No Laughing Matter (46 page)

She began once again to feel the anger of the lively old woman who had so much to say – stinging and witty about these soft shoed whispering genteel ghost women – who could hear voices
downstairs
-‘Who was that?’ ‘Why am I not told?’ ‘Only the postman, Auntie, nothing for you.’ Oh yes, she could feel it all again now. She could put it on paper if wanted, where it would flow – but to where
was it flowing? She was back then to form and figures and moral shapes. Old Alice was the victim, but the victim of her own victims – so what could one do but stand outside, and ironic, Godlike judge? Yet to do so seemed to ignore the fact that the old woman suffered – and so did the nieces. A victim was a victim. To be one alone was to
uphold
one’s right to the inner poetry, yet to be one alone was also to be an insufficient human being. To be two was the start of all human fulfilment; and also of all gangs and conspiracies. Once again she was drifting from old Alice’s powder-thick flesh into abstractions. Books were not written in the insomnia of the small hours, or at any rate, not hers. Deliberately she turned from the novel and thought of the speech she was to make to Gladys’ professional women. Should the appeal be the usual warning of the totalitarian menace? If professional women were like business men, abstract liberty would not be their rallying cry. Perhaps like herself, like Gladys, they would be childless, then she must reach for the same sentiment in them for these refugee children that she knew was in herself.

If she could let herself go for once, not to be afraid to wallow a Httle, avoid the barbed remark. Surely if ever irony was not called for it was in the cause of these wretched refugee Basque children. Why not? Mockery was the best weapon…. If now she could show old Alice mocking the nieces and yet somehow mock the mocker, for goodness knew perpetual irony had its own absurdity. But how? Oh, she must sleep. Sleep as Douglas’s gentle breathing showed that he slept. Every night in that divan bed not two feet away from her he slept the gentle sleep of a gentle man; and she the victim of his
gentleness
. How could she bring the conflict, the anger, the cruelty of these trapped women to life while he smoothed out all wrinkles, turned away all wrath, negotiated all tricky corners, smothered her in the softness of his feathered decency, her dear old goose, her murderer? She felt the flush and trembling of anger that came over her nowadays with sudden consciousness that she was the victim of a victim. With Ralph there had been no smothering kindness, but a constant renewal of the body by battle. There was no end to the passion
then
in her writing. What was she trying to kindle some old woman’s embers for? She should be writing about men, about their bodies, about the way our bodies answered theirs, about the courage and heroism that lay in the line of a man’s shoulders or the curl of his mouth and set the heart beating, the blood rushing to the head – no matter how he
treated one. The real values lay not in words and emotions and memories but in the movements and responses of the bodies, of two bodies – a man’s and a woman’s. All the rest was old woman’s talk and old maid’s defences.

*

‘Oh, no doubt, there was a very undesirable element in the early days. Mostly in the S. A. A friend of mine tells me it came as the greatest shock to Herr Hitler himself when he …’

‘I’ve no doubt at all of the fairness of the Lebensraum argument. Besides I always look back to the visits of courtesy I used to pay as Commissioner into Togoland before 1914. The whole place was a model of what a colony should be. If one compares the shambles of the Portuguese or the Belgians or even the French …’

‘Of course, you have to realize that they’re quite different to the sort of Jews we come across here. In Frankfurt, or in Vienna for that matter, since Versailles, you’ve had to be a Jew to have any hope of …’

‘Yes, Tony’s at Westminster with the Ambassador’s son. We met the father at the Latin play. A very distinguished man and a
connoisseur
of wine. I felt that he was
personally
so very upset by the tone of some of our newspapers….’

‘They’re largely the creation, of course, of men who had no
understanding
whatsoever of Balkan history.’

‘I only wish our young people were anything like the same good ambassadors for us …’

‘No, in the original
Mein
Kampf
there’s no mention of any British colonies. The English translations are all
very
unreliable.’

‘Shared their plum pudding and holly across No Man’s Land. Of course that didn’t suit international finance at all well.’

‘Had the cheek to ask our Prince of Wales as he was then to sit down to dinner with this Jew who’d robbed the Post Office at Tiflis. We should never have recognized them after’17.’

