No Laughing Matter (20 page)

Trapped, Porky Boy snorted a little and then, coming up with a luxurious truffle, said, ‘The awesome nature of memory! I remember so well my own distress in a similar circumstance. I say similar, though the curious thing is – and the thing quite typical of memory’s random, useless charm – that I’m quite unable to recall what the circumstances were. I have only a hazy sense that my parents were the instruments of the blow. But what I do remember is the awful sense of injustice I felt. It was some days before I realized that this was in fact the impact of life’s unpleasant reality. Life is unjust. The Countess and I today have only been dusty instruments. I don’t say you’ll come to thank us. You won’t. But you’ll see the inevitability of our being used by life to illumine her painful way.’

If his last words seemed a trifle incoherent it was perhaps that he could sense Quentin’s growing angry disgust, although with good taste he turned his head away from his children’s painful reactions to the truth, for he did not wish to bear unpleasant witness against them in time to come. He seemed not to notice, yet, apart from his
incoherence
, his side stepping movement suggested that he knew the danger and sought good sense in escape. But before Quentin could hit his father, Gladys held back her brother’s arm.

‘Not that I care if you knock his chump off. The beastly little bounder! But I don’t want you to go back on your beliefs, old boy. He’s not worth having on your conscience.’

To Gladys, Billy Pop said, ‘You
would
feel it most, Podge, because, God Bless you, though the least suited by figure, you’re the family’s true idealist.’ And to Sukey, ‘We must get you a nice dependable husband. That’ll put a stop to all these tears and rages.’ Then, taking his green homburg with the broad band from the hatrack and his malacca cane, he departed. ‘I have need of serious sustenance after this episode in la comédie humaine,’ he said. As with the Countess’
farewell
smile there was something childlike in his humorous twinkle as he left them.

Not until Billy Pop’s mixed aroma of cigar smoke and Eau de Cologne had quite faded did Gladys remember. ‘What about my tenner?’ Then bitterly, ‘Serious sustenance! He’ll blow the whole lot in one go.’

Rupert walked to the door that Billy had left open and, before shutting it, cried bitterly into the night, ‘O, for God’s sake get out of our lives.’

The Game began quietly that evening at about half past eight. It started as usual with some spontaneous exchanges between Billy Pop (Rupert) and the Countess (Marcus), founders of the Game, born of their need to relieve their pent up shame, distress and anger in
histrionics
, to heal their hurts with mimcry’s homeopathic sting, and no doubt as well to indulge some sexual urges. So much for the casual, conventional beginning as it might be:
MARCUS THE COUNTESS:
Oh, for God’s sake do up your flies, Billy, when you come into my drawing-room. What will visitors think? To which
RUPERT THE
BILLY POP:
I dress, my dear, to accommodate your friends’ conventional ideas of the artist. I’m sure they will forgive such little sartorial peccadilloes as part of the Bohemianism they’ve come to see.
MARCUS THE COUNTESS:
Well, if that’s where they’re feasting their eyes, they needn’t worry. There’s precious little by now to feast on. (Collapse of Stout Billy Pop.) Or
:
MARCUS THE COUNTESS:
Oh for God’s sake do up your flies, Billy, when you come into my drawing-room.
RUPERT THE BILLY POP:
Drawing-room! what drawing-room? This is our old free and easy, hugger mugger,
argy-bargy
den
.
MARCUS THE COUNTESS:
Nonsense. We still live comme il faut. We have servants. Where are the servants? Gladys, your cue. And in comes old
REGAN THE PODGE,
sliding on the parquet floor, laughing to beat the band, holding on to her maid’s cap
.
REGAN THE PODGE:
Oooh! I went and fell over, Mum. Just look at me batch of scones. I’ve flattened them out like pancakes.

But in fact all six had sensed that The Game would go further that evening, played as never before. They awaited some ritual.

Quentin the eldest and the newest, the most experienced in life, the most innocent in the life of number 52, appropriately marked the occasion, gave the word of command, opened the show, launched the boat and offered up a sacrifice by at last rounding out his own part, often tentatively suggested in the few weeks since he had returned home, but now finally declared to be that of Mr Justice Scales, the dispassionate, objective outsider (appropriately a returned hero) who by eliciting the facts, reveals the moral pattern, sets all to right,
uncovers
the riddle.

First as a stickler for principles, a getter down to basic facts, a young chap necessarily questioning everything in order to rebuild, he
examined the fictions, though they had already been intuitively agreed, by which The Game, now tacitly understood to require the form of a trial, was to be played. Was the man or the woman able to be another also the most suited to defend that other’s interest? Yes, for simulation, whatever its motive, demands identification. But was he or she sufficiently detached to be able to offer a defence intelligible to others as defending counsel should, without the confusions and blurs of subjective statement? Yes, for simulation and mimicry also demand observation: in them compassion is tinged by mockery or mockery by compassion, and identification is distanced by the
demands
of technique. But could this simple mixture of opposites which mimicry requires, of affection with distaste, of respect with contempt, of love with hatred – be justly defined as a sort of reasoned apology? Yes, if passed through the tempering fire of the scrutiny of Mr Justice Scales (Quentin). The rules established, the Game could now proceed.

