A Voyage Round My Father

by John Mortimer

  LILY. They cough in the night time. (She is arranging the presents on the table.) Like sheep.

  ARTHUR. Colds admitted. Infectious diseases not. I had a letter only the other day. A school in Torquay. Malaria. Decimated the boys. Brought on by the relaxing climate. Thank heavens, Bin, for our exposed position.

  LILY. Yes, dear.

  ARTHUR. For heaven’s sake don’t complain about the wind, then. It gets on the nerves of a saint. To have you always carping at the wind. Think of it – one little mountain range between here and Moscow and the boys might all go down with malaria.

  LILY. I wonder if Caroline’s going to like her presents?

  ARTHUR. Like her presents? Of course she’s going to like her presents. Doesn’t she always like her presents?

  LILY. I only wondered …

  ARTHUR. If you set out to make her dissatisfied. If you sow the seeds of doubt in her young mind … If you deliberately undertake to puzzle and bewilder a young girl with your extraordinary ideas of what a present ought to be. If you carp and criticize …

  LILY. I only wondered … if she wasn’t getting on a bit for Halma.

  ARTHUR. You wondered? Caroline takes it for granted. Every year she’ll get her Halma and every year you’ll lose three or four of her men … Swallow them up like collar studs. Of course she likes Halma, you’ve seen her in the evenings playing it with …

  He puts the folded flag on top of the desk. Then shouts as he picks up the ukulele.

  ARTHUR. He was here again last night!

  LILY. Who?

  ARTHUR. Tony Peters.

  LILY. He’s been here for eighteen years.

  ARTHUR. But this wasn’t here yesterday. He’s been lurking about when I didn’t know. Singing to you.

  LILY smiles complacently downwards. ARTHUR shouts and holds out the ukulele. She takes it and holds it as if to play it. She stands still in the attitude of someone about to play the ukulele during the ensuing dialogue. The French windows open and TONY PETERS enters. He is tall, debonair and gay, although balding, with the cuffs of his blazer slightly fraying, his suede shoes shiny and his grey flannel trousers faded. He is carrying a string bag full of screw-top bottles of light ale.

  TONY. It’s bloody cold.

  ARTHUR. It’s you.

  TONY. Of course it’s me. Look here, old man. Aren’t you going to dress? I mean it is Caroline’s birthday.

  ARTHUR. Oh my God. How far can I be goaded?

  TONY (unloads his bag, sets the bottles out on the table and then throws it on top of the Union Jack). I don’t know. It’s amusing to find out.

  ARTHUR. You were here last night?

  TONY. Certainly.

  ARTHUR. Singing to Bin?

  TONY. Keeping her company while you gave, to those few unlucky boys whose temperatures are still normal and who can still breathe through their noses, your usual Sunday evening sermon on ‘Life as a stiff row from Putney to Mortlake’.

  ARTHUR. So you chose that as a moment for singing … to a married woman.

  TONY. She sat in your chair, Arthur. We turned out the lights. The room was softly lit by the one bar of the electric fire. I was cross-legged on the floor. In the half-light I appeared boyish and irresistible. Lily needs no concealed lighting to look perpetually young. From under all the doors and through the cracks of the windows the wind sneered at us from Moscow – but we didn’t feel the cold. In the distance we heard you say that it is particularly under Hammersmith Bridge that God requires ten hard pulls on the oar. Above us the coughs crackled like distant gunfire. My fingers cramped by the cold, I struck at my instrument. (He takes the ukulele from LILY and plays.)

  (Singing.) ‘Oh the Captain’s name

  Was Captain Brown,

  And he played his ukulele

  As the ship went down… .’

  ARTHUR. That idiotic song.

  TONY (singing very close to Arthur).

  ‘Then he bought himself

  A bar of soap,

  And washed himself

  Ashore.’

  LILY puts her hand flat over her mouth like a child to stifle her giggles.

  ARTHUR. If either of you had the slightest idea of loyalty. If you had a grain of respect for me, for Sunday evening, for decent, wholesome living.

  TONY (singing).

  ‘Oh we left her baby on the shore,

  A thing that we’ve never done before.’

  ARTHUR. It’s obscene.

  TONY. Obscene?

