No Laughing Matter (21 page)

‘If Clara had been anything of a wife to him …’

‘She’d have let him land her with twelve unwanted children instead of six.’

‘She’s not been unwilling to grant her favours elsewhere if these terrible stories are true.’

‘My dear woman, would you give yourself happily to a jellyfish?’

‘It’s easy to see why she has no morals, no warmth.’

‘And he no stamina, no will. Your will-less Will!’
MISS
MAR
GARET
MOUSE
laughed dry sand in
GRANNY SUKEY
’s face, who replied, ‘How can you laugh at such a time, you godless suffragette?’ And now the two old beldames had come to hair pulling and slaps.

‘One expects no better than brawling from Mrs Pankhurst’s crew.’

‘You ignorant woman!… Oh dear,’ Margaret broke away, panting, ‘What is that name Mouse is always boasting? Her leader! Some dowdy old battleaxe. Oh, I know, Mrs Fawcett….’ She
engaged in physical battle once more. ‘You ignorant woman, my leader was Mrs Fawcett. We never used violence.’ But whether because of Margaret’s momentary fluffing of her lines or because he was
impatient
to take the stage again,
MARCUS THE COUNTESS
lay back across the nursery table, egret-duster flopping over one eye, long bead necklace flying wide. ‘Don’t force it Billah, for God’s sake don’t force it,’ she shrieked. And, as though from a long way off, from memories of some half forgotten game,
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
said sadly, bewilderedly, ‘I don’t know any other way of doing it, my dear.’

For a good two minutes there was silence, then Quentin catching Gladys ‘eye, took brisk control.
MR JUSTICE SCALES
said:’ All five accused are charged with deceit, with bad faith, with cruelty and with negligence. In addition the defendants the Countess and Billy Pop are accused of being accessories to the crime of murder. The defendant Regan is charged with murder. What have you got to say in your defence?’

MARCUS THE COUNTESS
smoothed upon her thin white arms a pair of elbow length white kid gloves and turned her head to look haughtily at the judge over her shoulder. She said, ‘Guilty to
producing
a generation of horrible little prigs.’ He added, ‘Am I a
ci-devant
comtesse, now, Quentin?’ To which Quentin, warming up, finding a childish desire to emulate, answered, ringing his
Fouquier-Tinville
bell, ‘Who slanders the younger generation with
opprobrious
epithets attacks the principles of the Revolution. You condemn yourself, Citizeness.’

‘I am an old man,’
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
said, ‘a very old man, my lord, a very old writing man. I played for Thirsty Scribblers against the Cheshire Cheese Chaps, an annual village green shandygaff fixture, in ‘06. Even then I was out for a duck.’

‘Age and incompetence were the pleas of Methuen, Moltke, Von Falkenhaym, Joffre and Fisher in a greater crime than yours. The plea is insufficient.’

‘I was poor but I was honest. And when I wasn’t it was because it slipped out of me ands like,’ said
REGAN THE PODGE
, attempting a ridiculous handspring and falling bump, bump on her you know where.

‘A plea of diminished responsibility is accepted. In seeking to cling to it you are your own class’s worst enemy.’

‘I’m sure I was only looking after my poor little Pom.’

‘A dog in a manger attitude. A nice thing for a respectable
Churchwoman
, monthly communicant at Saint John the Evangelist, Ladbroke Square, to put such an animal in that holy birthplace. Guilty.’

‘I am in no way morally obliged to sustain the younger generation in sentimental illusions. That the wretched animals were subsequently drowned in an amateurish fashion only shows the good sense of my recommendation that they should be disposed of by a professional veterinary surgeon.’

‘Real polly talk! A mouse should be careful how glibly she disposes of cats. Guilty. I find,’ he added, ‘none of these justificatory pleas adequate. Have you got anything more general to urge in your defence?’

‘He understood once when I was frightened of the dark after Regan had been telling stories of Jack the Ripper. When I screamed She came and smacked me, but He rebuked Her and carried me down to His study in a blanket, set me before the fire, fed me with the ginger sticks out of the tin of Edinburgh Rock.’

‘Why,’ asked
THE JUDGE
, ‘did you do this apparent kindness to your youngest?’

