No Laughing Matter (9 page)

‘That
was
the origin of the nickname, dear.’

‘Don’t be sarky, Mag. Anyway, I don’t think it was.’

‘What was it then?’

‘I can’t remember. Ask Rupert. He remembers everything to do with
HER
. She’s sort of sacred to him. Yet he sees through her
completely
. I can’t understand it.’

‘I shouldn’t try, Sue.’

‘But I like to think we all know what the other thinks.’

‘How very disagreeable!’

‘Why is it disagreeable? How can we be a team if we aren’t of one mind?’

‘We’re not a team, Sue. We’re a coalition. Like Mr Bonar Law and Mr Lloyd George. For limited practical purposes.’

‘Mag! How can you compare anyone you love to that awful Lloyd George? But you’re only talking for effect like you did in Miss Coulton’s English class. I know you are.’

‘Yes, I suppose I am. And, of course, we
are
all united. But it isn’t a thing to say. Rupert’s just as bad. You’re both so sloppy and
unseemly
sometimes. And Gladys too. It blurs the line and makes us seem like
them.
It’s much worse than talking about naked men. But I do love you, yes.’

‘Dear Mag.’ Sukey kissed her sister on the cheek. ‘I hate sloppiness too. Well, down to the infernal regions. I’ve been ordered to help Regan. Lunch
must
be on time with Granny M. and Dearest coming.’

‘Sue, we mustn’t put ourselves in the wrong today, whatever happens.’

‘Well, I can’t promise about noise, because old Regan loathes having me in the kitchen as much as I loathe being in the filthy place. She always clatters and bangs as much as she can to show her disapproval.’

‘You’ll
have
to stop her this morning. The Countess mustn’t be able to make any complaint against us if we’re going to speak out.’

‘Do you really mean us to? It’s easy enough for Quentin to
say
, but…’

‘You’re not funking it, Sue?’

‘Of course not. All right, I’ll suppress the horrible Regan even if I have to put her head in a saucepan.’

‘Yes, do, please. And see that the food’s just right. You know how greedy the old ladies are.’

‘I’ll try.’

Sukey hooked her right hand little finger with Margaret’s.

‘Till lunch-time then.’

*

In the nursery, Marcus, acutely aware of being hungry, mixed a subtle peacock green in the paintbox lid and listened to the near silence of the house. The sensation carried a memory of a sensation that carried a memory of a sensation on and on back to his dimly
remembered
baby years. The periodic thump of Gladys’s iron in the next room sounded deadened and dull, Margaret muttering crossly over her sewing was a mere punctuation of Rupert’s continual whispering repetition of his words. Different actions each year, but the same actors producing the same subdued noises. And always, as long as he could remember, he had felt hungry.

‘Peaceful slumber meek and mild, meek and mild. Never would my nights be wild.’ No, blast it. ‘Peaceful slumber
sweet
and mild,’ Rupert said.

‘I expect you were thinking of Gentle Jesus. What is
Chu
Chin
Chow
about?’ Marcus asked, ‘It sounds nonsense.’

‘It is rather tripe. We’re only doing it because Morrison, the
accountant
, is a baritone and fancies himself as a comic. Myrtle James and I wanted to do something with really passionate scenes. Myrtle’s hot stuff, you know.’

‘Is that the young lady with red hair who came to tea with you and licked the butter off her fingers after eating a crumpet?’

‘Don’t cheek. In any case no one said she was a lady. She’s a typist. All the same she’s had a jolly hard time at home and she’s a good sort. Hot stuff too. If the Countess hadn’t been sitting there like a basilisk, I’d have asked her up here and I believe she’d have come too.’

‘Into the nursery? It wouldn’t have been very comfortable.’

‘No, into my room of course, you idiot.’

‘Oh, I see.
Our
room actually. I’m very glad you didn’t. She was soaked in a most disagreeable scent. I shouldn’t have been able to sleep.’

‘
You
wouldn’t have been able to sleep. People think it’s a pretty shocking state of affairs that I should have to share a bedroom with a schoolkid. Of course I don’t usually let on. You can’t let the world know your business in a family like this. And then to be turned on to the nursery floor. At nineteen!’

‘You aren’t quite that yet, are you? I’m very hungry. But I’m sorry if sharing embarrasses you.’

‘I expect we all are, but it’s a special dinner today.’

