by Paul Merton
YOU WERE PERFECTLY FINE
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) was a New Yorker famous for her hard drinking, stinging repartee and endlessly quotable one-liners. In 1915 one of her poems was purchased by Vanity Fair, and she then went on to work for Vogue and Vanity Fair. In 1925, she began writing for the brand new magazine The New Yorker, establishing a connection that would last for over thirty years. She and her second husband, the actor Alan Campbell, were Oscar-nominated for their screenplay of the movie A Star is Born. Trying to define what humour means to her, Parker wrote, ‘There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it.’
The pale young man eased himself carefully into the low chair, and rolled his head to the side, so that the cool chintz comforted his cheek and temple.
“Oh, dear,” he said. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. Oh.”
The clear-eyed girl, sitting light and erect on the couch, smiled brightly at him.
“Not feeling so well to-day?” she said.
“Oh, I’m great,” he said. “Corking, I am. Know’ what time I got up? Four o’clock this afternoon, sharp. I kept trying to make it, and every time I took my head off the pillow, it would roll under the bed. This isn’t my head I’ve got on now. I think this is something that used to belong to Walt Whitman. Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.”
“Do you think maybe a drink would make you feel better?” she said.
“The hair of the mastiff that bit me?” he said. “Oh, no, thank you. Please never speak of anything like that again. I’m through. I’m all, all through. Look at that hand; steady as a humming-bird. Tell me, was I very terrible last night?”
“Oh, goodness,” she said, “everybody was feeling pretty high. You were all right.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I must have been dandy. Is everybody sore at me?”
“Good heavens, no,” she said. “Everyone thought you were terribly funny. Of course, Jim Pierson got a little stuffy, there for a minute at dinner. But people sort of held him back in his chair, and got him calmed down. I don’t think anybody at the other tables noticed it at all. Hardly anybody.”
“He was going to sock me?” he said. “Oh, Lord. What did I do to him?”
“Why, you didn’t do a thing,” she said. “You were perfectly fine. But you know how silly Jim gets, when he thinks anybody is making too much fuss over Elinor.”
“Was I making a pass at Elinor?” he said. “Did I do that?”
“Of course you didn’t,” she said. “You were only fooling, that’s all. She thought you were awfully amusing. She was having a marvelous time. She only got a little tiny bit annoyed just once, when you poured the clam-juice down her back.”
“My God,” he said. “Clam-juice down that back. And every vertebra a little Cabot. Dear God. What’ll I ever do?”
“Oh, she’ll be all right,” she said. “Just send her some flowers, or something. Don’t worry about it. It isn’t anything.”
“No, I won’t worry,” he said. “I haven’t got a care in the world. I’m sitting pretty. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Did I do any other amusing tricks at dinner?”
“You were fine,” she said. “Don’t be so foolish about it. Everybody was crazy about you. The maître d’hôtel was a little worried because you wouldn’t stop singing, but he really didn’t mind. All he said was, he was afraid they’d close the place again, if there was so much noise. But he didn’t care a bit, himself. I think he loved seeing you have such a good time. Oh, you were just singing away, there, for about an hour. It wasn’t so terribly loud, at all.”
“So I sang,” he said. “That must have been a treat. I sang.”
“Don’t you remember?” she said. “You just sang one song after another. Everybody in the place was listening. They loved it. Only you kept insisting that you wanted to sing some song about some kind of fusiliers or other, and everybody kept shushing you, and you’d keep trying to start it again. You were wonderful. We were all trying to make you stop singing for a minute, and eat something, but you wouldn’t hear of it. My, you were funny.”
“Didn’t I eat any dinner?” he said.
“Oh, not a thing,” she said. “Every time the waiter would offer you something, you’d give it right back to him, because you said that he was your long-lost brother, changed in the cradle by a gypsy band, and that anything you had was his. You had him simply roaring at you.”
“I bet I did,”’ he said. “I bet I was comical. Society’s Pet, I must have been. And what happened then, after my overwhelming success with the waiter?”
“Why, nothing much,” she said. “You took a sort of dislike to some old man with white hair, sitting across the room, because you didn’t like his necktie and you wanted to tell him about it. But we got you out, before he got really mad.”
