I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist

by Christina Stead

  Godfrey took the yellow second sheets and handed them to Stephen. ‘That is the copy for your files.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘We decided that the higher ethics was that you should not be taken unawares in court.’

  ‘Thanks for that. Tell me why you had to read it and in this company?’

  ‘I thought it would cause less pain if I gave it to you myself, read it, so that you could attack me if you wanted to. It seemed cowardly to put it in the mail, almost an anonymous letter: and in this company you will understand that it is disinterested. We do not want a prominent member of the Party to go into a disgraceful court fight for a monied child. Florence and Mrs Howard Senior cannot be accused of money interest.’

  ‘I see, rob the poor because they show a need for money. Rob a man of his child. How do you know I haven’t a tender affection for the brat?’

  Godfrey seemed surprised and hesitant, ‘Well, you understand my motives.’

  Stephen said, ‘I don’t know if I understand anyone’s motives. I get balled up any time I try to understand people’s motives. Maybe that’s why I’m such a bad writer. As you kindly said earlier this afternoon, there are no great writers on the people’s side and I’m one of them.’

  Godfrey was silent, his head hanging slightly; he looked at the carpet. Then he roused himself to say, ‘I thought I’d set it out very well. Perhaps it’s discursive? Florence liked it as it is. They liked it here.’

  He looked round at the guests. Beauclerk said, ‘I don’t know if I like it. It’s too personal. Let’s keep our noses clean. What’s it to us?’

  ‘Florence is a Party member; Olivia will be trained as a humanist.’

  ‘We’re Party members. Not humanists. Godfrey, you ought to have seen us first. You saw Florence.’

  Godfrey said to the Howards, ‘I could come over on Friday. Perhaps there are other issues to discuss; I want to be fair. I want the whole picture.’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ said Stephen.

  The oak door and the swing doors presently closed on Godfrey and Millian, who had to go home, because they had a baby-sitter waiting for them. They went down the steep path to Godfrey’s little car, Godfrey with his arm under Millian’s.

  Stephen said to his hosts, ‘Well, thanks for the evening. I’d like to reciprocate some time.’

  ‘I’m putting the last words to the manuscript of my new book. I’ll send it to you. You’ll read my manuscript and let me know what you think, in perfect frankness,’ said Jay Moffat Byrd.

  ‘Oh, frankness is what I like myself. I’ll do that,’ said Stephen.

  He shook Emily, who for some time had been sleeping on the shoulder of Bobby Beauclerk, her neighbour on the sofa. Flushed and fat, her hair in hanks about her, she woke up, ‘Is Godfrey still here?’

  ‘No; the stone guest has gone.’

  ‘Isn’t there a drink on the house, after that?’ asked Emily of Jim.

  ‘Come on, Emily, you’ve had enough. We’ll get a drink at home.’

  ‘I’m going to kiss you, Bob Beauclerk, you spoke up,’ she said and kissed him. She turned to them, ‘Well, goodbye friends, if that’s the word. Come down and see us sometime. Come over and have dinner next week, a dinner for the little Olivia. Alice, Jay! Jim and Vera! Maybe we’ll ask Millian and God. We’ll celebrate! Caviar fray—consommay—patty with troofs, lobster with thermidor—the works; champagne! Hooraw, hooraw, hooraw! What a world!

  ‘He can crack the unconscious but not a smile,’ said Emily.

  Stephen helped her down the path.

  7 AFTER THE PARTY

  IN THE CAR, STEPHEN said, ‘I’m going to read it all over and then go over and give him a punch in his righteous puss. Or, better, I’ll seduce Millian, for it would make Godfrey’s private life more absorbing still. Look at him seduced by Florence’s millionaire charms, so mature, so sophisticated. But I don’t intend to make Godfrey’s life as interesting for him as he makes my life interesting for me. I haven’t the talent.’

  There was a silence, when Stephen said, ‘He’s a good boy; he means all for the best. I bet he’d take it in good part if I did analyse his motives.’

  ‘Simple; he’s just voting for the family money. He’d like to lick every cent of it.’