‘I went prepared to scoff but I damn near stayed to pray. The extraordinary piercing blue of the man’s eyes – I happened to look his way as the torchbearer came into the arena …’

‘It seems there was a slaughterhouse for cattle near by. That was the simple origin of this righteous Boston schoolmarm’s story. But, of course, torture of the Jews is probably half round the United States by now. There’s nothing the Americans like better than moral indignation.’

‘Oh, Professor Crawford’s so interesting on that. Genealogy’s his subject. The Churchill stock is at least a quarter Jewish. Didn’t you know? Oh they don’t all advertise themselves with names like
Leopold
Amery.’

As Marcus elbowed his way to where an ancient maid was pouring out drinks these bursts of conversation came to him from every corner of the large, stuffy Edwardian room – from among the pretty-pretty blue of hydrangeas, from behind Japanese screens, from out the faded charm of Hokusai prints, from under innumerable gilded rococo tables. He, so unpolitical, so undereducated, could hardly have
understood
them, but, aesthete, he found the noises most disagreeable. He felt himself among overfed toads and elegant spitting snakes each giving out their own kind of venom. The snakes were tall emaciated women, of the kind called ‘society’, with too much rouge and long earrings, or thin, well groomed greying men of military or
diplomatic
appearance; the toads were fat, double chinned old women whose heavy makeup ended abruptly in thick yellowish grubby necks, who flashed too much jewellery and dripped too much mascara, or stout, pink-cheeked, white-haired, doctored torn old men who looked like prosperous sidesmen at a fashionable church. Among them went old Lady Westerton herself. Obviously now rather gaga, she groped her way from group to group, presenting a Hollywood English diplomat – a tall thin fortyish man with a small military moustache and a suggestion of corsets about his elegant figure. Whoever this notable snake was, Lady Westerton did not introduce him to Marcus. Indeed when Marcus had arrived at the cocktail party – and if it hadn’t been for poor Ozzie’s pictures he would never have thought twice about the invitation – she had shown in her embarrassment that she had invited him only through senile absentmindedness.

‘I’m afraid Jack couldn’t come. He’s on a business trip in New York.’

He didn’t offer details, because, although he approved of sending the pictures away, he was uneasy about their own suggested
emigration
. But the old woman had chuckled quite rudely in answer – she’d obviously become a trifle touched in the head since he’d last seen her two or three years before.

‘Oh, it wouldn’t be Jack’s party at all. In fact I doubt if there’s anyone here
you
know. Although it may not do you butterflies any harm to hear what responsible people are up to. Let me see who’s young. I know. Dulcie Stewart.’

She had taken him over at once to a smartly dressed blonde girl.

‘Dulcie, here’s Marcus Matthews, a rich butterfly who might be most useful to you if he wasn’t under the worst of influences. Get him along to your club.’

She had made one of her Edwardian grimaces and waddled off.

Dulcie Stewart said: ‘Oh yes, well do come. I mean if Lady
Westerton
vouches for you. I mean we do have to be a bit careful because new ideas scare the pants off people, don’t they? After all, that’s England’s trouble.’

She spoke to him in a bright but condescending way, laughing quite irrelevantly, as though she were running the coconut shy at a garden fête.

‘It’s not exactly a club, really. But we get together once a week and discuss in a room over a pub in Shepherd Market. Some of the
absolutely
necessary questions. For example, last week two or three chaps who knew about that sort of thing put forward their ideas about how to stop the unemployed going to pieces. I mean, after all, even those of us who don’t actually do jobs have got a duty to stop the rot if we can. Of course we’re only the younger crowd. You’d be rather a grandfather.’ It was clear from her smile that she thought he would like this observation. ‘But we do get people along to talk to us who matter – people like Colonel Deniston.’

‘I don’t know who that is. He’s never mattered to me yet. Should he have done?’

Her expression as she looked up at him, disgusted by this
conventional
flippancy, was so stupid and self-satisfied that he felt compelled to go on annoying her.

