No Laughing Matter (64 page)

*

‘No. Not every penny on horses, Inspector. Some went on the dogs.’

‘Look, Miss Matthews, you’re not doing yourself any good by trying to be funny.’

She wasn’t, it seemed, doing herself any good by any of her actions – her obstinacy, her slick readiness, her hauteur, her facetiousness. Or so they said but she knew that she was, for each day now that she was on bail, each day since her determined silence in the magistrate’s court, sympathy, kindness and pity were drying up around her. Already the Inspector had a hard glint in his eye and the policewoman grew more angular and sullen. Soon surely, as she poured out the same old lists of bookmakers, of courses, of tote bets and of runners, they would tire of the squalid story, cease to try to separate her genial person from her shabby actions, give in, leave her in peace. But now again:

‘You say that on October twelfth at Uttoxeter you lost two hundred pounds placed as a bet on Navarino in the two thirty race?’

‘Yes, I’ve told you before, and he’s still running for all I know.’

‘Don’t be impudent to the Inspector.’

‘That bet you say was placed with Clem Durrell, the bookmaker, on the course.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet Mr Durrell has no recollection whatsoever of your betting with him that day.’

‘I’m fat and forty, Inspector. Clem Durrell likes them frail and fifteen.’

Oh, soon it would be over. But now that danger spot again – ‘Mrs
Heathway in her deposition, though she clearly has no exact
information
to give, hints that you may have let yourself get into this situation on someone else’s behalf. If that’s so, Miss Matthews, you must …’

‘Sylvia Heathway is a very dear and old friend who would hint at anything which would exonerate me from my stupid, tomfool actions.’ Would he press on? No, he’d dropped it again, thank God. Two days to the trial. How she hated them all for being so kind. After all, she’d
done
the bloody thing; for whatever reason she’d deliberately cheated an old man and an old woman out of what would have given them badly needed security and decency. She tried to think of that guilt and that guilt only, for with its support, she should be able to push through her careful, unsupported story to the end. Alf turning up at the Magistrate’s court had nearly defeated her. She had sat in agonies, wondering whether he was about to speak, but he hadn’t. When she’d left with Marcus and Rupert who’d gone bail for her he’d come up with a bunch of chrysanthemums. She’d taken it and presented him as a business associate. Marcus and Rupert, of course, knew who he was, and, if they didn’t suspect, she could tell from his eyes that he thought they did. It had given her a few moments’ pleasure to feel so much in command of them all with her silence. Then she had said: ‘That’s very kind of you, Alf, but I want you to promise me not to associate yourself with all this. You have your …’ she had hesitated long enough to make him wonder, ‘your career to think of. And it’s not fair to Mrs Pritchard. After it’s all over, we’ll have a laugh.’

She had turned away. For the rest she had just longed to be rid of them all, their kindness, their belief in her – Margaret talking to her for hours ‘to keep her mind off things’; Marcus suddenly blushing and saying, ‘My dear, I’m as keen on men as you are any day, but believe me, for God’s sake, there isn’t
one
that’s worth going to prison for’; Rupert for some reason calling her Big Sis and telling her how he played some Shakespeare part; even the Countess, on that awful visit to 52 over Christmas, cutting great thick steps of brown bread, ‘because you adored thin bread and butter as a girl’. Only with Billy Pop had she felt free to brush off these weakening human claims. He’d heard something. ‘My poor little girl, if I knew who this dirty dog was who’s got you into this mess I’d knock his block off.’ Looking down at him and his crutches, she had said, ‘A little late,
Daddy, aren’t you? As always. ‘And Sukey’s letter, too, she had felt free to ignore –’ Oh, Gladys dear, Hugh and I have thought about your coming down here to be with us while you have this beastly waiting time but I
can’t
believe a school could be the right place….’ Not that she blamed Sukey. Oh, why couldn’t they leave her alone to take hot water bottles and wallow in her comfortable bed, for though she couldn’t imagine what prison was going to be like, thought of it with increasing daily terror, woke in the night
determined
to save herself by telling all (but she wouldn’t, and that, when courage left her, kept her going) she knew at least that these were her last hot, steamy, scented baths, last silk pyjamas and linen sheets, last whiskies and praliné chocolates. Oh, why couldn’t they just let her alone until the frightening day?

