No Laughing Matter (19 page)

And now Marcus drew and she must sacrifice good gloves to help him do so. Or so the world would say. Milton had loved her hands. Now stroking the back of her hand against the pillow she seemed to be once again caressing his cheek where the pillow threads had been unpicked and it was rough to the touch, as occasionally his chin. She buried her face in the grubby linen and – memory stronger than fact – his smell came back, something very expensive he rubbed in after shaving, from New York, and masculine sweat. She stretched and moulded until Milton held her when suddenly her father was with her again, but now with no hand on her shoulder, but in his wheel chair staring at her gravely until she was frightened and forced her eyes to open to escape him. It was all very well for him, the dead don’t feel, so what the hell right have they got to reproach with their eyes, cutting off sleep – sleep which was the only remaining escape? And come to
that, he was probably as lecherous as the rest of them, only that she’d been too small to recognize it. Disgusting they were in his day,
groping
their way through all those layers of undies and whalebone. That girl in grey who came to see him, fifteen years younger at least, and Mother only dead a year. Miss Karton, or Keaton. Filthy old beast.

But at the thought of Keaton she had slid off the bed, put her kimono on, and a few minutes later had tiptoed down to shake the sleeping Billy Pop in his study swivel chair. Though he stared at her in bleary dismay, yet he seemed at once to know what she intended, as though they had been two illicit lovers of long standing and secret night couplings. She said, whispering, ‘I’ll go to Mouse’s club and see her tomorrow.’ And she smiled, but not, as he might have thought, in anticipation of money received, rather because she had decided to wear her grey coat frock with the lemon feather trimming.

‘You go to your Mother’s at tea time. Don’t take flowers. I’ve got some of that honey which Edith believes cures her cough. Your mother always likes you to think of the servants.’

‘But you’ll come …’

‘No, Billy. She sees you alone so little.’

She almost laughed as she said it, because he reacted at once with a little sentimental, vain movement of his head which she had
anticipated
. But now, having spat out the phlegm which seemed to trouble his afternoon awakenings, he buttoned up his cardigan and was ready to act. They tiptoed upstairs without a word said of their immediate intent. She motioned him to lift the basket and herself placed a cushion on top of the sleeping trio, but the white kitten moved and she hadn’t the nerve, as she’d meant, to press the cushion down. Perhaps he had expected her to do so, for when she relaxed her weight and, taking up the cushion, put it under her arm, he stumbled and almost upset his burden.

‘Oh, don’t be clumsy, Bill. It’s hopeless to ask you to do anything. Give me the basket,’ and she snatched it from him.

He now carried the cushion and downstairs they crept. For a moment coming from the dark staircase into the light of the hall, she Stood blinking.

‘What’s wrong? Seen a ghost?’ Then peering at her, ‘You look ghastly. Are you all right?’

‘Dreams,’ she said, ‘I dreamt of my father or someone very like him. It upset me. I don’t know why.’

‘Duck and stuffing,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the filthiest taste in my mouth. But I thought your father was a hero. Now if it had been my guvnor popping back from the dead …’

‘Oh, shut up, Billy! You talk too much.’

As they crept down the stone stairs to the basement, she said angrily, ‘He was a soldier. At least he wasn’t scared.’

‘Anybody could massacre Afghans or Zulus. I don’t suppose his duties often called on him to drown kittens. Who knows what gurgling and struggling there’ll be?’

‘Oh, Billy, don’t be so horrid. Keep your writer’s imagination until it’s over. When it’s done you’ll have seen it and have something real to write about for once.’

‘And what if I muck it all up?’

‘Well, then, you’ll muck it all up. But of course, you won’t.’

Between the two versions of what was to be she couldn’t decide. But of one thing she was sure: standing with her back to the kitchen door, barring his entrance, she said, ‘And muck it all up! You used to speak such wonderful English, it was pleasant to listen to. But now it’s like all the rest, you’ve let everything slide.’ And when he smiled, she added, ‘No, I mean it, very seriously. If you don’t pull up, you’re done for, my boy.’

As he seemed about to defend himself she pushed the door open and impatiently urged him on. Taking the bucket from the pantry
cupboard
, she knocked over a broom, but the noise seemed of little concern, drowned as it was by Regan’s loud snores from her
bedroom
. Nevertheless the tortoiseshell kitten mewed and the Countess started, almost dropping the bucket.

‘That damned dream,’ she said, ‘if it hadn’t upset my nerves I’d have done all this myself. I know what you are Billy, all talk and no do.’

‘Well, this time, the quicker it’s done the better.’

She noted with satisfaction that what she said seriously still
influenced
him even under stress, for he added, ‘I readily grant that this is no occasion for protracted parleying.’