Call Clara Madeline Matthews, born Clara Madeline Rickard. Objection from
MARCUS THE COUNTESS
, that such a call was
pre-judging
, for, first the name by its stiff unfamiliarity meant the trial of someone else – of a birth certificate, or a shoplifter of that name, if such had ever existed. Secondly, Marcus pleaded, the first names were unfair ironies for she, the Countess, never pretended to the purity suggested by Clara nor to the repentance suggested by Madeline. She should be tried in all her familiar glory as ‘The Countess’. Question by
MR JUSTICE SCALES:

Would not this soubriquet prejudge the issue by suggesting the horrid fates of the Countess of Salisbury and the Countess Dubarry? No, for The Countess tout court was something much more tra la la than the frightened beheaded ladies, however virtuous, however light, however high born, however low. Even the Countess Porgi Amor (send back, send back, send back my Milton to me) to
e
dico
di
si
(I can’t say no to you, Iced Pratts), only superficially suggested all the overtones in that title. Would she please name some of these
overtones
? Impossible, the range is altogether too rich. Then the Court must seek evidence in history. General suggestion that Mr Rupert Matthews as so emotionally close should testify.

RUPERT THE BILLY POP:
The name was a little whimsy of mine thrown off…. But objection. The intention had been to call Mr Rupert Matthews in his own right. No evidence could be taken from
Rupert the Billy Pop as a witness not yet sworn in.
MR RUPERT
MATTHEWS
then gives it as his own that the name is a genteelism of Cuntess, established for the benefit of the nursery. To the judge’s horror a lady in the audience, notably Gladys, reveals by her flushing that she understands.

MARCUS THE COUNTESS:
How inexpressibly vulgah you are deah boy. It must have taken generations of Matthews trade to produce such vulgarity.

RUPERT THE BILLY POP
insists that he be sworn in to answer such a slur on his line. He will forgo his rightful name, William Ackerley Matthews, if it please the Court, or his proud pen name W. A. Matthews, author of, etc., or his once used pseudonym, Long-Stop, author of a series of articles published in
Blackwood’s
Magazine
on Cricket in Literature from Dingley Dell onwards, with a special appendix discussing Mr Jingle’s West Indian tour, or again homely Will, Shakespeare of his mother’s eye. With the modest, tweedy, pipe-formed smile that declares his Englishman’s birthright – the ability, nay the privilege to laugh at himself, he will accept the name given by his family, however it may have originated in mockery, bitterness, unfaithfulness or almighty dollar vulgarity, he can take it, chuckling, on the chin. Rupert, the Billy Pop – so he will testify. Request accepted more to accelerate the proceedings than to satisfy any ignoble desires for martyrdom of witness-accused. Very well, what does he wish to say?

RUPERT THE BILLY POP:
Only that by trade, England is great, her coffers full.

MARCUS THE COUNTESS:
And by arms has that greatness been preserved, the dear King sent victorious.

RUPERT THE BILLY POP
(scornfully): Gentlemen and officers!

MARCUS THE COUNTESS
(equally so): Merchant princes!

RUPERT THE BILLY POP:
Legalized murderers!

MARCUS THE COUNTESS:
Authorized thieves!

RUPERT THE BILLY POP:
Scum of the earth!

MARCUS THE COUNTESS:
Moneybags!

MR JUSTICE SCALES
, ordering the two accused to cease their recriminations, urges them to remember how only by combining had the professions and the trades been able to form that great middle class which had prevailed against both aristocratic arrogance and the madness of the mob. The great middle class will be proud, he said, that
its daughters and sons, however they may have strayed into the Arts or into Bohemia, should recognize the sources of their greatness; but there should surely be no quarrel to divide them. We who have returned, he says, have no doubt of what part the City played in sending us there nor of what part the General Staff played in seeing that millions of us remain there, in some corner of a foreign field that is forever…. But united in checking further comment by their Judge,
MARCUS THE COUNTESS
(now with shoulders bare and feather duster egret in his hair) and
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
(now with velvet smoking cap and his old one inch Ramblers ‘map, source of ‘Rambles through Surrey’ and ‘Walks around Box Hill’, alas, never written) join in happy duet – I brought the breeding and you brought the dough (to the tune of
il
chittarino
le
suonero
).

