Funny Ha, Ha

by Paul Merton

  PETER. Father, there’s no need for you to come down the Kings Road too. I could do perfectly well without you.

  DUDLEY. I’ll perfectly well without you my boy. Rosie, did we in our moment of joy, spawn this werewolf, this Beelzebub?

  PETER. I don’t know why you keep looking upwards when you mention mother. You know perfectly well she’s living in Frinton with a sailor.

  DUDLEY. That’s a terrible thing to say. That’s a bloody terrible thing to say. Soap and water. Do you think my wife would have left me? Do you think your mother would have left me? She loved me as I loved her. Good lord! Do you think your mother would have gone off to live with some dirty matelot in Frinton? She worshipped the ground I walked on.

  PETER. She liked the ground, but she didn’t care for you, father.

  DUDLEY. I’ll didn’t care for you you, my boy. Now then, she’s gone up there to the great sewer in the sky, the biggest drain of them all. All you can do is make this place into a sin cellar. Here, you’re nothing but a whoer. Get out of my house. Go on. Get out of my house.

  PETER. Father, it’s not your house. It’s my house.

  DUDLEY. Oh, pardon me for living. Pardon me for having two strong sturdy legs to stand on. I’ll get out of your house then, and never darken your doorstep again.

  PETER. I’m going to bed, father. Why don’t you have a Sydrax?

  DUDLEY. Oh, Rosie, Rosie my darling, my doll, my sweetheart. Where did we go wrong? Where did we go wrong?

  THE WOODEN MADONNA

  Noël Coward

  Noël Coward (1899–1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit and flamboyance. Coward achieved huge acclaim for his plays, which include classics such as Hay Fever, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit, but returned again and again to the short story throughout his writing life. ‘I find them fascinating to write,’ he explained, ‘but far from easy.’

  1

  Aubrey Dakers relaxed, a trifle self-consciously, in a pink cane chair outside the Café Bienvenue. He crossed one neatly creased trouser leg over the other and regarded his suede shoes whimsically for a moment and then, lighting a cigarette, gave himself up to enjoyment of the scene before him. His enjoyment was tempered with irritation. He had a slight headache from the train and the air was colder than he had anticipated, also it looked suspiciously as though it might rain during the next hour or so; however the sun was out for the time being and there was quite a lot to look at. On the other side of the water, mountains towered up into the sky, a number of small waterfalls lay on them like feathers and, in the distance, the higher peaks were still covered with snow. Little white streamers with black funnels bustled about the lake while immediately before him, beneath the blossoming chestnut trees, promenaded a series of highly characteristic types. By the newspaper kiosk for instance there was a group of young men, three of them wore bottle green capes and hats with feathers at the back, the fourth was more mundane in an ordinary Homburg and a buttoned-up mackintosh that looked quite like a cardboard box. Two artificial-looking children, dressed in red and blue respectively, galloped along the pavement bowling hoops; a gray man with an umbrella waited furtively by the ticket office at the head of the little wooden pier, obviously a secret agent. Seated at a table on Aubrey’s right were two English ladies, one very grand in black, wearing several gold chains and brooches and a patrician hat mounted high on bundles of gray hair; the other, small and servile, waited on her eagerly, pouring tea, offering patisserie, wriggling a little, like a dog waiting to have a ball thrown for it. “How funny,” thought Aubrey, “if the Grand one really did throw a ball and sent her scampering off yapping under people’s feet!” Pleased with this fantasy he smiled and then, observing a waiter looking at him, ordered a cup of coffee rather crossly.

  Aubrey Dakers at the age of twenty-seven was in the enviable position of having written a successful play and in the less enviable position of having eventually to follow it up with another. If not another play, a novel, or at least a book of short stories. His play Animal Grab had already run for over a year in London and showed every sign of continuing indefinitely. It had been hailed enthusiastically by the critics. He had been described as “A new star in the theatrical firmament.” “A second Somerset Maugham.” “A second Noël Coward.” “A second Oscar Wilde” and “A new playwright of considerable promise.” This last had been in The Times and, as was right and proper, headed the list of press comments outside the theater. The extraordinary part of the whole thing was that Aubrey had never really intended to write a play at all, nor indeed to write anything. He had been perfectly content running a little antique shop with Maurice Macgrath in Ebury Street, which had been reasonably successful for six years and they had been happy as larks together. Aubrey remembered with a pang of nostalgia those early days, before they had actually opened the shop, when the whole thing was still in the air so to speak. That fateful Easter Monday when Maurice had suddenly come up from his parents’ home in Kent and broken the glorious news. “My dear!” Aubrey could still recapture the thrill in his voice, “I’ve got the money!—Uncle Vernon’s promised it and got round father and everything and we’re to start looking for premises right away—isn’t it absolutely heavenly?”

