No Laughing Matter (23 page)

‘If we rotted and stank like the wretches who are sleeping out tonight in ditches or under the Adelphi arches, what would it matter?’

As they now sat without stir or sound, he stretched his legs a little, relaxing before he sprang at them again with flash and cackle. But into this short silence came a noise they had not heard for six years or more, a sound that had not ventured even to vie with the zeppelins
and the anti-aircraft fire. Marcus began to scream. He was shaking with hysteric sobbing: ‘The kittens are dead, the kittens are dead.’

At first they were silenced by surprise. Then Gladys, big sister with the longest memory, bent across Rupert and smacked her little brother hard on each cheek, first with the palm and then with the back of her hand. When his screaming subsided in a choking struggle to recover his breath, ‘He’s only a kid. It’s been a long day for him. This hasn’t happened for years,’ she said in explanation to her elder brother, Quentin.

‘Oh, Lord! I’m dreadfully sorry. It’s all my fault.’

‘No, no, old man,’ Sukey told him. ‘Really it isn’t. We all of us feel a bit all in, I think.’

‘A basin of nice smooth gruel, thin but not too thin,’ said Margaret, ‘That I could recommend. I’ll go down and make some Bovril.’

‘No, let me, Mr Woodhouse. You’ve got a rotten day ahead, I know,’ Rupert suggested.

‘Do you think Mr W. ever had rotten days?’

‘Yes, when doors were left open or governesses married.’
Chattering
, they went downstairs together.

Marcus, wiping tears from his eyes, announced that he would go to bed.

‘Not a bad idea all round,’ Gladys counselled. ‘Monday’s always a bit of a let down.’

Later, seeking a mislaid handkerchief, she tapped on the nursery door after Rupert was in bed. She seldom spoke directly to this younger brother, but now, ‘I’m afraid we’ve missed the boat this time. Poor old Quentin meant to be a great captain.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Rupert spoke comfortably from under many blankets. ‘That Yank’s face when Marcus spat at him will always remain to cheer my weary hours.’

‘Yes, but you haven’t got an unpaid school bill, Rupert. Oh, I’m sorry old boy. I know you must be feeling rotten about giving up this acting job. Perhaps you won’t have to.’

‘I won’t. I’ve already given notice at the office.’

‘Oh, I say. We’ll have to see how everything works out, Rupert; I mean what Quentin and I can afford.’

‘Whatever you can or can’t afford, I can’t afford to miss this chance.’

‘You mean if Margaret and Sukey have to go on …’

Whatever happens I’m going to Liverpool. But it’ll all fit in. Life does. It’s more of a joke than we can see at the moment. You’ll learn, Gladys.’

Gladys looked down at her brother. ‘I’ve always thought you were a rotter,’ she said. He closed his eyes. ‘Just because you’re the maiden’s dream of love.’ But she paused at the door. ‘Said the ugly sister,’ she added and laughed to make it all a joke. ‘If you hear an elephant bedding down for the night, it’ll be me. Pleasant dreams.’ Thumping in mockery of her elephantine tread, she went to her room.

Sukey put down her emptied cup on to its saucer by the bedside. ‘If we’d used a spoonful of Bovril for the gravy,’ she announced, ‘instead of all that rich stuff, things might have gone differently. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep after dinner, and the poor little kitties would be still alive.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Margaret, trying to concentrate on her few nightly pages of
Persuasion,
‘Perhaps it was the poor quack quack’s revenge for your eating him.’

There was a silence, so she put down the novel. ‘I’m sorry, Sukey. I think I’ve had as much of today as I can manage.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. Anyhow, I expect we shall look back at it all in years to come and smile.’

‘I hope,’ answered Margaret, ‘that I shall grow into a more pleasant woman than that.’

Through the darkness Marcus could hear Quentin trying to stretch in his cramped bed. ‘I’m very sorry, Markie. I’m afraid I upset you with all my talk. I wasn’t much use to any of you.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. You showed that you too have a sense of humour like the rest of us. It’s obligatory, you know, in this house. Only yours is of a fiercer brew than we’re used to.’

‘Well, whatever we decide tomorrow, today’s over. That’s one comfort.’

‘I see. I thought you at least had enjoyed yourself considerably, Quentin.’

From the sound of his brother’s body tautening Marcus could tell that his words had hurt. He lay awake for some time, for, when firing the arrow, he had forgotten that his brother had already an all but open hole in his shoulder.

