by T. S. Eliot
So I’m pretty footloose. Gomez, you see,
Is now a highly respected citizen
Of a central American republic: San Marco.
It’s as hard to become a respected citizen
Out there, as it is here. With this qualification:
Out there they respect you for rather different reasons.
LORD CLAVERTON. Do you mean that you’ve won respect out there
By the sort of activity that lost you respect
Here in England?
GOMEZ. Not at all, not at all.
I think that was rather an unkind suggestion.
I’ve always kept on the right side of the law —
And seen that the law turned its right side to me.
Sometimes I’ve had to pay pretty heavily;
But I learnt by experience whom to pay;
And a little money laid out in the right manner
In the right places, pays many times over.
I assure you it does.
LORD CLAVERTON. In other words
You have been engaged in systematic corruption.
GOMEZ. No, Dick, there’s a fault in your logic.
How can one corrupt those who are already corrupted?
I can swear that I’ve never corrupted anybody.
In fact, I’ve never come across an official
Innocent enough to be corruptible.
LORD CLAVERTON. It would seem then that most of your business
Has been of such a nature that, if carried on in England,
It might land you in gaol again?
GOMEZ. That’s true enough,
Except for a false inference. I wouldn’t dream
Of carrying on such business if I lived in England.
I have the same standards of morality
As the society in which I find myself.
I do nothing in England that you would disapprove of.
LORD CLAVERTON. That’s something, at least, to be thankful for.
I trust you’ve no need to engage in forgery.
GOMEZ. Forgery, Dick? An absurd suggestion!
Forgery, I can tell you, is a mug’s game.
I say that — with conviction.
No, forgery, or washing cheques, or anything of that nature,
Is certain to be found out sooner or later.
And then what happens? You have to move on.
That wouldn’t do for me. I’m too domestic.
And by the way, I’ve several children,
All grown up, doing well for themselves.
I wouldn’t allow either of my sons
To go into politics. In my country, Dick,
Politicians can’t afford mistakes. The prudent ones
Always have an aeroplane ready:
And keep an account in a bank in Switzerland.
The ones who don’t get out in time
Find themselves in gaol and not very comfortable,
Or before a firing squad.
You don’t know what serious politics is like!
I said to my boys: ‘Never touch politics.
Stay out of politics, and play both parties:
What you don’t get from one you may get from the other’.
Dick, don’t tell me that there isn’t any whisky in the house?
LORD CLAVERTON. I can provide whisky. [Presses the bell]
But why have you come?
GOMEZ. You’ve asked me that already!
To see you, Dick. A natural desire!
For you’re the only old friend I can trust.
LORD CLAVERTON. You really trust me? I appreciate the compliment.
GOMEZ. Which you’re sure you deserve. But when I say ‘trust’ …
[Knock. Enter LAMBERT]
LORD CLAVERTON. Lambert, will you bring in the whisky. And soda.
LAMBERT. Very good, my Lord.
GOMEZ. And some ice.
LAMBERT. Ice? Yes, my Lord.
[Exit]
GOMEZ. I began to say: when I say ‘trust’
I use the term as experience has taught me.
It’s nonsense to talk of trusting people
In general. What does that mean? One trusts a man
Or a woman — in this respect or that.
A won’t let me down in this relationship,
B won’t let me down in some other connection.
But, as I’ve always said to my boys:
‘When you come to the point where you need to trust someone
You must make it worth his while to be trustworthy’.
[During this LAMBERT enters silently, deposits tray and exit]
LORD CLAVERTON. Won’t you help yourself?
[GOMEZ does so, liberally]
GOMEZ. And what about you?
LORD CLAVERTON. I don’t take it, thank you.
GOMEZ. A reformed character!
LORD CLAVERTON. I should like to know why you need to trust me.
GOMEZ. That’s perfectly simple. I come back to England
After thirty-five years. Can you imagine
What it would be like to have been away from home
For thirty-five years? I was twenty-five —
The same age as you — when I went away,
Thousands of miles away, to another climate,
To another language, other standards of behaviour,
To fabricate for myself another personality
And to take another name. Think what that means —
To take another name.
[Gets up and helps himself to whisky]
But of course you know!
Just enough to think you know more than you do.
You’ve changed your name twice — by easy stages,
And each step was merely a step up the ladder,
So you weren’t aware of becoming a different person:
But where I changed my name, there was no social ladder.
It was jumping a gap — and you can’t jump back again.
I parted from myself by a sudden effort,
You, so slowly and sweetly, that you’ve never woken up
To the fact that Dick Ferry died long ago.
I married a girl who didn’t know a word of English,
Didn’t want to learn English, wasn’t interested
In anything that happened four thousand miles away,
Only believed what the parish priest told her.
I made my children learn English — it’s useful;
I always talk to them in English.
But do they think in English? No, they do not.
They think in Spanish, but their thoughts are Indian thoughts.
O God, Dick, you don’t know what it’s like
To be so cut off! Homesickness!
Homesickness is a sickly word.
You don’t understand such isolation
As mine, you think you do …
LORD CLAVERTON. I’m sure I do,
I’ve always been alone.
GOMEZ. Oh, loneliness —
Everybody knows what that’s like.
Your loneliness — so cosy, warm and padded:
You’re not isolated — merely insulated.
It’s only when you come to see that you have lost yourself
That you are quite alone.
LORD CLAVERTON. I’m waiting to hear
Why you should need to trust me.
GOMEZ. Perfectly simple.
My father’s dead long since — that’s a good thing.
My mother — I dare say she’s still alive,
But she must be very old. And she must think I’m dead;
And as for my married sisters — I don’t suppose their husbands
Were ever told the story. They wouldn’t want to see me.
