No Laughing Matter (18 page)
Read No Laughing Matter Online
Authors: Angus Wilson
MR MATTHEWS
junior: Yes, do that, Mouse, tuck in instead of flouncing out. You’ll forgive the sartorial pun. [
MOUSE
turns
and
stares
at
him
with
disgust.
She
goes
to
the
door,
opens
it,
then
turns
back.
]
MOUSE:
If I get an apology, Clara, before I leave the country on Friday, I shall forget the whole incident. An apology and a promise that those animals will be disposed of. Goodbye, Mrs Matthews. If you take my advice, you’ll back me up. You should have
remembered
, my dears, that who touches an old maid’s pet touches her. And old maids like cats have got sharp claws.
[As
she
goes
out,
Mr
Polly
shrieks,
‘Goodbye,
Goodbye,
Goodbye!’
A
moment
later,
REGAN
comes
in
with
vegetables,
sauces
and
plates.
]
REGAN
[
to
GRANNY MATTHEWS]:
Now, Madam, turn around and sit up to table. Miss Rickard’ll be back in a jiffy, that’s for sure. Just gone to you know where. All these old maids are the same. No sooner is food on the table than they must excuse theirselves.
GRANNY MATTHEWS:
Thank you, Regan, I don’t fancy anything. My asthma’s come on and I don’t feel at all well.
MR MATTHEWS
junior: Now, Mother, don’t fuss. A piece of gamey toast from under the bird.
GRANNY MATTHEWS:
Gamey toast for asthma! Really, Will. And
I don’t know what you mean – fuss! Miss Rickard is quite right. The least you can do is to get rid of those nasty little creatures. I don’t ask much. You ought to tell the children, Will.
MR MATTHEWS
junior: My dear Mother, we’re not living in the pater’s autocratic times. We don’t set up to be respectable here but it is a place of freedom. The children have turned their thumbs up. I’m certainly not going to play Emperor and turn them down just to give you a Roman holiday.
GRANNY MATTHEWS:
I don’t want any sort of holiday. The
children
get me here to ask for my help, though heaven knows an annuity’s difficult enough. They show no feeling for poor little Pom. It’s all those horrid creatures who nearly took her eye out that they care about. I don’t say it’s not for the best either. If there’s not your aunt and me to pay for you all you’ll have to make shift for yourselves like your grandfather and I did. And many’s the laugh you’ll have together when you look back on the so called hard times. [
Then
taking
a
tin
from
her
muff
she
places
it
on
the
table.
]
I’ll leave the toffees I brought. I know Quintus likes Mackintosh’s. Well, if they can’t do the little thing I ask…. Oh, I do wish Colyer hadn’t gone off. I want to go home. No, don’t try to persuade me, Will. I shall go and sit outside in the hall until he comes. Come on, my little unwelcome Pom. [
Exit
MRS MATTHEWS
senior.
QUENTIN
makes
to
follow
her
and
then
returns.
]
QUENTIN:
Oh Lord! That ought to make me feel bad. But we can’t possibly give way. Anyhow Colyer and Edith will fuss over her and she’ll get over it in time. If they hadn’t been so self-righteous …
GLADYS:
Poor old things! Did you hear Mouse say ‘lonely old women’? But really if they will go on as if they owned the earth, what do they expect?
MARGARET:
Poor Aunt Mouse! I know she says sharp things. But I never throught her heart had shrivelled up so.
SUKEY:
Of course Granny was upset about Pom, after all she’s
her
dog. But to act as though this wasn’t the kittens’ home.
RUPERT:
If only they hadn’t relished making a scene so much.
MARCUS:
And being so solemn and self-important and rich.
MRS MATTHEWS
junior [
sitting
down
to
table
]:
So you’ve learnt about the rich man and the camel and the eye of a needle. My dears, that really is growing up.
MR MATTHEWS
junior [
sitting
opposite
her
]:
I couldn’t be quite sure how it would go. My heart was in my mouth once or twice. But I should never have been in doubt, I ought to have known that my children would follow their hearts as soon as something touched them deeply enough.
