No Laughing Matter Read online

  ‘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.

  ‘We must make up to them for what we’ve never had,’ Rupert said. He bent down and stroked the tortoiseshell kitten. ‘This one’s a girl. Tortoiseshells always are.’

  Gladys announced: ‘Sue oughtn’t to keep milk in your room, Mag. If the Countess knew, there’d be blue murder.’

  ‘You flatter Sukey. I’m sure her blood
isn’t blue like the Countess’s. It’s probably pink like Billy Pop’s.’ Marcus’s sisters laughed at his remark, but Rupert went back to the nursery.

  Gladys said, ‘It’s a shame Marcus never has any schoolfriends round here at week-ends.’

  ‘If you remember the way she went on the last time he had a friend here …’

  ‘I wasn’t at home. Was she awful? Rotten luck, Marcus.’

  ‘I shouldn’t let her prevent me from asking friends here, thank you. It’s just that this is hardly a house I want to entertain in.’

  Gladys burst into a guffaw, but a second later the Countess screamed from below, ‘Who’s making all that unnecessary noise? Margaret, didn’t you give my message? You wait till I come upstairs, you’ll wish you had been born Wendy. If your father had any…. Billy, Billy, leave those old papers for once and give me a hand with your children. Come upstairs.’

  ‘There is going to be murder,’ Margaret said. She put the kittens back into the basket. Gladys shut the box-room door and stood before it like a sentry.

  ‘Oh, don’t be such funks.’ Leaning over the banisters Marcus called, ‘It’s the kittens, darling.’

  The Countess’ face peered up at him. She had taken off her boudoir cap and her thick black hair streamed over her shoulders.

  ‘Medusa,’ Marcus murmured.

  ‘What did you say? It was some impertinence, wasn’t it? I know that smug little smile. Anyway what are you doing on the landing? What kittens?’

  ‘Dear Leonora’s.’

  ‘Leonora?’

  ‘Our darling cat that was killed last week, that’s all.’

  ‘What do you mean “that’s all”? It was perfectly dreadful. Only a morbid child like you would want to dwell on it. Anyway what do you mean “our darling cat”. I was the one who looked after that cat. And old Regan. She doted on it. You children take old Regan far too much for granted. She’s a human being as well as a servant. What she did for that cat! She and I did everything for it. As far as you children were concerned, it might have died.’

  ‘It did,’ said Margaret.

  ‘There you are. The poor creature! It was an adorable cat too. A real alley cat. An independent cockney street cat. That cat and I understood one another.’

  ‘But you couldn’t remember its name,’ Rupert called from the nursery.

  ‘Learn to speak without shouting or shut up. You’re not acting now with the Mincing Lane Mummers. Names! That cat was a street arab. Street arabs don’t have names. Well, where is the shameless guttersnipe’s brood?’

  ‘You shouldn’t insult the dead.’

  The Countess turned for a moment to stare at Marcus’s pear-shape face and large dark eyes. Then she struck him a sharp blow on the cheek with the palm of her hand.

  ‘You’re talking too much.’

  She bent over the kittens and, picking up all five of them at once, she disposed of two in the wide sleeves of her Japanese kimono, the others she pressed to her flat breast.

  ‘They are a mongrel brood! Every colour of the rainbow. Adorable vulgar waifs of the London streets.’

  The black and white kitten, alarmed by the swinging of its sleeve hammock, caught for a moment at her bare arm, but this did not check her sweetness.

  ‘You’ll have to be tamed! You Seven Dials kitten! They’re apaches. That’s what they are, they’re apaches! But who put them in this black hole of Calcutta? It isn’t fit even to be a box-room. It wouldn’t be one if our wage earner didn’t insist on a room of her own. I suppose they were shoved into this hole because they weren’t pure bred Persians. Oh dear, what snobs I have given birth to. But I must say you’re beautiful looking snobs, the lot of you. Even my barber’s block, Rupert, and Gladys is becoming quite a handsome matron.’

  ‘And as for you, Countess,’ said Rupert, ‘is it Bernhardt and dog, or dog and bone?’

  ‘Yes, I know the joke, darling heart. But it is a silly one for you to make since you never saw the divine Sarah. Anyway my sort of figure will have its day, you mark my words. And you’re not going to stop me being a doting mother. You’re all quite beautiful. Everyone! Except, of course, snotty nosed little schoolboy Marcus. But then schoolboys shouldn’t be beautiful. That wouldn’t be quite decent. Except for you, Billy.’ Turning she addressed her husband’s head, as he appeared, blowing a little above the stair rail. ‘Your father was indecently pretty as a schoolboy. I have an enchanting photograph somewhere of him just at Marcus’s age. In his mortarboard. A little angel face. Weren’t you, pet? Oh, you don’t know the half of your father. Look Billy, these adorable kittens!’