No, I need one old friend, a friend whom I can trust —
And one who will accept both Culverwell and Gomez —
See Culverwell as Gomez — Gomez as Culverwell.
I need you, Dick, to give me re
ality!
LORD CLAVERTON. But according to the description you have given
Of trusting people, how do you propose
To make it worth my while to be trustworthy?
GOMEZ. It’s done already, Dick; done many years ago:
Adoption tried, and grappled to my soul
With hoops of steel, and all that sort of thing.
We’ll come to that, very soon. Isn’t it strange
That there should always have been this bond between us?
LORD CLAVERTON. It has never crossed my mind. Develop the point.
GOMEZ. Well, consider what we were when we went up to Oxford
And then what I became under your influence.
LORD CLAVERTON. You cannot attribute your … misfortune to my influence.
GOMEZ. I was just about as different as anyone could be
From the sort of men you’d been at school with —
I didn’t fit into your set, and I knew it.
When you started to take me up at Oxford
I’ve no doubt your friends wondered what you found in me —
A scholarship boy from an unknown grammar school.
I didn’t know either, but I was flattered.
Later, I came to understand: you made friends with me
Because it flattered you — tickled your love of power
To see that I was flattered, and that I admired you.
Everyone expected that I should get a First.
I suppose your tutor thought you’d be sent down.
It went the other way. You stayed the course, at least.
I had plenty of time to think things over, later.
LORD CLAVERTON. And what is the conclusion that you came to?
GOMEZ. This is how it worked out, Dick. You liked to play the rake,
But you never went too far. There’s a prudent devil
Inside you, Dick. He never came to my help.
LORD CLAVERTON. I certainly admit no responsibility,
None whatever, for what happened to you later.
GOMEZ. You led me on at Oxford, and left me to it.
And so it came about that I was sent down
With the consequences which you remember:
A miserable clerkship — which your father found for me,
And expensive tastes — which you had fostered in me,
And, equally unfortunate, a talent for penmanship.
Hence, as you have just reminded me
Defalcation and forgery. And then my stretch
Which gave me time to think it all out.
LORD CLAVERTON. That’s the second time you have mentioned your reflections.
But there’s just one thing you seem to have forgotten:
I came to your assistance when you were released.
GOMEZ. Yes, and paid my passage out. I know the reason:
You wanted to get rid of me. I shall tell you why presently.
Now let’s look for a moment at your life history.
You had plenty of money, and you made a good marriage —
Or so it seemed — and with your father’s money
And your wife’s family influence, you got on in politics.
Shall we say that you did very well by yourself?
Though not, I suspect, as well as you had hoped.
LORD CLAVERTON. I was never accused of making a mistake.
GOMEZ. No, in England mistakes are anonymous
Because the man who accepts responsibility
Isn’t the man who made the mistake.
That’s your convention. Or if it’s known you made it
You simply get moved to another post
Where at least you can’t make quite the same mistake.
At the worst, you go into opposition
And let the other people make mistakes
Until your own have been more or less forgotten.
I dare say you did make some mistake, Dick …
That would account for your leaving politics
And taking a conspicuous job in the City
Where the Government could always consult you
But of course didn’t have to take your advice …
I’ve made a point, you see, of following your career.
LORD CLAVERTON. I am touched by your interest.
GOMEZ. I have a gift for friendship.
I rejoiced in your success. But one thing has puzzled me.
You were given a ministry before you were fifty:
That should have led you to the very top!
And yet you withdrew from the world of politics
And went into the City. Director of a bank
And chairman of companies. You looked the part —
Cut out to be an impressive figurehead.
But again, you’ve retired at sixty. Why at sixty?
LORD CLAVERTON. Knowing as much about me as you do
You must have read that I retired at the insistence of my doctors.
GOMEZ. Oh yes, the usual euphemism.
And yet I wonder. It is surprising:
You should have been good for another five years
At least. Why did they let you retire?
LORD CLAVERTON. If you want to know, I had had a stroke.
And I might have another.
GOMEZ. Yes. You might have another.
But I wonder what brought about this … stroke;
And I wonder whether you’re the great economist
And financial wizard that you’re supposed to be.
And I’ve learned something of other vicissitudes.
Dick, I was very very sorry when I heard
That your marriage had not been altogether happy.
And as for your son — from what I’ve heard about him,
He’s followed your undergraduate career
Without the protection of that prudent devil
Of yours, to tell him not to go too far.
Well, now, I’m beginning to be thirsty again.
[Pours himself whisky]
LORD CLAVERTON. An interesting historical epitome.
Though I cannot accept it as altogether accurate.
The only thing I find surprising
In the respected citizen of San Marco
Is that in the midst of the engrossing business
Of the nature of which dark hints have been given,
He’s informed himself so carefully about my career.
GOMEZ. I don’t propose to give you a detailed account
Of my own career. I’ve been very successful.
What would have happened to me, I wonder,
If I had never met you? I should have got my First,
And I might have become the history master
In a school like that from which I went to Oxford.
As it is, I’m somebody — a more important man
In San Marco than I should ever have been in England.
LORD CLAVERTON. So, as you consider yourself a success …
GOMEZ. A worldly success, Dick. In another sense
We’re both of us failures. But even so,
I’d rather be my kind of failure than yours.
LORD CLAVERTON. And what do you call failure?
GOMEZ. What do I call failure?
The worst kind of failure, in my opinion,
Is the man who has to keep on pretending to himself
That he’s a success — the man who in the morning
Has to make up his face before he looks in the mirror.
LORD CLAVERTON. Isn’t that the kind of pretence that you’re maintaining
In trying to persuade me of your … worldly success?
GOMEZ. No, because I know the value of the coinage
I pay myself in.