  ‘He’s honest.’

  Emily said, ‘Everyone’s honest; but about what?’

  They reached home. When Emily poured herself the promised drink, Stephen said angrily, ‘Don’t drink so much!’ She held the glass in her lap and her eyes moistened. She looked with pathetic indignation at him.

  ‘Now, don’t you start on me, too. I carried it off well. I pretended to be asleep. But I heard it. He can’t laugh. That’s a bad trait. I’d laugh even if I were dying. What a joke! E. Wilkes bit the dust. I’m laughing at this evening.’

  She began to drink and laugh.

  ‘Bottom the Weaver or Malvolio the serious man, take your pick. These are my great C’s, U’s, leave out one, and T’s. At the last writers’ meeting Godfrey said everyone must streamline his writing in the studios, accept directives from national leaders and the Party, and the same in private life, to further the war effort. Then James Games got up and said, if Mr Bowles would instruct him, he’d be glad. “My whole life I’ve written Westerns for the struggling studios and I don’t know how to adapt white hat and black hat to the war effort.” And Godfrey answered him in simple faith. He said the boys overseas would recognise themselves as white hat and the Nazis as black hat.’

  Stephen said, ‘If American boys in soldier-suits are going to keep going over there to further social unity and prevent nationalist deviation (read economic imperialism) to oppose the Soviet sphere of influence, if they are going to die abroad so we can get fat at home, I don’t see why we shouldn’t send them millions of feet of horse-opera and situation comedy so they can die happy on some French Boot Hill with a letter in their pockets to Mamma; and if there are some nuts of homely truth stuck in this cake, good.’

  Emily poured herself another drink, ‘Godfrey doesn’t reason at all, though he’s sententious: he just has a heart. He’s probably good all through. He’s one of those people who oughtn’t to reason, who are fatally attracted by reason. But what reason? There are all kinds. I don’t believe in reason. It can lead you anywhere. The same man can argue on both sides convincingly: each side has its reasons. Listen to them and you’re the ass with no hay. Only madness can get you out of some situations someone said.’

  ‘Let me brood unreasonably. I’m thinking if there is anything I can do to Godfrey the Good, now that he has got all my family on his side.’

  ‘We won’t give Olivia back to Florence and Grandma no matter what; his literary effort is wasted, so is his asslicking. I know your family. They don’t really care for any scribbler who has to make his living in the studios. They don’t like workers. Good sense.’

  ‘I’m going to get witnesses too. If Florence has her good boys I’ll have mine. I’m not going to be the only one in the family without a cent. I’m not letting a millionaire kid get out of my clutches. I married a poor woman, I’m not a gold-digger, and I’m not going to be a hanger-on of my own wife the rest of my life. If I bring up Olivia, maybe one day Olivia will do the handsome and remember her poor old Dad. Goddamnit, Emily, how many bottles a week do you get through? Call me venal, I am.’

  Emily put down her glass and lit a cigarette from the butt of the first. She said timidly, ‘I’m not venal. I don’t think so. But I’m haunted. It’s the way Lennie listens at doors and on the house-phone and sometimes when I think he’s off with the baker’s boy, he’s really hanging around the porch wondering what we’re saying about him; trying to get the hang of things. Who is he? I feel conscience-stricken. I often wonder how the children feel. I don’t dream much. If I do dream it’s about the children or my illnesses or my “Cousin Laura”. You know I was brought up with her. Her mother Loretta was a widow and a kind of servant in the house. I feel terribly guilty abou
t that. Loretta could have been an actress. She would stop in the middle of cooking the dinner and recite:

  O, Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name.

  and she would also recite:

  Of all the girls that are so smart, There’s none like pretty Sally: She is the darling of my heart And she lives in our alley.

