No Laughing Matter (60 page)

‘Why are you keeping the truth from me, Miss Matthews? I know that you have taken our picture to Christie and there they say that they think it is a good picture. But you have taken it away before they are sure. What does it mean, please?’

For a moment, she thought, now it’s all all right, I shall tell him; but then he had been so badly treated that surely he could never trust people; and such people themselves were not able to be trusted.

‘Oh, I meant it all to be a surprise for you. It may be a very valuable picture, worth some thousands of pounds. Perhaps by Grünewald, you know, Matthias Grünewald. But I had to have a second opinion. That’s why I took it from Christie’s.’

Strangely the statement of its value made Herr Ahrendt more hostile. He glared at her.

‘Where is the picture, please, Miss Matthews? At once.’

His anger infected her.

‘Mr Ahrendt, you gave me that picture for valuation because for many years I have sold things for you and given you good prices. You told me the picture was probably of no value, but that, if it would fetch anything you would be grateful. Now you come in here….’

‘Many years, many years. For many years bad things are happening, Miss Matthews, though you may not know in this England. My wife is ill and old. She depends upon me. Miss Matthews, this is Tuesday. I want my picture back, or a good sale by this Sunday. Or there may happen bad things for you.’

He turned, swaying slightly – he had become very frail and old – and went towards the door.

‘Don’t you worry, you shall have your money. And good
riddance
,’ she shouted after him – after all if he had known worry and tension, so had she.

She saw him walking to and fro in front of the shop window for a few moments. Once he seemed about to come in. She almost went
out to him – the poor old thing! There was no sense in quarrelling. But tomorrow all would be right and, with that, he too would be his courteous old self again.

The next day when she had ascertained that the letter was not at the shop, she went racing. On her return to the flat in the evening she found a telegram ‘Forgot post letter London. Sent from here. All my apologies love Alf.’ The telegram came from Dublin. She went racing again after that. And finally on Friday night the letter came. It
contained
a post-dated cheque for
£
500. There was also a little note of apology from Herr Ahrendt, courteous, old world. She must forgive an old man’s fussing, but Mrs Ahrendt was ill and this was why he must insist.

*

‘I have been settled in now two weeks and all going well. Today Mr Truscott thats the one under Mr Roper told me I done very well and got the packin idear quicker than most and if I go on like this I will get a rise I know the letter said not to bother you and tho it makes me sad and Madge too Arthur says you did right and all for the best but I carnt let all go by without saying thank you for gettin a job was all that I wanted and like you said without it men rot. Madge and Arthur and Stanley and Baby and all send love and so does your pal with the biggest ever – Ted.’

Marcus closed the letter, avoiding looking at the Tchelitchev
portrait
and went in search of Jack. Voices – Jack’s, Mary’s, and, he thought, another’s – reached him from the conservatory. At first he thought to turn back, but he stimulated his own anger so that it would carry him through what would now have to be a self-
consciously
melodramatic entry. Speaking through great scarlet and orange sprays of bignonia, almost subdued by the heavy mingled smells of China tea and gardenias, he said, waving the letter:

‘What the hell do you mean by this, Jack?’

A nervous tick of extreme irritation seized Jack’s thin, papery cheeks. He leaned back in the black leather modern rocking chair, knotting his hands behind his head.

‘Shall we battle about it later, Markie? You haven’t said how do to Mary. And you don’t know Hansi Münzer.’

Marcus grimaced at Mary and bobbed his head in the direction of a young man who immediately stood up, bowing absurdly. The creature was one of the most appalling little screamers, with a silver
bracelet, a willowy figure and large, dark, lemur’s eyes – the most
un-me
person, Marcus thought, and to his amazement found, as his eyes took in the young man’s flirtatious glance, that he was beginning a cock stand. He instantly turned on Jack.

‘What do you mean by interfering in my affairs? Teaching me moral lessons!’

He noticed with a certain pleasure that Mary’s deepset eyes had become hooded as they always did when there was any blasphemy or vulgarity in personal relationships.

‘Oh, really!’ Jack’s drawl had the full arrogance that years ago would have frightened him. ‘The young man was most persistent. Telephoning at every hour. It’s all very well for you marching behind red flags, but I was here and had to cope with it. You’d treated him very badly so I thought he’d better have a job. I went to one of the family subsidiaries. He was told not to bother you. He deserves to be fired.’

