school could be the right place….’ Not that she blamed Sukey. Oh, why couldn’t they leave her alone to take hot water bottles and wallow in her comfortable bed, for though she couldn’t imagine what prison was going to be like, thought of it with increasing daily terror, woke in the night determined to save herself by telling all (but she wouldn’t, and that, when courage left her, kept her going) she knew at least that these were her last hot, steamy, scented baths, last silk pyjamas and linen sheets, last whiskies and praliné chocolates. Oh, why couldn’t they just let her alone until the frightening day?