‘Oh, don’t think I’m against colonels. Some colonels are very beautiful,’ but then from the collapse of all her smiles he almost feared there might be a tiresome scene. Luckily a very over-dressed, double breasted, waistcoated ‘city’ young man, who it seemed was in Lloyd’s, joined them and Dulcie gave all her attention to him, swinging about in a sex-hungry way as she talked that Marcus found peculiarly
off-putting
. Immediately he had excused himself to bring her another medium sweet sherry. As he made his way back through the crowded room he began to feel that these little poisoned darts of talk would lay him dead on the floor before he could give Dulcie her fresh drink. He kept his eyes resolutely on the two paintings that he had come to see.

Amid the faded mass of japonaiserie and fake dixhuitième, in a
drawing-room that had clearly always been too drained of colour even before the sun and the dust had done their worst, the Bonnard and the Segonzac flaunted their purples and blues and greens. How could Ozzie have been so mad as to leave them to this old trout? True, they weren’t by any means his sort of paintings. And he’d vowed, apart from an odd Laurencin or some other bit of ‘fun’, not to buy anything but abstracts for the next years. But yet to leave those Bonnard peacock curtains and the red of the Segonzac sitter’s dress in those dead surroundings! To leave them to the old trout just because she was his aunt! That was the worst of these aristocratic old things, even ones as nice as Ozzie, on their death beds and other solemn places they reverted to the most stultifying conventions. But still, if what he had heard was correct…. Excited by thoughts of possession he gave Dulcie her drink and immediately interrupted the ardent conversation she was holding with the young man from Lloyd’s.

‘Do you know if it’s true that Lady Westerton is wildly in debt?’ Even through his longing for the paintings, he could see their horrified expressions. Quickly he amended his question. ‘Is the poor old thing really very hard up nowadays, do you know?’

‘I suppose most people one knows are hard up so long as we have to maintain an army of idle men,’ said Lloyd’s.

Marcus could not immediately think what this army was. Was this young man one of those insane people who wanted to go to war for some cause or other?

‘It’s the appalling effect on
them
,’
Dulcie said, ‘that
we
’
re
concerned with. I say, I suppose this sherry does come from the Nationalist territory. I’m horribly vague about Spanish geography despite all the news one’s read in this last year. It must do, the Reds hardly hold anything now except Madrid, do they? Young men in their ‘teens and ‘twenties losing all self-respect, hanging about street corners, when simple physical exercise could keep them in decent condition.’

Marcus was completely bemused. He could only guess that the political signposts he knew of from his politically minded friends would be of no help to him in Dulcie’s land, whatever it was.

‘I’m not political in the least,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to
apologize
for it. But if you mean that that sanctimonious old horror
Chamberlain
should be ashamed of the dole, I quite agree. But then what can you expect of an awful old provincial? He gets all his orders
from the mayoress of Birmingham. Oh, it’s quite true. Didn’t you know that?’

Dulcie didn’t smile at all, but the Lloyd’s young man gave a smirk.

‘Chamberlain’s tied down by more than Birmingham, I’m afraid. He has to sing to the tune of his international paymasters.’

Marcus was surprised at such scandalmongering from such dreary ‘nice’ young people. He awaited further details with interest, but Dulcie took up the conversation.

‘Of course, a decent system of labour camps would solve the whole thing. A friend of mine who knows says there’s masses of forestry work that needs doing. Work of real national importance. And they’d be able to drill and play organized games.’

‘Who would?’

Dulcie looked at him as though she now understood that his strange manner had been a symptom of the imbecility that too often attacked the very rich.

‘You
do
live out of things. What’s your job?’

‘I collect paintings.’

She turned to the Lloyd’s man: ‘There you are, you see, Lionel. That’s what Hamish said at the last meeting. There is still an idle rich here and until we’ve got rid of it, we can’t really curse the rottenness at the other end of the ladder.’

Once again the Lloyd’s man was more polite. ‘You’re too dogmatic, Dulcie. There are heaps of valuable chaps who simply don’t know what’s what. You’ll learn a lot from the Colonel this evening,’ be told Marcus. ‘He will give you an idea of what the papers simply don’t tell us.
And
of what needs doing.’

All that Marcus now felt was a strong dislike for Dulcie. He giggled in her face.