'The money I'm going to get is not to be spent on anything of a permanent nature. If I won ten million pounds on one of these quiz shows it would all have to go on things that are to be, in a manner of speaking, burnt up. That is to say, expendable. Clothes for you, of course, because you've got to wear something proportionable to the expending that you'll be doing. The time for buying things of a permanent kind is all finished, you mark my words. Money is to be burnt up on living and not to be saved at all or converted into ornaments or furnishings or things of that nature.'
Well, I could see his point, but Howard had always been house-proud, and I should have thought he'd have wanted to buy, say, a new dining-room suite or a Hi-fi or really good curtains for the front room. But he never said now, 'When I win the money we'll have something better on the wall than those pot ducks.' He was changing inside in a queer sort of way, was Howard, but I trusted him.
And so the time came for Howard's big chance, and he was just as confident the night before as he had been all the way along. The night before he asked me to test him on Shakespeare's plays, who were the characters in them and when they were written and so on, and so I had this book and I asked him the questions out of it. He answered every one absolutely right without turning a hair. Then he came out with one of his queer outbursts. He said, 'Aaaaah, it must have been a damned sight better to live in those days than in these. I mean, they were all red-blooded men and women in those days, drinking down their ale by the gallon - and it was strong ale then, I can tell you - and jogging along on horseback instead of smoking a fag at the wheel of a car, and not reading a lot of lies and tripe put out by the Daily Window and gawping at the telly every evening. And no Polaris missiles and all that. Just clean honest healthy living with barrels of sack and canary, and kids looking up to their parents and not treating them like dirt and calling them squares from Cubeville. And when there was war everybody was in it fighting properly with swords and drawing blood and chopping off heads in a decent clean sort of way, not smashing people who've done no harm to anyone with hydrogen bombs and the like. And when they sang songs they were decent good songs with sensible words, not the bloody tripe you get now with a million records sold to the teenagers. All right,' he said, though I hadn't said a word, 'you can say it was unhygienic and they were deprived of the bloody blessings of wrapped bread and slices of bacon you can see through all done up in polythene, and they had no washing-machines and central heating, but it was still a better life than this one we're living now.'
'How do you know that?' I said. 'You never lived then, so how do you know?'
'I know,' he shouted. 'I just know, that's all.' He was in one of those moods when it was no good arguing with him. We'd not done any Shakespeare at the secondary mod, because the teachers said we wouldn't like it and we'd get bored. They never gave us a chance to see whether we'd get bored or not. But I'd seen pictures of those days, with their ruffs and long hair and beards and whatnot, so that the men like Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake looked like sort of beatniks dressed up for a fancy-dress party. And men wearing earrings, too. I got a sort of feeling of darkness and cruelty and very bad smells. And here was Howard crying it up, as though he was trying to sell it. Like one of his used cars.
Well, the time had come for Howard to go off to London. He had the day off, of course, perhaps his boss thinking that for Howard to be on the TV would boost his trade for him, so he made no trouble about giving him the day off. You can be sure that I'd spread the news all round the Supermarket a long time before, and the people in Shining Shoe Lane were already very sick about it, some of them. We wondered whether perhaps I ought to go up to London with Howard and appear on the programme, just standing next to him, sort of competing with the glamorous girls who fetched and carried the questions, but we decided it would be better for me to stay at home and watch. It would make it seem somehow more real that way.
Chapter 5
'And now,' cried the American or Irishman with the pointy sort of a face, 'a big hand for our next competitor.' And he led the clapping and an electric organ played a sort of march and there, led on by a brunette in a low-cut costume, fishnet stockings right up to her bottom as though she was a dancer, him very grim and her smiling enough to make her teeth drop out, there he was, my Howard in his best suit, marching on.
I'd been so nervous all that evening waiting for it to come on that I'd been really sick, that is to say I'd actually been sick after my tea, everything coming up clean as a whistle. But after a bit of a rest I felt better, so I went upstairs and made up very carefully and put on my black evening dress which was backless and came downstairs and sat with my back to the fire for a bit. Then, a good hour before Over and Over (it was called that, by the way, because you were supposed to go on making money over and over again, or something like that) I had the TV switched on. My heart was a bit in my mouth. Supposing something went wrong, like the tube suddenly going just as the show started. Supposing there was an electricity cut. Supposing the electricity fused, and I was hopeless at putting things like that right, that being Howard's job. I felt a bit cross because Howard wasn't there, but then I saw that was silly. Anyway, as you can tell, everything went all right. I was most proud of all when they showed the News, with Harold Macmillan and President Kennedy and so on, and the Shah of Persia and Adam Faith, knowing that now Howard had sort of joined their number, being on TV.
