Page 7 of One Hand Clapping


  The next morning, when the Daily Window came, there was a bit about Howard in it. The Daily Window had what it called a Telly Korner, with bits of gossip about stars appearing on TV and saying a bit about the programmes you could see that night. It said, 'In Over and Over tonight sacked used car salesman Howard Shirley tackles the thousand pound question on Books.' (I could see that Howard must have been talking to somebody at the television studios about being sacked, which was a silly thing to do.) It didn't say any more than that, as though the really important thing was that Howard was sacked, and it sort of upset me and made me feel that I didn't want to go to work that day. I said this to Howard and he said:

  'Don't go to work. Come with me to London. When I've won and the show's over we can go out for dinner somewhere and we can stay the night in a hotel.' Well, that seemed reasonable to me, and I thought, well, I might not feel so sick being in the studio with the studio audience, instead of here watching on my own. So I said yes. Howard went to the telephone kiosk on the corner and rang up the Supermarket and left a message that I wouldn't be coming that day. At least, that's what he said he said when he came back from phoning. Actually, what he'd really said was that I wasn't going back any more to the Supermarket, but he didn't tell me that till afterwards. It was his usual sly way.

  Anyway, you could see that from now on was our new life, whatever happened. We were bound to be different now, whatever happened, from what we'd been before, and it felt very strange and somehow very sad. I cooked breakfast, a good sustaining one because we'd be travelling, eggs and bacon for both of us, and after breakfast I dressed myself up very carefully in my cinnamon outfit, putting on clean underclothes underneath and not just clean either, but new, ones I hadn't worn before. And Howard put on everything clean, with very clean brown shoes, and his best suit. It felt as if we were going off to get married in a registry office. I had my dyed opossum coat, and I'd made up very carefully, and I suppose we must have looked a very handsome couple as we walked to the bus. And as we walked to the bus, Howard suddenly said, 'To hell! What are we doing this for? I'll ring up for a taxi.' The bus-stop was just a bit beyond the telephone kiosk, and it was perhaps seeing the telephone kiosk that put the idea into Howard's head. Anyway, he sent me back home to wait, and then he came back, and then one of Greenfield's men arrived to take us to the station.

  Howard was certainly in a very reckless mood today, or else over-confident, because when we walked into the booking hall at London Road Station he said again, 'To hell!' and then he booked first-class for us. I'd never travelled first-class before, at least not having paid for it; like everybody else I'd got into a first-class compartment with a second-class ticket, but only for very short journeys when the ticket-collector doesn't come down the train, but I'd not even done that very often. Today the train was a bit full, with a lot of businessmen going up to London, and the compartment we got into had four very old and prosperous-looking men in it, reading The Times, but not too busy reading it to give me the old once-over. There was a sort of smell of the pantomime on Boxing Day in the compartment, porty and cigarry, and the men had mottles and blue veins all over their noses, and the veins were sticking out a mile on their hands that held their newspapers. They were old rich men going to London to see how things were on the Stock Exchange or something, or to go to a takeover bid or something like that. Howard had bought me a very snazzy magazine, Vogue, realising that the fivepenny kind of woman's magazines wouldn't do at all here, and he'd bought a Times for himself. So that was five Timeses in one compartment, no question of anybody saying, 'When you've finished with Blighty hand it over and you can have a read of my Tit-bits.' Howard was reading The Times properly, too, frowning over it, and then I had to remind myself that, after all, Howard had been to the grammar school and, even though his brain was photographic, he did know a few things and was interested in things that he never talked about with me. He was frowning over an article about Stravinsky or some such name while the train went whizzing out of the dirty town into the clean countryside and on to London.

  We had a very nice lunch in the first-class dining-car, in spite of the very strong smell of sprouts that was in it. We had gravy soup, then veal cutlets with creamed potatoes and frozen peas, then cabinet pudding. We also had a half-bottle of what was called Medoc, and when the coffee came we had some brandy, too. I was a bit sleepy afterwards, back in the compartment, and everybody had a bit of a zizz, as they call it, while the poor engine-driver had to keep awake to drive us on to London. One of the old takeover-bid men in the compartment snored really loud. I dozed off in spite of that, and when I woke up it was dark and Howard said we were just coming into Euston. It was a bit of a surprise to me when Howard also told me that we hadn't reached our journey's end yet. We'd got to go to Charing Cross and then take a train to some suburb or other outside London, because that was where this television centre was.