“Oh, we got out,” he said. “Did I walk?”
“Walk! Of course you did,” she said. “You were absolutely all right. There was that nasty stretch of ice on the sidewalk, and you did sit down awfully hard, you poor dear. But good heavens, that might have happened to anybody.”
“Oh surely,” he said. “Mrs. Coolidge or anybody. So I fell down on the sidewalk. That would explain what’s the matter with my—Yes. I see. And then what, if you don’t mind?”
“Ah, now, Peter!” she said. “You can’t sit there and say you don’t remember what happened after that! I did think that maybe you were just a little tight at dinner—oh, you were perfectly all right, and all that, but I did know you were feeling pretty gay. But you were so serious, from the time you fell down—I never knew you to be that way. Don’t you know, how you told me I had never seen your real self before? Oh, Peter, I just couldn’t bear it, if you didn’t remember that lovely long ride we took together in the taxi! Please, you do remember that, don’t you? I think it would simply kill me, if you didn’t.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Riding in the taxi. Oh, yes, sure. Pretty long ride, hmm?”
“Round and round and round the Park,” she said. “Oh, and the trees were shining so in the moonlight. And you said you never knew before that you really had a soul.”
“Yes,” he said. “I said that. That was me.”
“You said such lovely, lovely things,” she said. “And I’d never known, all this time, how you had been feeling about me, and I’d never dared to let you see how I felt about you. And then last night—oh, Peter dear, I think that taxi ride was the most important thing that ever happened to us in our lives.”
“Yes,” he said. “I guess it must have been.”
“And we’re going to be so happy,” she said. “Oh, I just want to tell everybody! But I don’t know—I think maybe it would be sweeter to keep it all to ourselves.”
“I think it would be,” he said.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Swell.”
“Lovely!” she said.
“Look here,” he said, “do you mind if I have a drink? I mean, just medicinally, you know. I’m off the stuff for life, so help me. But I think I feel a collapse coming on.”
“Oh, I think it would do you good,” she said. “You poor boy, it’s a shame you feel so awful. I’ll go make you a highball.”
“Honestly,” he said, “I don’t see how you could ever want to speak to me again, after I made such a fool of myself, last night. I think I’d better go join a monastery in Thibet.”
“You crazy idiot! ” she said. “As if I could ever let you go away now! Stop talking like that. You were perfectly fine.”
She jumped up from the couch, kissed him quickly on the forehead, and ran out of the room.
*
The pale young man looked after her, and shook his head long and slowly, then dropped it in his damp and trembling hands.
“Oh, dear,” he said. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.”
SWINDLE SHEET WITH BLUEBLOOD ENGRAILED, ARRANT FIBS RAMPANT
S.J.
Perelman
Sidney Joseph Perelman (1904–1979) was born into a Russian Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn. He attended Brown University in 1922 where he became the cartoonist of the college magazine and finally its editor. After publishing his first two books he was invited to Hollywood by Groucho Marx to script two films: Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. A contributor to The New Yorker from 1935, he soon became the magazine’s most successful humourist.
I promise you I hadn’t a clue, when I unfolded my Times one recent morning at the bootblack’s, that it would contain the most electrifying news to come out of England in a generation—the biggest, indeed, since the relief of Lucknow. As invariably happens after one passes forty, the paper sagged open to the obituary page; I skimmed it quickly to make sure I wasn’t listed, and then, having winnowed the theatrical, movie, and book gossip, began reading the paper as every enlightened coward does nowadays, back to front. There, prominently boxed in the second section, was the particular dispatch—terse and devoid of bravura, yet charged with a kind of ragged dignity. “BRITAIN’S INDIGENT LORDS ASK EXPENSE ACCOUNTS,” it announced over a London dateline, and went on, “Some peers are too impoverished in the highly taxed present-day welfare state to travel to London and do their duty without pay, the House of Lords was told today. The Upper House, shorn by the last Labor Government of much of its power, was debating its own possible reform. One of its proposals was for giving expense money to those members who do trouble to come to Westminster. At present the Lords get no salaries and nothing but bare traveling expenses. On an average day no more than one peer in ten is present.”
