Alan Bennett: Plays, Volume 1 Read online

  CHILD’S VOICE: Dad. Dad. Dad.

  (She shouts up the stairs.)

  POLLY: No, it isn’t George. It’s the television.

  CHILD’S VOICE: Will you come up and see me?

  POLLY: No, I can’t. Not now. Read your reading book. This is George, my husband. This is Geoff … I never asked your other name.

  GEOFF: Price.

  POLLY: Price. By rights it’s an old-fashioned inhaler. I can’t think what to do with it.

  GEOFF: Flowers?

  POLLY: Flowers, I suppose, but I always think that’s a bit of a defeat. James has been using it as a rocket launcher. I suppose it will come in somewhere. Sit down, Geoff.

  GEOFF: Can’t I help?

  POLLY: I’ll see to it. How were the dark satanic mills?

  GEORGE: Rather nice today. I saw Nelly and Sam who send their regards. The Town Hall do was bloody. I said my piece for Granada. And I saw a falcon on the motorway. (To GEOFF.) Sit down, sit down, for goodness’ sake.

  POLLY: Are you wanting anything to eat? We had ours with the children.

  GEORGE: No. I ate on the motorway. At the ‘Grid n’Griddle’. I had ham n’eggs. And now I’ve got ’ndigestion. Oh, and I ran into McMasters.

  POLLY: In Manchester? Which cup would you like?

  GEOFF: I’m easy. Any.

  POLLY: Would you like A View of Lowestoft, a Masonic mug from Salford, or The Revd E. S. Clough, Twenty-Five Years at Scotney Road Chapel, Pudsey?

  GEOFF: Yes, that one.

  GEORGE: There’s not much to choose except that one’s chipped, one’s cracked and the other you can’t get your finger through the handle.

  POLLY: Scones. They’re home-made.

  GEOFF: If I lived here I should get fat.

  GEORGE: He said I could go back to Oxford any time I wanted.

  POLLY: That’s nice to know, anyway. Lovely and thin, George used to be, just like you.

  GEORGE: I don’t think I was ever quite as thin as that.

  POLLY: I wouldn’t care about you getting fatter if you were getting jollier. People are thinner now, aren’t they. Young people. Younger people, I mean. It’s the right foods.

  GEORGE: We never had any oranges during the war. You won’t remember the war, of course.

  GEOFF: No.

  GEORGE: People don’t seem to, nowadays. I don’t suppose you were even born when it ended.

  GEOFF: No. Not by a long way.

  POLLY: It’s funny. One meets more and more people who weren’t. There didn’t used to be any, and now one meets them all the time.

  GEORGE: I remember the end of the war. In fact I remember the actual war.

  GEOFF: That must be great.

  GEORGE: Yes, it is.

  (Pause.)

  GEOFF: Did you fight at all?

  GEORGE: No. I wasn’t old enough.

  GEOFF: It must be awful to have, you know, your earliest memories … you know, sort of seared by it.

  GEORGE: Yes. I was evacuated to Harrogate … and that was a bit … searing. Were you … seared at all, Polly? (POLLY pointedly ignores him.) More tea, Geoff?

  GEOFF: It’s the German side of it that interests me.

  GEORGE: We weren’t so much interested in the Germans as bitterly opposed to them.

  GEOFF: I collect one or two things… badges, things like that.

  POLLY: Really? I’ll keep my eyes open. I often see odd bits of things when I’m on my travels. I’m not sure we don’t have a bit of shrapnel upstairs. A buzz bomb fell near us at Stanmore. Would you be interested in that? (A horn sounds outside.)

  GEOFF: That would be marvellous.

  POLLY: It’s just a jagged bit of metal really, but it would be nice if someone had it who really appreciated it… for what it is. I’ve never been able to find a use for it.

  (A horn sounds again, more angrily.)

  GEORGE: All right, all right. I’m double parked. You can’t even park outside your own house.

  (He goes out by the street door,)

  POLLY: George is an MP.

  GEOFF: What sort?

  POLLY: Guess.

  GEOFF: Cons…

  POLLY: No.

  GEOFF: Sorry.

  POLLY: I’m not offended.

  GEOFF: It’s just that … he has … a look about him …

  POLLY: That’s not party, that’s politics. He’s been up in his constituency holding a surgery. Where people come and tell him their troubles.