  When we got there eventually the television centre was a really big place, very modern, with a lot of cars and vans parked outside. The man at the big glass doors seemed to know Howard and he gave me a nice smile for myself. Then Howard, knowing his way as though he worked there, led me down corridors and at last we came to a sort of drawing-room, very deep carpets and ashtrays like big wheels of glass, and then they brought us some tea. It was very restful and everybody was very nice. Soon it was time for Howard to be taken off to be made up, and then I began to feel the old palpitations. But everybody was very nice. Very well-dressed, too.

  Chapter 8

  And when at last I met Laddie O'Neill I found him very nice too, and really charming, and he'd been chewing things to make his breath sweet. He had a very nice manner. And all the time the fatal hour was drawing nearer and nearer and I was taken to what they called the auditorium and given a seat on the front row. People were coming in, all eager to see this show, and I couldn't for the life of me see why anybody should want to travel a long way, as some of these people had done, just for this half-hour show, when they had no personal interest in it. I mean, it was all right to look at in your own home, so long as you had no personal interest in it, but to come all this way was another thing. And, really, it wasn't a very interesting show when you came to think of it. Mean while all the people were coming in and the hands of the clock crept on. There were monitor screens up on the ceiling, and we could see lights flashing all over them, and the men on the cameras were riding round and going up in the air and then down again. I could see then that there was something exciting in all that, far more exciting than the show, except, of course, for my personal etc, etc.

  Then Laddie O'Neill came to warm us up, telling a few jokes and asking us to clap in the right places, and then we waited and we could see on the monitor screens the commercials before the show, then came silence, then the letters B.A.A.D., played like music, those letters standing for British And Affiliated Distribution, whatever that means, then the title of the show, then we were all clapping while this chap played the electronic organ, and the show had begun. The woman sitting to my right kept breathing in a wheezy sort of way, and she smelt of very strong peppermints. On my left was a little girl of about nine or ten, who didn't seem to belong to anybody. The first part of the show was the usual thing, rather silly people being clapped for knowing that twice two was four and having to be helped even with that, and one old man having to be cheered because he was eighty-eight and knew nothing about anything. And then we had to have an old charwoman full of Cockney humour, as they call it, though it just seemed like downright rudeness to me. She took her teeth out for a laugh and did a Knees Up Mother Brown with poor old Laddie O'Neill who had to pretend he was enjoying it as he'd never enjoyed anything in his life before. And then it was time for the break for the commercials. Everybody in the studio audience seemed to have got word that I was Howard's wife, and people smiled at me in a kind way as though they felt sorry for me. One old woman behind prodded me in the back and said, 'You ought to be up there with him, there's been plenty of
married couples up there plenty of times.' But some man next to her, perhaps her husband, said, 'Don't talk soft, there's only room for one in them glass boxes, and she'd look a right charlie up there just standing doing nothing anyway.'

  I really wanted to be sick when the curtains opened once more, and there was a kind of back-curtain with PS1,000 written right across. The two girls, hostesses they were really called, came in with Howard, and there were loud claps and cheers, but I could do nothing except swallow the big lump that kept coming up, a new lump coming up for every one that I swallowed. Now these two girls had already been introduced to me before the show started and, really, they were both very nice and quite well-educated and what they did, smiling and wearing fish-net stockings, was only an act really, something they did for the money, because they said the acting profession was overcrowded and they found it very difficult to get good parts in plays. They were called Vicki and Maureen. Howard looked handsome as usual and very confident, and he bowed slightly with a little grin to acknowledge the applause. Then he was put in the glass box with a light on inside, and there was a big clock on the wall. He had to put on his headphones and Laddie O'Neill had his microphone ready and Laddie said, 'Can you hear me all right, Howard?' Howard said he could. Then Vicki brought the thousand-pound questions in an envelope. It was a very tense moment as Laddie broke the envelope open, and as he just glanced over the paper he took out you could see from his face that he knew the questions were very difficult. Then came the usual rigmarole about the time to be given for answering questions, and the first answer was to be taken as the answer Howard meant, no second shots, and think very carefully before answering. So Laddie read out the three questions in one bunch and asked Howard if he understood the questions, which Howard said he did. But to me, of course, and to everybody else in the audience the questions just meant nothing. So then Laddie began to ask each question separately and the clock started ticking away and Howard answered the questions carefully and very clearly. You might feel like asking now how it is that I know these questions and the answers to them as well, do I just remember them or something, but the fact is that there was a copy of all the questions given to Howard as a sort of souvenir, and I've kept this copy. Poor, poor Howard. Question No. 1 was this:

  'Mediaeval literature. Who were the authors of the following? Confessio Amantis; The Testament of Cresseid; The Vision of Tiers Plowman.' And Howard answered:

  'John Gower; Robert Henryson; William Langland.'