Well, Howard was second on, the first competitor being a chinny old woman who was very proud of being eighty-nine or some such age and insisted on doing a dance and showing her bloomers. Of course, the quiz-master went along with her and asked her easy questions about cookery, and helped her to get the right answers, then he put his arms round her and kissed her and everybody cheered. So it was going to be a bit difficult for Howard, Howard being a serious type and not likely to want to dance or grin like an ape or make silly jokes. Anyway, I remember every word that was spoken that night. First the quiz-master said, 'What's your name, sir?' and Howard told him, then the quiz-master said, 'A little louder, please,' so Howard firmly boomed it out so that the ornaments on the mantelpiece shook. 'And are you married, sir?' Howard said he was. 'And your job, sir?' Howard said he sold used cars and for some reason that got a very big round of applause. To this day I wonder why. 'And what are your hobbies?' asked the quiz-master. Howard said, very seriously, 'I've only one hobby, and that is my wife.' And that brought the house down practically. The quiz-master was clapping away and leading the cheering, and I felt silly but proud. I hoped very much Myrtle was watching. I knew, of course, that she was bound to be watching, just as Mum and Pop would be, and all the neighbourhood for that matter, but Myrtle would probably say she forgot to see it, or she and Michael had a prior engagement or something. What I wanted was for Myrtle to admit she'd been watching and not to pretend otherwise. And I wanted her to hear that about me being Howard's only hobby. Then the quiz-master said, 'And what do you want to be asked questions about, Howard?' He'd dropped the 'sir' now and was being all matey. Howard said, 'Books.' The quiz-master called the girl with the fishnet stockings and the big smile as though the show was her show, and he asked her to bring the questions about Books. So then it started and my heart thumped so I could almost taste it.
'First question for one pound,' said the quiz-master. I suppose it would sound more matey, seeing that he decided to be all matey, to call him by his name, which was Laddie O'Neill, really a dog's name. Anyway, Laddie said, 'Which would be better for breakfast, Shakespeare or Bacon?'
'That's a bloody silly question.'
The audience didn't know what to make of that, and I blushed because that was typical of Howard, but the quiz-master, that is to say Laddie, just laughed it off and said, 'It's meant to be a silly question, because the first question always is.' Then Howard turned on a big smile and said:
'All right, Bacon, but I'd like something Shelley with it.' Nobody in the audience saw that, but Laddie yelled his head off and said, 'Very good, very
good indeed, meaning, of course, that an egg is shelly. Excellent. And now, for two pounds, question number two. What three sisters wrote books under the name of Bell?' Howard said:
'The Bronte sisters. That is to say, Charlotte Bronte, 1816 to 1855, Emily Bronte, 1818 to 1848, and Anne Bronte, 1820 to 1849. They called themselves, respectively that is, Currer Bell and Ellis Bell and Acton Bell.'
Everybody was a bit stunned by this, you could tell that, and poor old Laddie O'Neill's jaw just dropped as if he'd suddenly died standing up. 'Oh,' he said, 'right. But I haven't got all that written down here.'
'All that's correct,' said Howard. 'You can take it from me.' And he looked very burly and sure of himself.
'Question number three,' said Laddie, 'for four pounds.' And he began to read the question like a little child, stumbling a bit over the words. You could see he didn't know much about it. But he was a nice helpful sort of a man, and you couldn't help liking him. I only wished Howard would be a bit more nice and not be so serious and stern. Then, while he was waiting for the question, Howard suddenly winked at me, and, like a fool, I winked back. 'For four pounds,' said Laddie. 'This is in three parts and you've got to get them all right. Name the authors of the following three seventeenth-century books. Hesperides. Religio Medici. Tetrachordon.' I can't show you how he pronounced these names, but he stuttered at them and stumbled over them and tried to make a bit of a joke of them with the audience. But Howard put him right on the way to pronounce them, and said: 'Hesperides was the secular poems of Robert Herrick, 1591 to 1674. Religio Medici or A Doctor's Religion was by Sir Thomas Browne, 1605 to 1682. Tetrachordon was a book on divorce written by John Milton.' He smiled in a thin-lipped way, then he said, 'Sorry. 1608 to 1674.'
Now, you could see the audience wasn't too sure how to take all this, Howard knowing so much and coming out with it too pat. What an audience likes is for you to get something wrong and have to be helped, or to be a bit slow in answering, but there Howard was, full of it all and giving information he wasn't called on to give, so that it looked as if he was showing off. I wanted to shout to him about that, but of course there was nothing I could do but tear my handkerchief to bits in my teeth and groan a bit. Then Laddie O'Neill said, 'You honestly needn't tell us all these dates, you know, Howard.' He put his arm round Howard. You could see he was really a very nice man. 'We admire your knowledge and so on, Howard, but just give us the answer and no more. Okay?' Howard smiled at that and then the audience decided to be very nice to Howard and they clapped and cheered. An audience is a very funny thing, really. 'Right,' said Laddie. 'For eight pounds.' And he cleared his throat. 'You're to give me the names of the authors of the following lines of poetry. Ready?' And he read them out in a very stiff sort of voice.
'Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.'
'That's William Congreve,' said Howard. 'From his play The Mourning Bride.'
'An honest man's the noblest work of God.'
'Alexander Pope,' said Howard. 'His Essay on Man.'
This was getting monotonous. 'The paths of glory lead but to the grave,' said Laddie.
