No Laughing Matter (67 page)

‘A Mrs Lomax wheeled Father round one day. He gushed about it to me a bit. I can’t remember what he said. Poetic experience or
something
. They rather lorded it over the other old dears in the hotel, you know. I think they enjoyed their last days.’

‘The throne room here had gone a little stale certainly. A change of royal residence was overdue,’ Margaret said.

‘My dear, yes! The Countess wrote to me. She used to look at the sunsets and pick daffodils. The last and pastoral phase.’

‘And then P. S. went over to see them at least once a fortnight.’

The finality of Sukey’s statement left Margaret and Marcus bewildered.

Margaret said, ‘Delicious tea! I’d no idea prep school boys were the pampered ones in England. You must be terribly relieved, Sukey, that all yours came through unscratched.’

Sukey laughed. ‘I simply put them into God’s hands before Munich when one knew war couldn’t be avoided. And He’s rewarded me. Of course, I knew P. S. would never be involved. There was an absurd moment when Hugh said they’d call him up despite his history schol. But John’s were very good, they got deferment. Now, of course, he’ll have to do this National Service. The other two tease him about playing soldiers. Poor P. S.! He isn’t a bit pleased. He’s got girl trouble. Some girl at Newnham. So it won’t do him any harm to occupy the awful Germans for a bit.’

To prevent herself laughing, Margaret tried to exchange a glance with Marcus, but to her surprise he was staring intently at Sukey.

‘Gracious, Sukey, you are
lucky.
Having a family to make do and mend for. I do hope you’ve spoilt them and given them every luxury and comfort. It’s especially important for boys.’

‘What an idea! I’ve given them love and security, that’s what all children need.’

‘Well, yes, of course. But I do think a bit of luxury, too, and especially to see beautiful things and to travel. I suppose, really, that’s an uncle’s job. Oh, I do feel ashamed. When can I meet them and take them out and spoil them?’

‘My dear Marcus! You’re very kind but I don’t think they’d interest you very much. They’re not youths any longer, you know. They’re great hulking men.’

Margaret smiled at Sukey’s limited conventional notions. She was going to exchange a smile with Marcus, for he’d never been reticent about his tastes to her, but he had gone red in the face.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t like them to hulk over me. Anyway they won’t have an opportunity. I shan’t be in this bloody country, thank God.’

Really, Margaret thought, to take Sukey so seriously.

‘And you’re going to settle in Egypt, Mag, I hear. We were there in ’29 you know. A parent lent us a houseboat. I’ve written one or two pieces about it. Of course, you don’t know that I write now. I hardly dare tell you. For broadcasting, from the local station, you know. Just ordinary family stuff, of course. But I think I’ve caught the West Country taste. That Nile trip has been most fruitful. Are there still those hawks, Mag, that mew like kittens? I’ve done a piece about a special one that became quite tame and used to take food from P. S. ‘s hand when he was a baby – Mu Mu, he called it – and then one day I came out on deck and found it had dropped a dead rat on to his pram. I’ve called it “Mu Mu’s Tribute”.’

After a short silence, Marcus said, ‘I can’t
wait
to stay en famille in Torquay, can you?’

‘And you, Mag, how was your war?’

But Margaret suddenly felt impatient. ‘It’s no good Sukey, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve never missed the patter of tiny feet. I can’t bear the little brats.’

The twins glared at one another across the table. Marcus was
overcome
with nausea from the gross smell of women. Let’s put them through their hoops, he thought. Let’s make the bitches purr.

‘It’s easy for you two to wrangle. You’ve always had the chance of fulfilment.’

Sukey blushed but her tense face softened contentedly; and even Margaret’s thin lips parted in pleased relaxation. They both looked at him with complacent compassion.

‘Oh, I know,’ he cried, ‘if the Countess had let me grow away from her or whatever it’s called. But then I shouldn’t have been so stinking rich. I must say I shouldn’t like not having money.’

