The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950
Page 57
The meanings are different. Look! We’re back in the room
That we entered only a few minutes ago.
Here’s an armchair, there’s the table;
There’s the door … and I hear someone coming:
It’s Lambert with the tea …
[Enter LAMBERT with trolley]
and I shall say, ‘Lambert,
Please let his lordship know that tea is waiting’.
LAMBERT. Yes, Miss Monica.
MONICA. I’m very glad, Charles,
That you can stay to tea.
[Exit LAMBERT]
— Now we’re in the public world.
CHARLES. And your father will come. With his calm possessive air
And his kindly welcome, which is always a reminder
That I mustn’t stay too long, for you belong to him.
He seems so placidly to take it for granted
That you don’t really care for any company but his!
MONICA. You’re not to assume that anything I’ve said to you
Has given you the right to criticise my father.
In the first place, you don’t understand him;
In the second place, we’re not engaged yet.
CHARLES. Aren’t we? We’re agreed that we’re in love with each other,
And, there being no legal impediment
Isn’t that enough to constitute an engagement?
Aren’t you sure that you want to marry me?
MONICA. Yes, Charles. I’m sure that I want to marry you
When I’m free to do so. But by that time
You may have changed your mind. Such things have happened.
CHARLES. That won’t happen to me.
[Knock. Enter LAMBERT]
LAMBERT. Excuse me, Miss Monica. His Lordship said to tell you
Not to wait tea for him.
MONICA. Thank you, Lambert.
LAMBERT. He’s busy at the moment. But he won’t be very long.
[Exit]
CHARLES. Don’t you understand that you’re torturing me?
How long will you be imprisoned, alone with your father
In that very expensive hotel for convalescents
To which you’re taking him? And what after that?
MONICA. There are several good reasons why I should go with him.
CHARLES. Better reasons than for marrying me?
What reasons?
MONICA. First, his terror of being alone.
In the life he’s led, he’s never had to be alone.
And when he’s been at home in the evening,
Even when he’s reading, or busy with his papers
He needs to have someone else in the room with him,
Reading too — or just sitting — someone
Not occupied with anything that can’t be interrupted.
Someone to make a remark to now and then.
And mostly it’s been me.
CHARLES. I know it’s been you.
It’s a pity that you haven’t had brothers and sisters
To share the burden. Sisters, I should say,
For your brother’s never been of any use to you.
MONICA. And never will be of any use to anybody,
I’m afraid. Poor Michael! Mother spoilt him
And Father was too severe — so they’re always at loggerheads.
CHARLES. But you spoke of several reasons for your going with your father.
Is there any better reason than his fear of solitude?
MONICA. The second reason is exactly the opposite:
It’s his fear of being exposed to strangers.
CHARLES. But he’s most alive when he’s among people
Managing, manœuvring, cajoling or bullying —
At all of which he’s a master. Strangers!
MONICA. You don’t understand. It’s one thing meeting people
When you’re in authority, with authority’s costume,
When the man that people see when they meet you
Is not the private man, but the public personage.
In politics Father wore a public label.
And later, as chairman of public companies,
Always his privacy has been preserved.
CHARLES. His privacy has been so well preserved
That I’ve sometimes wondered whether there was any …
Private self to preserve.
MONICA. There is a private self, Charles.
I’m sure of that.
CHARLES. You’ve given two reasons,
One the contradiction of the other.
Can there be a third?
MONICA. The third reason is this:
I’ve only just been given it by Dr. Selby —
Father is much iller than he is aware of:
It may be, he will never return from Badgley Court.
But Selby wants him to have every encouragement —
If he’s hopeful, he’s likely to live a little longer.
That’s why Selby chose the place. A convalescent home
With the atmosphere of an hotel —
Nothing about it to suggest the clinic —
Everything about it to suggest recovery.
CHARLES. This is your best reason, and the most depressing;
For this situation may persist for a long time,
And you’ll go on postponing and postponing our marriage.
MONICA. I’m afraid … not a very long time, Charles.