MRS MATTHEWS
junior: How could one be sure, Billy? After all that horrid talk upstairs when everything was plans and careers? I felt stifled by self-importance and office desks.
QUENTIN:
Everything we said upstairs was completely serious, Mother.
GLADYS:
And important.
MR MATTHEWS
junior: Of course, Podge. Your Mother and I learned a great deal from it. We’ve improvised, you know, all our lives. We’ve had to. Always avoided Gladstone and speechmaking where a little bit of bright chatter would get us by. Perhaps you’ve seen something of the reasons for that today. We, too, were children once and made our own rebellions. Little Nell and the starving matchseller – I liked that, Mag. But you’re asking us to learn a new seriousness, my dears. I laughed with Oscar, you must remember. Or with those who had known him. He must have a heart of stone, who cannot laugh at the death of little Nell…. But now it seems we must learn new ways, your Mother and I.
MRS MATTHEWS
junior: No, not new ways, Billy. New objects. The children’s lives are not going to be ours. Their ambitions are bound to be post-war ambitions. New to us. Not that I’m exactly an antimacassar mother.
MR MATTHEWS
junior: No, my dear, you’re rag-time. [
Seeing
MARCUS
and
RUPERT
smiling
.] Or whatever’s the new thing.
MRS MATTHEWS
junior: We respect you so much, Quentin, dear boy. But you mustn’t be too sane, darlings. It really won’t do in this family. Surely we can all get these things, the real essence of life for you all, in our old happy-go-lucky stick-it-together-with-Secotine way. Surely we don’t have to go back to ‘mine is mine’ and
gilt-edged
securities and ‘money talks’ and all those horrors. And please, Quentin, darling, specially not a lot of smugness and pretending.
[
She
gets
up
and
puts
one
arm
round
QUENTIN
and
another
round
RUPERT
,
kissing
them
in
turn.
Then
bending
down,
she
kisses
MARCUS
on
the
forehead.
BILLY
Pop
puts
an
arm
round
MAR
GARET
and another round
GLADYS
.
He
tickles
their
waists.
Releasing
them,
he
goes
and
holds
SUKEY
to
him
for
a
moment
and
kisses
her.
The
COUNTESS
cuts
up
some
duck
on
a
plate
and
puts
it
down
for
the
kittens.
]
MRS MATTHEWS
junior: There, they shall have the lion’s share. Now that the roarers have left us. They won’t learn any lesson from it all, of course, poor old things [
she
giggles
]
.
But that odious Mr Polly and the horrible Pom are balder than when they came here. [
She
sits
and
begins
to
carve.
]
Oh, we’re all together again. Billy, this calls for a celebration. [
But
BILLY
POP
has
already
brought
out
a
bottle
of
champagne
from
the
sideboard
cupboard.
He
opens
it and when
the
cork
pops
everyone
cries
‘Oh!’.
As
he
pours
out
the
champagne,
they
hear
the
sound
of
the
door
bell
and
of
GRANNY MATTHEWS
’
departure
in
the
car.
REGAN
appears
at
the
door.
]
MRS MATTHEWS
junior: I know, Regan, Madam’s gone. Have a glass of bubbly, Regan darling. You couldn’t be
more
squiffy. [
Seeing
one
of
Mr
Polly’s
green
tail
feathers
on
the
carp
et,
she
picks
it
up
and
puts
it
in
her
hair.
]
Oh, you darlings, all of you, you’ve made me feel so much better. I feel quite ready for any battle. With my war paint and my tomahawk. I know, Marcus, I know … [
imitating
him
]
whatever a tomahawk may be. [
All
the
family
watch
to
see
how
this
teasing
overture
from
the
Countess
to
her
most
ancient
enemy
among
the
children
will
be
taken.
The
boy
smiles
and
speaks.
]
MARCUS
: It means the sharpest of axes, Motor. But, as befits you, the most gaily coloured of axes too.
[
All
the
family
feel
free
to
laugh
and
the
curtain
comes
down
on
their
happy
laughter.
]
End of Act 3 of the Family Sunday Play.
