I'm Dying Laughing (65 page)

‘Johnny says we know enough about them. Our job is to be lined up against them. My feelings are that they’re right on some points. I’m a bit of a communist.’

Giles, who was drinking warm milk, declared suddenly, ‘I’m not. Communists are Jews and I don’t like Jews either. No one in our school likes Jews.’

Giles was now a brown-faced, chubby and amiable boy of seven, alert, witty.

Violet hugged him, ‘Little precious infant!’

He let her hug him, ate and watched them wisely, smiling a little.

His father asked, ‘What’s this? You’re an American. America is a democracy. We don’t believe in fascism. We don’t hate Jews or Negroes or Mexicans or even little boys who are too big for their pants.’

Giles grinned, ‘Yes, but Daddy, the boys at school aren’t Americans, they’re French, one’s Greek, one’s Swiss, one’s Italian, one’s English and they all come from democracies, except the British and they don’t like communists. Communists aren’t democratic. Louis’s father said so.’

‘Who’s that, Louis’s father?’

‘Louis is a Greek. His father’s a Greek. The communists want to take away his house and his business. That’s robbery. And Louis says I’m an American, an American believes in democracy; and Louis says the Americans are helping his father. So they can’t be communists.’

Emily laughed and opened her mouth. Stephen said, hesitating, ‘Yes, no doubt the Americans are helping his father because his father is rich.’

Giles said seriously, helping himself to a slice of apple pie, ‘And because his father has a factory and we have a factory, I told him. I told him you are a communist, but he doesn’t believe me. He says, no Americans are communists.’

‘Well, you know Axel and Ruth and Bundy and Mike and a lot more of our friends are communists, and they’re Americans.’

Giles said, ‘Oh, they’re poor. I mean rich Americans like us, who have factories and houses and automobiles.’

Stephen said testily, ‘We don’t have a factory, we don’t have a house and at the moment we haven’t even an automobile. And in America every hillbilly has an automobile and every communist, too.’

‘But we have a factory. I told him we had a lot of them.’

‘Well, you will have to tell him differently. Because we don’t have one, not one,’ said Emily energetically.

Giles stopped chewing and looked at her severely, ‘Not one?’

‘Have you ever seen a factory we owned?’

‘No, but I know—Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma Wilkes—a lot of people and Uncle Cha in England and Aunt Dunbar Melton in England—they all have; and I know in Alexandria we have. I told Akim, we have factories in Alexandria.’

Emily said, ‘Well, we don’t. Other people do but we don’t. And that’s why we’re the other side of the fence. We’re communists.’

‘But why? Akim and Louis and Gilbert and Giorgi, the Bulgarian boy and the others, they are all against communists, everyone in the school and they say I must be too because we have factories. They said so.’

‘I can see their point of view all right, very rational,’ said Stephen smiling.

‘And they say I have to be on their side because if the Americans don’t stand with them, there’s going to be hell to pay.’

‘Eh? What’s that?’ said Stephen.

‘The whole world would go to the devil
. Ilsont raison,
they’re right. Because they say if I were a communist I’d try to rob their factories and I said I wouldn’t, so they said I couldn’t be a communist. I said I’d fight them if they said my father would try to rob their factories.’

Stephen sighed, ‘Oh, I wish I could. Never mind, their point of view is crystal clear. You boys have interesting talks for toddlers.’

‘Pedro says he isn’t worried because his father’s factories are all in South America and at present South America is lined up with the United States; but there are communists everywhere trying to take their factories; and you never can tell, we all have to stand together.’

Stephen said, ‘Well, that’s a solidarity that’s quite touching; and I only wish we were as solid ourselves. That’s pretty good. Only Giles, we have to be solid on the other side, because we’re the have-nots, have-not factories, have-not rich villas, have-not yachts, et cetera. We’re on the outs and so we have to side with the workers.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we are workers.’

Giles studied them, baffled and anxious: ‘But we aren’t workers! We don’t work!’

‘That’s cool from my own son. Come, when you grow up, Giles, you’re going to work, aren’t you?’

‘No. I’m going to have a factory and two automobiles like Eduardo and Louis, and race-horses. We are all going to whip the workers, just like they used to do in the olden days. It is the only way to make them work.’

Stephen sprang up, ‘Well, for Christ’s sake. What sort of a den of thieves have we led him into? He’s coming away tomorrow morning. I’m not going to support at this rate a seven-year-old fascist and peon-whipper. I’ll go and see the headmaster in the morning.’