It’s almost certain that the winter in Jamaica
Will never take place. ‘Make the reservations’
Selby said, ‘as if you were going’.
But Badgley Court’s so near your constituency!
You can come down at weekends, even when the House is sitting.
And you can take me out, if Father can spare me.
But he’ll simply love having you to talk to!
CHARLES. I know he’s used to seeing me about.
MONICA. I’ve seen him looking at you. He was thinking of himself
When he was your age — when he started like you,
With the same hopes, the same ambitions —
And of his disappointments.
CHARLES. Is that wistfulness,
Compassion, or … envy?
MONICA. Envy is everywhere.
Who is without envy? And most people
Are unaware or unashamed of being envious.
It’s all we can ask if compassion and wistfulness …
And tenderness, Charles! are mixed with envy:
I do believe that he is fond of you.
So you must come often. And Oh, Charles dear —
[Enter LORD CLAVERTON]
MONICA. You’ve been very long in coming, Father. What have you been doing?
LORD CLAVERTON. Good afternoon, Charles. You might have guessed, Monica,
What I’ve been doing. Don’t you recognise this book?
MONICA. It’s your engagement book.
LORD CLAVERTON. Yes, I’ve been brooding over it.
MONICA. But what a time for your engagement book!
You know what the doctors said: complete relaxation
And to think about nothing. Though I know that won’t be easy.
LORD CLAVERTON. That is just what I was doing.
MONICA. Thinking of nothing?
LORD CLAVERTON. Contemplating nothingness. Just remember:
Every day, year after year, over my breakfast,
I have looked at this book — or one just like it —
You know I keep the old ones on a shelf together;
I could look in the right book, and find out what I was doing
Twenty years ago, to-day, at this hour of the afternoon.
If I’ve been looking at this engagement book, to-day,
Not over breakfast, but before tea,
It’s the empty pages that I’ve been fingering —
The first empty pages since I entered Parliament.
I used
to jot down notes of what I had to say to people:
Now I’ve no more to say, and no one to say it to.
I’ve been wondering … how many more empty pages?
MONICA. You would soon fill them up if we allowed you to!
That’s my business to prevent. You know I’m to protect you
From your own restless energy — the inexhaustible
Sources of the power that wears out the machine.
LORD CLAVERTON. They’ve dried up, Monica, and you know it.
They talk of rest, these doctors, Charles; they tell me to be cautious,
To take life easily. Take life easily!
It’s like telling a man he mustn’t run for trains
When the last thing he wants is to take a train for anywhere!
No, I’ve not the slightest longing for the life I’ve left —
Only fear of the emptiness before me.
If I had the energy to work myself to death
How gladly would I face death! But waiting, simply waiting,
With no desire to act, yet a loathing of inaction.
A fear of the vacuum, and no desire to fill it.
It’s just like sitting in an empty waiting room
In a railway station on a branch line,
After the last train, after all the other passengers
Have left, and the booking office is closed
And the porters have gone. What am I waiting for
In a cold and empty room before an empty grate?
For no one. For nothing.
MONICA. Yet you’ve been looking forward
To this very time! You know how you grumbled
At the farewell banquet, with the tributes from the staff,
The presentation, and the speech you had to make
And the speeches that you had to listen to!
LORD CLAVERTON [pointing to a silver salver, still lying in its case]. I don’t know which impressed me more, the insincerity
Of what was said about me, or of my reply —
All to thank them for that.
Oh the grudging contributions
That bought this piece of silver! The inadequate levy
That made the Chairman’s Price! And my fellow directors
Saying ‘we must put our hands in our pockets
To double this collection — it must be something showy’.
This would do for visiting cards — if people still left cards
And if I was going to have any visitors.
MONICA. Father, you simply want to revel in gloom!
You know you’ve retired in a blaze of glory —
You’ve read every word about you in the papers.
CHARLES. And the leading articles saying ‘we are confident
That his sagacious counsel will long continue
To be at the disposal of the Government in power’.
