No Laughing Matter Read Online Free Page A

Mum.’
    â€˜Good. Take Master Marcus’ hand, will you?’
    The square, red-faced woman did as she was asked. Her blue skirt and coat were neat, but her greying carroty hair crept erratically around the brim of her cherry-decorated hat. ‘Will you make one of yer drawings of them orses, Master Marcus?’ she asked him with grave interest, and very gravely he answered, ‘Yes, I think I shall, Stoker.’
    â€˜Our only Pole Star is the Big Wheel,’ Mr Matthews announced. ‘I don’t want a Pole Star, Billy darling. I want tea.’
    â€˜It’s quite difficult to see ahead with this crowd,’ her mother- in-law observed. ‘The world and his wife are here.’
    â€˜This way then,’ Mr Matthews pointed with his stick to where the Big Wheel sparkled and flashed high up against the sky’s clear blue. The twins and Rupert began to sing once more as the party moved on.
    â€˜Oh! No! Not again, children,’ said their mother. ‘We may recognize the world and his wife but we don’t want to attract their attention.’ But she stopped their singing lovingly.
    â€˜I’m afraid we’re bound to, Clara dear. It’s Mr Polly. They always stare at him.’ Miss Rickard scratched the parrot’s feathered head. Mr and Mrs Matthews smiled to one another.
    Quentin said, ‘I should have thought that the horses had been trained, Father.’ He stopped, blushing.
    â€˜Of course they were trained. What a rotten silly thing to say.’ His younger brother Rupert mocked him.
    â€˜I meant cruelty.’
    â€˜The horses! The darling lovely horses,’ Sukey cried.
    But her twin sister Margaret said, ‘It was all beautiful. It all went together. You can’t just say the horses.’
    â€˜I only liked the horses,’ Sukey insisted.
    â€˜I wish I’d been the man who straddled the two white horses with his arms spread out. Crippen! Didn’t everyone cheer.’
    â€˜Oh, Rupert dear, please don’t use that expression. To keep on reminding us of that dreadful little man.’
    â€˜I liked the tall cowboy with the black hair. He looked so strong.’
    â€˜Gladys is being soppy,’ Rupert told them.
    â€˜Not at all. I’m only glad to see Podge has such a good eye.’ Mrs Matthews patted her daughter’s plump rosy cheek. ‘They were handsome, darling. You’re quite right. And their great chests! How the perspiration ran down them, poor things.’
    Her mother-in-law coughed.
    â€˜So the dust is troubling you now, Grannie. Never mind. Here’s relief. The Geisha Tea Gardens. Look, children, at the waitresses all dressed in kimonos.’
    â€˜I hope,’ said Miss Rickards, ‘that we shan’t be made to kneel. I haven’t done that since I was in Japan twenty years ago. My bones would creak nowadays. No, I’m too old for kneeling.’
    â€˜Except in church,’ Mrs Matthews senior amended.
    â€˜We don’t kneel at the Circle,’ Miss Rickards told her.
    Once again Mr and Mrs Matthews were united in smiling complicity , and on this occasion they even extended the conspiracy to include Gladys and Quentin, their two eldest. Later when the children had finished three stone bottles of pop between them, Rupert and Quentin became restless, despite all the waitresses dressed up as geishas and even little Marcus showed a sort of lordly boredom. ‘Such ugly colours,’ he said. But the twins were riveted to the gaily coloured kimonos until Margaret cried, ‘They’re just dressed up in dressing gowns, aren’t they, Mother?’ and Sukey amplified, ‘Servants dressed up,’ then seeing Stoker busy with a bath bun, she blushed. But the spell was broken and now the girls’ restiveness was added to the boys’.
    â€˜Now just sit still, darlings, and your great aunt will tell you all about the real cowboys.’
    â€˜Yes, give us Texas,