No Laughing Matter (2 page)

Gladys, of course, was busy inside the wagon. All the stores had to be checked and double entered in the great ledger book. With a long quill pen by the light of a hurricane lamp she dipped into the silver inkpot (silver? more likely horn, moose horn perhaps), counted and wrote, counted and wrote – long bars of coarse yellow soap, packets of candles, loaves of sugar (pyramids, she saw them, in dark blue paper), red flannel petticoats (use obscure but an essential item) and beads (like the flannel, of course, for barter – or was that in the South Seas?), huge hams, vast sacks of lentils and chick peas (what could
they
look like?). And Father (how cunningly he held the reins,
just feeling the horses ‘mouths, no more) turned back and smiled. ‘Well, Podge. Our little manager. She'll make a perfect wife for some lucky devil in Eldorado.' She ran up the length of the wagon and, throwing her arms around his shoulders, pressed her cheek against his, and they both looked up (boyishly twinkling blue eyes, solemn little dark ones) through the frosty air to where an all
Halloween
moon showed its pumpkin form in the great star vault above them. Then he tugged her pigtails lightly – ‘So that's how it is. But you'll have to leave your little wooden hut one of these days, you know. For some lucky fellah or other.' ‘Don't tease the poor Podge. Time enough when she loses all that puppy fat. You'll manage the general stores in Eldorado, won't you, darling?' The back of her mother's hand so cool, like blue veined marble, stroked against her other cheek, pressed against it. And instantly his lips were gently finding hers, then pressing hard against them so that she almost cried (it was painful the first time, Marian Sargeant said), pressing as hard as his hard thighs had gripped the black mare's flanks as up and over they went, the black breeched cowboy with the black stetson hat on the black mare. Mother and Father he, and more, as she waited, the girl with the head on her – to run the general stores, so warm to come home to after days of roundup. Horrid Marian Sargeant's nasty whispers sounded in her ear and Marian's grubby little notes passed by a sweaty hand far down the room. Miss Baker looked up and frowned; oh they would be caught and it was nasty. She forced
herself
away from Miss Baker's class, away from the handsome black haired cowboy, back to the account books in the covered wagon. ‘A plump little house-proud Podge,' her father said.

Rupert, the great golden eagle, flew higher and higher up towards the mountain crags and looked down to where the wagon, obese and dropsical, waddled at first like some worn-out pachyderm, a hippo perhaps, stranded far from lakes or rivers, or the last surviving
brontosaurus
, swollen with thirst; and then, as he soared higher, it scuttled, first like an armadillo, then like the armadillo's dwarf mockery, a woodlouse, absurdly, desperately seeking cover. A ridiculous woodlouse as far beneath an eagle's gaze as a flea to a mousing cat's. But now from the wagon rose the second eagle, smaller, ravenblack, fleeter perhaps on wing, yet with only a female's strength. Together they rose and floated, rose and floated, flying above, around and beneath one another, now coasting on the wind's currents, now
battling the full force of the gale, a glorious dance to make the whole prairie sing if there had been anything but a scuttling woodlouse (now almost a dustspeck) to inhale this wonderful triumph of mother and son. And then something glittered in the black eagle's eye, her beak snapped. Rupert made himself the red spaniel at his parents ‘feet down in the happy, housewarm family-smelling wagon, and snuffled and licked at their hands, as his honest brown eyes looked up beneath a worried furry frown.' There's a lovely boy,' they cried. And Granny M. and Aunt Mouse and Stoker and All took up the cry,' Our
faithful
, loving old boy.'