  Then those lovely spring days motoring over the countryside, in Maurice’s sister’s Talbot, ransacking every antique shop they could find and often returning long after dark with the rumble seat crammed with oddments. The bigger stuff they bought was of course impossible to convey in the Talbot so this was all sent to be stored in Norman’s studio, where, Norman being away in Capri for the winter, it could stay in the charge of Norman’s housekeeper until May at least. Before May, however, they had found the shop in Ebury Street, fallen in love with it on sight and taken it recklessly on a twelve-year lease. Aubrey sighed. There had been anxious hours during those first few months. Then had come the sale of the Queen Anne set, broken chair and all, and then, almost as though Tate had suddenly determined to bewilder them with success, the bread trough and the Dutch candelabra were bought on the same day. You could never forget moments like that. The evening of celebration they’d had! Dinner at the Berkeley Grill and front-row stalls for the ballet.

  After that the business had climbed steadily. They had always thought it would once they had a good start, and it did. During the ensuing years dinners at the Berkeley and stalls for the ballet became almost commonplace. But alas, even for amiable harmless lives like those of Aubrey and Maurice the laws of change are inexorable. In the year nineteen thirty-six the blow fell or, to be more accurate, a series of blows, beginning with Lady Brophy opening an elaborate interior decorating establishment five doors away from them. Lady Brophy was idle and rich, and with the heedless extravagance of the amateur, altered her window display completely every few weeks. She seldom arrived at her shop before noon, and then in a Rolls Royce, when Aubrey and Maurice had been at their post since nine o’clock as usual. Lady Brophy was undoubtedly the first blow. The drop in business within a few weeks of her arrival was only too apparent. The second blow was Maurice getting flu and then pneumonia and being sent to Sainte Maxime to convalesce where he first met Ivan. The third blow was a small but effective fire in the basement of the shop which demolished a Sheraton chair, two gatelegged tables, one good, the other so-so, a Jacobean corner cupboard, a set of Victorian engravings, two painted ostrich eggs circa 1850 and a really precious Spanish four-poster bed that Maurice had bought at an auction in Sevenoaks. The final and ultimately most decisive blow was Maurice’s return to London with Ivan.

  Ivan was more thoroughly Russian than any Russian Aubrey had ever seen. He was tall, melancholy, intellectual, given to spectacular outbursts of temperament and connected with the film business. Not, of course, in an active commercial way but on the experimental side. He was ardently at work upon a color film of shapes and sounds only, for which, he asserted positively, one of the principal companies in Hollywood was eagerly waiting. Aubrey often reproac
hed himself for having been so nice to Ivan, if only he had known then what he knew later he would probably have been able to have nipped the whole thing in the bud, but then of course he could never have believed, unless it had been hammered into his brain by brutal reality, that Maurice could be so silly and, above all, so deceitful—but still there it was. Maurice suddenly announced that he wanted to give up the shop and lead a different sort of life entirely. You could have knocked Aubrey down with a feather. Maurice began the scene just as they were dressing to go to a first night at the Old Vic. Of course they hadn’t gone. Even now Aubrey could hardly think of that awful evening without trembling. They had stayed in the flat, half dressed, just as they were and had the whole thing out. It had finally transpired that the root of the whole trouble was that Maurice was dissatisfied with himself. That, of course, was typical of Maurice—suddenly to be dissatisfied with himself when there was so much extra work to be done on account of the fire and a lot of new stuff to be bought. In vain Aubrey had remonstrated with him. In vain he had reiterated that what you are you are, and all the wishing in the world won’t make you any different. Maurice had argued back that deep in his subconscious mind he had always had a conviction that what he was he wasn’t really, that is to say at least not nearly so much as Aubrey was and that Ivan with his brilliant mind and wonderful view of life was the only person in the world who could really understand and help him; also, he added, he was an expert horseman. A few hours later they had gone out and had a chicken sandwich upstairs at the Café de Paris, both of them quite calm, purged of all emotion, but miserably aware that whatever the future might have in store for them, something very precious and important had been lost irretrievably.