She filled the bucket. He took the black and white kitten by the scruff of its neck and plunged it into the water, holding it down with his hand. But a few seconds later he fished it out again, a squealing struggling object, monstrously embryonic, its head more than ever abnormally large above its thin fur-flattened, dripping little body.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t.’

‘Oh, give it to me.’ But at the touch of its soggy fur she was revolted. ‘Get Regan,’ she said, ‘servants always understand how to do these things.’

Regan, indeed, took longer to wake from her heavy sleep than, once woken, grumblingly to drown the kittens.

The Countess remarked, ‘Well, that’s soon over.’

But Billy Pop must have found the time had passed more slowly, for he said, ‘Who would have thought such little blighters would have such a kick in them?’

‘Well,’ Regan demanded, ‘what’s to be done with this lot?’ And she thrust the bulging, dripping sack beneath the noses of her
employers
. (She had seen at once the need for a sack. Had she a peasant granddam somewhere back in history, this apparently wholly Rowlandson-Hogarth woman, or did the basic folklores still bind country and town at that level in those days?)

‘What’s been done with the other?’ asked her mistress.

‘Miss Sukey’s wrapped it in a andkerchief and put it by the back door. They’re burying it under the tree in the back yard.’

‘Burying it! I’ve never heard such nonsense. What’s wrong with the ovens?’ The Countess spoke prophetically, then changed her mind. ‘No, put them in the dustbin. Good heavens, when I think of the huge Christmas box we give each year to those men.’

And the bell rang.

‘Oh, my God, who can that be on a Sunday afternoon? Your Mother perhaps, or Mouse, come back to apologize?’

The Countess went to the kitchen window to peer up the area steps, but with the kittens’ death the wind had died also and fog was thickening outside in the growing dusk, murky, smoke thick, dun coloured, so that viewed through the grubby, flyblown glass the world outside was crepuscular, passers-by mere shadowy moths.

‘I’m out, Regan. No, see who it is. And tidy yourself up, Billy, while I dress. Be sure you wash all that muck off.’

Who could say what muck?

Not Regan who, left alone, set out to finish the job started, bell or no bell – and the effing thing rang and rang. Shovelling muck into a dustbin doesn’t take all day, not that is if your head doesn’t ache to beat the band. And then again if you’ve had a couple at midday, especially watery, vinegary stuff like champagne, number one comes first. So, like Marie Lloyd, she walks among the cabbages and pees.
Oh, ring, ring, ring your bloody head off. What silly sod will call in a pea-souper. More like night! And sure enough it
was
a foreigner. One of her yanks, tho not the usual. ‘Mrs Matthews?’ And, ‘Gome on in,’ she told him. In the hall, in the light he seemed a nice boy. Young, younger than the other. Does your Mother know you’re out, Sonny Jim? But you couldn’t help fancying him. Probably the champagne, there’s other things it brings on besides peeing. ‘I’ve been ringing that bell a pretty good while. I reckoned the Matthews family was away from home. Were you hitting the high spots last night or what?’ ‘We were sleeping.’ ‘Sleeping? Come to look at you, you seem as though you had a pretty thick night.’ But she wasn’t having familiarity. ‘What name, Sir, shall I say?’ A randy laugh he’d got, but she smiled to show there was no offence. It sounded like Lootnant Iced Pratts. Well, he’d certainly come to the right shop for them. If that was the way he wanted it…. So she shouted the name loud and clear up the stairs. And there was milady, quick as your finger, standing at the top of the stairs, ‘Oh, Lestah, how lovelah to see yah.’ Have a banana! And, ‘You wicked boy, you’ve brought mer flahs. My favourite chrysan the old enough to be your mums.’ And, ‘I thought maybe that now Major Ward has gone, you wouldn’t object to a plain lootnant!’ Object! You’d better move quick, Lestah, or Her Highness will have come in her drawers. And,’ Oh, no, I can’t let you spend your pay on little me, but Billah, Billah, come and meet Mr Iced Pratts while I slip into something a bit more suitable.’ What about your birthday suit, madam? See if you can touch this poor mug for a couple of quid? And where shall it be? ‘Oh, ai know, the Piccahdillah. Did you know you can net your own trout thah?’ Yes, and he’s netted an old trout here while he’s about it. ‘Let me mix your high balls before I go up to change.’ Oh, milady, how can you talk so dirty? And now we come tripping down in our black jet bodice, apache skirt, velvet tam, cigarette and all. ‘How do I look, Regan, darling?’ Like a young girl going to her first ball, I don’t think. But, Oh Gawd, a short life and a quiet one, not in this house. Here they come and up will go the bloomin balloon. Who’s going to answer this one? Not yours truly. Not on your nelly. I’m off to finish my kip.

But Sukey was the one, despite all her convention and love of respectability, to make a public scene.