On the day of the trial when Margaret and Douglas went to fetch the Countess and Billy Pop they had changed their minds. The Countess in a lemon nightdress and a lilac dressing gown explained to Margaret: ‘The whole thing’s aged me so terribly, Margaret. I’ve grown overnight into a little, bent, shrunken old woman. I suddenly saw myself, dear, pushing your father into that court room in his wheelchair – a pathetic old couple. For that’s what we are now. A sight like that couldn’t help anyone, least of all Gladys.’ When they had accepted this she became more agile, more sporty with Douglas. ‘Now, Douglas, as soon as they’ve come to their senses and released that poor girl, we must all have a celebration. Something quiet, of course; Billy and I are no longer youngsters. But I rely on you to book a table somewhere nice, somewhere amusing that’ll take the poor girl’s mind off all these horrors. You know the West End of London today. Billy and I are so out of it.’

Margaret said: ‘Mother, you’d better realize that Gladys may very well be convicted and sent to prison.’

The Countess began to cry into a little lace-edged handkerchief.

‘You’ve always been so hard, Margaret. You and Marcus. I don’t think you can be children of mine. Oh, yes, she has, Douglas, I know her better than you. All those horrid books! Oh, you’ve made my head ache. I’m not at all well these days, you know.’

She went back to bed. Billy Pop called to them from his study: ‘You’ve heard what your Mother thinks. I daren’t tell her how poor the chances are. The vile injustice of this world, eh, Mag? Gladeyes, the best of the lot of you.’

‘Yes, Father, she is.’

He tapped his dictionary impatiently. ‘Well, the best I can do and it’s a poor best is to get on with my work. You hear Mrs Hannapin won’t come in and cook today? Though she knows your Mother’s not up to it. A sister over from Canada or something. La
Rochefoucauld
was unpleasantly right – “The troubles of other people sit lightly upon our shoulders”.’

The trial lasted nearly the whole day, despite Gladys’s refusal to offer a serious defence. Margaret, sitting between Douglas and Rupert, heard every word that was spoken and could remember none a minute later. She went over and over that evening when Douglas had not told her of Gladys’s visit, so much so that when he took her hand she pulled it away. And it did not help that the idea that she had got that evening at the theatre – she couldn’t quite remember now what it was – had done the trick. It only remained to kill Aunt Alice in loneliness and fear. Nevertheless she let her hand remain in Rupert’s, for this belonged to their childhood, this was part of the nightmare of 52.

At the magistrates ‘court and in the weeks between she had felt, every time that Gladys had made some stupid facetious joke or fooled about when she was in such danger, that they were all on trial for accepting their sister’s clowning, her fat jollity as a substitute for the pains of real intimacy. She sat tense while Gladys stone-walled in the witness box and made no compunctious noises but only once or twice bad, childish jokes until the Judge rebuked her sharply – no welcoming family laughter here for the nursery Bessie Bunter. When at last the jury brought in the expected verdict Margaret was nearly sick and she could feel Rupert’s hand clench in hers.’ Your defending counsel has laid great emphasis upon your realizing your assets in order to recompense Mr Ahrendt. It is his job to do so. But I confess that I can see here little more than a last minute panic, an effort to buy off the man you had so grievously wronged. Grievously, and from your conduct in court today, I fear, heartlessly, with a shameful levity. The public must be protected against this kind of fraud….’ My God! in her fright, in the loneliness we’ve all condemned her to, she’ll surely seek to buy him off with a somersault or a false nose. But the woman who received the sentence – ‘You will go to prison for four years penal servitude, the maximum sentence for your offence, which I have no hesitation in pronouncing’ – was suddenly a very
quiet, portly, dignified woman, who, standing quite alone, an object in an active world, said in a voice so low that Margaret could hardly hear it, ‘Thank you, my Lord’ and disappeared below. So, perhaps, Margaret noted, not, as the nieces expected, in vulgar ranting, would the old raddled woman go out in her lonely bedroom.

Outside in the cold air they could none of them, Margaret saw, bear the prolongation of any family play.

Rupert said defensively, ‘Debbie didn’t feel she should come,’ and looked at Douglas as an intruder.

Marcus immediately said, ‘Thank you for coming, Douglas,’ so that Margaret felt she must come to Rupert’s defence.

‘Oh, Douglas! He’ll do anything helpful a bit late. I’ll telephone them at 52 and for the rest, we’re all quite useless.’

So they all felt, and went their own ways.

Quentin, recovering in hospital from broken wrist, fractured ribs, concussion and shock, read the news in the evening paper. He could only remember that in his comminatory catalogue of his brothers and sisters on the fatal night he had completely forgotten Gladys’ existence. He would write to her. Get on to Pritt about the case – they hadn’t quarrelled that much and he was a fine lawyer. Poor Gladys – lonely, neglected, fat old dear, completely forgotten. As
he
was. Not a single soul had been to see him in hospital. It was the price you pay for telling the truth; not a soul, not even Lena, ‘the good hearted trollop’. He was still very weak and he began to cry.