Mary was talking now to little Miss Lemur – ‘Do you mean that dreams have a sort of black edge around them that gives them formal coherence like a painting?’

‘Oh, the dream, of course, is only one of many fruitful images for the painter.’

Some bloody Expressionist rubbish. Marcus felt more angry with Jack.

What bloody right have you to involve me in a lot of paternalistic patronage? If Ted had been left to stew in the juice all you capitalist shits had put him in he might have acquired some sense of class solidarity.’

Jack leaned back, ‘Oh, my Gawd!’

Mary, too, took a hand. ‘Horrid words, Marcus. I do think ideas must be judged a little by the words they breed.’

Well then, Hansi, ‘Jack said,’ I’ll come to the studio this evening since you say you want them seen by electric light. You do mean that? All right. We could dine and go to the cinema or theatre first. Is there something you wish to see?’

‘What is there of Shakespeare?’

Marcus saw that there was nothing for it but to accept the
opportunity
of recovering his temper that Jack and Mary had so civilizedly combined to offer him.

He said: ‘Well, you could see my brother in
Twelfth
Night.
’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Markie. We couldn’t go to the Old Vie.’ When the lemur’s eyes grew round in question, Mary explained:

‘It’s all terribly earnest and unlovely.’

‘The décor!’ Jack cried, ‘They think it’s clever to do without colour or splendour.’

‘I think,’ Mary suggested, ‘it’s because they do it all on the cheap.’

‘Oh no, my dear, they like it like that. Like Heal’s furniture. Do you remember, Markie, we went to
Othello
,
and it was dressed in vomit colour.
Othello
and Renaissance Venice, of all things! Oh, no, you’d hate it, Hansi. We could go to Nellie Wallace at the Bedford. Or there’s
Duck
Soup.
Perhaps Nellie Wallace is a bit difficult for you, I think it had better be Harpo Marx.’

‘My God, you are snobbish,’ Marcus said.

‘Darling Marcus,’ Mary observed, ‘I don’t see why it’s snobbish to go to the things one likes.’

But Marcus had left the tropical scene.

*

Under the thickly white-painted shell that surmounted the entrance to Kingsway Hall (was it classical? was it baroque? no, eclectic) there gathered the eclectic group of speakers selected to represent a wide cultural front of opposition to the growing Fascist tyrannies. Reg Smalley, the Chairman, Free Church guardian of civil liberties, had news for each in turn as they arrived, of the Government’s repressive Bill shortly to be before the House. ‘It’s Clause ten that we’ve got to concentrate on,’ he said to each as he met them. The two Trades Council men, the comrade from the Ex-Servicemen’s League Against Fascism, the Co-op Guild woman, and, of course, the Labour League of Lawyers worried and fought over the clause with Mr Smalley eagerly, as the pack dismembers the fox. Matthias Birnbaum stood aloof in metaphysical and artistic grandeur – the great foreign visitor observing the antics of the Pytchley or the Quorn. Margaret, no hunting woman, dangerously dressed indeed in fox furs, felt it her job, as fellow-writer and co-innocent, to bring life to the Olympian brow.

‘Not our happiest sort of architecture, I’m afraid.’

‘No? I suppose it’s the usual Jugendstil of its period.’

So firm was his tone that Margaret looked around her. However, he was wrong; the building was not Art Nouveau, but argument did not appear likely to be fruitful.

‘Thomas Mann’s declaration was very inspiring.’

‘His declaration? Oh, his statement to the P.E.N. Club. You found that inspiring? He inspired also many patriotic German ladies in the Kaiser Time with his new democratic faith. But as a Jew I was not so happy with his nationalism then, so I remain a little bit sceptical now.’

She had the impression that he counted the minutes of silence until he felt he had adequately reproved her.

‘On what will you speak this afternoon, Miss Matthews?’

‘Oh, the old business, just say a word or two about the writer’s inevitable commitment to freedom and his consequent implacable hatred of Fascism in any form. It’s mainly important that we should be seen to take a stand.’

‘Oh. What a great pity that John Galsworthy is not here to speak for the English writers. He was very much known and admired in Germany.’

‘Yes, I know. He wasn’t a very good novelist, you know.’