  ARTHUR. Perhaps not the words. The dirty expression you put into it. When I’m not looking.

  TONY (singing).

  ‘If you see the mother

  Tell her gently

  That we left her baby on the shore.’

  The giggles explode past LILY’S hand.

  ARTHUR. Bin!

  LILY. I’m sorry. It just gets me every time. Poor baby! It’s so damned casual.

  ARTHUR. It doesn’t seem to me a subject for joking.

  LILY. But the way Tony sings it. Just as if he’d forgotten a baby.

  ARTHUR. He probably has.

  LILY. What can you be saying?

  ARTHUR. I don’t know. How can I know anything? Everything goes on when I’m not there. Furniture falls to the ground. This man sings. Crockery breaks. You pull his ears, stroke his hair as he squats there in front of you. Don’t think I’ve got no imagination. I’ve got a vivid imagination. And my hearing is keen. Remember that. I warn you both. My hearing is exceptionally keen.

  TONY. Hear that Lily? Stroke my hair more quietly in future.

  As ARTHUR seems about to hit him a clock groans and strikes offstage.

  LILY. Arthur. You must get dressed. It’s nearly time. Caroline’ll be down.

  ARTHUR. Let her come down. It’s time she found out something. Let her find out the lying and deceit and infidelity that all these years … let her find out that her mother spends musical evenings breathing down the neck of an ex-night-club gigolo, lounge lizard, wallflower, sensitive plant, clinging vine, baby-leaving, guitar-twanging, Mayfair playboy, good-time Charlie, fly-by-night, moonlight flit, who can’t even do quadratic equations. Let her find out all she is. Poor girl. Poor child. You’re right Bin – you’ve brought it on us all. She’s too old for Halma now.

  He sits down exhausted. They look at him in horror. He, too, is a little horrified by what he has said.

  TONY. Arthur. Look here, my dear old fellow. It’s Caroline’s party. You wouldn’t spoil a party?

  ARTHUR. I don’t know that I feel particularly festive.

  LILY. Come on, Arthur. You know how you enjoy Caroline’s birthday.

  ARTHUR. I always have. Up to now. Ever since she was born.

  TONY. And look Arthur, my dear old Head, I bought these for us in the pub. A whiff each after dinner.

  He takes two battered cigars out of his breast pocket.

  ARTHUR (crackles and smells the cigar). That was thoughtful of you, Peters.

  TONY. I know you don’t smoke them as often as one might like. Only when something a little bit festive arises from time to time.

  LILY (ecstatic). Oh, Tony Peters! Beautifully managed.

  ARTHUR. Perhaps my suspicions are unfounded.

  LILY. You manage him so beautifully.

  TONY. Why not finish dressing, my fine old Headmaster? Let us both face the fact, you must be bitterly cold.

  ARTHUR (starts to work himself up again). I tell you I never feel cold. Anyway it’s never cold here. Only occasionally a little brisk after sunset. Anyway who’s old? Didn’t you tell me, Tony Peters, that in your prep school the Third Eleven Match play was once stopped by a Zeppelin? You didn’t mean to let that slide out did you? What does that make you? Pretty long in bottle for a junior assistant! Ha! Ha!

  TONY. I’m not a junior assistant.

  ARTHUR. What are you then?

  TONY. A senior assistant.

  ARTHUR. You’re the only assistant. I think of you as junior.

  TONY (shrugging h
is shoulders). It’s a fact. I give an impression of perpetual youth. (He slaps his pocket, brings out a half-bottle of whisky.) I thought this might slip down well with the whiffs.

  ARTHUR (mollified). It looks like good stuff.

  TONY. I’ve always had an eye for a piece of good stuff.

  ARTHUR looks up suspiciously.

  TONY. Arthur, Head, do believe me. That remark was in no way meant to be offensive.

  ARTHUR. I’ll take your word for it.

  LILY. So hurry on Arthur, do. We must be just so for when Caroline comes in.

  TONY. Go on Head. Spick and span. That’s the order of the day. Look, Lily’s in her best. As always, on these occasions.

  LILY and TONY pat him, steer him towards the door; he turns to them before he goes out.