The heavily built, tall man with flushed, jowled, handsome face and with blond hair greying at the temples (Banker? Wing Co. or even A.V.M.? or perhaps a confidence trickster pretending to Air Force rank?) was thinking of money, too, as he played somewhat stumblingly The Cobbler’s Song on the out of tune grand piano in the room above. He wasn’t quite sure why money pervaded his thoughts, for, of course, he was in fact reflecting on women and their importance. He owed everything to them. My God, he’d only to be in this room with this absurd moth-eaten Spanish shawl, even something of Her scent still coming from it, to remember that. If it hadn’t been for that love – hate battle with Her, he might have
remained 
a good looking flirty clerk, a sales manager Lothario to this day. But She had played with him so terribly, made him so restless, so keyed up to meet the demands of any scene, that his powers had been extended to their very top note. She’d been so completely
ruthless
, too, in getting rid of his Monas for him. And all for what? It was easy to say that ultimately he owed it all to the Great White Slug for not satisfying her, but that wasn’t fair. He knew too much about it all now to blame the old boy for not being quite up to it. No, she was torn apart inside, ravaged by a need for power. She’d never let go. And if you asked her what she wanted the power for, she wouldn’t have known.

They none of them did. She’d said she needed life and air (
understandable
in 52. It ponged a bit today of mice and mould and general decay); Alma said it was in order to be able to give ‘her all’; and Debbie said it was for him and for the children. But if they’d really known what they wanted, then it would have been all up with men, for it was out of this rage, this striving in the bellies of women, that men found their powers, their creative thrust. If a man found a woman who thought she had this urge herself, then he’d best wean her from it, as he had weaned Debbie. Yes, he saluted the long, lazy blond cad with his Hawaiian guitar who had sprawled and idled around these rooms in a haze of brilliantine and Turkish tobacco smoke and post cards of Toots and Lorna Pound. He might have been such an unutterably, underbred cad, but as it was …

‘Well, actually, no,’ he told them, ‘I’ve played everything from
Hamlet
– the gravedigger scene of course, the humour still lives, you know, even for hardened old Desert Rats – to
Lady
Audley’s
Secret and in the most God awful, out of the way holes, so I’m off Rep. even at the Old Vic, off theatre altogether at the moment.’

‘Oh, Rupert! But your Malvolio was so unforgettable.’

‘Thank you, Mag darling. And bless you for that note. It happened when all that G. business came up … I hope you were right. At the moment I don’t feel quite sure of myself. I don’t want to depend on others’ opinions.’

‘Oh, no, you must never do that in creative work.’

‘I’m glad you feel that too. Anyway, the theatre hasn’t found itself again after all those thunderingly good air raid audiences. No, I want to try films for a bit. Broaden my technique. And Britain’s going to have it all her own way with the cinema industry now we’ve got
subsidies. Hollywood’s done for. I shan’t go for good, mind you, The theatre’s my real love. But I’ve got rather a handsome contract with Rank. ‘He smiled a rueful, boyish smile,’ and it won’t be
unwelcome
. Sandra’s being presented this summer and with Christopher two years off Eton …’ He added quickly, ‘Of course, we’d have sent the boys to you, Sukey, if Debbie hadn’t wanted a school near enough to Sunningdale to drive over for the afternoon.’

‘Good Heavens! We’ve never had stage people.’ As though to soften this, she added, ‘But British films have always been the best, Rupert, look at George Arliss. Senior and I went three times to his Disraeli.’

Margaret said, ‘In Cairo we never get more than a third class company doing Lonsdale and the cinemas are flea pits.’

Marcus said, ‘I adored the cinemas in Ceylon,’ but he didn’t explain why.

‘We must get on,’ Sukey told them, ‘I think I’ll have to call Gladys down. And where can Quentin have got to? I’ve only taken at the hotel for one night. I see now that I could have saved money and stayed here.’