  (GEORGE returns.)

  GEOFF: What sort of thing? Troubles?

  GEORGE: He’d got miles of room.

  POLLY: All sorts.

  GEORGE: The council’s demolishing their houses, the Ministry’s withholding their pensions, benefits, compensation, ejection. The load of bitterness and despair people hump about with them you’d be amazed.

  POLLY: It’s a very poor constituency. He was lucky to get it … I mean …

  GEORGE: Not really. Poor. At least not many. It’s the ones who’ve gone to the wall. I had a woman in today who believes that her husband, an unemployed fitter, is having an affair with the Queen. And that the Household Cavalry had her under constant watch.

  POLLY: Why the Household Cavalry?

  GEORGE: Why the Queen?

  POLLY: Poor soul. What did you say?

  GEORGE: We agreed that the best thing for me to do was to ask the Duke of Edinburgh to have a quiet word with Her Majesty and when she’d gone I had a quiet word with the Mental Health Officer. Poor bugger. Then there was an enormous. West Indian woman who said the people next door kept poisoning her cat and the police wouldn’t listen to her. I didn’t do anything about that at all.

  POLLY: There ought to be some way of stopping them wasting your time.

  GEORGE: That’s why they land up with me, because nobody else has been prepared to waste their time. They just get passed on. They can’t get into the army, they can’t get out of the army, the wife’s gone off with the kids, the kids have gone into a home, a policeman’s hit them over the head. Then some people come just because it’s free and they want to talk to somebody and they know it’s their right. I’m quite sure there are seventy-year-old ladies who line up at the ante-natal clinic because they’d feel cheated if they didn’t. (GEOFF is a good listener and laughs at all GEORGE’s more obvious jokes.)

  The words Member of Parliament still have prestige though, extraordinary. One phone call and officials are scuttling about all over the place.

  GEOFF: That’s great.

  GEORGE: There are still people who stink, did you know that?

  They sit there on the other side of the table in Sam’s airless little office and they stink of muck and squalor and filth and despair. They’re just clinging on to the bare face of life. Sorry. Shop.

  POLLY: I’m just trying to think what else there is to do. Is electricity in your line, because there’s the landing light. I ought to have asked Captain Oates to do it.

  GEOFF: Who?

  POLLY: Captain Oates. We call him, anyway. He was an electrician who came to do the bathroom. One day he went off saying, ‘I’m just going out. I may be quite a time.’ And he never came back. So George christened him Captain Oates.

  (GEOFF is perplexed and silent.)

  Sorry. Captain Oates was someone who went with Captain Scott.

  (GEOFF smiles, but is still uncomprehending.)

  The first man to…

  GEORGE: The first Englishman–

  POLLY: The first Englishman to get to the North–

  GEORGE: South.

  POLLY: South Pole. This Captain Oates was with him. He had a bad leg or something, and was holding them up so one night he went out of the tent saying, ‘I’m just going outside. I may be some time.’ When really they all knew he wasn’t going to come back.

  GEOFF: Oh.

  (He tries to force a laugh.)

  GEORGE: Though it’s my belief he may have been going for a particularly long slash.

  POLLY: Anyway, that’s why we called the plumber
Captain Oates.

  GEOFF: I thought you said it was the electrician.

  POLLY: It was.

  (Pause.)

  GEOFF: You must think I’m thick.

  GEORGE: No. It’s just a fact. You know it or you don’t.

  GEOFF: You both know it, though.

  GEORGE: So? It’s like knowing about cars or the times of trains.

  Facts. Nothing to do with intelligence. Of course I’m not

  saying you’re not thick. Only that that doesn’t prove it. I could well do without knowing about Captain Oates.

  Useless facts swilling about the brain. Could all be drained off and I should be none the wiser. Or none the stupider.

  (A crash and crying from upstairs.)

  Look out, I can hear Thompson and Bywaters. Our two children at present on licence from Strangeways. James seven…

  POLLY: Eight.

  GEORGE: And Elizabeth, three?

  (POLLY creeps to the door and listens.)

  POLLY: Go to sleep, love. No, he’s not. You’re not to comedown.

  (Sounds of children coming downstairs, GEORGE goes to the door and flings it open.)