Margaret sat on a stool in the shade cast by a wheel of the now stationary wagon. She made an entry in her diary – ‘A wonderfull satisfactory day. We made almost a royal progress with little colonies of prairie marmots popping up like so many jack-in-the-boxes from the rocks around us. They would stand for seconds together on their hind legs, their front paws dangling before their white furred chests, for all the world like a group of village women in their aprons come out to cheer our passing coach. And if happiness is the mark of Kings, we are Kings and Queens now; Grandmother so stately with her piled up snow-white hair, Aunt Mouse the embodiment of courtly dignity, and, as for Mother and Father, they both look so beautiful and young and so dedicated as they are about to enter their new kingdom. There is no doubt at all that the hardships and high hopes of this journey to a new life have proved their own satisfaction. United in common dangers we have found the new life before we have even reached Eldorado.' She read through the passage and her mouth seemed filled with sickening sugar and choking starch. Granny Matthews, of course, would pant and exclaim, ‘What long words for a little girl of twelve and a half! I really think, Will, she's going to be another genius like her father!' But Aunt Mouse, she dreaded to think how Aunt Mouse would look. ‘Maggie, my dear girl, Kings and Queens! Where is your sense of humour? Life isn't all icing sugar, my dear.' Deliberately she added to the diary's entry, ‘At about five as the sun was setting, our two collies, who had been missing all day, returned to the wagon. Their jaws were dripping with blood and out of Trusty's huge maw hung the mangled remains of a prairie marmot, village white apron and all. Life has so many different satisfactions.' She looked up to her great aunt for a certain grim approval. But then again she had meant to convey the incredible, sudden family happiness
of today and now it was spoiled. Deliberately risking a sarcastic gleam in her great aunt's eye, she turned to the inside cover of her diary, A Pioneer in the Prairies, she wrote, Being the Journal of Lady Margaret Carmichael, A Lady of Quality. There, now it was someone else, and Aunt Mouse and all other mice could jeer as much as they wished, it would not touch her. Yet still she had not made these hours immortal.

Sukey fed the few hens they had brought along in order to be sure of fresh eggs, and then sat blissfully for a moment in the prairie sun's warm rays (she had forgotten her bonnet, but never to fuss) watching the fat little puppies (liver and white, tan and white, chocolate and white) grunting and tugging as they fed from old Trusty. That old Trusty should so suddenly and unexpectedly have given birth was the wonderful, supreme surprise of these wonderful supremely happy days of – at last – a real family life she had always read of in stories, heard of from other girls at school, dreamed of over the nursery fire. No scenes, no ‘words', no clever laughing at good, ordinary things, no awful disregard of the neighbours here in the prairies. That, if
anything
, was the tiny, midget fly in the delicious ointment – just for some of their neighbours to know what a happy family they could be! But not the awful neighbours they had in horrid Victoria, in horrid London. She had known things would never be right until they got away from the fog and the smoke and the chimneys. She had thought, it is true, of an English farm like the one in the
Quantocks
where they had stayed last summer, or of the seaside, all dunes and seaweed beds, like the shore in front of Granny M.'s house at Cromer; but, of course, they were not like other families, the mad Matthews, a gipsy lot, she should have seen earlier that they would never be happy until they were on the move. All that fighting and bitterness and the dirty kitchen and unmade beds had been just
because
they had felt caged, their wild spirits bottled up, their wings clipped. Now that they were as free as air they were happy as any ordinary, nice family and yet, besides, quite extraordinary, clever, talented, unpredictable, lively and absurdly lovable–still, in short, the mad Matthews. Except, of course, herself – Sukey, our little
changeling
, the sensible chicken in the crazy clutch, Father called her. Even now when danger and hardship and sheer wanderlust had brought the best out of all of them, she had her little contribution to make–seeing that some sort of a timetable was kept, if not for their meals, then for
the poor hens and the dogs and the horses, seeing that Marcus ‘
bedtime
was not entirely forgotten, that Granny M.'s afternoon nap was remembered, that Aunt Mouse took her linctus. And later when they got to Eldorado and there were neighbours again, it would be she surely who could bridge the return to civilization for this mad,
difficult
, lovable family of hers. She placed great importance on whether they found nice neighbours. What would Eldorado prove to be like? She could not help thinking it would be like the Quantocks, in which case there would be the rector and Doctor Seely; or perhaps they would reach the Pacific Ocean when no doubt as at Cromer there would be a lot of kind, quiet retired people with grandchildren. Whatever, her happiness was now complete as, moving back to join her family in the wagon, another little family began to follow her, each fat puppy wobbling and falling over the other in its eager love. In the country, at regular hours, surrounded by happy little creatures of all kinds.