The big-framed, gaunt-faced woman with heavy, sagging breasts and a fuzz of greying hair (ex-Resistance fighter? Labour mayor? stage star’s dresser?) sat on the improvised bed on which had been piled all the mass of stuff from the lumber room and the nursery cupboard. She was so high up from the ground that her legs swung in the air and her left shoe fell off her foot on to the floor. It gave her a further excuse for remaining there, for if she bent down too far these days she suffered a giddy spell. Not that she felt happy in the little cupboard room. Really, they had had no right to stick her in a hole like this with no dressing table and insufficient blankets; and then to charge her rent. And a mass of housework, too, after working at that stuffy Food Ministry all day. She had been lodger, breadwinner, servant, everything except daughter. Everything, or almost. She could feel Billy Pop’s – what did they call it in novels? – ‘hot breath’ upon her now. As that comedian who dressed up as a woman used to say, ‘believe me, girls, it wasn’t quelques fleurs.’ No, it had been disgusting, horrible. Then a rumbling laugh came up from her stomach. Oh fuck that for a lark! Not after the cells at Holloway, lovey. Don’t come the duchess, dear. Only one lace blouse, dearie? What about Apron, dowlas, for work; badge, arm, red band; boots,
ordinary; cape, serge blue and cap, storm, to wear with; chemise, calico; dress, blue denim; knickers, calico; nightgown, calico; petticoat, calico; shoes, black strap; stays, grey lace up; stockings, black woollen? And a bucket, a Bible and a hard, hard bed. As to Father’s little ways, there’d been Goddard and Parker and Darling and Avory and more girls than she could remember who’d been kinder to their drunken, fumbling pas than she had. And grandpas, too, in the fat girl’s case – ‘it stood up proper lovely for is
seventy-eight
years. If it adn’t been for is tickly beard ….’ And she’d laughed with the others until the tears had run and the wardresses gave them hell.

But it was no good, she could no longer be honest to that
nightmare
world. She must judge by the standards of her own world, of all of them assembled downstairs (Oh, how could she face them all together?) and of the girls in the pool. And by these standards the awful parents had done very badly. But, as she turned her head,
something
glittered for a moment on the top of the piled up trunks – a piece of mica. It must be the sheet that went over Alf’s photo in that old frame. She took it and rubbed it against her cheek. The room was full of his love and her love. She could hardly bear it, for, after she’d come out he’d got her the job and now he wanted it on the old footing – at her age and with her hag’s face, and he, as she’d always hoped, on his way to the top of the tree. Take and give, take and give; that’s what their lives had been. But they couldn’t go on with it now – at their age, a couple of right Charlies they’d look. No! Marriage and a villa, that’s what she needed. But to give him up … oh, what
should
she do? Slinging her bucket bag over her shoulder, she went down to face them.

‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘I was terribly lucky. A friend got me an
interview
at the War Office. And they put me in the typists’ pool. There was no money involved, you see, so nobody looked into my
swimming
record.’

Sukey began busily to stack up the empty cups.

Marcus said: ‘I’m sure you floated through the whole job
deliriously
. Better than I could have done. All those typists! But then mixed bathing isn’t for me at all.’

Rupert said: ‘We thought of getting Tanya into the War Office, but her call-up wasn’t due until two weeks after V.J. day, thank the Lord.’

Margaret took Gladys’s hand and said, ‘Darling, it is lovely to see you.’

A silence so long followed that Gladys thought she would fall through the floor. Her cheeks burned, she shifted from leg to leg. At last she said, almost before she’d noticed it, ‘I’m going to marry a Mr Murkins. Mr Ebenezer Murkins. But he’s called Benny, I’m glad to say. And he’s my boss.’

‘The pool attendant?’ Marcus asked.

‘No, much grander! Head of Establishments they call it. He’s due to retire anyway next year. So he’s not a young hot-head. But then I’m not in my first flush either. His other wife – she’s dead of course, he’s no Turk – used to what he calls entertain a good deal in their home in Weybridge, but, as he said, all things considering
I
wouldn’t want to entertain a lot. And all things considering, he’s right. So we’re going to live in the country – a cottage not too far from Romsey Abbey. He likes looking at the New Forest ponies.’

‘You make him sound like the leech gatherer,’ Margaret said. ‘You know, very simple.’

‘Oh, no, he looks quite distinguished. Like a sort of colonel. But, as he says, ponies won’t be enough to keep a handsome girl like me out of mischief. Yes, he honestly means it. In his eyes I’m sweet seventeen, but full in figure. It’s hard to resist. And he’s so kind and a good sport too. I keep him in fits. I told him it’s too late to breed Murkins, so I’d better breed dogs. And now he’d got it into his head that I should. I don’t know which breed easily and which don’t. You’re the country one, Sukey, what kind do you think I should choose? I think bulldogs, don’t you? Then they’ll all grow up to look like their mistress.’

She stuck out her lower jaw so that her stubby teeth glared at them, and when she pushed down her head on to her chest the baggy skin of her face and neck formed a hundred pouches. It was startlingly like and they were in fits. Under cover of the laughter Margaret whispered:

‘Darling, I
am
so pleased. I thought you might go on beating your head against a brick wall,’ but Gladys did not appear to hear her.