Violet asked, ‘What do you expect him to think? He’s only a baby. I think it’s interesting to hear what they say. I think we don’t pay enough attention to the other side.’

Emily murmured, ‘You’re right. But just the same, Vee, we pay good money for the boy to be taught, not distorted. Bad joke.’

Stephen said to Giles, ‘When you grow up, my pretty child, you’ll have to work; just like Giorgi and Louis, Pedro, Eduardo and whoever they are. They have a big surprise coming to them.’

‘Eduardo says he will never work; he will kill every worker with his own hand first; and Gilbert is going into the Foreign Office and Louis says he is going to play along with the Americans and we all should.’

‘They certainly teach a lot and fast at that school,’ said Stephen.

Emily and Stephen, especially Emily, spent the next twenty minutes telling the boy what he should think and say, and explaining work and the worker to him. Giles replied, ‘But it wouldn’t be fair taking away Alessandro’s race-horses, and automobiles and everything.’

‘A new personage, who is Alessandro?’ said Emily.

‘A Greek boy. It’s wrong. It makes him mad. It makes me mad too. Besides, I already told them about Grandma and Fairfield and everything.’

Violet said, ‘Poor child. Oh, it is confusing. I shouldn’t know what on earth to answer a child. Parenthood is fascinating, dangerous of course, but it makes you think. I’m glad I have a child now.’

Stephen yawned and stretched, ‘Well, do what you like. I leave it to you, my boy. I don’t go with those boys and I never did mix with such high-feathered birds. I don’t want to preach communism in a place where they couldn’t understand it. I don’t want you to get into a mess for nothing. Just remember which side you’re on. The side of the workers and the Soviet Union.’

‘But Dr Thibault said and the teachers all say that Russia is making war against the whole world and is stirring up France and making France poor.’

‘Some school. You know that’s a lie, Giles,’ said his mother.

‘Well, I don’t see how Russia is on the side of the workers and on my side. I think it looks as if everyone is against us.’

‘How true! But why are your little boyfriends, Giorgi and Alessandro and Louis and so on so very scared, eh? Why are the pants scared off them, so they’re worried night and day about losing their race-horses? Eh? They’re scared, aren’t they?’

Giles burst out laughing, ‘Well, yes, they’re scared, they’re certainly scared. Haw-haw. Oh, boy! Are they scared!’

‘They’re scared our side is going to win. And it is.’

‘Say, Daddy, when all the factories are taken away from them, I don’t suppose we could get a factory, eh? I know how to drive an automobile already, so maybe I could get one to drive.’

They burst into a babel of talk, laughing and commenting on the opportunism of children. But Giles was thoughtful, his eyes on the wall. ‘Well, I wish I knew who would win. If I knew, I’d know what to do.’

‘He’ll survive; even in the dark ages.’

‘I wish I knew what to do,’ said Stephen.

‘He’s a dream baby,’ said Emily, leading him off to bed.

‘He’s very thoughtful,’ said Violet.

E
MILY HAD WRITTEN TO
Christy’s family, Grandma, Maurice and even to Florence in her exaggerated humble tone, that Christy, in spite of all her efforts, was hopeless at his studies.

‘He could not even be a steam-fitter, whatever that is.’ She had given Christy into the care of Suzanne and two tutors but even now he was thinking of going to Munich to music festivals, with girls; he did not care at all about studies. She had written these letters when he left her, in suffering, though she let her pain appear as disparagement and blame.

Two days after he returned, Stephen received from his mother a letter referring distantly to
letters received,
and saying, that it was evident that Stephen and Emily were not fit to bring up Christy; they had themselves retired. He was a sensitive, unusual boy who needed special understanding and that if his water-colours were at present poor and did not fit him for entry to the Beaux-Arts it was because he had been forced furiously and without intelligence. Christy was the kind that grows slowly and solidly. Anna had long been sure that a boy with the loving, delicate and thoughtful nature of Christy could not thrive in ‘that domestic climate’; they were unsuitable as guardians and Anna intended to provide him with a setting of repose, calm and dignity, ‘above all quiet’.

Stephen read this letter at breakfast and, beside himself, shouted out, ‘What letters are these? What have you written, you goddam drivelling idiot? Losing me a boy I’ve worked for for years.’

Emily shut the door on Stephen, but she was overwhelmed. She wrote a note to Violet and asked the porter to take a taxi and deliver it to the Trefougars.