  ARTHUR. For God’s sake, you two. Use your imaginations. Think what it’s like being up there, wrestling with a collar in utter ignorance. Tormented… .

  TONY. Get a start on the collar now. You’ll be back with us in five minutes.

  ARTHUR. Five minutes? Haven’t you ever thought, Peters, the whole course of a man’s life can be changed in five minutes. Does it take five minutes to die? Or catch malaria? Or say the one word to unhinge another man’s wife from him? All right, I’ll trust you. But look here, both. No singing. Don’t torture me with that.

  TONY. If I do sing, I’ll sing so quietly that no human ear could ever pick it up. I’ll sing in notes only audible to a dog.

  ARTHUR. That’s worse.

  LILY. Now go on, really. Caroline can’t sit and gaze at a brass collar stud on her birthday.

  ARTHUR. I’m going. For Caroline’s sake, I’m going. Poor child. (He stands in the doorway, the door open.)

  TONY. For Caroline’s sake. Goodbye.

  TONY shuts the door on him. Then walks over to the basket-work chair and drops into it.

  TONY. He’s not right.

  LILY. About what?

  TONY. About me.

  LILY. What about you?

  TONY. I can do quadratic equations.

  LILY. Another year gone. Another birthday come again.

  TONY. Gather all the Xs and Ys on to one side.

  LILY. Eighteen years old. (She fiddles with the presents.)

  TONY. Remove the brackets.

  LILY. Oh Tony, can she possibly be happy?

  TONY. Remember that minus times minus makes plus.

  LILY. Tony can you hear me?

  TONY. As an example. In the problem, if it takes ten barbers twenty minutes at double speed to shave ‘y’ tramps let ‘x’ equal the time taken to shave half a tramp. That’s Arthur’s problem. Arthur can teach quadratics all right. But can he do them? Isn’t that rather the point?

  LILY. Everyone here is so taken up with their own concerns.

  TONY. I’m sorry.

  LILY. I quite understand. You’re naturally anxious for your algebra.

  TONY. No, Lily. Not at all. Come and sit down.

  LILY. Where?

  TONY. Here. (He slaps his knee.)

  LILY. I’d be taking a risk.

  TONY. All we can take in this mean, tight-fisted world.

  She giggles and sits on the floor in front of him, her elbows on his knees, gazing up at him.

  LILY. Now is Caroline … ?

  TONY. What?

  LILY. Happy.

  TONY. She shows no signs of being otherwise.

  LILY (looks down suddenly, her eyes full of tears). How can she tell us?

  TONY. Poor Arthur. It may not be so bad as he thinks.

  LILY. When it’s something we must have all noticed why don’t we discuss …

  TONY. At first perhaps, it was our headmaster’s fault. When it happened at first I blamed him. But since last birthday I’ve begun to suspect …

  LILY. Tony. You’re talking about it. About Caroline …

  TONY (talking quickly as if to avoid an awkward moment). Caroline is now eighteen which must mean that she was born in 1940. Dark days with storm clouds hanging over Europe. Poor child she never knew the pre-war when you could weekend in Paris on a two-pound-ten note and get a reasonable packet of cigarettes for elevenpence complete with card which could be collected towards a jolly acceptable free gift. She never borrowed a bus and took a couple of girls from Elstree Studio out dancing up the Great West Road and home with the milk and change left out of a pound.

  LILY begins to smile up at him.

  LILY. It’s yourself you’re discussing.

  TONY. She missed the Big Apple and the Lambeth Walk and the Palais Glide. She couldn’t even come to the party I gave for the Jubilee. Poor child, God knows I’d have invited her. Twenty-three of us in a line gliding down the Earls Court Road at three in the morning. Smooth as skaters. (Takes up his ukelele and sings.)

  ‘She was sweet sixteen.

  On the village green.

  Poor little Angeline.’

  ARTHUR (offstage shouting). For pity’s sake.

  TONY shrugs his shoulders and puts his ukelele down, exasperated.

  TONY. Really. He’s like my old landlady in the Earls Court Road. Bump on the ceiling with a broom if you so much as lifted a girl from the floor to the sofa.

  LILY (elbows on his knees). Was it so carefree for you then, in Earls Court?