Oh! in the old days that was quite another thing. Time and time again when they’d had a more than usually violent row, when he’d been more than usually impossible, less than ever a husband to respect, something would snap in her and she would hit him. Nothing could excuse such a thing, of course, that she fully realized; nothing, that is, that others, outsiders, could understand – a sudden awful feebleness would ooze out of him. as he talked and talked, like cheap sawdust out of a cracked jack-in-the-box and there seemed no way out but to smash the rotten toy she’d been cheated into buying. Sometimes she would really hurt him, more than just physically; and then he would hide himself, locked in his study. But at other times he would play the spoilt child. Packing into his old cricket bag two pairs of socks and, God knows why, his black dress braces, he would walk out of the house, slamming the door, shouting as he went that he would bloody well never return, calling her names, adding the usual hope that his father was burning in hell for leaving the money tied up. For a few moments, of course, she would respond weepingly, distressedly to his going, for in these rows one got keyed up to take everything seriously. But then her sense of humour would break through, as often as not brought to life by Regan’s cockney common sense. ‘Ten past twelve,’ the old girl used to say, or whatever time it was, ‘e’ll be back in alf an hour. I’ll pop over to Overtons and get im a nice Dover sole. Don’t you worry, Madam. E’ll just fancy that when e comes in ungry.’ And sure enough, they’d hardly have time for a laugh over his previous dramatic exits before there he was back again, tail between his legs. Into his study to sulk, where Regan or one of the children would take him his grilled sole with a double lump of butter deliriously melting into the solid white flesh. And later, over a glass of sherry, neither of them would allude to it, or ever again. Unless, of course, laughter failed to ignite and her anger went on smouldering in rows with Regan, with Marcus, with Rupert, with any or all of them. In which
case he might well come back from his little tempertrot not to find grilled sole but instead a tumbler or an ashtray or an old book flying through the air. But eventually even then it would be all China tea and Regan’s scones and Sukey sent round to Fuller’s for his favourite walnut layer cake, and everybody sorry for what they’d said, although a bit sorry for themselves.

That was the way they’d always lived, the kind of odd job lot they’d always been.

But now she stood in the dark little hall by the telephone, refusing to panic. He had been gone five days, had stormed out with one of these new expanding suitcases given him by Margaret for his
birthday
. And the cut across her upper lip where he had hit her still bled at intervals, not even witchhazel seemed to clear the yellow and black bruises around her eye. This time, too, Regan had brought no sole, played no consoling role. ‘I don’t want to fuss the children, Regan,’ she had said when she heard he was not back for dinner.’ Should ope not. They don’t come ere so often that you can afford to go makin use of em.’ Such a horrid bolshie spirit there was in the air,
everywhere
.

‘
The
ironies
of
Miss
Margaret
Matthews’ stories
expose
our
most
cherished evasions.’

*

Mrs Culmer talked of Derek when he was small. ‘He was always neat and tidy, Miss Carmichael,’ she said, ‘Where the others collected just stamps, he had his chosen field. He couldn’t have been more than six when, “I shall only collect the stamps of Europe,” he said. “It’ll be harder but that will make it more interesting, won’t it, Mummy?’” And her head shook, was it with pride, was it with the unaccustomed champagne that gave quite a rose flush to her cheeks, white and wrinkled as old kid leather? Through the shimmering amber haze of the paradise feathers that surmounted the high crown of Mrs
Culmer’s
hat, Elisabeth had a misty, shimmering picture of the wedding party, a picture that jerked and trembled as the woman’s head
suddenly
swerved – like some of the early bioscopes that she could just remember. The Carmichael family on parade! Or rather, really, in hot pursuit! And, she had to admit, they made a most impressive
showing, not that the Culmers – poor rabbit-toothed, popeyed warren – were an elusive quarry. Mr Culmer’s double chins wobbled as James told him stories of what Frank Harris had said to Leonard Smithers, leading him always to the brink of the sort of thing they did not say at 165 Mimosa Road, Dulwich, and then reprieving him with, ‘but Frank’s observations on women were never of the kind, you know, that can be uttered in the presence of ladies.’ From where she stood, Mr Culmer, a red turkey seen through his wife’s
magnificent
crest of exotic feathers, seemed to be literally gobbling his thanks for what he was spared from receiving. As for poor Derek himself, the happy bridegroom (and happy he should be, carrying off darling Jane), even in his wedding day ecstasy (and she gave him credit for some real ecstasy that day, for what man would not be seized with a spasm of divine fury who carried off Jane as his prize?) he paled a little before his new mother-in-law’s relentless pressure. He stood there, poor thing, champagne glass trembling ever so slightly in his hand (or was that the tremor imparted by his mother’s paradise feathers through which she saw him?), gazing hypnotically at Sophie’s emerald green shoes, her emerald green stockings showing below her elegant monkey-fur trimmed dress, and let himself be patronized into nothingness.