  ‘She laughed and sang; and would cry if anyone said they were waiting for dinner. She never meant to give us burnt dinners. Several times lately I’ve dreamed that my Cousin Laura came in through those folding doors. Doors are frightening. People knock: who is there? The knocking on the door! It’s your heart knocking. You open up and a stranger comes in, a killer, Death or a ghost, or someone you’ve forgotten or done wrong to. I dream I’m sitting here and Laura looks at me with her big oval eyes. She’s just as she used to be when she was fifteen, and lovely, a bit fat but shy and sweet. She asks me, “Where is my child? You can’t keep my child.” I ask her, “What child?” She says, faltering and timid just as she used to, when I shouted at her, “You know I mean Giles, I’ve come for him.” She says terrible things to me just like I imagine Florence saying about Olivia. I can’t stand it. I never say things to people like they say to me. Like Godfrey. People don’t tell them the harm they are doing and so they go on, haughty and hard, wounding and lashing. I worry about it. Am I a child-stealer? I took Lennie from his father. I know my brother Arnold didn’t want him; but I took him. And I am taking Olivia from Florence. Maybe Godfrey is right and Florence does need her.

  ‘The other night Laura came and said to me, “I’ve come for my son”; and she meant Giles. I said, “But Laura you know Giles is my real son.” But she just moved towards the door and said over her shoulder, “I’m going to get Giles.” Oh, my God! I threw myself at her feet, I screamed and sobbed. I hung on to her knees. “Laura, Laura! He’s my own son, my child.” I was helpless. Laura always gave up things for me, anything I’d ask her; I made her play second fiddle till she became a sex-success. It’s there in my mind, that I shouted at her and she opened her eyes and took a step backward and she was frightened. I was playing some game; she said, “You’ve cheated!” Laughing. I shouted, “Do you know you can get killed for saying that? People kill for that.” She didn’t understand. After that, I never could understand her: maybe, she went underground. Now, this time, in my dream, she left me there on the floor and went upstairs. I got up and ran to the foot of the stairs, calling, “Laura, Laura, Laura!”’

  ‘Is that what you were saying? You were screaming,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Yes, I am sorry you woke me up. It means that Laura is still going upstairs to get Giles. What frightened me was that she was a soft-hearted girl and never stood up for herself: she’d cry. I stole the show. I feel guilty now.’

  ‘I knew your Cousin Laura very well. Dear Aunt Loretta tried to net me for her when you and I got engaged and I sized her up the minute I met her. She’s dull and she spreads boredom around her fifteen inches thick and anything the man says is right. But because you always underrated your sex appeal, Auntie thought if you could get a man, Laura could get him faster.’

  ‘You were prejudiced against Laura from the start,’ said Emily.

  ‘I couldn’t stand the name Laura; and her mother trying to hook me when it was you I was after. She told me what a good cook she was: Laura would have no need to spoil those lovely hands: in other words, marry Loretta and daughter.’

  ‘She had lovely hands and a soft, hesitating, throaty voice and—’

  ‘When all I wanted was you. You had just scored a bull’s eye in the entertainment field and I figured I could live off you for the rest of my days.’

  Emily laughed heartily, ‘Oh, Stephen, let’s get malicious: I need to laugh. I’ve been so dismal. Laura haunting me, my brother Arnold wanting money again and I can’t refuse because of Lennie, Godfrey denouncing me, Lennie eavesdropping, owing the butcher, the governess quitting to get married, so that I’m sure Florence will have the court dropping in when there’s no one to iron Olivia’s dresses, so I have to iron them. But I’ve got her. I do adore her. It’s your daughter; it’s you.’

  ‘Godfrey made you feel dismal. He made me feel like a louse too.’

  ‘Not me. I hear he thinks I’m boring. I said to myself tonight, surely that is Godfrey boring me and not me boring Godfrey!’ said Emily.

  ‘Everyone bores Godfrey, because they can’t keep on these high heights; they keep falling off. Godfrey deprecates those falls. He wants man to rise on his former self to higher things: like sister Florence’s bank account. Just supposing Godfrey had sister Florence’s living-room to perorate in. That is why he has had to revisit the psychoanalyst to make good his union with Millian. All the rhapsodies! My Florence, her ducats, her ducats, my Florence!’

  Emily said thoughtfully, ‘No, Godfrey’s really disinterested. He spreads that kindly universal shadeless light all over, till your soul is dead.’

