No Laughing Matter (50 page)

‘I am very sorry, I was screaming like a vulgar, self-centred bitch. Like my mother, in fact.’ Seeing Ted’s shocked look at his abuse of the sacred name, he said quickly, ‘She’s not really. She’s a poor old trout, in fact. And my father’s far worse if that makes it better. In any case, for God’s sake, don’t let us talk about
that.
I shouldn’t have said what I did and I apologize. Of course I like you. I mean to do all I can to help. Only let’s not talk. It breaks your wonderful strong silent man image for me, I suppose.’

He smiled to remove any bite from the touch of sarcasm he had indulged to help himself through his apology. He could see Ted searching anew to respond to what he did not understand. At last he said: ‘That’s all right. I’m not much one for talk anyway. I just wanted to show that I’d appreciated …’

Marcus put his hand over Ted’s mouth to indicate that there were better ways of showing appreciation.

*

‘No,’ said Madge, ‘if e goes slidin on them mats again, eel wear out the seat of is knickers. And we can’t av im goin around without them. Not when winter comes. Damage im for life, that might.’ And she gave one of her fortissimo laughs.

So little Stanley couldn’t go again on the Jack and Jill, but Marcus and Ted took him between them on the Giant Dipper.

‘Well, what do yer know?’ asked Madge, ‘Two and a tanner each to bring up yer tea.’

‘Yeah, it’s a racket all right. Boy! Is that a racket?’ Ted often spoke
in his idea of American when he was with his family. He said it made the kids laugh, but Marcus had not heard this.

‘E done all the screamin,’ Stanley said, pointing at Marcus.

‘
E
did,
e
did. Oo did? You want to learn to talk proper,’ Madge cried. ‘What if e did? E paid for it all, didn’t e?’

Shirley had finished her sno-fru and was insistent that Ted and im should swing her which they did several times, her white knickers gleaming in the bright, crisp, ozoneful air. She was quite red in the face when they had finished, but her affection for Marcus seemed only stimulated, for she clung to his leg. Stanley, not to be outdone, hugged his arm.

‘Good old Shirl,’ Madge said, ‘she won’t pay no two and a tanner for
er
bit of fun.’

And then after more shrimps and cockles it was time to return to London. Shirley cried and Stanley announced firmly that he was going to stay on.

‘Where’ll you sleep, then, daftie?’ his mother asked.

‘On the beach.’

‘What’ll you do when it gets cold, eh?’

‘Go in one of them otels. E could buy one of them. Could you buy all Sowfend?’ he asked, round eyed.

‘No,’ said Marcus.

‘There you are,’ Madge told them, ‘So that’s it. You can always tell it’s time for em to go ome when they don’t want to. Not that I’d stop any poor kids from doin what they like.’ She often
announced
such things about herself, as though she thought nobody noticed her many virtues.

So to the train they went, for Madge had been firm against the car. On their earlier trip to Hampton Court Prescott’s stillness and silence had spoiled her fun. She said: ‘Looked on us as if we were dirt, e did. You could see it from the back of is neck.’ Chauffeurs were out, like presents of money to the children; ‘I don’t mind treats, but not tips. I’ve got my rules. That’s ow Arthur and me make out. You ought to teach
im
a few rules,’ she had told Marcus, pointing at Ted.

Although it was the end of the season the railway carriage was quite full. Marcus read aloud to the children from
Rupert
the
Bear
he had bought for them, and they remained quiet for the complete journey. When they were bored by Bill Badger’s advice to Rupert
they revelled in the consciousness of being the centre of attention of the whole carriage, for Marcus, who loved reading aloud, let himself rip with mime and expression. At first Ted and still more Madge shifted uneasily, but when they found that Marcus’s voice, far from arousing derision, produced on every face a sweet reverent expression they felt free to share in the credit for the performance. Madge even leaned across to the old lady opposite.

‘E reads beautiful, doesn’t e? Rupert the bear! Makes you laugh doesn’t it? Still the children love it. That’s the thing.’

‘Dear little mites,’ the old woman said.

They had a talk about Princess Marina’s big hats in loud whispers that threatened to drown the reading. But all the same, reading aloud was clearly to become one of the permitted treats.

At Fenchurch Street Station, Madge said: ‘Well, we’ll all say ta then, unless you want to come over the water for a cupper. You’re welcome. But you won’t want more kids’ row for today.’