  GEORGE: No, young man. Back you go. You’ve no business to be out of bed. Up, up, up.

  (GEORGE goes upstairs.)

  POLLY: They are demons. Have you got a flat?

  GEOFF: Sort of.

  POLLY: Do you live with someone. I mean not live with ‘live with’, I mean –

  GEOFF: Yes. In Notting Hill. We have this house. It’s owned by some anarchists. I suppose it’s a sort of commune really… we’re always borrowing each other’s butter anyway.

  (POLLY should be active throughout this, clearing up tea things, backwards and forwards between the kitchen and living-room, so that sometimes she misses his comments and he hers.)

  We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community but people wouldn’t obey the rules.

  POLLY: I suppose you think we’re very corrupt.

  GEOFF: No. Are you?

  POLLY: All this … property, possessions. Politics.

  GEOFF: Not this sort of stuff. This isn’t really possessions, is it?

  POLLY: Isn’t it?

  GEOFF: No. Most people wouldn’t want this sort of stuff, anyway. Do I make you nervous?

  POLLY: What? No. No.

  (But he does. GEORGE comes down.)

  GEORGE: He wants a banana and she wants a cup of tea. How many sugars?

  POLLY: It varies.

  GEORGE: How many sugars?

  (Unidentifiable shout.)

  Seven! Seven.

  POLLY: How did you take up… sort of … doing nothing?

  GEOFF: I wasn’t much good at school. I got rheumatic fever when I was ten, and I got behindhand. I went to a special school for a bit.

  (GEORGE is now going upstairs again with the tea.)

  Then I kept being off school and never really got the hang of it again.

  (POLLY is in the kitchen.)

  There was a group of us. We just used to sit at the back of the class and wank.

  POLLY: Was it a comprehensive school then?

  GEOFF: And I reckoned I could do that just as well at home. I went round Art School for a bit, but I didn’t reckon that much either. Are you Sagittarius?

  POLLY: Me? Why? I always forget. December 14.1 generally have to look it up.

  GEOFF: (Nodding) Sagittarius.

  POLLY: How do you know?

  GEOFF: Vibes, I suppose.

  POLLY: It’s dogs and sport, isn’t it, Sagittarius? Not really me.

  GEOFF: I sussed this Libra bird on the Tube last week and she’d never opened her mouth.

  POLLY: What’s George then, if you’re so good at guessing?

  GEOFF: Leo.

  POLLY: What are you? July 30. Yes, he is. You are Leo, aren’t you? Fancy Geoff knowing that.

  GEORGE: It’s rubbish.

  GEOFF: It isn’t, you know.

  (They are about to start and argue, but GEOFF thinks better of it.)

  Where is this plug?

  POLLY: In the cistern cupboard. Mind you don’t get a shock.

  (He opens the stairs door, GEORGE hears the kids coming and pushes him aside.)

  GEORGE: All right, it’s very nice of you to bring the cup down, thank you. But, James, if I catch you out of bed once more there’ll be no Jugoslavia. Right? ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ You might know Jesus wasn’t married.

  (GEOFF goes upstairs.)

  He says you didn’t read with him.

  POLLY: There wasn’t time. Besides I don’t understand this new system. There I am going C-A-T and they don’t do it like that any more.

  GEORGE: Will you hear my words?

  POLLY: What for?

  GEORGE: That television. Here …. Skip the first bit, I’m going to rewrite that … burble, burble, burble … ours is still a society in which we throw people into the dustbin, some sooner, some later. We chuck some people in at fifteen, we chuck others in at sixty-five. Our society is one that produces a colossal amount of rubbish. Litter, junk, waste. Yes?

  POLLY: The leftovers.

  GEORGE: The leftovers. And in among the leftovers are people. We waste people. The best society – I think a socialist society – is one in which fewest people are wasted.

  POLLY: Elizabeth’s bottom’s cleared up a treat.

  (GEORGE should be only half saying the speech, and altering it as he goes through, while POLLY doesn’t give it much attention either.)

  GEORGE: Somehow society must be kept open, open at every level so that there are always options…

  (GEORGE sits down-and winces.) Oh, sod it, what have I sat on?

  (He fetches out a crumpled, brightly painted construction.)