  ‘If you will consent to my going over and knocking Godfrey to the ground several times, it will be very good for his all-seeing, all-knowing psyche. We all forgive him. The one time he doesn’t get forgiven will be an eye-opener for him.’

  She laughed, ‘Oh, forget it. He’ll probably kiss you on the other fist. Can you risk being kissed by his good lips? Manoel!’

  The man came in.

  ‘Manoel, we’ll go and have a picnic early tomorrow. Get a picnic lunch packed, roast chicken, salad, white wine—’ she grinned towards Stephen, ‘cheese and fruit. The youngsters want to swim. Then we’ll come home, put on the record-player and play poker. I’ll be out in a jiffy, Manoel, and see what else.’

  Suddenly she became wild with excitement and pleasure. She jumped up, ‘Begone dull care! I’m going to paper this whole house before Christmas. I’m not going to let myself be pulled down by Moffat Byrd, Holinshed, Bowles and cohorts. We’ll make a lovely Christmas for Giles, Lennie, Christopher and Olivia; perhaps it will be the last Christmas Olivia will be with us.’

  ‘I’ll see it isn’t; I’ll write a report too,’ said Stephen.

  Emily said, ‘About her drinking. About her husbands, lawful and unlawful, about her being a communist. A communist nowadays isn’t allowed to bring up children.’

  ‘Let’s keep the Party out of it.’

  ‘We’ll say she goes down south to incite the coloured people. She does,’ said Emily.

  ‘She’s just a progressive like us; won’t they point that out?’ said Stephen.

  ‘A progressive! Everything a progressive does is treason to the republic in which we live. We can get her on a hundred counts. What if we too are guilty? We can point that her shining witness too is a communist; his statements aren’t worth the paper they’re typed on. We can do anything. And we must, for we must keep Olivia; I need that child as I never needed anything.’

  ‘Not even me?’

  ‘Oh, oh, I need everything so badly so much, Stephen. I can’t do without anything. I need you all. Stephen, let’s get a new wallpaper, a good one, and French curtains.’

  ‘When we’re so broke, that’s the last thing we need. We have to pay for the lawyers, too.’

  Her eyes sparkling, her face lively, enchanting, begging and teasing, she said, ‘Come, we must have a home suitable for Olivia, the others don’t matter to the court. And oh, think, darling, Olivia’s birthday party is coming; we’re having twenty little boys and girls; and oh, let’s make the place bright. I’m going to ring the man in the morning. These drapes don’t go with our pictures; we’ll have to get another rug, this is shoe-worn.’

  Emily went to the kitchen to give advice to Manoel and Eva, then went to the telephone and told several people about Godfrey’s noble action in jackalling for Florence Howard and she invited them all to come to dinner on Friday when Godfrey and Millian and the rest were coming.

  Stephen growled, ‘I can’t stand that woman, Millian. I don’t want any of ’em.’

  Emily began flutter
ing and teetering towards the door, ‘Oh, yes? I have invited everyone who was there this evening except one or two.’

  ‘It’s late. Come on.’

  He went upstairs. She ran into the kitchen through two heavy swing-doors and found on the red-tiled floor, a stray cat. The kitchen was in order and faultlessly clean; but an unwashed baking dish had been put on the floor for the cat to lick at. Emily shouted, with an ugly expression, ‘Who did that?’

  She took the cat by the scruff of the neck and hauled it to the door. It was a bluish, shorthaired animal with a white hourglass on the belly. It had just had kittens. It was almost starved to death. She threw it out on the hillside which rose behind the house. There were always stray dogs and cats in the hills. People, when they were leaving, took their pets there, hurled them from the cars, and raced back down the glen. At nights, cats howled in the glens and sniffed round the doors. The cat threw itself against the bolted door. Emily put on an apron and scrubbed the floor all over again, saying, ‘Ugh, fooey!’ and scrubbed the baking dish inside and out. She dried it, scrubbed the draining board and sink. Stephen came through the door with a scowl and asked her what she was doing: the servants were paid to do that.

  ‘You took a drink while I was having my bath, I suppose.’