‘That doesn’t mean
I
shall get any more to eat even if you do. It’ll just be Sukey’s bread-and-butter pudding and there’s never enough even of that. You’d think they’d know that growing boys need feeding.’

Rupert fished a bar of chocolate from his pocket and broke it in half. ‘You can have this if you like. But don’t make yourself sick. We mustn’t any of us be in the wrong today.’

‘Thank you very much. You needn’t worry. I’m never sick.’

‘You still wet the bed.’

‘You oughtn’t to mention that. Just because we share the same room ought to make you more respectful of privacy than ever.’

‘Oh, ought it?’ Rupert peered over his small brother’s shoulder. ‘That’s jolly good. I thought you were drawing those boring women’s dresses. What is it? Ali Baba for the pantomime?’

‘No. Strange as it may seem to you, I’m not still concerned with pantomimes. It’s Haroun Al Raschid’s palace.’

‘It would make a jolly good set for
Chu
Chin
Chow.
We might use it. Wait a minute, though, what’s all that going on up in the corner? That looks a bit thick.’

Marcus giggled. ‘It’s the grand vizier in hot pursuit.’

‘And hot it looks! I hope you haven’t got a foul mind, Marcus Matthews. All the same I think I’ll take a closer squiz at those fleeing nymphs of the harem.’

‘They’re not nymphs. At least I don’t think so. Nymphs are always girls, aren’t they? Those are two beautiful boys. One’s my idea of a yummy boy called Rampion who’s up Grant’s. Of course, I’ve never seen him naked.’

‘You filthy little swine. Just you shut up. I should think you
have
got a foul mind. It’s worse than that, it’s like a sewer. I ought to punch your head. You’d better watch out. That kind of thinking can easily land you in the loony bin. It’s worse than playing with yourself. I’m not sure I oughtn’t to talk to Father about this.’

‘You won’t, Rupert.’

‘Oh, won’t I?’

‘Because first you wouldn’t be able to get the words out. Secondly we mustn’t upset them at the moment. Thirdly it’s none of your business. Fourthly if it really sent people mad everybody at school would be in a lunatic asylum, and anyway Billy Pop would never
allow himself to hear it. Come to that I bet you had a crush on somebody at school. Much worse went on when you were there – I’ve heard about it.’

‘Oh, crushes. Of course there were those. House tarts, and so on. Actually if you must know I kissed one kid once. But only a few complete beasts were foul.’

‘Oh. Then it’s different now.’

Rupert stretched out on the nursery rug, his hands locked beneath his head. He stared at the ceiling as he talked.

‘Look, you’ll grow out of this. Everyone does. So you don’t want to worry. But don’t give way to it. I mean if I could draw like you can I should make some tophole pictures of girls. I’ve seen some. Atkinson had them at the office. Saucy oo la la stuff like Delysia. One was wearing nothing but a feathered garter. Try and think about girls as much as you can, Markie. That’s my advice.’

‘Thank you. But I don’t think I should like to.’

‘But seriously, you’ve got to. It’s a question of growing up.
Otherwise
people would never get married. And what do you think would blooming well happen to the world then?’

‘I don’t intend to marry. I don’t see how any of us could. After seeing
them
.’

‘Every woman isn’t a virago like the Countess. In any case she’d be all right if she’d married a proper man.’

Marcus considered. ‘Well, he can’t be a eunuch, canhe? I’vethought about that. Unless you think we’re all bastards.’

‘No, of course, we aren’t. But there’s such a thing as the art of love.’

‘I know there is. It’s by Ovid. I’m sure Billy Pop must have read it. He’s read most of the boring books there are.’

‘Ovid! God, you are a kid. No, I mean some men know how to make love to women and some don’t. That’s all there is to it.’

‘I see. Well, I don’t think I should want to. There’s always
something
wrong even with the nicest of them. I mean that Myrtle friend of yours having that scent.’

‘Better than a pimply boy. Anyway shut up now. I’ve got to learn these lines. But I’m warning you. If you go thinking all that filth, something ghastly will happen to you.’

