No Laughing Matter (51 page)

Although not perhaps for Gladys. Her speech continued: ‘I say, I’ve just realized that I’ve as good as said that we don’t want your money because lonely kids shouldn’t be dependent on strangers. Just the sort of floater I would make, babbling on. But anyhow, there it is and Margaret’s the clever one, she’ll tell us why we’ve got to fork out. The only thing I ought to have said is that plans are going ahead and I hope that when we meet next year we shall do so not as a lot of nameless women but as the Association of Professional and Business Women – what a mouthful! That is if certain objections to our using the title from some ladies in Burlington Arcade and Bond Street can be got round. With which bad joke in poor taste I’ll sit down and let you hear a real speech from your favourite novelist, Margaret Matthews.’

She sat down with one of her clownish bumps – surely there must be a jam tart stuck to her sitdown upon. Why
did
she have to clown? Looking at the melted faces Margaret saw that they too had hardened again into their usual lines of boredom, crossness, egotism and fear. Well,
she
couldn’t revive their fleeting tenderness. They must be
content with facts and figures from her. Such she gave them, for, after all, they expected a dry note from so ironic an author.

In the taxi on the way back for a cup of tea at the shop in George Street Gladys said: ‘Honestly, Margaret, I do apologize for waffling on like that. Thank Gawd you were there to save the day.’

Margaret was about to snap back, when, turning, she saw that this stout, handsome woman in the smart black suit and the silly hat was genuinely afraid of her reaction.

‘It’s awful, Gladys, that we all seemed so close to one another as children and yet we knew nothing really of each other.’

And despite the oath she had taken on Sukey’s wedding day that after all those years of sharing a bedroom, she would never in her life again touch or let herself be touched by another woman, she put her arms round her sister, and, refusing to allow even the absurdity of the brim of Gladys’ hat pushing her own Astrakhan cap askew to deter her, kissed her full on the lips.

‘If you knew, darling, what a heroine you’ve been to us all always.’

She wanted to say sacred cow, but it would offend; and it was true, whatever else they felt about each other, Gladys’s courage and
simplicity
and lonely success had stood above all their bitchery or moralizing.

‘And as to your hold on all those women,’ she added, ‘Darling! And
you
talk about loneliness!’

For it was true, for those few minutes they had obviously adored her.

‘Oh well, you must remember a whole lot of them got their first jobs through my agency.’

Then she stopped the taxi for a few minutes at a fishmonger’s and returned with a huge bag of prawns for their tea.

That, thought Margaret, is the secret of her charm. Here they sat in the little office at the back of the antique shop, she, Gladys and this rather nice, faded woman called Sylvia, drinking strong Indian tea and peeling prawns as though it were some dormitory feast. Imagine strong Indian tea and prawns at home! She would never allow herself such coarse indulgence, such threats to her digestion, and if, in some moment of madness, she did so, Douglas’s good sense and forethought for her health would banish them at once. Yet here she was trying covertly to take two prawns to every one that Gladys ate, while this most genteel, faded Sylvia was probably getting away with three.

Of course they started off the occasion to a happy tune, with heartening news that some impoverished old refugee couple possessed a Grünewald without knowing it. Gladys had made the most of that. Then and there they had debated about how and when to break the news; her own opinion had been asked and regarded as though she’d been in on the story from its very beginnings; so much so that it looked in the end as though she were responsible for the final decision – that nothing should be said until the letter from Christie’s confirmed the telephone call to Sylvia, and that then Gladys and Sylvia would go up to St John’s Wood, and Sylvia would say
this
and Gladys would put
that
face on, and so and so on until, at the last, the moment would come when the good news could burst forth. And the old gentleman’s thin, bearded face would crease into incredulous smiles of happiness, his nicotine stained fingers would tremble with
excitement
. And as for Mutti – strange little bent witch-like lady! ‘Oh, what a good thing you were here, Margaret! That’s absolutely the best way to go about it.’ When really, of course, she had played no part in devising such a children’s surprise. It was gross sentimentality. That awful Dickens again. Scrooge and Tiny Tim. But it was entirely acceptable, for unlike Dickens, it obviously came to Gladys naturally; there was no faking, no ‘told to the children’.