‘Where are they? Where are the kittens?’ she asked going straight into the drawing-room from her vain visit below.

‘Sukey, dear. Lieutenant Eispratz. One of the twins, Lester.’

‘How do you do? Where are the kittens, Mother?’

‘I don’t really know, dear. She’s the animal lover of this family. Have you seen the kittens, Billy?’

‘Lost their mittens again?’

‘Oh, don’t be silly, Father.’

‘Oh, dear, the lack of respect of the younger generations for the paternal parent. Of course it’s all the fault of you Americans. Ever since Milton christened poor Billy ’Pop’. Perhaps they’ve gone for a walk, Sukey. They’re getting to be rather big kittens.’

‘They would hardly walk out of the dining-room when the door’s shut.’

‘Well, ask Regan, dear. She’s probably done something with them.’

When Sukey called over the bannisters to Regan, ‘Are the kittens in the kitchen, Regan?’ the old girl just bawled out, ‘I ave a little cat, and I’m very fond of that, but I’d rather ave a bow, wow, wow, wow,’ so that, comical kid, even the most po-faced would have had to smile.

Sukey gone, the Countess was quick to urge her swain abroad.

‘No, no, it’s not necessary. There’s a taxicab rank just round the corner. I love to get there early and see the people. Yes, why not? A restaurant is a sort of theatre. Oh, no, I know my way blindfold. We cockneys you know. You should see our wonderful cook. It’s only the dirt I object to in fogs. How can one ever get one’s hands clean? Yes, what a night, wasn’t it? Roof gone? My dear boy, as long as you’re here to tell the story. Yes, I know. Well, of course, this is such a noisy street and with the wind voices carried so. You little know the wicked street you’ve come to. Billy and I keep meaning to move but we love our little house and it’s all so gloriously central. But the noises last night! Of course it’s quite an apache quarter and when these terrible whores beat each other…. Horses eat each other? No, why should I? What a gruesome idea!’ And with this she had brought him to the front door but not, alas, out of it by the time that Sukey appeared.

She held in her hand the horrid sack and for a moment appeared about to fell her Mother with it. But instead she called hysterically (hysteria was all you could call it when a visitor new to the house and one at once so unexpected and so welcome was standing in the hall) up the stairs to summon her brothers and sisters. And soon there they were, craning and crowding from the landing above – Rupert like
Georgie Giraffe looming above the rebellious boys gathered at Tiger Tim’s call. But if Mrs Bruin had gone too far this time, Billy Pop Porkie Boy seemed in most danger as he stood at the foot of the stairs, rotund and blinking (frabjous owl), marooned between his
retreating
, errant wife and his advancing children. However, he
suppressed
his OoooGooroos and his Oh My Stars bravely but somewhat tritely to say, ‘The Countess is going out with Mr Eispratz. Have a wonderful time, my dear.’ The Countess smiled at all of them (yet she looked, who would not? in need of an Abdullah) and the
lieutenant’s
perplexed look cleared. Seeing her smile, he smiled too in a warm friendly grimace of his rough-tough, ugly-handsome, young india-rubber, Chicago phiz. A smile that appeared finally to enrage Sukey, for, dropping her horrid evidence, she rushed at her Mother, and, placing her strong plump fingers on those scrawny shoulders, she shook her until her long jade earrings swung like gibbets in the wind. But the Countess stifled her Royal rage and decided on
helplessness
. A self-restraint that paid, for the lieutenant seized Sukey in turn by her shoulders and swung her away. Gladys called in her deep voice, ‘Leave my sister alone!’ Quentin took a menacing step
forward
; but Marcus, who had crept to the bottom of the stairs, acted – he spat very fiercely and very accurately in their visitor’s eye. Startled, Mr Eispratz (his family immigrants from Frankfurt two generations back, his great grandmother, scheitel and all, a rare friend of old, old Gutele Rothschild, legend said) moved his hands from Sukey who immediately smacked him hard across the face and then sank upon the hall carpet sobbing. The Countess quickly opened the front door. Touching the lieutenant’s slob-green sleeve to urge him to his escort’s duty she said, ‘I’m so terribly sorry all this should have happened here,’ ‘Too bad in any house, lady,’ he replied. For a moment the Countess stood framed in the doorway, her fringed black evening cape billowing flittermothlike against the yellow world beyond. ‘It was either that, my dears,’ she said, ‘or killing the geese – for your grandmother and Mouse are silly geese, that I grant you. But when you get to your father’s and my age you’ll know that nothing ever, ever must be done that could prevent the golden eggs being laid.’ Smiling with childlike glee she added, ‘Never mind, darlings, all the righteousness is on your side and that’s what the young enjoy so much.’ Then putting her hand through her bewildered escort’s arm, she was gone.