  That had all happened two and a half years ago. They had sold the shop jointly. Stock, lease, goodwill and everything. Aubrey had felt himself unable, even in the face of Maurice’s pleading, to carry it on by himself or even with Norman, who had been quite keen to come in. The whole thing was over and that was that. Much better make a clean cut and embark on something new.

  Maurice had, in due course, departed for America with Ivan, but there had apparently been some sort of hitch over the color film, for Aubrey had received a brief postcard from him some months later saying that he had obtained a position as assistant in Gump’s Oriental Store in San Francisco and was very happy.

  To embark on something new proved to be difficult for Aubrey for the simple reason that he had not the remotest idea what to embark on. He had a small amount of money saved from his share of the shop, and in order to husband this as carefully as possible he rejoined his family and stayed with them unenthusiastically for several months. He might have been less apathetic and devitalized had he but known at the time that those months at home with his parents, two unmarried sisters, a young brother and an elder brother with a wife and child, were the turning point in his life. Animal Grab, the comedy that had so entranced London and brought him such staggering success, had actually been written at his sister-in-law’s request, for the local Amateur Dramatic Society to perform at the Town Hall for Christmas. There it had been seen, quite by chance, by Thornton Heatherly, who happened to be staying in the neighborhood and was taken to it. Thornton Heatherly, an enterprising young man with a harelip, had been running a small repertory theater at Hounslow for nearly two years at a loss although with a certain amount of critical réclame and Animal Grab impressed him, not so much by its wit or craftsmanship or story, but by its unabashed family appeal. There was a persistent vogue of family plays of all sorts in London. Animal Grab was as authentic and definitely noisier than most, in addition to which it had two surefire characters in it. A vague, lovable mother who always forgot people’s names and a comedy cook who repeatedly gave notice.

  Thornton Heatherly drove over to see Aubrey the next day, bought a year’s option on the play with a minimum advance on account of royalties, and exactly eight weeks later, after a triumphant fortnight at Hounslow, it became the smash hit of the London season.

  Since then Aubrey had had a busy time adjusting himself to his new circumstances. First he took the upper part of a small house in South Eaton Place, which he furnished bit by bit with impeccable taste, until, finally, for sheer perfection of Victorian atmosphere, it rivaled even Norman’s famous flat in Clebe Place. Then he gradually acquired, with expensive clothes to go with it, a manner of cynical detachment, which was most effective and came in handy as an opening gambit when meeting strangers. “How extraordinary,” they would exclaim. “One would never imagine that the author of Animal Grab looked in the least like you,” to which he would reply with a light sophisticated smile and a certain disarming honesty—“Actually the play is based on my own family which only goes to prove how wickedly deceptive appearances can be!” Everyone, in the face of such amused candor, found him charming and he was invited everywhere. It was, of course, inevitable that the more intellectual of his friends shouldn’t much care for Animal Grab. While having to admit its authenticity they were scornful of its excessive naïveté. Vivian Melrose, who contributed abstract poems and, occasionally, even more abstract dramatic criticisms to The Weekly Revue and ran a leftist bookshop in Marylebone summed it up very pungently, “Animal Grab,” he said, “makes Puberty seem like Senile Decay!” Aubrey was smart enough to quote this with a wry laugh on several occasions, but in his heart he felt that Vivian had really gone a little too far. However, fortified by his weekly royalty checks, the sale of the amateur rights, the sale of the film rights and serialization in the Evening Standard, he could afford to ignore such gibes to a certain extent, but nevertheless a slight sting remained. He had signed an optional contract with Thornton Heatherly for the next two plays he wrote but as yet he had been unable to put pen to paper. After endless conversations with his intimate friends, such as Norman, and Elvira James, who was a literary agent and knew a thing or two, he had decided that his next effort should not be a play at all. He would first of all write a book of short stories, some of which need not be more than light sketches, in order to form an easy flexible style and then try his hand at a novel. He felt a strong urge—as indeed who doesn’t?—to write a really good modern novel. Elvira and he had discussed this project very thoroughly. “To begin with,” she had said, “it must not be about a family, either your own or anybody else’s. The vogue for family life, although running strong at the moment, will not last for ever and there will be a reaction, mark my words.” Aubrey agreed with her wholeheartedly, for truth to tell, family feeling, although charmingly expressed in Animal Grab, was not, and never had been, his strong point. “Then,” went on Elvira relentlessly, “there must be no character in your book who is absentminded, your heroine must never say ‘Come on, old Weasel, let’s have another set,’ and no old gentleman, father, uncle, vicar or professor must be called ‘Boffles’!” Aubrey, recognizing the innate wisdom of this, promised. “Away with you,” said Elvira, “go away and take notes, watch people, travel, look at Somerset Maugham!” This conversation had taken place a week ago and here he was alone in Switzerland having looked at Somerset Maugham steadfastly since leaving Victoria.