‘Come to that,’ cried
REGAN THE PODGE,
somersaulting into the centre of the court (who knows, deep voiced and muscular as Gladys was, what centre court she might have walked into if it had not been for a glandular imbalance that in a pre-endocrinologically minded decade had swollen her in adolescence, that and the enforced
resignation
of Billy Pop from Queen’s Club for undischarged debts to fellow members at the time when his daughter’s tennis zeal was strongest) ‘Come to that, it was er oity-toity ways and that what got er called the Countess. It was im that called er….’ But the stout loveable old cockney clown was herself called to order. ‘I’ll accept this evidence,’ the beak said, ‘when the witness is sworn. Witness accused number three,’ he added nastylike. ‘Henrietta Pubbles Stoker,’ he said, giving her her monniker in full. But to their surprise, cook in a million, faithful old war horse, their own their only childhood friend, she elected to be sworn as
REGAN THE PODGE
(jokers that they were, both of them). ‘It was them give me the name,’ she said, ‘and I’ll stand by it. On account of they thought I killed me da,’ she explained. But the judge asked her to consider the wisdom of this admission. Apart from anything else, he said, those who had fought on the Western Front did not do so, he must tell them, to hand over the Western World to playboys; or to playgirls for that matter. There was a world waiting to be solved, he said, describing a large circle with his hand; a world waiting to be remade so that never again … but
MARCUS THE COUNTESS
could stand it no longer. ‘I refuse,’ she said, ‘to have my butter rationed again for anybody. I want fun,’ she added, ‘gaiety, laughter. I want to dance round the dock.’ And
so she did in the arms of
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
. With the old nursery tablecloth with bobbles for a skirt she danced with him round the old nursery alarm clock, in slow fox time. ‘Do you remember, Billah?’ she asked, ‘when we bunnah hugged till dawn?’ ‘Not all the old fire has died down, has it?’
RUPERT THE BILLY POP
observed, ‘we can still teach the young ’uns a thing or two, eh?’ But
MARCUS THE COUNTESS
sprang away from him. ‘Your breath smells, Billah,’ she said, ‘Oh God! You’ve let yourself go to pieces.’ ‘Come to that,’ said her ex-partner ungallantly, ‘you stink like a whore’s knocking shop.’

At this point whispered representations to the judge showed a certain public impatience with this marital bickering. ‘Your failure to keep alive any of the ideals, any of the love, any of the hopes that presumably inspired your days of courtship is your own concern. We are here….’ But
MR JUSTICE SCALES
was rudely interrupted by
MISS MARGARET MOUSE.
In acid tones she told him, ‘Ideals, love, hope,’ she cried, ‘If you’re talking of my nephew in law, the eminent writer whose ink has run dry, you’ve chosen your words most aptly. His ideal was to live on other people’s cash, his love was for himself and for no one else, his hope that the rest of the world would believe that it owed him a living.’ ‘And so it does,’ said
GRANNY SUKEY
beaming goofily, ‘so it does. Everyone always loved Will. Everyone wanted to do things for him. He was such a lovely little boy. If only he’d married little Mollie Spooner. Oh dear, I can’t help laughing when I think of that picnic on the beach – if I gives her a ring does we have to have a big bed like you and Dadda? – and he was only four years old. Dear little Will!’ ‘Dear little fiddlesticks. He caught my poor silly niece when her pretty little head was filled with some silly romantic notions about love in a garret. “We’ll be poor but happy. There’ll be bread and cheese lunches, Mouse,” she said to me. Poor little fool!’

‘Bread and cheese lunches when Will always needed something solid midday! He was lucky with her if he
got
bread and cheese. It was servants here and servants there or milady dined out. But
she
never thought she was going to be poor. I’m afraid she told you terrible lies, Miss Rickard. She certainly did to us. We understood there was to be a proper dowry.’

‘And you fell for the bait, my good woman?’

‘There’s no need for name calling. And I should choose your words
more carefully. Bait indeed, with a name like Mouse, ‘Granny Sukey blew out her cheeks and puffed and huffed and then gave a characteristic earthy chuckle.’ How we laughed when we first heard that name, “Clara’s Aunt Mouse”, Will said. “A hole in the wall sort of crowd they sound”, my dear husband answered, “but it’s your own life, my boy. You must make what you can of this business.” Those were his very words in our dear old morning-room at Roehampton.’

However often Sukey ‘did’ Granny Matthews the others never expected their conventional sister to succeed so well and her sudden inventions always brought the house down. Gladys was rolling in her seat fit to burst. Marcus jumping up and down till his shirt threatened to slip more than décolleté. Rupert tried hard to preserve a
professional’s
condescending smile, and Quentin put down in laughing despair the nursery bell he was ringing in vain to bring The Game to order. For now, Margaret, not to be outdone, stretched the skin of her face to Mouse’s thin parchment and tightened the posture of her long thin body so that it seemed to recall a hundred wary tent slumbers – a woman alone among sand and Berbers and camels.
MISS MARGARET
MOUSE
laughed the dry laugh with which she turned clubs and hotels and pensions the world over into desert. ‘A generous disposition of a young parentless gel of eighteen. It’s a pity your husband never lived to see how his son fulfilled his kind licence. A young gel of beauty, attainments and breeding reduced to a shrill drab!’