Then, from toasting the old couple in strong tea, they had passed now to prawns and intimacy. Sylvia was telling them of a ridiculous boy with huge ears who had fallen madly in love with her at
seventeen
– the sequence was a natural one, for the boy’s father was a picture restorer; as Gladys commented, ‘of all things’. Margaret wanted to say ‘Why shouldn’t he be?’ but somehow the atmosphere was unpropitious for such dryness. As Sylvia’s story unfolded she seemed to Margaret’s ear, even for a girl, to have encouraged the wretched boy in a heartless, genteel fashion. But under Gladys’s influence – at least that was what it must be – the story appeared quite different – absurd, droll, a tremendous lark. ‘Oh, those ears!’ Sylvia ended, ‘wouldn’t it have been terrible if I’d married him and produced a whole brood of bats?’

And it did seem comic, and Margaret found herself laughing with the others, for all the world like three schoolgirls drunk on pop and doughnuts. She had an extraordinary sense of loving women’s company as though it were a happy world of innocence from which the old Adam had been temporarily shut out. Fighting against this
irrational view she thought, I know what it is, for all that caddish looking man of hers, Gladys is really Lesbian, that’s why women respond to her. But, looking at her sister, the idea was an absurd sophisticated platitude, plainly inapplicable to this simple, easy woman. She heard herself saying: ‘Believe it or not I should never have had my first affair but for a rat in my bedroom. It was the most absurd thing …’

But of course she knew it wasn’t absurd at all, that for very good reasons she never let herself think of, the business with Roger …

‘I screamed and screamed and this very presentable young man …’

‘The age of chivalry was not dead
then
,’ said Sylvia, but what might have been bitterness sounded like light hearted comment.

‘Oh, yes, a very parfit gentle knight. But I’m afraid I was a horribly scared damsel in distress. You see I’d had no experience …’

Margaret thought, why don’t I talk more with other women in this open way. She was really enjoying her story when the telephone rang.

‘Oh, hullo, old dear.’ Gladys said, and, ‘Oh Lord! I thought that was all settled…. Do they, the blighters? … That’s steep, isn’t it? … Oh Lord! So do I…. No, I didn’t mean to. Of course, I see it’s frightfully serious…. I don’t know where we’re going to get that amount from…. No, of course, my dear, No. We’ll just have to try…. No, I’m not, Alf. Honestly, I’m not. I blame
myself.
I ought to have known.’ At last she said, ‘All right. The Piccadilly. American Bar. I’ll come straight away.’

Margaret had tried with Sylvia’s help to cover this strained
conversation
with vague chatter about the shop – did people really pay good money for Victoriana? How many people knew a fake from the real thing? Not to underline their unconcern with Gladys’s private alarms she went straight on with her story.

‘He was an awfully nice boy, really. And only a bit less innocent than me.’

But Gladys said, ‘Sorry, Margaret. Some other time. I must dash. Will you shut up shop, Sylvia? I shan’t be back this evening.’

And when Margaret, in her annoyance, invaded her sister’s privacy by asking, Whatever are you going to the Piccadilly Hotel for? That was where the Countess used to net trout. You
must
remember,’ Gladys said impatiently,’ I can’t say I do. This is a damned sight more important than anything Mother ever did.’ And was gone.

They saw her through the shop window, fat and ridiculous, agitatedly flagging a passing taxi.

Margaret exclaimed, ‘Well! Is that old flame of hers always so importunate?’

She regretted the question, for, looking at this thin, anaemic woman she realized that she liked her as little as she knew her. She regretted it more when Sylvia answered: ‘I know nothing about Gladys’s private life. I never think that sort of thing does in business.’

Margaret rose. ‘I must say antique buying’s as good an excuse as any I’ve heard for an afternoon’s gossip. How much is that?’

She seized upon the first tolerable object to hand as she walked through the shop – a hollowed Seychelles nut set in an ornate gold salver.

‘Twenty pounds. It’s not genuine. It’s a Victorian imitation in gilt of the sort of baroque stuff you see at Waddesdon.’

‘It looks pretty. That’s all I mind.’

As Margaret made out her cheque, Sylvia said: ‘I hope we gave you lots of material with our gossip for one of your wonderful, nasty short stories.’

*

Along the last five
hundred yards of the bridle path brambles stretched out at every level, to sting the face, to catch the arm, to tear stockings. As Frau Liebermann hesitated Sukey stepped out on to the stubble.