Marcus sat on top of the wagon, cross-legged. Mother called out, ‘Look! Our little black monkey!', but her words miraculously were without a lash, and she smiled up at him lovingly. He gazed all around at the flat sandy desert, with here and there a palm tree, and he found it sadly lacking. He began rapidly to increase the oases of palm trees so that soon they grew jungle thick, and about them crept great vines with monstrous flowers, crimson, purple, scarlet, brightest yellow. In the trumpets flickered emerald, gold and ruby humming birds, and soon the flowering trees waving high above the gentle breeze sent down delicious scents of spices to the paddy fields below. Above too, could be heard the chatter of monkeys and the shriek of parrots; now a macaw's tail flashed blue and saffron and now a
toucan's
beak showed for a second its livid green. Beneath him the elephant padded on, all but hidden from him by the richly jewelled howdah in which he sat with its canopy of fretted ivory, yet ever and again he caught sight of the great beast's trunk lashing through the air as it trumpeted. Around the great elephant his brothers and sisters led by his mother danced a triumphal dance, their rich jewelled veils and costly robes churning the incensed air. His father,
grandmother
and Aunt Mouse were borne aloft in litters. Eldorado came in sight; he could glimpse its minarets and towers, hear distantly its splashing fountains. Yet while the others heralded the arrival of this beautiful family by ever more delicious cries and movements, he, high
above, crowned by a vast red turban twice his own height, sat, most beautiful of all, cross-legged, black and motionless, a lovely sacred boy.

*

At the moment that Marcus in his holy pomp arrived at Eldorado, the communion became complete. Old Mrs Matthews forgot her everyday goodness, Miss Rickards her wise dryness, Miss Stoker her avenging comicality, Mr Matthews his sly warmth, Mrs Matthews her passionate fevers. Quentin became one youth and no leader; Gladys fused desire and orderliness; Rupert was made a boy again; Margaret resolved her formal dilemmas; Sukie forgot the hierarchies of
niceness
; Marcus' sensuous needs were quenched – all felt only pleasure, affection and physical ease. Perhaps it was this last that they
communicated
to the large crowd around them in the Coronation Walk of the Exhibition, certainly people fell away to make room for this family party – husband and wife side by side, flanked by two
handsome
boys, then two older ladies with parasols flanked by two elegant little girls, and last a most proper nurse flanked on one side by a solemn plaited schoolgirl and, on the other, by a black little imp of a boy. The family moved forward, apparently unaware of the crowd around them, triumphantly happy, and as they moved, recalling perhaps his wife's earlier humming, Mr Matthews began to sing joyfully. And soon all the others joined in chorus. It was the ladies who first stopped singing. Men are the egoists of life, of course; women are the conformists. And again, men need to advertise comradeship and ease, women are content to feel it. There are so many ways of explaining the gradual breakdown of the singing, but almost none to explain how it began.

Encouraged by their father's lead, for once oblivious of the adult female example, all six of the Matthews children bawled aloud, even Quentin quite forgetful, despite his school top hat and tails, of
Ladbroke
Grove proprieties. ‘Oh! We'll chase the buffalo, yes we'll chase the buffalo, in the wilds of West Kensington, we'll chase the buffalo.' Many in the large crowd turned with amusement or surprise to see these posh youngsters singing so loudly in public. Mr Matthews, by now conscious of the public gaze, smiled and swung his walking stick a little at the attentions of the passers-by; his wife smiled, too, to see him smiling. ‘Billy loves public notice, don't you, darling?' She put her gloved hand on his white linen sleeve – in the intense heat of that summer day he had got out his tropical suit, relict of their Madeira
honeymoon. Herself, she twirled her cream lace parasol a little. Old Mrs Matthews smiled, a trifle askance, and kept her eyes intent upon the asphalt; ‘The conventions weren't made for Will. And never have been.' Miss Rickards, as usual, seemed to see nothing. Turning her head, she made kissing noises with her lips at the knowing green parrot that perched on her shoulder. But young Mrs Matthews knew her aunt too well to be deceived. ‘Don't hide your face in Mr Polly, Mouse. She doesn't want to admit that you've made her smile, Billy. Eccentric Mouse is the really conventional one.' She turned to look behind her for Stoker. ‘And Stoker's singing too.' And so the quaint cockney was, if you could call the tuneless drone singing.