RUPERT THE BILLY POP
seemed quite bemused by the question. He hummed and ha-ed – a kind of noise that few men produced so exactly. ‘It was concerned for the little lad. Literary man,’ he said, ‘more imagination than Woman. God bless her. I’ve written one or two ghost stories, they’re not perhaps my finest. Unmarketed in fact But…’

‘Will hated to be alone as a little boy. We never left him,’ said
GRANNY SUKEY.

‘Ha,’ commented
THE JUDGE.

‘Getting back at is old trouble. That’s what it was,’ Regan THE Podge cried. ‘I know im. Men are all the same. Just like our old man. Use us any time it suited im.’

‘All the same,’ said Marcus, ‘He needn’t have given me the ginger sticks. He likes them himself. I know because he usually wolfs them down and leaves the horrible strawberry ones.’

‘The plea is dubious,’ said
THE JUDGE.

‘She knew when I first got fat how much I minded. He wanted me to go on with the tennis lessons altho’ I knew I was no longer any
good and that people laughed. She cancelled the lessons and took me to San Toy instead.’

‘Explain your unexpected kindness to your elder daughter.’ The Judge said.

MARCUS THE COUNTESS
laughed harshly. ‘I had no intention of letting Billy waste the money just to show off at his club.’

But
MISS MARGARET MOUSE
intervened. ‘Clara was a much shyer girl than you would think. Perhaps I made her do things on her own too much as a girl. But I’ve always believed that shyness must be overcome. Perhaps she was thinking of her own girlhood.’

‘A sort of transferred egoism,’ said
THE JUDGE
.

‘But she needn’t have taken me to San Toy,’ said Gladys.

‘Did you want to go?’

‘Well, not very much, but it was nice when we got there,’

‘Another dubious plea.’

‘When I played Wolsey at school
She
forgot the afternoon and
He
arrived late and squiffy. But the old lady came in time and applauded and prevented Him making a fool of Himself in front of the House.
And
she gave Him a terrific talking to afterwards.’

Here
JUDGE SCALES
rang his bell furiously. ‘I cannot accept any of these exceptional, quixotic and inexplicable acts as pleas. They run contrary to the well known personalities of the defendants. We’re concerned with general influences and overall trends in judging our elders. In any case these are your children’s memories, not your own. You have filched enough from them already without barefaced robbery in the court.’

His words left them bewildered, then
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
said, ‘Only today we offered our children advice, valuable advice for life’s journey ahead. I seem to remember that your mother said, Marry. She addressed her advice to the girls. The Lord save us from spinsters. But I invite you, my boys, to come with me to my club and watch the bachelors sitting there spinning out the hours, holding on to us luckier fellows like so many ancient mariners with their glittering eyes. No, God forbid! Marry, all of you, marry!’ At which
MARCUS
THE COUNTESS
put her hand on his arm in silent thanks for this tribute to her wifely virtues, and then, smiling slyly, lisped, ‘But, Oh, Billy, do see that they marry
well
.’

Rupert whispering in Quentin’s ear, the latter banged on the table and called, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you your own, your only,
your oonique Rupert Matthews. ‘At which Rupert, tripping across the room, seeming all feet and no body, sang,’ Cash in the bank she said she’d plenty, I was a MUG.’

‘But,’ continued
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
, ‘it was the
companionship
, the often laughed at but the very real comradeship of marriage that I particularly stressed as the real staff for you children to lean upon in life’s uphill journey.’

‘If you please, Mr Chairman,’ said Rupert. And as Quentin banged once more upon the table, Rupert the incomparable coster, white silk choker round his neck, billycock set jauntily on his head, waltzed with arms folded towards his dear old Dutch. ‘We’ve been together now for forty years, and it dont seem a day too much (bowing to her) There aint a lady livin in the land as I’d swop for my dear old Dutch.’

His Lady making him an awkward curtsey, he trips her up and smacks her bottom. He then goes off singing, ‘My word, if I catch you bending, my word, if I catch you bending.’