“Well, well!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “It’s high time, if you ask me.”
“What’d you say?” inquired the bootblack with a start, almost spilling the jonquil-colored dye with which he was defacing my shoes.
“This story about the British peers,” I replied. “Poor chaps are practically on the dole—beggars-on-horseback sort of thing. Pretty ironical situation, what?”
He threw me a sidelong glance, plainly uncertain whether it was safe to commit himself. “You a peer?” he asked cautiously.
“No,” I said, “but I do think England’s in a hell of a state when your Gloucesters and your Somersets have to get down on their knees and scrounge expense money.”
“Yeah, the whole world’s falling apart,” he said, scratching his ear reflectively with his dauber. “A couple of shmos like you and me, we can’t even get up our rent, whereas them dukes and earls and all those other highbinders over there are rolling in dough.”
“But they’re not,” I objected. “Judging from this, they’ve hardly enough carfare to get from their ancestral seats to London.”
“That’s what I said—it’s all topsy-turvy,” he returned. His inflection made it abundantly clear that he was humoring an imbecile. “Look, should I put some new laces in here? These are full of knots.”
“I prefer them that way,” I said icily, and retired behind the paper. The snub, though momentarily soothing to my ego, cost me dear; in retaliation, he gave me such a flamboyant shine that an old gorgon on the sidewalk mistook me for a minstrel and demanded to know where I was hiding my tambourine.
Fletcherizing the news item subsequently in a more tranquil setting, it occurred to me that while the projected expense accounts might seem a godsend at first glance, they could also be a potential source of embarrassment to the noble lords. No matter how august their lineage, they will eventually have to undergo the scrutiny of, and explain every last deduction to, a corps of income-tax ferrets rated among the keenest in the world. I have been speculating about just how, in these circumstances, one applies the thumbscrews to a man whose title dates back four or five centuries—how, in other words, the British tax inquisitor manages to grovel and browbeat at the same time. Obviously, the best way to find out is to secrete ourselves behind the arras at such an examination. Softly, then, and remember, everything you see or hear henceforth is in strictest confidence.
SCENE: The office of Simon Auger, an inspector in the review division of the Board of Inland Revenue. A small, cheerless room equipped with the standard instruments of torture—a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet. As a decorative touch rather than for its psychological effect, someone has hung on the wall a kiboko, or rhinoceros-hide whip. When the curtain rises, Auger, a dyspeptic of forty-odd, is finishing a frugal lunch of Holland Rusk, wheat germ, and parsnips, a copy of Burke’s Peerage propped up before him. For the most part, his face is expressionless, but occasionally it betrays a wintry smile of the kind observable in barracudas. At length, he sighs deeply, stashes the book in the desk, and, withdrawing a bottle of Lucknow’s Instant Relief, downs a spoonful. The phone rings.
AUGER: Auger here… Who?… Ah, yes. Please ask His Lordship to come in, won’t you? [The door opens to admit Llewellyn Fitzpoultice, ninth Viscount Zeugma. He is in his mid-sixties, ramrod-straight, affects a white cavalry mustache and a buttonhole, and is well dressed to the point of dandyism. Having fortified himself with four brandy-and-sodas at lunch, his complexion—already bronzed by twenty-five years on the Northwest Frontier—glows like an old mahogany sideboard.]
ZEUGMA [Jauntily]. Afternoon. Hope I’m not terribly late.
AUGER: Not at all. No more than three-quarters of an hour or so.
ZEUGMA: Frightfully sorry. This filthy traffic, you know. I defy anyone to find a cab in Greek Street.
AUGER: Your Lordship was lunching in Soho?
ZEUGMA: Yes, I found a rather decent little place there—Stiletto’s. They do you quite well for five guineas—coquilles St. Jacques, snails, a tart, and a passable rosé. You must try it sometime.
AUGER: I could hardly afford to, at my salary.
ZEUGMA: Between ourselves, I can’t either, but the Crown pays for it—ha ha ha. [Blandly] Necessary business expense in connection with my duties in the Upper House.