  TONY (modestly). Carefree? Look Lily, I knew ten clubs where the drummers were happy to allow me a whirl with their sticks. I knew twenty pubs in S.W. alone which were flattered to take my cheque, and as for the opposite sex …

  LILY looks at him admiringly.

  I had enough telephone numbers to fill a reasonably bulky pocket diary from January to Christmas. Even the little space for my weight and size of hat, Lily, was crammed with those available numbers.

  LILY. What do you think took away all our happy days?

  TONY. Are they gone?

  LILY. Arthur says so. Driven away, he says, by the Russians and the Socialists and the shocking way they’ve put up the rates.

  TONY. We can still have a good time.

  LILY. But can Caroline? If she could only tell …

  She gets up and wanders to the table, arranging the presents.

  TONY. Well there …

  LILY. And when she never knew …

  TONY. Isn’t that rather the point?

  LILY. Deprived, Tony, of all the pre-war we ever had?

  TONY. All that pre-war denied her.

  LILY. What would become of us, do you suppose, if we hadn’t got that pre-war to think about?

  TONY (he gets up from the chair and stands with his arm round her shoulders). It’s not all over. We don’t just let it die out.

  LILY. It mustn’t.

  TONY. We keep it going you see. And it keeps us going too.

  Pause, as they stand side by side.

  ARTHUR (yelling from offstage). What have you two got to be so damned quiet about?

  They smile at each other and TONY breaks away from her and walks round the room rubbing his hands and flapping his arms. He begins to talk in the clipped, stoical voice of an explorer reminiscing.

  TONY. The glass stood at forty below when we unpacked our Christmas dinner in Camp A. (He blows on his nails.)

  LILY (thoughtfully, softly). I remember the day you arrived. It was summer and Arthur was out taking cricket practice.

  TONY. Frozen penguin and a mince pie which my dear sister had sent from Godalming, found, quite by chance, stuffed in a corner of my flea-bag.

  LILY. I heard the sound of your two-seater on the gravel.

  TONY. We broke the mince pie with our ice axes. Three dogs died in the night.

  LILY. Why did you have to sell that two-seater?

  TONY … Prayed to God before sharing our penguin. Now a thousand miles from base camp. Had a premonition we should never see England again… .

  LILY. I was alone in the middle of the afternoon. I heard you singing outside the window. It opened and you came in … When you saw me standing all alone …

  TONY. Peters …<
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  LILY. Yes?

  TONY. With silent heroism …

  LILY. What?

  TONY. Walked out of the tent.

  With a dramatic gesture he steps behind the curtain of the French window and is lost to sight.

  LILY (standing alone centre stage, her arms extended. A slight wait). Tony! Why won’t you ever be serious with me?

  ARTHUR enters, fully dressed, his hair brushed and shining.

  ARTHUR. Where the hell’s he got to now?

  LILY makes a gesture of despair.

  ARTHUR. It’s no use lying, Bin. I can see his filthy suede shoes under the curtain.

  He pulls the curtain aside. TONY smiles at him, pats his shoulder and walks out into the room. TONY lights a cigarette with great finesse. ARTHUR sits down at the table, raises his hands as if to say something several times. The words don’t exist for what he feels that he must say.

  TONY. Now Arthur. Don’t make a fool of yourself over this.

  ARTHUR. I … make a fool?

  TONY. It’s quite reasonable.

  LILY. Tony, it seems, was discovering the North Pole.

  ARTHUR. The North Pole?

  TONY. Shut your eyes, Headmaster, and what can you hear? The ice cracking like gunfire in the distance. The wind howling in the guy ropes. The fizz of the solid fuel as it melts a little snow for your evening cocoa.

  ARTHUR. Oh my God! (He buries his face in his hands.)

  LILY (laughing). Give the poor man a little peace.

  TONY. Peace? What does Arthur want with peace? He’d be as bored as a retired general with nothing to do but keep chickens and explore the possibility of life after death. As lonely as a bull without a bull-fighter. As hard up for conversation as an invalid without his operation. Give him peace and you’d bury your husband. What can he listen to in this great frozen institution except the sound of his own eternal irritation? (He claps him on the shoulder.) Keep going, Headmaster, go off every minute. You’re the dear old foghorn that lets us know we’re still afloat.