Marcus tried to concentrate once more on the peacocks and apes with which he was filling Haroun Al Raschid’s fountained court. But the pleasure had gone from it. He remembered that when he had
caught a glimpse of Rampion’s bottom as he was changing it had been very spotty. He looked with disgust at the familiar nursery. Once he had believed that if he yelled loudly enough he could magic into any scene that he wanted, even Haroun Al Raschid’s Baghdad. But now he knew that even were he to yell the roof down there would be no elegant, fountain-cool palace but simply roofless old hideous No. 52, and around him would be not only the debris of the raised roof but all the mess of Sunday morning Victoria – pages of the Pink ‘un flapping against walls, paper bags, banana skins, pools of vomit. Surely there were other things somewhere, things both comical
and
elegant. Not that it mattered. For the wind had got up and was blowing above and under and around every draughty door and window. No need to scream, for soon the dust would cover all, would silt up in the basement and stifle Regan’s snores, would cover grey Billy Pop with thicker grey and all his paper weights (the See No Evil Monkey, the Lincoln Imp, Mother Shipton) that made his desk a toy town, would bury the drawing room under a sandy film, thick upon the water in the black china bowls where the Countess floated marigold heads, and moving on up above, would strike the Countess’ bed like the Annunciation’s beam, but stifling not awakening. Finally he, too, would surrender to the tender death of dust’s embrace, would give himself…. But something sneezed – loudly and clearly, something in the boxroom under the water tank sneezed and mewed. Marcus came to and laughed at his daydreams. The dust no doubt had reached the kittens. And soon they were setting up a chorus of jerky, competitive wailing, not so shrill as a nest of birds, but more urgent – calling perhaps for their dead mother. Sukey had put them in the boxhole after the taxicab had hit Leonora, when they had all agreed that the small creatures must be preserved from the Countess’ unpredictable love and Billy Pop’s spite-laced maunderings. ‘We’ll all look after them,’ Sukey had said. But they all knew that she meant them to be her particular care. Sukey, then, must act or their mewing would disturb the Countess. Softly Marcus called, ‘Sukey! The Kittens!’

Quentin, too, was stirred from soothing warm water. ‘Sukey, you’d better do something.’ Yet, receiving no answer, he fell back into contemplating the greasy brass maker’s plate on the geyser. ‘The Heatall, Manufactured in York.’ From these letters he tried to make words – he had played this game with the same letters on the same
geyser when he was seven. He tried to make ‘Change All’ or Renew All’, but could find only ‘Destroy All’. Yet the water still lapped him deliriously.

And now Marcus, getting no answer from Sukey, paid his tribute to the kittens. He painted broad tiger stripes of brown and yellow into a mousseline de soie balldress he was designing; and the stripes in turn gave him the model’s name: ‘Zaza’. He scrawled this in dashing scarlet ink across the bottom of the cardboard sheet. He turned to Rupert, seeking what should be done to hush the crying kittens, but Rupert was saying to himself, ‘We are the dust beneath thy feet, O Chu Chin Chow’. Marcus watched his brother saying it cringingly and then saying it with a mocking smile; then he walked out into the passage and found Gladys already busily giving the kittens milk from a fountain pen filler.

‘I say, I wonder how Sue gets them to open their mouths. They shut up as soon as this fearsome looking thing comes near them.’

Margaret peered into the basket. ‘Their heads are enormous and their bodies are like snakes. They’re like diseased weasels. I can’t think why one should feel so protective towards them.’

‘Never mind what they’re like, Margaret. Pick up the little tabby blighter and see if we can get him to open his mouth.’

The kitten cried out happily as Margaret held him in the air.

‘Can’t they all be fed together?’ Marcus asked, taking up the
beautiful
little ginger one and giving his finger to its sharp teeth as a nipple.

‘No, they can’t,’ said Gladys. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, just because they make such beautiful patterns in the basket. But held up separately like that they
do
look like weasels or
something
. Perhaps just kittens.’

‘They are each of them just that,’ said Margaret. ‘How
self-centred
you are, Marcus.’ She tickled the tabby kitten’s ears.

‘This little beggar’s done very well. I won’t give him any more. He’ll get wind. Pick up the white one. That’s the little blighter that’s been raising the roof

By now Quentin had put his head solicitously round the bathroom door. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’

‘Well, not sure. That is if you know better, old boy.’

‘I don’t. Poor motherless little things.’

‘It’s hardly for us to condole with them on that score,’ Margaret said.

Rupert loomed through the nursery door. ‘No, indeed, I suspect that’s why they look in such healthy shape.’

‘Oh, you mustn’t,’ Marcus cried, ‘Leonora would have been a wonderful mother.’

To their surprise Quentin said, ‘Dead mothers tell no tales.’ Perhaps to his own, for he immediately returned to the bathroom.