No Laughing Matter (33 page)

WILLIAM MATTHEWS
[
going
at
once
to
the
sideboard
and
the
drinks
]: It seems unsuitable to be offering my own son a drink in my own house. But until such time as you have all finally decided that it would be impractical and unethical for me to live on my own property and with my own wife, have a whisky.

QUENTIN
[
ignoring
the
offer
]:
By the way, in relation to any economic agreement that you and mother may reach, I think it only fair to point out that while the survival of private property into 1940 at the latest is highly problematical, the continued toleration of run-down housing whether by the landlord’s negligence or because of his inadequate capital funds, is something that will hardly continue into the next decade.

WILLIAM MATTHEWS:
Oh, my dear boy, I’m far more of a
socialist
than you think. If the government want to do up this house, I’ve no intention of objecting. Of course if it becomes your mother’s, I can’t say. Women are so much more snobbish about these things.

A
FIRM CLEAR WOMAN’S VOICE OUTSIDE THE DOOR:
What things, Billy?

[
Enter
CLARA MATTHEWS,
a
good
looking
woman
on
the
edge
of
fifty.
The
short
skirts,
flat
chests
and
slim
hips
fashionable
at
the
time
suit
her
well.
She
has
legs
of
which
any
girl
might
be
proud.
With
her
Eton
crop
she might indeed be a boy from that school playing the heroine
in
a
house
play.
But
no
boy
ever
had
such
wxoman’
s
instinct
for
getting
her
own
way
by
a
devious,
illogical
and
seemingly
irrelevant
course
of
words
and
action
as
Mrs
Matthews.
With
her
children,
in
particular,
she
has
the
great
advantage
that,
having
brought
them
up
to
expect
her
to
act
with
consistent
selfishness
and
egotism,
they
are
always
totally
disarmed
when
she
seeks
the
same
ends
by
sudden
shows
of
generosity
and
concern
for
others.
She
has
made
her
entry
carefully,
flanked
by
her
younger
sons
–
on
her
right,
RUPERT MATTHEWS,
25‚
tall,
fair,
handsome.
Dressed
in
lilac
Oxford
bags
and
a
bronze
high-necked
sweater,
he
looks
too
theatrical
to
be
taken
for
a
successful
young
actor,
but
those
who
know
the
limitless
‘hammy’
qualities
of
the
contem
porary
theatre
will
have
rightly
reasoned
that
no
one
could
look
so
actorish
without
being
in
fact
an
actor.
Being
an
actor,
however,
of
our
own
day,
and
not
of
the
vulgar,
robust
era
of
Irving
or
Tree,
he
has
all
the
necessary
manners
of
a
gentleman,
i.e.
he
makes
a
good
deal
of
play
with
lighting
cigarettes
for
himself
and
his
mother,
moves
chairs
very
‘realistically’,
speaks
with
a
clipped
accent
as
though
unwilling
to
communicate
in
words
and
generally
follow
s
th
e vogue
of
our
contempor
ary
actor-knights,
th
a
t ‘realistic’
apparatus
of
manners
which
the
English
with
their
infallible
gift
for
the
trivial
and
inessential
have
made
their
special
heritage
from
the
great
art
of
Ibsen.
However,
since,
with
the
social
shake-up
consequent
upon
England’s
pyrrhic
victory
in
1918,
‘gentlemen
’
in
general
take
their
manners
from
the
stage,
RUPERT
MATTHEWS
is
well
on
the
way
to
being
as
successful
a
gentleman
as
an
actor.
His
brother
MARCUS‚
who
supports
CLARA MATTHEWS
on her left, is
with in
a month
or
two
of
21
or manhood.
His
good
looks,
however,
are
of
the
kind
that
do
not
give
promise
of
the
masculinity
demanded
conventionally
in
our
own
day
of
those
who
call
themselves
men;
nor
do
his
wide
skirt-like
pleated
trousers,
tight
black
coat
and
tighter
black
double
waistcoat
assist
his
masculinity.
His
short
black
Valentino
side
whiskers
bring
out
the
Spanish
in
him,
but
again
not
somehow
the
Spanish
man.
His
intermediate
type
has
never
perhaps
found
a
satisfactory
social
niche
since
Saint
Paul,
interpreting
Jesus
Christ’s
social
revolutionary
views
in
the
light
of
his
own
peculiar
sexual
temperament,
brought
to
an
end
the
long-lived
sexual
morality
of
the
Romano-Hellenic
world.
In
1925
he
stands
between
the
national
scapegoatism
of
Oscar
Wilde
and
the
national
obsessive
attention
of
the
later
decades.
Given
England,
he
has
no
choice
but
to
be
‘artistic’;
but
a
certain
firmness
of
chin
and
fierceness
of
eye,
not
unlike
his
mother’s,
suggest
that
MARCUS MATTHEWS
will
demand
a
more
important
role
in
our
capitalist
society
than
the
artist’s.
]

CLARA MATTHEWS:
What thing, Billy, are women more snobbish about?