‘Good gracious me! Whatever is wrong?’ asked brisk Nurse Evans in her sing song.

‘I’m so alone, nurse, so absolutely bloody alone.’

‘And so you will be if you go on like that. Nobody wants to visit a grown man crying like that.’

But he did receive visitors at five o’clock – Dodo Towneley, two other chaps from the paper and Muriel Lane, their famous roving correspondent, a good looking, bubsy, snooty bitch. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her cleavage. They said, of course, that they’d meant long before now to comfort their hero beaten up by Blackshirt bullies, but they hoped to make up for it with fruit and books and calf’s foot jelly. The really important thing, however, was this
absolutely
terrific article of his. Dodo showed it to him. ‘What makes the Red Cross’ it was called, and subheaded, ‘The Dane who didn’t like
atrocities’. It was first rate, a sash hit with everyone, all Fleet Street was laughing.

‘I laughed like a drain,’ Muriel Lane said.

‘Look,’ Dodo said, ‘This is your line – exposing all these hells with good intentions. I tell you what, you’ll be out of here in a fortnight, your doctor says. We’re going to send you to convalesce in Africa. There’s a body of cranks – schoolteachers, nuteaters, pacifist poets and American missionaries marching next month to the Abyssinian border to protest against Italian exploitation. Of course Musso won’t let them in. But
you
must cover it. It’ll be the funniest thing we’ve had for years.’

‘But what harm are they doing?’

‘What harm? Good Lord! Well, even as to harm, they’re deflecting attention from the important things that are being done – yes, that’s the line.’

‘You’ll be coming with
me
,’
Muriel said, ‘I’m covering the news angle.’

Nigel phoned to Debbie the next week. ‘Debbie, darling, I’m calling a couple of rehearsals on Wednesday and Thursday. As always the performances have gone ragged. But Rupert! Deary me! It’s all broken in pieces. The line’s quite gone. One minute he’s a sort of sergeant major and the next he’s a lost soul in agony. I thought as you’d done so much before …’

‘Oh dear, Nigel. I’m afraid it’s all this business of his sister. He really never saw the poor creature, but you’ve no idea what a “family” family the Matthews are in their unconventional way. But I’ll work on him. Don’t worry.’

*

Munich came to most of the Matthews brothers and sisters as a horrible, long-awaited, too predictable curtain to an exhausting play. They greeted it – most of them abroad – with the sad
recognition
that the nagging pain in their vitals would not now be brought to an end by any of the advertised panaceas, of which Mr
Chamberlain’s
‘peace in our time’ scrap of paper was so obvious a parody. Quentin in Somaliland doubled his evening whisky intake; Rupert, now in the Broadway transfer of
Twelfth
Night
,
remembered that the show must go on; Margaret at Aswan went out in a boat all day by herself and at evening had a headache from the sun;
Marcus, viewing an ornate Saint Sebastian in a church at Sao Paulo, schemed to keep Jack from returning to Europe. Gladys, who might have been a more shocked recipient of the news, was numbed by prison.

But the effect on Billy Pop and the Countess was dramatic. The Countess was sure that it was a terrible comedown for England, but Billy Pop had met old so-and-so again, the chap who was high up in the Ministry who said that, not at all, it was the genuine last
concession
to Hitler, and old so-and-so in the War Office who said Hitler had bitten off more than he could chew, and, in any case, if it came to a scrap, most of the German forces were only on paper, whereas ours…. But the Countess didn’t feel convinced. Billy Pop had reassured her so often in life and did old so-and-so really know? Your Father’s a brilliant man but he’s let himself drop out of the world that counts for so long; and, again had he
really
met old
so-and
-so? It wouldn’t be the first time or the last that he’d lied to her. As for the children, away from England, it just showed how little sense they had of what was happening in the world; clever enough, but with their heads in the air, ostriches with their heads in the sand. Now Billy, whatever his faults, was always alive to things, and, as for herself, she’d never been a dreamer, thank God. She wrote to Sukey since the others were unavailable. ‘We must pray and hope. But your Father and I and a lot of informed people do feel that this is the red light. It isn’t just Czechoslovakia and all that. We simply
cannot
give way anymore.’ Sukey was so cut off, living in the
provinces
.