To recover the proceedings from yet another of these marital knockabouts that seemed to threaten all orderliness, The Judge reminded the court that not all the advice they had received had been parental. At which
RUPERT THE BILLY POP,
seemingly irrepressible, intervened once more, ‘Ah, no!’ he said, ‘My dear old mother gave you her bit of wisdom. God bless her! True to the good old days and the good old ways as usual, she told you, if I remember rightly to cultivate a sense of the past.’

At which
GRANNY SUKEY,
settling her hearthrug sables round her shoulders and spraying the room as her teeth rushed forward
cheerfully
to correct him, said, ‘Not too serious, of course. Just
remembering
all the funny family things.’

This time, before Quentin could bang upon the table, in came Rupert the Wrecker carrying a small stepladder and a pot of paste, and after him his mate Ghastly Gladys with a roll of paper, and My Mate Marcus with a broom. After some screamingly funny acrobatics and some witty backchat, they joined together in chorus – ‘When Father papered the parlour …’

But now
MISS MARGARET MOUSE
claimed their attention. ‘In all this welter of comic sentimentalism may I pour just a little cold water to restore a little common sense. If you remember I urged self-reliance upon you children. You would have done better to have taken notice of what I said.’

THE JUDGE
allowed himself a comment here. ‘At least you took good care by your subsequent action to see that we could not rely on you,’ he said bitterly.

‘You have to look after yourself in this world,’
MISS MARGARET
MOUSE
said, ‘for no one else will.’

And in cakewalked Ragtime Rupert, straw boater all ajaunt,
playing
upon his old ukelele cane. ‘I love me, I love me, I’m wild about myself. I wrote myself a letter …’

Self-reliance,’ said
MISS MARGARET MOUSE
acidly, ‘is not
always
self-love.’

So Rupert the Baritone threw aside his boater and his cane, and thunderingly gave it to them: ‘The top of the hill hasn’t room for two, be sure the one that gets there must be you.’

MARCUS THE COUNTESS
smiled. ‘Yes, darlings, and who was the one who pointed out that self wasn’t quite enough? Your cynical old mother. Responsibility for others, for …’

‘For your own dear self,’ said
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
, ‘that was what I advised them. As some little return for all you have done.’ And in a second, putting on his bowler hat again, he was Rupert the Cheeky Chappie (a prophetic role at that date). ‘And now I’m in the money, and I’ve lots of LSD, I’m looking after my old mum as she looked after me.’

‘So it seems,’ said
THE JUDGE
, ‘that only Regan had no advice to offer us.’

‘Most proper. Knows her place,’
GRANNY SUKEY
smiled
benevolently
. ‘Her broad wisdom learnt in the school of the streets,’ said
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
, ‘needs no words to express itself.’

‘To expect advice from a servant owed wages,’ began
MISS
M
ARGARET
M
OUSE
, but Marcus was whispering in Gladys’ ear. And now
R
EGAN
T
HE
P
ODGE
rolled forward. ‘I’ve got me little word to say. It was master Markie I give it to. I’m careful who I talk to in this ouse. But between these four walls, ere it is for the lot of you. Keep away from the muck. Get to know the upper tens. Get yourselves asked to their ouses. All them weekend goins on.’ Broadly she winked at them.

MARCUS THE COUNTESS
laughed delightedly. ‘Adorable,
delicious
Regan,’ she cried,’ of course she
would
be the one to teach us. She’s right, my dears, she’s right. Go for the fun and the beauty in life and let all the solemn duties fit in where they can.’

And now at a signal from
M
R
J
USTICE
S
CALES
(their own their ownerly Chairman and MC, acting Major Quentin Matthews, wounded but without the MC) she played at an invisible piano and Rupert the Lothario all whiskers, light tenor and a smile’s caress, sang to his Bohemian girl, ‘I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls with vassals and serfs at my side.’

When the singing faded away, Regan the Podge could be seen polishing the floor. Sweat pouring from her, she looked up at the company. ‘Doin the floors is fersty work. Wot about a pint of wallop?’

‘The advice – such as it is – offered by the defendants is accepted,’ said
T
HE
J
UDGE
, ‘in mitigation of their actions. But we also note the comment on that advice offered by the musical reflections for which we were particularly indebted to that fine old favourite of the Halls, Mr Rupert Matthews. Before I deliver judgement, I shall retire for a moment in the approved fashion.’