  It must not be imagined that Aubrey intended to imitate anybody’s particular style, he was far too intelligent for that, but he realized that a careful study of expert methods must in the long run be of some use to a beginner, and Aubrey had no illusions whatever as to his status as a writer. He only knew now, after the violent change that had occurred in his life during the last eighteen months, that he wanted, really wanted, to write. His notes, since leaving England, while not exactly copious, at least showed praiseworthy determination. “Old Lady on platform in wheelchair, probably French Duchess.” “Man in dining car with elderly woman obviously German.” He had had later to cross out German and put Scotch as he happened to hear them talking in the corridor. “The French countryside seen from a railway carriage looks strangely unfinished.” That wasn’t bad. “Indian Colonel and wife going to take cure in Wiesbaden suddenly have terrible r
ow and he kills her in tunnel.” This had been suggested by two disagreeable people at the next table to him at dinner in the Wagon restaurant.

  Sitting outside this café in the afternoon sunshine his mind felt pleasantly alert. It had certainly been a good idea, this little continental jaunt; here he could sit, for hours if need be, just watching and listening and absorbing atmosphere. Later, of course, in the bar of the hotel or in the lounge after dinner, he would get into conversation with various people and draw them out subtly to talk about themselves, to tell him their stories. His knowledge of French being only adequate he hoped that should they wish to lay bare their lives in that language that they would not speak too rapidly. Of German he knew not a word, so whatever he gathered would have to be in English, slow French or by signs.

  At this moment in his reflections his attention was caught by the seedy-looking man whom he had noticed before buying a ticket for the boat. Something in the way he was standing, or rather leaning against the railing, struck a familiar chord in his mind. He reminded him of somebody, that’s what it was, but who? He scrutinized him carefully, the gray suit, the umbrella, the straggling moustache, the air of depressed resignation. Then he remembered—he was exactly like a commoner, foreign edition of Uncle Philip. Aubrey sighed with relief at having identified him; there is nothing so annoying as being tantalized by a resemblance. Uncle Philip! It might make quite an interesting little story if Uncle Philip, after all those years of marriage, suddenly left Aunt Freda and came here to live in some awful little pension with a French prostitute. Or perhaps not live with her, just meet her every afternoon here at the pier. His eyes would light up when she stepped off the boat (she worked in a café in a town on the other side of the lake and only had a few hours off), and they would walk away together under the chestnut trees, he timidly holding her arm. Then they would go to some sordid bedroom in the town somewhere and he, lying with her arms round him, would suddenly think of his life, those years at Exeter with Aunt Freda, and laugh madly. Aubrey looked at the Swiss Uncle Philip again; he was reading a newspaper now very intently. Perhaps, after all, he was a secret agent as he had at first thought and was waiting for the boat to take him down the lake to the town on the other side of the frontier, where he would sit in a bar with two men in bowler hats and talk very ostentatiously about his son who was ill in Zurich, which would give them to understand that Karl had received the papers satisfactorily in Amsterdam.