  POLLY: It’s The Ark. James was very proud of it.

  GEORGE: Egg boxes. Always egg boxes. Miss Gainsborough has pushed the potentialities of egg boxes beyond man’s wildest dreams. I reckon she must be getting a retainer from the Egg Marketing Board.

  POLLY: It’s true. All schools are the same.

  GEORGE: What I want to know is when they take the crucial step from egg boxes to differential calculus. I believe that some people are better than others, better not because they’re cleverer or more cultivated or God knows – (He laughs)-because they’re better off, but –

  POLLY: Are you going to do that?

  GEORGE: What?

  (POLLY imitates his mid-sentence laugh.)

  I might. Why?

  POLLY: Oh, nothing. (GEORGE is nonplussed. He repeats the sequence without laughing.) You didn’t laugh.

  GEORGE: You said…

  POLLY: No. I liked it.

  GEORGE: It’s a kind of grace, I think. The chosen few. If you can’t produce such people because I’m not sure they’re born not made, if you can’t produce them, then what you can do, and this is where socialism comes in, what you can do, is to show such people to themselves, to link them up.

  POLLY: I don’t think Miss Gainsborough takes much notice of James. When I spoke to her last week she had to think before she even knew who he was.

  GEORGE: Not surprising if there are thirty-odd kids in the class. Anyway what does it matter? He is thick. We have got ourselves a thick child.

  POLLY: Why should he be thick. I was a bright girl.

  GEORGE: Heredity isn’t a law of the land. If one only knew beforehand what one’s children were going to be like. One ought to be able to see a trailer.

  ‘Pause before you enter here

  Lest from this womb a child appear.

  Matchless he in face and skin

  Fair of hair and clean of limb

  But let not your mind your senses rob,

  For he will be a stupid slob.’

  POLLY: You laugh. If Andy were my son …

  GEORGE: Ah, but Andy is not your son, and Andy, thank God, has brains. Brains and beauty, the only untaxable inheritance. He never had any special treatment and look at him. An advertisement for the
comprehensive system, brighter than ever I was and beautiful with it. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him?

  POLLY: He was in at tea-time, just for a minute.

  GEORGE: Even now touching up some respectable girl in the Classic, Baker Street.

  POLLY: So we can’t just abandon him.

  GEORGE: Andy?

  POLLY: James.

  (Pause.)

  I think he ought to go to Freshfields.

  GEORGE: He is not going to Freshfields.

  (They have plainly had this conversation before.)

  Saunders Road, even with Miss Gainsborough is a very …

  POLLY: I’m not having his whole life sacrificed to your principles …

  GEORGE: His whole life. The kid is seven.

  POLLY: Eight. You don’t even know how old your own child is. Mozart was practically dead by the time he was his age. And why is it always the kids who suffer for the principle? Why is it, it’s when it comes to schooling we always have to run up the Red Flag. Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right so long as you don’t have to pay for it.

  GEORGE: I am not having him educated with a load of shrill-voiced Tory boys to buy him advancement which at the moment his talents do not appear to merit.

  POLLY: Merit. How can you talk about merit. At seven.

  GEORGE: Eight. I don’t know what you’re bothering about. The first sound he learns to imitate is that of a police klaxon. He is capable of detecting the subtlest distinction in bodywork and performance. At the moment all indications are that we have brought into the world a tiny used car dealer.

  POLLY: You see, even about something like this, you can’t be serious. It’s jokes, isn’t it. Scoring. You are condemning him to …

  GEORGE: (Irritated by POLLY’s intrusion) I know what I’m condemning him to better than you do. I mean I had a state education.

  POLLY: State education? You?

  GEORGE: I went to a grammar school. (Exits.)

  POLLY: Grammar school! Founded about 400 BC and wearing long blue frocks, some grammar school! (The lights change to indicate the time has changed. Possibly a child cries again upstairs as the stage is dark. GEORGE enters with BRIAN LOWTHER, MP, better dressed, better spoken but otherwise little different from GEORGE.)

  BRIAN: I was expecting another three o’clock do tonight. (Yawns.) I reckon you must all be losing heart.

  GEORGE: What I don’t understand about you, Brian… what’s the matter?

  BRIAN: I think I must have… (He lifts his shoe.)