Free No Laughing Matter by Angus Wilson Page B

Wendy’ applied to a great gawk like you! If you can’t laugh, take Billy’s breakfast down to him in his study. I’d only just got to sleep after all the noise you children made upstairs last night. Toing and froing! Did Regan put senna pods in your pudding? I’ve never heard such a noise.’
    Margaret made no answer and suddenly her mother shouted at her.
    ‘No one’s to pull that chain at night. No one. Do you understand? No one!’
    Margaret’s attention was so intent upon her mother’s expression that she showed no reaction. The Countess returned to her usual drawling ennui. ‘Oh, really, Margaret! If you can’t laugh at that ! “The Forbidden Chain”! Why the whole ideas’s too delicious. Sanitary inspectors descending upon us. “Mother’s inhuman order”headlined in the West London Gazette. Heavens knows what absurdity ! But perhaps with such constipated children as I have…. Yes, you are constipated, mentally and physically, all of you … Oh, go away, Margaret. I’m tired and I can’t bear you so early in the morning. And tell all of them I require absolute silence. I mean it. Not a sound until eleven. You can call me then. And now give me one of my cachets fêvres for my head. Oh, and Wendy you really must learn to consider others a little. I’ve told you again and again to use lavender water when you’ve got the curse on. Poor Sir James! Poor Peter Pan! Wendy indeed!’
    As Margaret handed her the tablets, the Countess sank back on her pillows, mopping the tears from her eyes with a little lace-edged handkerchief. Then she put one long elegant hand to her head to ease the pain that so much laughter had caused her. Her voice followed Margaret out of the room.
    ‘Now don’t go being hurt. And, Margaret, silence means your father and Regan as well, please.’
    Making her way downstairs to her father’s study, Margaret fixed accurately the little stream of frothy spittle that had run from the side of the Countess’ mouth. Later she would make a phrase about it, connecting it perhaps with snakes and venom, and write the phrase down in her notebook. Yet with venomous spittle alone she would satisfy, she knew, only today’s resentment; to give full shape to the Countess …
    The smell of stale tobacco smoke halted Margaret for a second when she opened Billy Pop’s study door. Through the blue grey haze she could see him like some soft toned impressionist sketch by Whistler – a symphony in grey: grey, curly hair, neat grey moustache, grey tweeds, grey foulard bow tie, dove-grey cloth waistcoat and dove-grey cloth spats. And to bring the picture together, of course, two dancing, gay points of colour – the amber stem of his curved pipe, the rosy pink of his peach-soft cheeks. ‘Mr Carmichael thought of himself as a symphony, his children knew him to be a nocturne.’ Phrase-happy, Margaret was sucked into his soft grey cloud-kingdom and let herself be kissed on the lips.
    ‘I’ll have two fried eggs and bacon, Mag. Marcus’s and Sukey’s – shall we call the two eggs? And your sister Gladys’s butter ration if my own has been used. It’s hard to believe that a child of mine can fail to distinguish butter from margarine, but so Gladys says, and shemust pay for her Philistine boast. Golly, early work makes me hungry.’
    Margaret, determined to remove the twinkle from his eyes, looked fixedly at the mass of cut-out Bairnsfather Old Bills and Daily Mail Teddy Tails on his desk, but when he saw her expression he only twinkled the more.
    ‘Don’t be censorious, Mag. In any case I’m not as idle as you think. Memoir writing’s an oblique art, this is my hobby and the roots of art and play lie very close together. And then again trifles – the humour of an eye – like these stir the memory.’
    She could not help saying, ‘Oh! the memoirs!’ He spoke through her exclamation and so did not seem to hear it.
    ‘Besides, cuttings like these will be of great interest to my grandchildren if