  That was right, of course, and there was very big applause, but it just struck me for an instant, and it was almost as if it was Howard himself thinking and not me, that it was cheap and dirty to applaud something that nobody had any idea of, that nobody cared a bit about these three men, whoever they were, and that the three men, who I all saw with beards and very old-fashioned clothes and dirty with not having bathed, were all dead and dignified and quiet and sort of despising everybody here in this studio. And I'd never read them or even heard of them and I felt sorry and mean somehow, and I got a picture in my mind of Mr Slessor our English master, so-called, with his crazy, man and his way out, and I felt sick and angry. And all this was in about one second. Question No. 2 was this:

  'Elizabethan drama. Who wrote The Shoemaker's Holiday, Bartholomew Fair and A New Way to Pay Old Debts?' And Howard said:

  'Thomas Dekker; Ben Jonson; Philip Massinger.' And he was right again, and under the loud applause I could sort of see another three men with beards, silent and dignified, and they all wore little gold ear-rings and big ruffs round their necks. And now we would really know whether Howard would make it or not, because everything depended on this last question, and if Howard got even one little bit of one part of it wrong, then it was good-bye to the money and welcome a lot of sneers and nastiness back in Bradcaster. Question No. 3 was this:

  'The modern novel. Who were the authors of the following? The Ambassadors; Where Angels Fear to Tread; The Good Soldier.' And Howard said:

  'Henry James; Edward Morgan Forster; Ford Madox Hueffer.' Then there was deathly silence, because Laddie didn't say, as he'd always said so far, 'And you're right.' Instead he sort of puzzled over his bit of paper and seemed to tremble a bit. He said, 'I'm terribly sorry, Howard, I'm really dreadfully sorry, because it's such a tiny mistake you've made--' The audience went 'Awwwww,' very loud. 'Such a tiny mistake,' said Laddie, louder. 'What I've got written down here is not Ford Madox Hueffer but Ford Madox Ford.'

  'All right,' said Howard, 'Ford Madox Ford.'

  'I'm really dreadfully sorry, Howard, but you've got no second chance. Your first answer is the answer you mean, I made that clear now, didn't I?' And you could see poor Laddie was about near tears, and I was ready to collapse into the floor, but I still had this confidence in Howard, Howard must be right and the paper must be wrong. Howard said:

  'That's all right. He called himself Ford Madox Hueffer and then he changed his name to Ford Madox Ford. It's one and the same man, you see. You check that with anyone.' Then there was kind of chaos. You got the idea that people were wildly ringing people up on the phone, and that other people were wildly going through big books somewhere at the back of the studio, and meanwhile the organist, who I also met and I thought was not a very nice sort of a man, was playing sort of spooky music on his electric organ to fill up the time. There was real pandemonium too in the audience, and arguments were going on, and people kept patting me on the back and saying, 'There, there, girl.' But very soon there was Laddie receiving a bit of paper from Vicki, and he read it and then he looked overjoyed and then he cried out, very loud indeed, 'He's right, he's perfectly right! He's absolutely right, everybody!' Then he was dragging Howard out of the box and pumping his hand, and the two girls were kissing him, but I didn't mind, then before I knew where I was I was being pushed up on to the stage and facing the cameras and kissing Howard myself and seeing the cheque for one thousand pounds with my own eyes, and there were loud cheers and then the show was over. Howard said, hugging me, 'This is nothing, darling, nothing at all. This is just the beginning.' And then we were whirled off backstage for a drink.