When Marcus seemed hesitant, she looked towards Ted, surprised.

‘Yeah, why not?’

‘Well then. If I’d av known you was coming …’

The children finished the line for their mother.

‘You like to get shut of all that posh stuff, don’t you?’ she went on, ‘Ees gettin to be like one of the family, isn’t e, Ted?’

‘You’d better watch out, Madge. E may get kicked out of
Buckingham
Palace one of these days, so ees got Devon Mansions, Tooley Street in mind as an ome from ome.’

‘No, I can’t this evening,’ Marcus said, ‘I’ve got an engagement, I’m afraid.’

The change in his expression was so complete and sudden that Madge stopped to think.

‘If your engagement’s with Ted, you don’t av to be bashful. I’ll op it with the kids.’

‘Yeah, we aven’t been…’

But Marcus said, ‘No, I’m awfully sorry, Ted, I must go home. I’ll see you soon.’

As he left them, Ted called in a hurt voice, ‘Well, don’t forget little Stan’s birthday on the 9th.’

As he made for a taxi, he could hear behind him, above the station’s din, how Madge’s anger at this reminder clashed with Ted’s grievance.
Margaret had been listening to the young faced woman with
blue-rinsed
hair seated next to her. One of the last war’s tragic girl widows, she was now one of England’s rare successful women solicitors. Question by question through the grapefruit, the meagre fillets of sole Dieppoise, the cutlets reforme and the mocha bombe, she had built up this life of male and still more of female prejudice overcome, the ‘not the clients I should have chosen’ that gave the start, the family clients wooed and retained, at last the spectacular case won, and then, thought Margaret, no doubt the ‘not the clients I should have chosen’ (poor shady creatures) dropped. Gladys had interrupted once, ‘Watch out, Monica, she’s preserving you in vinegar.’

But Monica had said, ‘Libel’s my speciality. I’m quite safe,’ and with laughter, Margaret had continued her fascinating jig-saw game. ‘And do you still feel that you must go down to Mrs
Seymour-Clinton’s
house? Or can you command her presence now at your office?’ For listening is an art and part of it consists in feeding back proper names, dates and other facts to show the speaker that you are inside the story. But now with the coffee and Turkish cigarettes (though most of the halo-hatted ladies with eyes as hard as their diamond clips preferred their own Players or Gold Flake), she began to feel the usual tiny scratchings in the depths of her insides. As they grew she could do no more than smile fixedly at Monica, and finally (for even those very thin bright green peppermint creams could not save her, though she adored them) had to become intent on making pyramids of crumbs around her plate. At last Monica noticed (as they always eventually did) and turned to her other neighbour. Margaret knew just that humpy, glum look that she must be wearing for even Gladys was drawn to say: ‘I say, I’m afraid Monica’s bored you horribly, Margaret. Of course, none of us are intellectuals. But Monica’s rather bright as a rule.’

‘No, no, it’s been fascinating. It’s only that I’m going to speak in a few minutes. I always die the little death. Aren’t you worried, Gladys?’

‘Me? I’m only going to make an announcement and the rest is you. You don’t realize what a big figure you are. Most of these women will have read a lot of your stuff. You mustn’t judge by a Philistine like me.’

‘But don’t you ever feel nervous before speaking?’

‘No, I can’t say I do. Ought I to?’

Out of her deepest beliefs about luck and humility and atonement Margaret wanted to say, yes, yes. But she thought instead – none of this is important, my writing’s all that matters. Suddenly she saw how to develop the story – Alice would try, of course, to play the nieces off against the other. And they maliciously would encourage it,
comparing
notes. The irony would … but, if she thought of this, she would lose touch. She made herself attend to Gladys.

She was surprised when her sister, despite the muffling disadvantage of a huge wide brimmed hat, spoke clearly and easily. So surprised that some minutes had passed before she realized how even more unexpected was what Gladys was saying.