‘It’s quite all right,’ she said, ‘the harvest’s in weeks ago. Such as it was this dismal summer.’ Then she cried, ‘Oh of course, your shoes! I should have thought to warn you. Or perhaps you don’t have these stout brogues in Germany. They’re hideous but they’re awfully convenient in the country.’

‘Oh, no, we have them. But I can walk easily in these.’

‘No, No, you mustn’t! Middleman, where are your manners? Darling, really! Hold back the brambles for Frau Liebermann and then she can walk on the path.’

Sukey would have liked to have protested at the woman’s total lack of any sense of economy. Ruining good shoes in her position. Coming on a picnic in that good, real wool three piece and with high heels. But tact was the only thing that mattered for these next three weeks.

When they reached the grass clearing Senior set down his picnic basket, looked at his watch and said: ‘I say, it’s pretty late, Mum.
I should think we’d better do our blackberrying stint before we have tea. Give everybody a basket, P. S.’

Sukey made faces at him to be more tactful, then said: ‘I’m not going to apologize, Frau Liebermann, for treating you like one of the family. We’ll leave you here with the picnic things while we go off blackberrying. Rugs for Frau Liebermann, Middleman.’

Behind her in a scarcely audible whisper, Senior said: ‘Frau L’s not Granny to be left with the basket.’

‘No,’ whispered Middleman, ‘nor a maid.’

‘I thought at one time,’ Sukey said, ‘that my offspring looked like avoiding the tiresome stage of growing up. Now I see that was a fond mother’s delusion.’ She laughed in order to give the rebuke a flavour of teasing. But if Frau Liebermann tactfully did not hear the boys’ words, she responded to their sentiments: ‘Oh, no, I shall be glad to pick fruit.’

‘We don’t usually say “pick fruit” for blackberries and things that grow wild,’ Sukey told her.

‘But we could,’ Middleman said. ‘It would sound rather nice. I vote we do.’

‘I’m trying,’ Sukey explained, ‘to help Frau Liebermann to speak English correctly.’

‘Thank you so much. You are very kind.’

‘You speak jolly good English already,’ Middleman told her.

‘Jolly good, Jolly good,’ Sukey laughed. ‘Well, you’ll be equipped with schoolboy lingo anyway, Frau Liebermann.’ But she put her arm round Middleman’s shoulders, ‘And I wouldn’t have it otherwise, darling.’

‘Do you have blackberries in the Harz, Frau Liebermann?’ Senior asked. ‘These ones here?’

‘Oh, yes. We call them Brombeeren. But more usually on the ground. Heidelbeeren. How are those called in English, Arnold?’

The little boy’s swarthy features flushed with red as usual when his beloved mother questioned him, and as usual he answered in a mumble ‘I don’t know.’

‘Could it be heathberries?’ P. S. asked, ‘Heide is heath, isn’t it?’

‘Jolly good,’ said Middleman, ‘except that there aren’t such things as heathberries.’

Sukey frowned at him.

‘There could be,’ Senior said, ‘I should think they’d be what we
call bilberries or whortleberries. We don’t get them round here.

Suddenly Arnold had flung himself down on the ground, crawling on his stomach, as so often quite unrestrained in his imitations. Sukey looked towards P. S. and gave him a comforting smile, for she knew how much this feeble fooling by another boy of his own age
embarrassed
him. At the same time, remembering Frau Liebermann’s position, her evident devotion for her hideous little son, she cried:

‘Oh, that’s just right, Arnold. What a nuisance they are to pick, aren’t they? And what a strain on the tummy muscles! But they’re delicious with cream. And they remind us of our darling Quantocks, don’t they, boys? The West of England is so beautiful, Frau
Liebermann
. You and Arnold must …’

But as strands of hennaed hair blew across the thick orange
make-up
with which Frau Liebermann apparently loved to cake her face, Sukey broke off. The clash of the two reds, and then again the dark oiliness of Arnold’s skin, the precocious black hairy growth on his upper lip simply did not fuse with the brown combes and the purple heather of the Quantocks.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘each to his own direction. And back here, in what? Half an hour? But do remember your lovely stockings, Frau Liebermann. The thorns are terrible.’

Arnold pulled at his mother’s sleeve. ‘Look, Mummy, that way are the best. Shall we go there?’

‘“Mummy”, auch sprachst du?’ She ran her hand through his thick, straight, lifeless black hair. Then she gave him a little push. ‘You go there, Arnold. I shall go another way. So we shall be getting more fruit for Mrs Pascoe than if we go together.’