  Chapter 9

  We got a train back to real London, and outside the station Howard called a taxi and we were taken to one of the really big hotels, right in the middle of London. It seemed like the world was at our feet, riding through the busy town with all lights around us, the taxi having to stop very often and get caught in traffic jams, though, but I didn't mind, I was in no hurry for anything, holding Howard's hand in the taxi as if it was our courting days all over again. London somehow seemed to have a special smell of its own, different from the smell of Bradcaster, a sort of smell of bigness, but it wasn't too big for either of us that night. We got to the hotel, which was a big giant of a place, with all lights inside it and people coming and going and the swing-doors never stopping swinging, and the commissionaire came to open the taxi door for us, and there was Howard giving out silver left and right. Then I remembered that we'd not brought any luggage with us. That was daft, and I couldn't help laughing a bit, though I also felt a bit ashamed. We'd left the house that morning, all dressed up, and we just hadn't thought of packing even a toothbrush. I suppose that was because of feeling free as the air, me anyway, having given up my job at the Supermarket, and even a toothbrush is something that makes you feel tied down. Howard had to laugh, too, because he hadn't thought either, and now we wondered what to do, all the shops being closed. We couldn't just go in and book a room for the night and not have any luggage, though at one point Howard said why not? The commissionaire was a very nice big man with a lot of medals and he became very interested in what Howard and I were talking and laughing about. He was a fatherly sort of a man. He said if we were in that position it did make it a bit awkward, people at the reception desk always fearing the worst and this was a respectable hotel. Then Howard explained who he was and the commissionaire said, 'I thought your face looked a bit familiar, sir. Last Thursday I was off ill, nothing serious, a
bit of malaria I'd picked up in the first war, and I saw this programme on the telly, and, as I say, I can see now that you're the same gentleman. Well, sir, fancy that, winning a thousand nicker.' Both Howard and I had to smile at that word, it being a London word. 'Well, sir,' the commissionaire went on, 'the best thing is for you to tell the people at the desk who you are and how you didn't intend to stay the night and now that you've won you want to celebrate a bit and they won't think there's anything strange about it at all.' Howard said thank you and gave the commissionaire ten bob, and then we went in and over the deep burgundy-coloured carpet, with lights flashing all over the walls and the place full of very rich Jews and their wives, very well-dressed and talking with their hands a lot, and, smiling and laying on the charm, Howard explained to the smart young lady at the desk what the position was. She was a bit cold and polite, saying, 'Oh, yaas?' and 'Rahlly?' but the girl who was with her behind the desk, a very jolly-looking girl, said she knew who Howard was and wasn't it marvellous, and then everything was all right. As Howard said to me over and over later on, it wasn't a question of doing anything wrong coming to a posh hotel without luggage, it was a question of not doing anything cheap. It would have been all right just to pay in advance, as you usually have to if you bring no luggage, for some reason, but Howard didn't like anybody to get the wrong idea, and I agreed with him there.

  Anyway, we went up to our room, and it was a very nice room, though little, with an electric fire, a radio, a dressing-table with strip-lighting, and even a place for plugging in an electric razor. When we'd freshened ourselves up a bit we realised how hungry we were, all the excitement and everything else making us forget it rather, and Howard said we wouldn't eat in the hotel but would take a taxi to some big restaurant and have a really good slap-up meal with champagne as well. So we went downstairs and the commissionaire was only too ready to call us a taxi and off we went to this big restaurant whose name I've forgotten. It was pretty full but we got bowed to a table and I had to hold back a fit of giggles for some reason, and when he was ordering some wine Howard gave me another of his surprises, but of course it was only his poor old photographic brain really. When the wine waiter came Howard said we'd have a bottle of champagne, I forget the name of it, a French name, but Howard had done French at the grammar school, and he said we'd have either 1953 or 1955, but no other year, whatever all that meant, though Howard explained to me later on that those were vintage years and some were good and some were bad but those two years were very good. I said I wouldn't know the difference, but he said that wasn't the point, he was determined to get the best this world could offer of everything for me, and for himself, in the short time that was left. I didn't get that about the short time that was left, but I thought that he must be referring to the H-Bomb or something or the Polaris missile or whatever it was he was always worrying about. Anyway, this champagne came along and Howard looked at the bottle and sure enough on the label it said 1957. 'That,' said Howard to the wine-waiter, 'is not what I asked for. What I asked for was either 1953 or 1955. If you haven't got either of those then I'm willing to take a 1952, but I'm not having this 1957, because 1957 was a lousy vintage year for champagne, and I'm just not having it, so there.' The wine-waiter sort of sneered and said: