No Laughing Matter Page 9

  ‘Billy darling, I do love you when you’re touchy. But if I can’t have my picnic, I shall have my revenge. I’ll wear a hat at luncheon just to see your mother’s bewildered face. She can never remember whether I’m doing the right thing or the wrong.’ She began to laugh as she thought of Granny M.’s old head shaking with the difficulties of etiquette. Blowing a kiss to her family, she went downstairs to her bathroom to dress.

  Billy Pop was absorbed in Virginibus Puerisque, but he could feel that his waiting children expected some remark from him.

  ‘If only Stevenson hadn’t whoremongered after that French harlot the novel, but had stuck to his ane fair Scots bride the essay! He was a natural rover, you know. When he could get away from fixed forms and let his fancy wander, he was superb. Listen to this.’

  ‘We are listening, Father.’

  The sound of Gladys’s voice coming distantly made him look up. They had all gone back to their rooms. He decided not to read the extract. Instead, he said, ‘I doubt if it’s true. Your mother as usual was being generous. I didn’t really have it in me to be anyone.’ Getting no reply, he added, ‘But I’ve tried to be a friend to you children.’ In face of their continued silence he decided to take his treasure trove down to his study. As he went downstairs he called, ‘When I eventually have to pay Charon his fare, you will look back on me as a grey man. Not memorable like your mother. But perhaps you may say to yourselves, He wasn’t such a bad old stick.’

  *

  Rejecting all old sticks bad or good, the Matthews children began to use their Sunday morning leisure. In the nursery Marcus, craving for the newest and smartest, began to paint in a chic Vogue background for his models. In the nursery, too, determining on a new world where reason and humane feelings would reign, Quentin set himself to the recommended book Self Government In Industry. In the bathroom, Rupert, rubbing lotion into his hair, thought of a new sort of play where all would happen naturally in a natural setting–lovers ‘quarrels, for instance, in a bathroom, but not of course an old squalid geysered bathroom like this, a scene all jazz design and gay silk dressing-gowns and hairbrushes, bottles of scent and of expensive hair oil flying across the room in a lovers’ witty battle of words. Beatrice and Benedict brought up-to-date in a Riviera villa perhaps, or a suite at the Ritz, or a gay Paris atelier. Gladys, checking her Post Office savings book as she balanced on the edge of her bed, thought of the new world lying open to girls, a new world that with such interest she would open to them in her brand new employment office with its brand new punch card system of classification, and the newest portable typewriting machines in Kingsway, she and her one or two sensible bachelor girl aides. And Alfred had offered to invest £100 for every £50 of her own capital. Margaret, sitting at her dressing table, wisps of dark hair brushing the virgin pages of her exercise book, worried and frowned over this new story that would at last have its just proportions. Sukey, who was trying out a new eggless recipe, turned from mixing batter for the toad-in-the-hole to see Regan lift each of the pheasants in turn and sniff at them. The light for a moment caught at some bristly featheriness left by incomplete plucking of the largest bird and then glanced on to the dark hairs that protruded from the mole on Regan’s chin. She looked away and concentrated on whipping the batter. When she turned again to make her plea for the kittens Regan was flicking into her mouth a speck of raw giblet from the kitchen table.

  ‘The cock bird’s the igh one,’ she said, ‘That’ll do for your Granny Matthews. She’s one of the old school. She likes er birds gamey. Miss Rickard’s got a weaker stomach for all er travelling. She’ll take the breast of one of the ens. Or as much as eel leave for er.’ She chuckled.

  ‘Oh, Regan, the things you remember about us.’

  ‘That’s part of bein in service, Miss Sukey.’

  ‘You’ve spoilt us, you know.’

  In the great roomy farmhouse kitchen from whose speckless tiled floors one could eat one’s breakfast anyday, Ada laughed. ‘Oh, I gave him a piece of my mind, Madam; “The garden isn’t yours,” I told him, “asparagus like great pillars. The idea of it! Just for your old village show! When you know that the mistress likes the early spikes as thin as her little finger.” It won’t happen again, you can assure the master of that.’ Sukey said to this tall country woman, so neatly dressed in her uniform, almost handsome with her direct self-respecting gaze, ‘Oh, you’ve bullied him, Ada. The poor man! And you know he’s in love with you.’ ‘Oh, he’s all right, Anderson is, Madam. But every man needs to be put in his place now and again. It doesn’t do to spoil them. You know that.’ ‘Indeed, I do, Ada.’ Then laughing – two women together – she looked up and saw Regan’s greasy old apron, a hairpin hanging over her ear.

  ‘And we’ve spoilt you, Regan,’ she added softly. And then not to upset the old creature, no, rather, surely to be fair, ‘They have. This house. It spoils everything.’ She looked ahead trying to catch sight of Ada, even of the kitchen garden, but there was only the grocer’s gift calendar still announcing June and marked with a bloody thumb-print.

  ‘Too stiff for your wrists?’ Regan came towards the bowl of batter. ‘Ere, let me.’

  ‘No, no, it’s quite all right. Oh, you are a darling, Regan, putting up with us all.’

  ‘Now what’s this you want? All over me, aren’t you?’

  The woman was in a rare friendly mood. Sukey, drawing back from a blast of cooking brandy fumes mixed with onion, determinedly separated real warmth from maudlin alcohol. Determinedly also she replied to Regan’s warm self.

  ‘Dear Regan, you always see through us. I do want something. Yes.’ She made her request.

  ‘Kittens messing all over my kitchen floor. No thank you. Never eard of such a thing. Insanity that’s what it is. Insanity.’

  ‘But think of the mice we’ll get if we don’t have a cat to take Leonora’s place.’

  ‘Leonora! That taxi was a Dispensation, if you ask me. Besides you won’t get no mice in my kitchen. The idea! And if there was, mice droppins is better than cats’ mess. Why, there was an old geezer once sent down to the kitchen to thank me for the sponge cake with chocolate flutings. I said to Monser Jooles, “Chocolate flutings! She’s barmy!” It was only after, I thought of the mice. Mice drop-pins, why when I was working for Mrs Pitditch-Perkins …’

  ‘Oh, Regan, darling! What an absolutely glorious story!’ Sukey turned and there was the Countess ‘framed’, as she no doubt thought of herself, in the kitchen doorway. Sukey saw in her mother only a means of stemming Regan’s tide.

  ‘So you’re going to challenge poor Grannie’s cherished ideas of etiquette.’ She looked at her mother’s small toque of pansies and violets.

  ‘Well, she shouldn’t cherish them if she’s so vague about what’s the done thing.’

  ‘All the same, a toque’s rather a timorous challenge. Especially with Grannie’s short sight.’

  ‘A timorous challenge! That’s quite witty for you, darling. I used to think Margaret would be the wit but she’s getting so sour. Perhaps you will be. I hope one of you will inherit. After all I’m here as a constant example, and better still you’ve got Regan’s natural wit. And so you’ve agreed, Regan. I knew as soon as I heard that wonderful mouse story. You’re going to give my kittens a warm home near the boiler. And for party occasions they can come upstairs to the dining-room and be looked at by visitors. You mustn’t let them be a nuisance, Regan. Sukey will see to their feeding, won’t you, darling? And one of the others can empty the sandbox. Marcus, I should think. It will be good for him. No schoolboy should have such clean white hands as Marcus has.’

  ‘I don’t fancy kittens in the kitchen, Madam. It’s insanity.’

  ‘Insanity!’ The Countess laughed down the scale. ‘You’ve been got at by Miss Sukey and all those awful school of cookery ideas. Sanity, that’s what they teach there, and look at the result. Those terrible potato flour scones! Thank goodness, Sukey, you only cook for the nursery menu. But you, Regan, you made
even the Zepp raids an orgy! Do you remember those delicious little woodcock the night the bomb fell in Covent Garden? But you will take my kittens, won’t you, Regan? I need an awful lot of consoling today. My friend Major Ward has gone back to the United States. He sent a special message to you, Regan. Your praliné ices will live with him for ever.’

  The Countess was in tears. Sukey turned away. But Regan responded.

  ‘You ad igh old times together, didn’t you? And will again. If not with im. There’s others. You’ve never been content with one.’

  ‘Oh, Regan, you’re a shockingly bad influence on me. Thank heaven for you! And my kittens?’

  Regan clicked her tongue. ‘Oh, all right. You can ave your muck box. But don’t blame me if you all get the bellyache. And now off you go if Miss Rickard’s to ave er creme brule.’

  ‘Dear Regan,’ the Countess said. She went over to Sukey. ‘There you are, darling. The kittens are provided for. And I want you to look after them for me. And Sukey,’ she whispered, ‘do see she doesn’t take another nip. She’s had just enough to produce a superb luncheon, but we don’t want her paralytic. The kittens are called mine, darling, but, of course, you’re the one to care for them. The idea of your sharing with the others was absurd. Do remember, darling heart, that Billy and I have special reasons for wanting to please the old girls today.’

  ‘Yes, Countess, I understand.’ Sukey felt quite conspiratorial in the irony of her answer, like Mazarin or someone in one of Billy Pop’s historical stories.