‘No, I suppose not. But then the English novel is not an aesthetic novel, it is a social novel.
The
Forsyte
Saga
has great importance as the mirror of the British high bourgeoisie.’

To her relief Rupert, in a green Tyrolean hat and a camel hair coat, brought some glitter of the stage to dispel Herr Birnbaum’s solemnity. But not for long. For even praise barely worked.

‘I can hardly tell you, Herr Birnbaum, how excited my children were that I was going to meet the author of
The
Goat
Boy.
’

No relaxation, only grim: ‘
Girl.
The translation is very bad.’

After a pause, Rupert, ‘Of course our great gain in the theatre from all this wickedness has been Reinhardt’s arrival.’

‘You admire him?’

‘Well, to be honest, I was disappointed with his “Dream” at Oxford. I know it was undergraduates, but even so …’

‘Oh, what did you expect then?’

Margaret could tell that Rupert found such questioning unfamiliar.

‘Well, the reports had been so…. One really thought, well here it is.’

‘Here is what.’

‘It’s rather a ridiculous expression, but what I
mean
is, the
production
was so old fashioned in the spectacular manner, almost
Beerbohm
Tree stuff. I saw no trace of genius …’

‘Oh, das Genie. That, Reinhardt has not. But I suppose he is more advanced than what you have here.’

‘That’s what our critics had led us to suppose …’

‘Oh! Your critics. I am right, isn’t it so? that they have no training in Dramaturgie.’

Rupert withdrew his chin from his green and white spotted silk muffler. Sniffing the air he said:

‘Oh, none, I’m glad to say, none at all.’

‘We can’t wait for Q. J. Matthews.’ Reg Smalley’s voice broke in before the great man could react. ‘As people are arriving in good numbers I think we might repair to the vestry. We can go straight on to the platform from there.’

Crowded into a small room of hideous yellow pitch-pine panelling, Rupert and Margaret stood disconsolately together like two
flamingoes
with their wings cut.

‘I have no training in Dramaturgie.’ Rupert was so much the awful Birnbaum and also the old Rupert imitating Germans in the nursery that she burst into a loud laugh. Everyone turned for a moment and stared.

‘Oh, blast! Quentin is going to be late. They won’t let him on the platform.’

‘My dear Mag, why on earth not?’

‘He’s in disgrace politically.’

‘Silly old ass!’

‘Well, do be very nice to him, Rupert. I’m sure he’s following his conscience’

‘Oh, good Heavens, yes.’ Rupert immediately looked stiff and pompous.

At that moment Quentin, hatless, and wearing a filthy raincoat, pushed his way into the little room. His sister and brother made to greet him. He waved to them, but before they could reach him he was deep in the conclave about Clause Ten.

‘The man you want to lobby,’ they heard him say, ‘is Emrys Evans. Get him to ask questions. He’s a good lawyer and he hates Simon’s guts. Oh, it’s an old legal story.’

Once more Rupert and Margaret huddled in dishevelled isolation.

‘I’m sorry I let you in for this, Rupert.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. I suppose one had to accept.’

‘Yes, I think so. Though I oughtn’t to, for I’m just in the middle of a new novel.’

‘It’s not going very well, is it?’

‘No. Oh, Rupert, do you mean you can still tell after all these years? And we never meet!’

‘Well, yes, actually I can, Mag. But your last was good.’

‘As good as I could make it. But your Malvolio. Raves, Rupert!’

‘Yes, I wish I …’

‘You’re not sure? I’ll tell you.’

‘Oh, I wish you would. If
you
said yes … Come tonight. I can get you a ticket.’

Margaret only had time to mouth acceptance before Reg Smalley marshalled them all on to the platform.

Marcus was late at Holborn Underground where he was to meet Jane Farquhar. She was furious, had a cold, looked like hell as they ran across the empty Saturday afternoon Kingsway through stinging, icy rain. When they got to the entrance ushers warned them they would have to stand at the back of the hall. A deep social instinct made Marcus greet the whole unfortunate, wet, rubber-smelling occasion by pointing out the thickly moulded shell ceiling.

‘Not the happiest use of baroque. Perhaps it would be wisest to excuse it by calling it eclectic’

Jane Farquhar growled and contrived, as they squeezed their way into the packed crowd, to give off an even more pungent smell of wet mackintosh.