‘James and I went to Madeira for ours. It was quite divine – the mimosa, the bougainvilia, the little boys diving for pennies. Of course we don’t expect
that
in these hard postwar days, but I did think you’d be a little more enterprising than the New Forest. Poor Jane,
surrounded
by honeymooning bank clerks! But how silly I am! She won’t notice the bank clerks while she has you there.’ Her eyes selected for exemplary compassion Derek’s clerical collar below his weak chin as she said it. Elisabeth could hardly keep from giggling, for at that very moment Mrs Culmer said, ‘Jane and Derek make such a splendid pair. It seems the Bishop saw them at the church fête and asked who were the Vikings. It’s their being so fair,’ she explained. Elisabeth could still hear her mother’s voice, ‘But perhaps you’ll become chaplain at Monte. They do have an English chaplain there don’t they? And then I can spend my winters with you and Jane. But shall I tell you something very shocking?’ Derek’s teeth protruded even further now in his alarm. ‘I like vulgar Nice better than Monte, isn’t it awful of me?’ Then she added loudly, ‘I do hope you’re going to be a nice worldly, ambitious clergyman.’ Even Mrs Culmer turned
at the sound of her son’s nervous giggling. She stared for a moment at Sophie’s green and black outfit, her emerald green turban, her long tasselled green cigarette holder. ‘Your mother,’ she said, ‘can wear things that other people …’ ‘And does,’ Elisabeth said, ‘Let me assure you, Mrs Culmer, does.’ The wretched woman jerked back her head as though the weasel had at last struck. Weasels and stoats, that’s what we are, Elisabeth thought, with these rabbit Culmers. But there it is, she decided, I’ve tasted blood too.

She tried to make reparation by urging the woman to take a foie gras sandwich. Claridge’s footmen and the Fragonard room! ‘How shall we ever recoup?’ Sophie had wailed, ‘But Jane will like a Claridge’s reception. And if she doesn’t, I shall.’ Truth to tell there would be no recouping necessary, for Granny Carmichael was footing the bill. And there she stood, now repaid in sycophancy, diminutive, yet Madame Mère by virtue of her sables and her lorgnettes, and still more because of the Sèvres and the large cheque she was known to have given. Such of the Culmer guests as were not overwhelmed by the Carmichael opulence stood in a cowed semi-circle before Sophie’s Aunt Mildred who, severe but smart, gave an account of the noseless boy’s head that had been her gift, noseless antiques being beyond the usual aesthetic range of the Culmers. ‘I picked it up in a lamp shop in Trebizond,’ she said. ‘It was some recompense for a sprained ankle that kept me from seeing the
tulipa
sprengeri
I’d been after.’ Derek’s Aunt Ella, the bank manager’s widow, clicked her tongue as
appropriate
commiseration, but Aunt Mildred clearly misconstrued the click. ‘Oh, it’s not a masterpiece,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s provincial workmanship, of course. But at least it has the archaic feeling.
Nothing
of the Parthenon about it, thank heaven. Or are you a Parthenon devotee?’ Poor Aunt Ella, Elisabeth thought, for if she had been devoted to anything it would have been the spirit of the Parthenon flickering still in Alma Tadema or Lord Leighton – in oleograph of course. Oh, it was a rout. The ferrets had properly cleared out the warrens. Elisabeth felt a wild elation. She could have cried Yoicks or Tally Ho!

Just so long as Jane didn’t sense it. But she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, for extraordinary though it seemed to tell it, Jane, their own Jane, their one conventional pretty duckling (though she could give a devastating comic quack when she chose), Jane, so beautiful there in her veil, her train, her blossom (Oh, how the conventions worked on
her side!) carrying roses as pink and gold and soft and utterly, absurdly English as herself, was in love, oh, but head over heels in love with this superior rabbit Derek. So that for her, long quivering ears and pink quivering noses and two teeth just perceptibly ready to nip the lettuce leaf were not only the required human look but the perfection of male beauty. To Jane at this moment of solemn, absurd happiness, Elisabeth knew, Adonis and Don Juan, Hercules and Valentino
himself
all had long ears and quivering noses and, no doubt at all, white scuts. UnCarmichaellike, Jane today, it could be seen, would see, speak and hear no evil. Suppressing her laughter Elisabeth made excuses to the bird of paradise and, whispering to her tall musician brother Gerald, took him, ostensibly for a piece of cake but really to gaze at the bridegroom’s backview, where, sure enough, some
handkerchief
or piece of shirt or heaven knew what showed white so that, giggling into their own handkerchiefs, she and Gerald had to take refuge in the pretence of viewing once more the presents. ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ she whispered to him, ‘doesn’t matter a jot, for if all her babies are born leverets, Jane’s much too miraculously happy to mind.’