‘Cold winds blast the miserable house, horror whines in the rooms, the servants are trembling, they listen, rejoicing, I am sure, and yet frightened, and they keep to the basement and my whole life is going to pieces. Stephen does not love me, but Christy and Christy’s family. I am nothing. He would throw me into the street today for Christy’s money.’

In the afternoon, Violet came to see her, and Stephen, haggard, sick, had to greet her with an almost suffocated courtesy and let her go up to Emily. Violet imagined that Emily was out of the cordial sustaining drugs that kept her working and cheerful, and she had brought some of her own. ‘I was on to Dr Kley; I will get some for you, and bring them to you tomorrow. I know how it is. Not a word!’ She kissed her and went, talking genteelly to Stephen on the way out. The next day she came again, with drugs from Dr Kley for which she had paid, Emily having money difficulties at that moment with Stephen in the house; and soon she left again.

When she had gone Emily took as much of the drug as she thought would give her a long sleep or even carry her over the border into death. One of the servants found her, and called Suzanne, Stephen being absent; Suzanne came, brought a doctor and between them they brought her round.

‘Don’t tell him, don’t tell,’ she begged; Suzanne promised not to tell and went downstairs urging the doctor to be silent.

‘Have you any more of that?’ the doctor asked her.

‘Oh, no, I get it from a friend and that is the last. I meant to end it all and so I took all I had,’ she said; though she had more.

She struggled downstairs and only just in time, for Stephen was crossing the courtyard. On the console table where they put the letters, Emily found another letter to Stephen from his mother about Christy. She tore it open, skimmed it. The short letter consisted only of reproaches and threats:

‘You took the child from us but only to torture him, make him a spy and an unintelligent person. You complain of his letters to me; but you have made him what he is. He can’t go to you, he is afraid of Emily, he says so, and so he must write to me. Who else can he go to? I shall see to it that you have no more to do with him. He is too important as a person to be twisted in this way. I am quite satisfied however with his present living conditions. When I come over in December, I will see what I want to do with him; but I am extremely displeased with you, I am in fact angry. I see that you can never keep your word but let all kinds of selfish and outside interests interfere with the boy’s good development and happiness. I have decided against bringing Fairfield with me in December, since it is most likely that I will take Christy back with me to the States when I go in January.’

Emily, worn out by her illness and these evil letters, took to her bed. She would lie in bed for an hour or so, but then get up and go to her typewriter, where once more she worked on a story she thought would sell, on outlines and on what she now called ‘the Marie-Antoinette book’; though she was still only lining it up to present to Stephen, to get his opinion. In between hours of cruel battle and insult, shouts and yells, the two would sit down and discuss their moneymaking plans, in writing.

Emily had to give Stephen the letter from his mother. She explained that she had opened it because of her anxiety and she mourned bitterly, ‘How can anyone say such dreadful things, such lies? Anna doesn’t mean to lie. I never knew her to lie, but those are lies. I love the boy. I never did anything for my own interest, only for his. He’s as much to me as Giles. I have awful thoughts about him, about us, Stephen. I am so unhappy. You know I am not a weeper and wailer and gnasher; but I have never known such cruel unhappiness as now. Every letter we get, every visitor even, every telephone call is black, miserable, negative; each one seems to spell doom. I sometimes feel I should never have taken the child of another woman. I feel as if they are right to reproach me. Yes, I didn’t tell, but I often felt that. I did it for you, too. But I was not sure it was right. My God! But out of my love for Christy and you I struggled against it. I do understand Christy; they’re wrong. I’ve brooded over him and worked till the sweat poured down all over me, like a showerbath, worrying and helping him and teaching him—don’t you believe I love him, don’t they? No, they all think and you think too that it’s sordid, venal; it’s only greed. But I love him. I know very well he’s not like others, he’s different from us, perhaps like you, but sensitive, another rate of growth, another sensibility; strange, and beautiful, all the corruption and innocence that makes adolescence so fascinating and makes us long for our lost corruption. We are too dull and formalist. Just at this difficult time, they are going to take him back again. He’ll never learn anything now. He’ll always be a half-grown boy, never quite out of his shell. Oh, Stephen, I wonder if you understand the child-man he is, the strange unique thing, a true individual. If I could tell you what I feel about him—it’s almost poetry, because I see the child in the man, and what an exquisite creature of fable that is, more than a thing half-goat and half-man. If you were to know the truth, Stephen. If you could understand my deep passionate love for Christy, you would talk to your mother and convince her that Christy never could have a more tender, devoted mother than I am. And I know how to shed the mother for the sister, and friend.’