‘I don’t know how many of you know Cromer, but it’s cliffs and East Winds. At any rate it seemed to be so when we were there as kids. Perhaps that’s why I used to feel particularly out of it all there, Out in the cold, as they say. That and the fact that I felt so useless. At home, as I was saying, things were so hopeless that I could try to be a little mother and flatter myself that I wasn’t cut off from all the rest. But down at my grandmother’s there were competent servants to look after us and regular meals and the old girl herself, though rather a fusspot, was kind to us all. But just because of that I suppose I felt desperately lonely always on those holidays. Of course it was just as bad for the rest, but I had this special difficulty of being the eldest. I think that’s why I used to love
Little
Women
so
…’

Margaret felt a wave of resentment. It had been good of Gladys to let her make this appeal to her business women on behalf of the Basque children, but she had no right to use the occasion to make this tear jerking appeal for herself. ‘Little mother’ indeed – it called up pictures of Little Nell and Little Dorrit and all those awful horrors that made Dickens so impossible to read. She looked around at the hard, well made-up faces looming like so many painted moons from beneath their halo hats and was even more furious to see that their hard-boiled expressions had softened into mawkish blurs. And Gladys seemed determined to press upon this sickly and irrelevant vox humana stop.

‘I must have looked a disgusting object, lees too fat in long white cotton stockings, and a sort of straw bonnet that girls had to wear then, just like the bonnets the donkeys wore on the front, and out of it a great fat face like a kid’s drawing of the moon. It wasn’t exactly the face to make friends and influence people, but then as a kid one doesn’t realize that. You can imagine then how bucked I was when
this couple by the high-falutin name of Tankerville-Jones took me up. A fat girl of twelve whom nobody much wanted to know. It must have been down on the beach one of the few sunny days we had in frozen Cromer. The Tankerville-Jones had a hut near Granny’s. I am sure if she had seen them, she’d have said they were most
unsuitable
people, but she never came down to the beach. And as for the parents they didn’t notice anything that we did. Nobody noticed, in fact, that for more than a week I was away from the family most of the day. Mr Tankerville-Jones had hired a pony and cart and took me and her out into the country for farm teas. He used to call her his missus, though I doubt if the poor thing was. And she used to tell my fortune again and again with the cards on a woolly green chenille tablecloth – you know the sort I mean, Margaret, what we used to call caterpillar muck – in the dingy room they’d rented. I loved that, for she was a romantic creature and was always marrying me off to Lewis Waller. And as for Mr T J, he was a perfectly splendid mimic – and I knew about mimics with my brother Rupert at home, a brilliant actor already, even though he was only a small kid. But Mr T J could do Little Tich so that you wouldn’t notice he was six foot and all his height seemed to have gone into his feet. Oh, they were wonderful days!’

Gladys sighed, and Margaret came to, realizing that she had long forgotten the Soho dining-room, the paper carnations, the hard faced women, the Italian waiters and the litter of coffee cups and petit fours.

‘And I knew,’ Gladys said, ‘as sure as eggs were eggs that they were an illusion. I remember thinking one day as I came into that stuffy little parlour and Mr TJ looked bilious and Mrs TJ, for all her rouge and her feather boa and her little laughs, was tearful, that I was in a balloon and soon someone would prick it and it would go bust all round me. Which was something I hated. At Christmas parties I used to stuff my fingers in my ears. I suppose it was just to cheer them up that I told them how Granny would be giving us each a five
pound note that week as she always did every summer holidays. I remember now that as I told them about it, I knew that the five
pound note would be theirs. I could see all around Mrs TJ’s eye that she’d powdered it thickly to hide where the skin was bruised, and something in
his
eye frightened me as much as it did her. I think that’s why she cultivated me, looking back, because she was scared and to
have anyone around, even a child, was better than being alone with him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he did her in in the end. But I never saw it in the papers if he did. And why
he
bothered with me, I never like to think. But back I went next day with Granny’s fiver. And of course he borrowed it. And the day after when I went round to the lodgings, my friends had done a moonlight flit. And, honestly that was all I could think about. Not the money, although I had to keep on lying all that summer and went without sweets or anything for months, but all I cared was that I’d lost the only friends I’d ever made. It all came into my mind in the taxi coming here. And here are these Basque kids turned out of their homes. Never mind for what reason. As I told my sister, we’re not political here. But it’s awful for kids to be lonely. It makes them so dependent on any bit of love they can pick up here and there.’

Margaret, looking at the women around the table, saw that their hard little smiles, their conscious competence and their conscious chic had melted as completely as the little pools of mocha cream that remained in the ice cream glasses. She felt a wondering admiration for Gladys and with it a faint, grumbling envy. I don’t
want
to have sentimental, middlebrow storytelling powers like that. But still melted faces meant lots of money for Basque children.