'Thomas Gray. Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' And then Laddie O'Neill gave Howard a bit of shock. He said:
'I fried an egg upon the sidewalk hot.'
Howard's face dropped a mile. 'Pardon?' he said. And my heart dropped, too. Howard didn't know it. Laddie repeated the line. Howard nearly cried. He didn't know, he didn't know. He said:
'I don't know.'
'Quite right,' said Laddie. 'How can you be expected to know when I've only just made it up? 'And then everybody collapsed with mirth and relief and whatnot. For there were only three parts to the question and Howard had got them all right, but Laddie was just having a bit of a game with him. And it wasn't a bad idea, really, because Howard wasn't so cocky now as he had been. My poor clever Howard. But it wasn't cleverness, as he always said. It was his poor photographic brain.
'Right,' said Laddie. 'The next one's for sixteen pounds. Here it is. And a mouthful it is, too. What were the two big eighteenth-century literary hoaxes, and who were the people responsible for them?'
'Chatterton was responsible for the Rowley poems,' said Howard, in a humble sort of way now, 'and Macpherson was the real author of Ossian.'
'Correct,' yelled Laddie, and the audience cheered. Everybody was on very good terms now. 'And for thirty-two pounds,' said Laddie, and you could see he had his eye on the clock, 'give me the names of the dead people in whose memory the following poems were written.' Then he rattled off the names. 'In Memoriam. Lycidas. Adonais. Thyrsis.' And Howard rattled off his answers just as fast:
'Hallam. Edward King. Keats. A. H. Clough.'
And the house was brought down again and things were thrown in the air and Howard was given his thirty-two pounds in notes by the fishnet girl who put her arm round him. 'Back in a few minutes,' yelled Laddie O'Neill, and then the commercials came on. The way they did this programme was to do a few more people in the second half and then bring back whoever had won thirty-two pounds, and they could keep that, nothing could take that away from them, and if this person wanted to qualify for what they called The Big Money then he or she had to answer one hard question. If they got the right answer to this, then the person, he or she, they, would come back the next week and try and get up to five hundred pounds. Then the week after that would be for one thousand pounds, and that's what Howard looked like getting if everything went all right. I was suddenly very hungry as soon as they brought on the commercials, what with advertising tinned Steak and Kidney Pudding and then tinned Risotto and whatnot. So I made myself a very quick sandwich of a wedge of corned beef left over from the morning when I'd made Howard sandwiches to take with him on the train, two big chunks of bread and this corned beef in between, with mustard on. I must have looked a bit queer, sitting there in my glamour, all alone in the house, with this whacking great big sandwich, but there was nobody to see me except the people in the commercials. Then the second part of Over and Over came on and there were two or three very dull people who all went off with either four pounds or eight, I wasn't very interested, and then it was Howard once more. When he came on he got a big loud burst of applause and I felt very proud. They made him climb on to a sort of pedestal with spotlights on it and a fishnet-stocking girl on either side to help him down, I supposed, both of them showing every tooth they'd got, and a lot more besides. Then they made a very big thing of bringing the envelope with the special question in it, the idea being, as I said, that if he got this right then he could go on next week to sixty-four, then a hundred and twenty-five, then two hundred and fifty, then five hundred pounds. So my heart was in my mouth, all mixed up with corned-beef sandwich, as they played sort of eerie music on the electric organ and Laddie O'Neill opened the envelope up, Laddie looking to me now like a real old friend. Laddie said:
'Here is the question which, if you get it right, qualifies you for The Big Money next week. Are you ready?' Yes, we were all ready. Howard was up there in the spotlights like a statue wearing a best suit, still as anything, but you could see he was a bit nervous. That was because they made such a solemn sort of occasion of it all. 'Right,' said Laddie. 'Here it is. Listen carefully.' And he read the question in a very solemn way, as if this was all happening in church. He said, 'You are asked to give two examples of tet - tet - tet--'
'Tetralogies?' said Howard.
'Tetralogies. Thank you. My false teeth aren't fitting very well tonight,' Laddie said, winking at the audience. Then, very serious again, he said: 'Two examples of tetralogies from the work of modern novelists. Thirty seconds to answer, starting now.' So Howard said, right away and very clear:
'Well, there's the Alexandria Quartet, as it's called, by Lawrence Durrell, and there's the Tietjens tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford.'
And of course he was right. But naturally he had to muck it all up by showing off and saying, 'In modern poetry, of course, there's T. S. Eliot with his Four Quartets, but you did say the
novel, didn't you?' But he said this while the clapping was going on. What the silly fool didn't realise was that they'd make it really hard for him from now on. From now on he'd get the toughest questions all the professors at universities and so on could drag out of their beards. He'd really done for himself, had Howard, what with his contempt for everybody showing itself like that in his showing off. But the programme ended with Howard being helped down off his pedestal by these two glamorous grinning girls with their fishnet stockings up to their bottoms, and people cheering and Laddie clapping away with his mouth open and the electric organ playing something sort of very triumphant, almost like the second wedding march. And I was very proud.
Chapter 6