  She poured the batter mixture into the greased baking tin. The mixture, cascading smoothly white from the smooth white bowl, seemed to carry her along with it without thought or care. Regan, too, was whistling gaily, not in her usual sad, off-key drone.

  ‘Why are we so happy when she gets her own way, Regan?’

  Regan, busy clarifying the sugar, said nothing.

  ‘I suppose it’s a relief to have her in a happy mood.’

  ‘Oh, drat you, Miss Sukey! Don’t keep on talking. Your Ma’s avin a bad time. Let’s leave it at that. Anyway she don’t know what a real bit of fun means. You none of you do. The gentry or those that goes by the name. She ought to come over to my sister Em’s place of a Saturday night. I couldn’t let them know what I’ve come down to. ‘She poured herself out a glass of cooking brandy.’ But there, you’ve got to kick the bucket somewhere. And one filthy ole’s as good as another.’

  Sukey concentratedly spread margarine thinly on the bread scraps for the pudding she was preparing. So concentratedly that she found to her annoyance that she had prepared more bread scraps than the baking dish would hold even if she left out the always optional fistful of currants. She turned round with released fury when she heard Billy Pop’s voice.

  ‘Well, Regan, well?’ he was asking.

  ‘It isn’t well at all, Father. It’s very bad. She’s just called the house a filthy hole.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ he began to lick the cream from the blades of the whipper that Regan had used, ‘Oh, dear! Well, there it is. If you know a better ‘ole, Regan, go to it, as Old Bill said.’

  ‘It isn’t only Regan who wants to go. Don’t make any mistake about that. We all of us hate it here. Not just the dirt but the way you’ve let everything slide. Look at you dropping cream on your waistcoat now.’

  Regan dipped a dishcloth in boiling water and rubbed Billy Pop’s waistcoat vigorously. ‘There!’

  Billy Pop poured himself out a half glass of the cooking brandy. He took a mouthful and made a face. ‘Not a good brandy.’ He hastily swallowed the rest. Sukey’s full bottom lip was trembling, she brushed tears from her eyelashes with the back of her hand.

  ‘“April, April, laugh thy girlish laughter, and the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears, April.” Nothing seems so terrible again as it does when one’s young, eh, Regan?’

  Regan did not answer him, and, as Sukey started to cry he went over to her. ‘If you’re trying to compete with your mother’s mercurial moods, my dear, don’t. Remember she’s a Mrs Siddons, a Bernhardt. You’re not. Or probably not. You’re peaches and cream.’ He pinched her cheek, but this did not stop her sobbing. ‘Well, you’ve brought all this on, Regan. You’ll have to deal with it,’ he told her. She was balancing the roasting dish against her knee as she basted the ducks. He went over and broke off a piece of well toffeed skin.

  Sukey shouted at him. ‘Oh, yes, anybody but yourself. And what have you brought her to? Faithful old Regan.’

  ‘You’re saying hurtful things, Sukey.’

  With this rebuke he faded out of the kitchen like the steam from the brussels sprouts boiling on the range. But something moist remained with them – for Regan a kiss in the cellar before the All Clear, for Sukey the watering eyes the day his last manuscript came back ‘no sale’ from his agents. They also conjure up who only fade away.

  *

  James Carmichael lightly touched his gay blue and white spotted foulard bow tie. He was out of his seat in a second to greet her. ‘My dear,’ he asked, ‘how do you contrive to look so lovely? Like champagne to the thirsty traveller.’ But her black eyes were contemptuous. ‘James, if you’re going to make speeches, think first. Champagne doesn’t quench thirst.’ His body became bowed, his knees sagged, he resumed his seat before she sat down. Ash fell from his cigarette upon his waistcoat. ‘I don’t seem to sleep. This shortness of breath. But still, who cares?’ he mumbled.

  Margaret put down her pen, satisfied that Billy Pop had been nailed on paper. The speech was less rotund, perhaps, less pompous, but then James Carmichael was an idle stockbroker, not a failed writer. His speech would be more truncated, less flowery. But the Countess wasn’t there at all. She was neither herself nor Sophie Carmichael. True, Sophie was intended to be less ‘bohemian’, but this dialogue was that of a dowager – ‘think first’, it was an old woman snapping. Without the Countess’s laughter and mockery, the words were dead. Complexity was gone and complexity was the heart of the life she sought to convey. How to put it on paper? Her fingers itched to tear up all she had written, to find the one magic word that would say everything. If she could convey the surrounding atmosphere of No. 52 perhaps – ‘From below stairs rose the familiar, humiliating smell of cabbage a-boiling and with it Charles’ tremulous tenor singing some ridiculous, sugary tune from Chu Chin Chow.’ ‘A-boiling’ was too affected and ‘cabbage’ too obvious. Why not use the immediate, the familiar and real ‘brussels sprouts coming to the boil’? But where to put the sentence? ‘Like champagne to the thirsty traveller? From below stairs rose the familiar, humiliating smell of brussels sprouts coming to the boil, etc’ Margaret sat back with a smile. It was pleasing, placing irony. And yet, and yet, by ironically placing so carefully it somehow failed to capture the contradictory whole. She flattened the nib of her pen against the blotter until it broke. Now at least she had the respite given her by the task of replacing it.