  ‘The poor little kittens have lost their mittens.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so whimsical. Anyway this little ginger is going to do a number one if we’re not careful. Take them away at once, Marcus. But don’t put them back into that black hole or we’ll have an inspector or somebody fussing. Get a basket from Regan. Not that awful old thing. Where did you children find it? Oh, it’s Rag’s basket! Whoever kept that? How disgusting and sentimental! That’s your fault Billy, you’ve taught them sentimentality. Now remember, all of you, when someone dies whom you love – it doesn’t matter who it is, animal or friend – don’t hang on. Love them and forget them! It’s so much more healthy. Marcus, you’re going to drop them. Don’t droop so. You’re not holding a lily. Sukey had better deal with them. She likes being the little mother.’

  ‘You sent Sukey to the kitchen.’

  ‘Sent her to the kitchen! What do you mean, Margaret? She’s gone to help Regan. Sent her to the kitchen! Well of course I did. We don’t pay expensive fees to have her taught cooking if she’s never going to cook. Call down to her, Billy. She’s your daughter.’ She paused to hear Sukey’s response from the depths of the staircase well, then she went on. ‘You, Wendy, what’s your name, since Sukey can never be where she’s wanted, look into the next to bottom drawer of my chest of drawers and you’ll find a square of scarlet velvet. Put it under them in the basket. It’ll go with my red curtains in the dining-room. For that’s where the kittens must live, of course. Not all the time. They must have a box of sand in the kitchen. Regan will explain to you about emptying and filling.’

  ‘Leonora used to go outside.’

  ‘Yes, and got killed as a result. No thank you. If you don’t really care about them enough to bother, then you’d much better wring their necks now.’

  ‘It’s more usual to drown unwanted kittens, Countess.’

  ‘But they’re not unwanted, Billy. Not by the children and me anyway. Their games are going to be so amusing. Gladys, you can get a ball or something for them tomorrow and then …’

  ‘You’re not to touch them. You’re not to. They’re my kittens!’

  The Countess turned to see a red-faced Sukey shouting at her. Would she rush at her mother, who stared fixedly at her? Billy Pop put a hand on his daughter’s arm. ‘Steady, Sue, steady.’

  ‘That gold band has done nothing for that child’s teeth, Billy,’ the Countess remarked. ‘So they’re yours, are they, Sukey?’ She came closer to her daughter. ‘Sukey, the little mother, who shut them in a cupboard. Do you have any idea of what a long, slow death stifling is? Gasping for breath. Do you, Sukey, do you?’

  The bathroom door opened and Quentin came out in an old mohair dressing gown. ‘They’re our kittens, mother. We’re all responsible for them. And, by the way, Margaret didn’t forget to impose silence on us.’

  ‘She’d have been perfectly justified if she had, wouldn’t you, Mag? I was absolutely beastly to her when she brought my breakfast. Remind me to be nicer to you all day, darling heart.’ The Countess went up to her eldest son and kissed him. ‘A nice long bath, darling? You always loved to soak. Acting Major Matthews and his kittens! No, Quentin, I can’t have your dignity demeaned like that. An Acting Major going up to Oxford is enough …’

  ‘London, Mother.’

  ‘So you keep telling me, dear, but they don’t have universities in London or if they have, t
hey shouldn’t. Anyway a Major at a University is bad enough, but a Major with kittens…. All right, Sukey, you’ve said your piece. Don’t ruin the lunch as well. And speak nicely to Regan about putting a sand-box in the kitchen.’

  But Sukey disregarded her mother. She was intent upon apology. ‘I’m sorry, Quentin. Of course, they’re ours. I didn’t mean to be possessive. I should never have said they were mine.’

  ‘Indeed you shouldn’t, Sukey. Anyway they’re mine now.’ Looking at her children the Countess felt quite warm towards them. ‘You shall all look after them for me. And now enough of kittens. What have you all been doing this morning?’

  ‘Look,’ Billy Pop held out a book he had taken from the shelves, ‘A first edition of Virginibus Puerisque. It oughtn’t to be here with these old review copies. I remember so well finding it on a junk stall in the cattlemarket at Stirling when I was on a walking tour of the Midlothian.’

  ‘Oh, how can you be so selfish, Billy? Just the same rambling egotism as your mother. “Do you remember that picnic on the Island?” “Do you remember, Will, when you forgot yourself at the Christmas party, dear little boy?” At least she has the excuse of being senile. But you! Can’t you live in the present for a moment? Don’t you want to know what your children are doing? You’d have done better to write a few more books instead of finding them. Life isn’t just to be found, you have to work for it. There’s nothing to laugh about, Marcus. Your father’s a brilliant man. If he didn’t lack application he’d be somebody. And now I’ve no time to hear what my children have to say, because I have to dress up for your mother. If Grannie M. didn’t insist on sitting up to table, we could all have a nice nursery picnic. You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you, Quentin?’

  ‘I dare say Quentin picnicked quite often enough at the Front,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Nonsense. You none of you remember Quentin. You’ve forgotten him while he’s been away defending his country. He has the simplest of tastes, haven’t you, darling heart?’

  But Billy Pop was clearly in an interrupting mood. ‘Just to get the record straight I’d like to remind you, Countess, that the formal occasion is as much on your aunt’s account as on my mother’s.’