And Gerald agreed – so imposing and handsome, now he
was
a Viking! The Culmers scattered before him like pitiful puny Picts before the glorious Norsemen as he advanced to the piano at his mother’s request and gave them
La
Cathédrale
Engloutie.
‘I say, jolly good fingerwork,’ said Derek’s tennis sister and her own sister’s bridesmaid. Aunt Ella said, ‘Charming. So light. Is it your brother’s composition?’ And down went all the rabbits, drowned with the cathedral. Meanwhile Selwyn, their lean, clever brother Selwyn, was giving Mr Culmer apoplexy by being pro-German. ‘Reparations as Clemenceau and the French conceive them are not only wrong,’ he told the old gentleman, ‘but much worse, they are stupid.’ If only, Elisabeth could see Mr Culmer gobbling to himself, this dreadful young bolshie hadn’t been wounded. As it was the rabbits sustained all the wounds; the Carmichaels just tasted blood. Even dear Louie, so handsome, yet somehow cramped in a picture hat and grey
charmeuse
frock, had joined the attack. ‘Yes, I’m opening a branch in the spring,’ she told Mrs Culmer gruffly. ‘Putting in a young ex-officer as manager.’ ‘A man’s going to work under you?’ ‘If he doesn’t, he’ll soon get his marching orders.’ But it was Ronnie, looking so absurdly decadent with a vast gardenia in the button hole of his hired wedding
clothes, his lips and cheeks, as Elisabeth, if no one else, saw, more carmine than mere nature had fashioned, who put the rabbits to their final rout. ‘Putney?’ he answered Derek’s tennis sister, and the waves of heavy scent that came from him spoke of exotic blooms as much as his shrill voice suggested exotic birds. ‘How amusing! Well, yes, I
have.
Once a Metropolitan train, you know – not the deep kind where you expect to see miners with lamps, but the other sort that pops up above ground now and again for air – took me by mistake to
somewhere
called Putney Heath. Well, naturally I adore heaths, with all the gruesome gibbets and handsome highwaymen, so I thought how amusing. But, my dear, it wasn’t amusing
at
all. The whole place was covered, but covered, with the most sinister tramps in old burberries – I expect they were trench coats really that they’d worn out at the front in both senses – who indulged in the most impudent, not to say improper, mendicancy. Well, I am only a boy so I thought discretion was the better part of valour, to use a tiresome cliché – and fled.’

Of course it was all wrong at seventeen and living at home with nothing to do, God knew what he would become, but all the same she would back him, for he had – and to a degree – the Carmichael hunting instinct when confronted with silliness and mediocrity.

Gerald began to play again, this time Falla. But Elisabeth’s attention was distracted from the nights in Spanish gardens, however cool, however fountained, by the bride’s sudden discreet movement
towards
the door. Elisabeth whispered to Louie, but her elder sister from the corner of her mouth said, ‘Travelling dress. Room hired. Ssh! Mother’s putting on her Chopin frown.’ It was clearly what they all thought, that Jane had gone to put on her travelling dress. But no, no, it wasn’t that, she wanted to cry to them all, can’t you see she’s distressed! Some blundering Culmer has trodden on her toes no doubt, hurt our beautiful, our rare Jane on this of all days. The room grew cold and the footmen shrivelled into mere mummies, the cake crumbled into dust, the bubbles died in the champagne, the paradise feathers drooped, Falla indeed became Chopin, his funeral march. And nobody noticed except herself– and why should they, for none of them were as close as she to Jane’s sweet candour and simplicity. There in the Abbey Cloisters the tablet read, ‘Jane Lyttelton – dear child,’ and she wanted to call to them all to stop their chatter – murderers, worldly trivial murderers, you’ve sent her to the block, our nine days Queen, dear child. But more to the point was to go
after her. Slipping past the footmen she inquired softly for her sister’s tiring room. And there it was at the end of the corridor – the
ridiculous
room, all Pompadour and Dubarry and powder blue and satin ovals and mirrors no doubt, that would have to serve for their last heart to heart, their final sisterly confab instead of their own attic room at home shared over so many years of secret laughter and secret thrills and secret diaries. A hired room at Claridge’s must stand proxy at the last for the whole of their girlhood.