  *

  ‘Youth is the time for loving, so poets always say. ‘Maybe they did, but Billy Pop felt a resistance to the couplet when offered to him by the flirtatious mingling of Rupert’s tenor and the Countess’s contralto floating out from the drawing-room. He felt isolated by it and decided to seek feminine assuagement from his daughters on the top floor. Meanwhile as he climbed the stairs he covered the unwanted duet with his own bawled solo –’ I cobble all night and I cobble all day. Turn tiddy turn, turn tiddy turn. I am Chu Chin Chow from China, from Shanghai China.’ The ‘Shanghai’ was a mistake, inartistic. Particularity spoils art. Some important chap had said it. Probably at the Thursday Bookmen Luncheon. Gosse or Q. But the great features did not emerge at all. Probably not great at all, probably Smith, Brown or Jones. For after all, exactitude, the mot juste and the cherished fact, artistically cherished of course, were the keys to art. For example, ‘I cobble all night and I cobble all day!’ Everything exact. The last, the stretch, the awl. The cobbler gives his awl. No, excess of wit destroys simplicity. Just ‘The Cobbler’, that crystallized
gem the short story – surely crystal gem, most unfortunate to crack one’s teeth on a sugared ruby. Every word as hard as a diamond. The last, the stretch, the awl. All but not perhaps enough. Well, any trade would do when starting from scratch. A printer maybe. A more familiar world. César Birotteau. But then Balzac really knew. No, damn this splitting head, stick to your last. Ars longa and needs endurance. Arnold Bennett, generous old vulgarian, ‘to those of us who still care for the precise image your little masterpiece of the cockney cobbler’s day out at Margate….’ Cockney? Ah, perhaps Regan’s brother-in-law was a cobbler. Exactitude, that was what one needed. A writer’s note book. And then selection. Life can’t be put on paper in all its complexity. ‘True art, as you show, lies so much in the selecting gift of eye and ear.’ Arnold Bennett, generous old vulgarian. ‘The generosity of your encouragement needless to say is a more satisfactory stimulation to fresh work than any perfunctory praise from run-of-the-mill critics. If my little story has passed your exacting….’ Composing his generous but quite unvulgar reply to Arnold Bennett and humming the Cobbler’s Song, Billy Pop paused in contented dreaming mood for a moment on the top landing.

  What children they all were. The doors ajar of each room, a continued, habitual practice from the Countess’s ban on childhood privacy. There at her dressing-table Margaret frowning over some scribbling; there, with pad balanced on her knee, Gladys intent over a letter she was writing. His Grub Street Grubs. There was an article. Between Margaret’s fine edged art and Gladys’s rough simplicity, where did the greater feminine solace lie? True art, after all, is simple.

  *

  ‘My darling,’ Gladys wrote, ‘I don’t want to shock you but you don’t have to worry about my finding it difficult to accept the loan you’re offering me. When we became lovers I told you that for me this meant total acceptance of everything, good and bad, that followed from it. Well, this is one of the good things. Good because it means, old thing, that you really care for my plans, that you’re not just pleasing me as some men would please their mistresses by humouring them. Hark at me laying down the law about the ways of this wicked world of ours. Anyhow, we’re going to be equal partners. And I shall have my own life. I know sometimes you think I’m spouting women’s rights and all that, but I’m not, you know. It’s just that our kind of love means each having their own thing in life and respecting the other’s. For instance you sometimes worry about Doris getting hurt. But I honestly don’t believe it will happen. Of course, we can’t be quite as above board as we should like to, because that’s how the world still is. But I shall never barge in on your life with her because I’ve got all of you all the time whether you’re with me or not. And I can’t want for anything else but that you should feel happy. Fussing you about D. could only be if I was jealous, but then if I was jealous we shouldn’t truly, truly be absolutely in love with each other. As it is, It’s all so frightfully simple really.’ Hearing his steps she covered the letter with her accounts book.