AUGER: Indeed. [He jots down a note.] By the way, I believe I had the pleasure of meeting a relative of yours about a fortnight ago—the Right Honourable Anthony de Profundis.
ZEUGMA. Wild young cub—Tony. What’s the boy been up to?
AUGER. Little matter of evasion and fraud. He was sly, but we specialize in those sly ones—ha ha ha. [Opening a dossier] Well, let’s get on with it, shall we? Your address remains the same, I take it—The Grange, Regurgingham-supra-Mare, Dotards, Broome Abbas, Warwickshire.
ZEUGMA. That’s right. But why do you ask?
AUGER. Because your nephew changed his unexpectedly last week, if you follow me.
ZEUGMA. I—I say, it seems dreadfully warm in here. Could we open a window?
AUGER. I’m afraid not. Whoever designed this stage set forgot to include one. However, to resume. According to your return, you made thirty-one trips here from Warwickshire during the last Parliamentary session.
ZEUGMA [Muffled]. Whole avalanche of measures directly affecting my constituency. Crucial decisions. No time for shillyshallying.
AUGER. I have no doubt. Still, in glancing over the minutes of the Upper House I notice Your Lordship didn’t speak once in all that period.
ZEUGMA. Blasted committees chained me down. Paperwork from dawn to dark. Closeted with Winnie weeks on end. Barely able to snatch a sandwich.
AUGER. Yes, few of us realize how unselfishly England’s public men give of their energy. Notwithstanding, you did find time to squeeze in sixty-three meals, excluding breakfasts, for a total of four hundred fifty-seven pounds thirteen shillings. These were all concerned with legislative matters?
ZEUGMA. Every blessed one. [Spluttering] Confound it, are you questioning my word?
AUGER. I wouldn’t dream of it. I was merely giving you what we call a surface probe—to make certain there was no aura of peculation, as it were. Now suppose we cast an eye at your hotel appropriation. These five-room suites you habitually took at the Dorchester—weren’t they a bit grandiose for an overnight stay?
ZEUGMA. By Gad, sir, if you expect me to
crawl into some greasy boarding house in Kensington and fry my own kippers—
AUGER. Certainly not, certainly not. One can’t conceivably imagine Lady Zeugma in such an atmosphere.
ZEUGMA [Unwarily]. She wasn’t with me—er, that is, I was batching it most of the term—
AUGER [Smoothly]. I see. And the rest of the time you shared the accommodations with another legislator?
ZEUGMA. Well—uh—in a way. My staff secretary— or, rather, my secretarial adviser. Mrs. Thistle Fotheringay, of Stoke Poges.
AUGER. Ah, that explains these miscellaneous charges—one hundred eighteen quid for champagne, forty-two pounds ten for caviar, and so on. Naturally, neither you nor Mrs. Fotheringay ever partook of these delicacies paid for by the state?
ZEUGMA [Struggling to dislodge an emery board from his trachea]. N-no, of course not. I just kept ’em on hand for colleagues—for other viscounts, you understand. Haven’t touched a drop of bubbly in years. It’s death to my liver.
AUGER. Really. Then perhaps you’d care to examine this cutting from a recent issue of the Tatler. It shows you and your-ahem-secretarial adviser with upraised champagne glasses, dining at the Bagatelle.
ZEUGMA. Demnition… I say, old man, mind if I pass it along to Mrs. Fotheringay? Women like to preserve sentimental slop like this.
AUGER. I know. That’s why I thought of sending it to Lady Zeugma.
ZEUGMA [Agitatedly]. Wait a bit, let’s not—We mustn’t go off half—By Jove, I’ve just had an absolutely wizard idea!
AUGER. Amazing how they pop out of nowhere, isn’t it?
ZEUGMA. You revenue blokes have some kind of fraternal organization, don’t you? I mean where you take the missus to Blackpool, toffee for the kiddies, all that drill?
AUGER. Quite. And if I may anticipate Your Lordship, you’d like to make a small donation to our outing fund.
ZEUGMA. Why, how did you guess?