And the expectation that your voice will be heard
In debate in the Upper House …
LORD CLAVERTON. The established liturgy
Of the Press on any conspicuous retirement.
My obituary, if I had died in harness,
Would have occupied a column and a half
With an inset, a portrait taken twenty years ago.
In five years’ time, it will be the half of that;
In ten years’ time, a paragraph.
CHARLES. That’s the reward
Of every public man.
LORD CLAVERTON. Say rather, the exequies
Of the failed successes, the successful failures,
Who occupy positions that other men covet.
When we go, a good many folk are mildly grieved,
And our closest associates, the small minority
Of those who really understand the place we filled
Are inwardly delighted. They won’t want my ghost
Walking in the City or sitting in the Lords.
And I, who recognise myself as a ghost
Shan’t want to be seen there. It makes me smile
To think that men should be frightened of ghosts.
If they only knew how frightened a ghost can be of men!
[Knock. Enter LAMBERT]
LAMBERT. Excuse me, my Lord. There’s a gentleman downstairs
Is very insistent that he must see you.
I told him you never saw anyone, my Lord,
But by previous appointment. He said he knew that,
So he had brought this note. He said that when you read it
You would want to see him. Said you’d be very angry
If you heard that he’d gone away without your seeing him.
LORD CLAVERTON. What sort of a person?
LAMBERT. A foreign person
By the looks of him. But talks good English.
A pleasant-spoken gentleman.
LORD CLAVERTON [after reading the note]. I’ll see him in the library.
No, stop. I’ve left too many papers about there.
I’d better see him here.
LAMBERT. Very good, my Lord.
Shall I take the trolley, Miss Monica?
MONICA. Yes, thank you, Lambert.
[Exit LAMBERT]
CHARLES. I ought to be going.
MONICA. Let us go into the library. And then I’ll see you off.
LORD CLAVERTON. I’m sorry to turn you out of the room like this,
But I’ll have to see this man by myself, Monica.
I’ve never heard of this Señor Gomez
But he comes with a letter of introduction
From a man I used to know. I can’t refuse to see him.
Though from what I remember of the man who introduces him
I expect he wants money. Or to sell me something worthless.
MONICA. You ought not to bother with such people now, Father.
If you haven’t got rid of him in twenty minutes
I’ll send Lambert to tell you that you have to take a trunk call.
Come, Charles. Will you bring my coat?
CHARLES. I’ll say goodbye, sir.
And look forward to seeing you both at Badgley Court
In a week or two.
[Enter LAMBERT]
LAMBERT. Mr. Gomez, my Lord.
LORD CLAVERTON. Goodbye, Charles. And please remember
That we both want to see you, whenever you can come
If you’re in the vicinity. Don’t we, Monica?
MONICA. Yes, Father. (To CHARLES) We both want to see you.
[Exeunt MONICA and CHARLES]
[LAMBERT shows in GOMEZ]
LORD CLAVERTON. Good evening, Mr…. Gomez. You’re a friend of Mr. Culverwell?
GOMEZ. We’re as thick as thieves, you might almost say.
Don’t you know me, Dick?
LORD CLAVERTON. Fred Culverwell!
Why do you come back with another name?
GOMEZ. You’ve changed your name too, since I knew you.
When we were up at Oxford, you were plain Dick Ferry.
Then, when you married, you took your wife’s name
And became Mr. Richard Claverton-Ferry;
And finally, Lord Claverton. I’ve followed your example,
And done the same, in a modest way.
You know, where I live, people do change their names;
And besides, my wife’s name is a good deal more normal
In my country, than Culverwell — and easier to pronounce.
LORD CLAVERTON. Have you lived out there ever since … you left England?
GOMEZ. Ever since I finished my sentence.
LORD CLAVERTON. What has brought you to England?
GOMEZ. Call it homesickness,
Curiosity, restlessness, whatever you like.
But I’ve been a pretty hard worker all these years
And I thought, now’s the time to take a long holiday,
Let’s say a rest cure — that’s what I’ve come for.
You see, I’m a widower, like you, Dick.
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