WILLIAM MATTHEWS:
Quentin tells me that the Government will step in and do up our home, my dear. Someone from the Home Office perhaps. [
He
laughs
delightedly
at
his
own
joke.
]

CLARA MATTHEWS:
What a revolting idea! Some dreadful little town clerk choosing my wallpapers. Over my dead body. If that’s your socialism, Quentin, I can soon tell you it won’t work. Taste is a matter of fashion and whoever heard of town clerks being in the fashion? Not that I don’t want to see this dining-room re-done. I can’t quite make up my mind …

RUPERT:
I think it should be beige. Tallu’s new flat is entirely beige.

MARCUS:
Beige is hardly new, is it? Now Lady Melchett has done something so amusing with her small drawing-room. It’s all sand pink and off white.

CLARA MATTHEWS
[
looking
in
turn
with
admiration
at
her
sons
]: Well, at least Rupert and Marcus have learned something by going out into the world. Now what you think you’re doing, Quentin, giving up that most suitable job in Oxford, I can’t imagine. What
are
you doing?

QUENTIN:
As a matter of fact I’ve just been asked to do a series of articles for the
Daily
News.

WILLIAM MATTHEWS
[
now,
in
his
turn,
impressed
]:
the
Daily
News,
eh? I used to know old Callcott there, but I should think …

CLARA MATTHEWS:
Dead, of course, bound to be. No one has made so many influential friends who die easily as your father. Articles about what, anyway, Quentin?

Q
UENTIN
: About the unemployed, mother. Even you, I suppose, may have heard of them.

CLARA MATTHEWS:
Even I! Why I’m almost an expert on
unemployment
. I’ve lived with your father for twenty-five years. Now there’s something for your father to do. He can help you with your articles. I’m sure nobody knows more about the subject than he does.

QUENTIN MATTHEWS:
This happens to be a serious subject, Mother. Some of the men in the Rhondda have been unemployed since the war ended. There’s a real danger that they’ll become unemployable.

CLARA MATTHEWS:
Then your father
is
the man to write the articles. But enough about why
you’ve
been so silly as to leave Oxford. We’re met here because after all these years
I
have got to
leave your father. While you children were young and needed a home, a mother, a nominal father, then I was prepared to make any sacrifices, I was prepared …

RUPERT:
As you know, Mother, for many years, we’ve all thought …

CLARA MATTHEWS:
Don’t interrupt me, Rupert. You’re not playing the lead here. Now, at last, I can’t go on. Physical brutality, desertion, infidelity with the lowest of the low …

WILLIAM MATTHEWS:
She was from a very respectable family in Tooting.

CLARA MATTHEWS:
Tooting! You could hardly sink lower, Billy.

[
They
both
share
in
laughter
at
this.
]
It isn’t even picturesque like Stepney and Whitechapel. And how can you eat sandwiches at a time like this?

W
ILLIAM
M
ATTHEWS
: They’re very good sandwiches, my dear. They make me realize what I’m missing without Regan’s cooking …

CLARA MATTHEWS:
You must pay
some
price, I suppose, for acting like a brute. However, I’m glad you like them. The children won’t appreciate them. They’ve never known the difference between blinis and bully beef. But I told Regan – foie gras and smoked salmon. After all, we don’t bring twenty-five years of marriage to an end every day. Give me a foie gras. Well, as I say, brutality, desertion, adultery. I suppose even the English Law won’t ask for more.

QUENTIN:
I think you have every ground for divorce, Mother …

CLARA MATTHEWS:
Divorce! My dear Quentin, I’m not a
Bolshevik
woman commissar. Nor a low comedy actress [
looks
at
Rupert
]
nor a God knows what [
looks
at
Marcus
]
.
No, I don’t intend to end my days as a notorious divorcée, however little my children care. I want you to arrange a legal separation for me. Unless, of course, I might later meet someone responsible and distinguished to pass the evening of my days with. In which case I should look to you boys to see that it was all regularized. But the important thing is the financial settlement and that’s where you can help. Let’s hear what settlement you children propose so that your father and I can live separately without too much diminution of the little standards we’ve tried to build up to do credit to our successful children.