A Voyage Round My Father

by John Mortimer

  LILY. Ssh. Caroline!

  ARTHUR has raised his two clenched fists and now opens his hands and pushes himself up from the table.

  ARTHUR. She’s been out for a walk.

  CAROLINE has come in through the French window halfway through TONY’S speech. Now she closes them and comes into the room, crosses it, and hangs her mackintosh on the back of the door that leads to the school.

  (Pulling out his watch and looking at it.) She usually does at this time.

  CAROLINE comes up to the three of them, and looks at them without expression. She sits down. The others stand. She is eighteen and extremely beautiful, her beauty being such that it is strange, composed and vaguely alarming. She has a look of complete innocence and wears, unexpectedly, the sort of clothes worn by starlets on the covers of very cheap film magazines. These clothes have an appearance of being homemade. She does not speak. While she is on the stage the other characters speak faster as if to conceal the fact of her silence from themselves.

  TONY. I wonder where she’s been?

  LILY. Usually along the front.

  TONY. She doesn’t feel the cold?

  ARTHUR. Brought up here, of course she doesn’t notice it.

  TONY. She always walks alone?

  LILY. Hardly ever picks up a friend.

  Pause while they all think of something to say. CAROLINE is still expressionless.

  ARTHUR. Well – she’s back just in time.

  TONY. Haven’t you got something to say to her?

  ARTHUR. You needn’t remind me. Many happy returns of the day.

  He puts his hand out. CAROLINE shakes it. Arthur sits down at the table.

  TONY. Many, many, happies, Caroline dear. (He stoops to kiss the top of her head.)

  CAROLINE lifts her face and kisses him on the mouth. She is still expressionless. He sits down, disconcerted, patting his lips with his handkerchief.

  LILY. Caroline, my baby. Don’t grow up any more.

  LILY hugs CAROLINE like a child and then sits down.

  ARTHUR. She didn’t like you saying that.

  TONY. She didn’t mind.

  Pause while LILY begins to cry.

  ARTHUR (suddenly loses his temper). Will you provoke me, Bin, with these bloody waterworks?

  TONY. Look. She hasn’t noticed her presents yet.

  ARTHUR. She was upset.

  TONY. No she wasn’t.

  CAROLINE looks down at her place and lifts her hands in amazement. Her face is still without expression.

  LILY (recovering). She’s seen them now.

  ARTHUR (eagerly). She may open mine first.

  TONY. Well, of all the selfish …

  ARTHUR. She’s going to. I hope you didn’t notice me buying it, Caroline, in the High Street yesterday. Creeping out of W. H. Smith’s.

  TONY. Now you’ve given the game away.

  ARTHUR. What are you hinting?

  TONY. The mention of W. H. Smith. Now she can rule out stockings or underwear or any nice toilet water.

  CAROLINE shakes the parcel.

  TONY. Now she’s guessed what it is.

  ARTHUR. I don’t believe she has.

  CAROLINE shakes her head.

  ARTHUR. No, she hasn’t.

  CAROLINE opens the parcel; it contains a Halma set and three boy’s adventure books.

  TONY. Same old things. She’s bored with Halma.

  ARTHUR. No she’s not!

  TONY. Yes she is.

  ARTHUR. Anyway it’s a wholesome game, Peters, unlike the indoor sports you’re addicted to.

  TONY. And these books! You only buy them to read them yourself. Three midshipmen stranded on a desert island. (Picks up one and starts to read.) ‘Give over tickling, Harry, giggled his chum, little guessing it was the hairy baboon that had crept up behind the unsuspecting youngsters …’

  ARTHUR. She appreciates it.

  LILY (soothingly). Of course she does, don’t let’s quarrel. Not on the birthday.

  TONY (putting down the book). I suppose it takes all tastes.

  LILY. Perhaps now she’ll open mine.

  CAROLINE picks up a parcel.

  LILY. I made it for you, dear. It took so long. I seem to have been making it all my life.

  CAROLINE opens the parcel. A long sweater, white and endless with the school colours at the neck. She holds it in front of herself. It’s far too long.

  LILY. Oh Caroline. There’s too much of it. I had far too much spare time.

  TONY (putting his hand on LILY’S shoulder). She likes it. She thinks it’ll keep her warm.

  ARTHUR. Warm? Keep her warm did you say? I tell you it’s perfectly warm here, all the year round.

  TONY. There now, Headmaster. Lily’s right. We shouldn’t quarrel on the birthday. And look. She’s knitted in the school colours. That’ll cheer you up, you know. When you see those colours always round your daughter.

  ARTHUR. At least it shows some sense of loyalty.

  TONY. Of course, not being, strictly speaking, a parent my present gets opened last.

  ARTHUR (resentfully). A treat saved up for you.

  CAROLINE picks up TONY’S present. Holds it against her cheek. Listens to it.

  TONY. I believe … Yes. I think I am right in saying (radio commentator’s voice): ‘The ceremony is just about to begin. It’s a wonderful spectacle here today. The Lady Mayoress has released the pigeons. The massed bands are striking up. The Boy Scouts are fainting in unprecedented numbers and …’

  CAROLINE undoes the parcel, produces a gilt powder compact.

  ARTHUR. What can it be?

  CAROLINE opens the compact and sprinkles powder on her nose.

  LILY. My baby …

  ARTHUR. Take that muck off your face. I forbid it. Go straight upstairs and wash.

  TONY. Headmaster!

  LILY. Surely Tony. She’s still too young.

  TONY goes behind CAROLINE, his hands on each side of her head he directs her face to one parent, then another.