Quentin said: ‘Of course this means going about things the hard and slow way. I hope everybody realizes that. We’re not to suppose that the parents have changed their spots overnight. We’ll have to put up a fight for what we believe in. But I admit that I feel happier this way. It isn’t as if we don’t all know what’s wrong with the ethos of number 52; we’ve all suffered from it. But Billy Pop had a point when he spoke of
their
revolt. His, at any rate, I can imagine. I lived at Ladbroke Grove and I know. You’ve none of you felt its full force. Dividends, roast beef and the Great British Empire used to stifle me. It was Grandad’s legacy. Of course Granny’s all right. She’s a fine old
stick. But it was part of his system that she should be a reflection. And from what Aunt Mouse said this afternoon, she appears no better. Their failure this afternoon was the failure of a class. But that’s another matter. We couldn’t have acted in any other way. We’d taken on the kittens and we were committed. Luckily commitment to action is a wonderful tonic. One found that again and again after a long spell of trench stalemate. It happened just in time. If we’d gone ahead with our plan we’d have given hostages to the barbarians. As it is whatever we achieve will be without strings.’
He talked on like this for some time. At first with the unfamiliar champagne inside them, the others listened with a sense of inspired certainty, of high will that knows no obstacles; and at last, with the unfamiliar champagne still inside them and the familiar cosy nursery warmth around them and the familiar fairy tale Gothic storm outside, they fell into various fitful sleeps. And Quentin, too, eventually droned his way into slumber.
At about that time his mother awoke from her after lunch nap. Awoke with the clearest impression of her father’s hand laid upon her shoulder. Father, those strange dark flecks on the flesh of his cheeks, which was alternately wrinkled and stretched like the skin of a
tortoise’s
neck in his last years, but never pale except in the final
unfamiliar
death (how angry Mouse had been that the nurse had taken her, a five
year old, into the bedroom); always sunburnt from his years abroad, and with his dark restless eyes always bright (though that must be sentimental distortion, for no eyes could have remained bright with all that pain and wasting). Father, who smelt so nice of lavender water and heather and cigar smoke and leather. She sensed that she had netted some true beauty from the depths of her
childhood
when she realized that the words had come to her in rhyme. And now this frowsty bed, and the crêpe de chine nightdress she had put over her petticoat smelt of stale sweat and, God knew why, faintly of onions. But surroundings are nothing; memories, feelings, these are one’s true self, despite all life’s mischances. Knowing this, she returned resolutely to the past.
If Father had lived, she would have gone with him to his foreign stations, for he refused all the old Indian conventions and Mouse was like butter in his fingers; indeed he had promised her that there should be ‘no boarding school for his motherless girl’. She would have sat on the verandah with him, he reading aloud, while she sewed, for
even the nuns had to grant her the sewing (especially fine stitching), and the Indian servant coming out with delicious drinks at sundown, and a letter from Mouse from Turkey or Nepal or somewhere mountainous telling them of a new tulip species discovered or a row with some Orthodox monks over photography, at which together they would have looked solemn and then burst into laughter at the same moment, but kind laughter, for who would have minded Mouse’s madness while he lived? But he hadn’t lived, damn him, and so she hadn’t married one of his subalterns, a regiment at her feet, but Billy Pop and a smelly house and a sour bed. What right had the old beast to come back and haunt her in her dreams, making her remember the crocuses at the foot of the elm where he sat in his wheel chair that sunfilled March and the tadpole he showed to her in the pool by the cowhouses, in the last weeks that he was wheeled out in that chair it must have been, for it was hot late May or June weather – she could smell roses – and by August he was dead. And a good thing too, probably an old bore like most army men. Yet his hand,
rough-skinned
and bony so that the flesh slid upon the veins and sinews as one touched, had been so gentle as it held hers and guided her fingers over the inside of his crocodile skin cigar case, to help her not to mind putting on gloves, for the uncured side of the leather set her teeth on edge. ‘A pair of gloves are the making of a beautiful woman’s hands, Clarrie. And hands and feet …’ he had said. She had drawn a picture of him shooting the crocodile in green and red chalks, in the Sudan it had been, near Wadi Haifa or some such place.