  TONY. Can you be such unobservant parents? Your daughter has now been using cosmetics in considerable quantities for many years.

  ARTHUR. Is this true, Bin?

  LILY. She’s still a child.

  TONY. Her table upstairs is covered with tubes, little brushes and the feet of rabbits. In an afternoon, with nothing better to do, she can turn from a pale, coal-eyed, fourteenth wife of an oil sheik to a brash, healthy, dog-keeping, pony-riding, daddy-adoring virgin with a pillar-box mouth. Her beauty spots come off on the face towels and when she cries she cries black tears.

  ARTHUR. Your appalling influence.

  TONY. The passage of time, Headmaster. What can you and I do to prevent it?

  ARTHUR. I see her as a little girl.

  TONY. Then you don’t bother to look.

  ARTHUR. Did you notice Bin?

  LILY. When the sun falls straight on her I do have my suspicions. We’ve had so little sun lately.

  The clock groans and strikes. CAROLINE puts down the powder compact and goes out of the room, through the door to the boy’s department.

  She’s gone.

  TONY. To collect her presents from the boys.

  ARTHUR. Of course. I was forgetting.

  TONY. She always does that next. Then she comes back to show us what they’ve given.

  ARTHUR. Of course … of course.

  ARTHUR and LILY are staring thoughtfully in front of them. TONY walks about nervously, about to broach a difficult subject.

  TONY. My old friends. (He gets no reaction and starts again.) Colleagues. Of course I’m not a parent.

  ARTHUR (angrily). If only I could be sure of that.

  TONY (smiling flattered). Not in any official sense. But I have at least been a child.

  LILY (looking at him affectionately). Yes, Tony, of course you have.

  TONY. Now frankly speaking, isn’t eighteen a bit of a cross roads? Isn’t there something, can’t you feel, that Caroline ought to be told?

  ARTHUR. Tol
d?

  TONY. Yes.

  LILY. What sort of thing, Tony, had you in mind?

  TONY (suddenly at a loss). We must have something to tell her. At least I should have thought so. Nothing to embarass anyone to tell, of course … But (more positive) … her education. Aren’t there a few gaps there?

  ARTHUR. You don’t find everything in the covers of books, Peters. That’s why I always lay the emphasis on organized games.

  TONY. Yes. I noticed. (He picks up his ukelele and begins to play odd notes, tuning it as he speaks, more vaguely and with less assurance.)

  LILY goes out and, during TONY’S speech, comes back with a tray, including a dish of sausages and mash which she puts down to keep warm by the electric fire.

  It’s not that I’m all that keen on education myself. In fact I merely drifted into it. It was a thé dansant on the river, Maidenhead. The waiter was feeding the swans, he had an apron full of bread-crumbs. I was dancing with a girl called Fay Knockbroker. She was so small and yellow and it was hot to touch her. Like a red-hot buttercup.

  ARTHUR makes an explosion of disgust. LILY looks up at him from the dishes and smiles and goes out again.

  … ‘Tony,’ she said, ‘Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you work?’ It appeared her father, Knockbroker, what did he deal in, taps? – I really forget, has said marriage was forbidden unless I worked. I had five shillings in my trousers that afternoon. I couldn’t have covered the cucumber sandwiches.

  ARTHUR. Grossly irresponsible.

  TONY. In fact marriage was far from my thoughts. I only wanted to get Fay launched in a punt and pushed out under the willows.

  ARTHUR. Disgusting.

  TONY. Probably. But it’s that punt, those willows, that have kept me going in all our cold winters.

  LILY comes in again with the tomato ketchup.

  That and …

  ARTHUR. Don’t say it! I can guess …

  TONY. How do you live, Headmaster, without any of those old past moments to warm you up?

  ARTHUR. I have my memories. A cry from the megaphone on the tow path. A cheer under Barnes Bridge.

  TONY. But Miss Knockbroker wasn’t stepping on board that afternoon. ‘You get a job,’ she said, ‘or I stay on dry land and marry Humphrey Ewart. He works!’

  ARTHUR (interested grudgingly). Did he?

  TONY. She met him at the Guards’ Boat Club. Blowing safes turned out to be his profession. Knockbroker was very livid when it all came out after the marriage.

  ARTHUR. And you?

  TONY. I went up to London to get a job. I had to leave her to pay for tea. What could I do? I didn’t know anything. I had to teach. I had no great enthusiasm for education. I might have come to love it. As tutor cramming a young millionaire in the South of France, with his widowed mother bringing us long pink drinks to wash down the logarithms …

  ARTHUR (suddenly roaring with laughter). And you ended out here!

  TONY. I only came temporarily. Till something else offered.

  ARTHUR. You are still temporary. As far as I’m concerned.

  LILY. You don’t regret it Tony?

  TONY (looking round at her, then brassly). Of course not. No regrets. I’ve no enthusiasm for education. But I can’t help thinking. There are things Caroline should be told.

  ARTHUR. What for instance?

  TONY. We’ve had experience of life.

  LILY (lovingly). Ah yes. How very true. Great experience of life.

  TONY. Now, shouldn’t we be passing on that experience to her?

  ARTHUR. I’m against passing on experience. Boys find it very embarrassing.

  TONY. But Caroline, Headmaster, isn’t this rather the point we have to face? Is not, and can never be, barring all accidents, a boy.

  ARTHUR. The principle’s the same. I have it so often in class. You start by telling them something unimportant like the date of the Spanish Armada, 1585.

  TONY. 1582.

  ARTHUR. 1585.

  TONY. 1582.

  ARTHUR. Fifteen hundred and eighty five. The year of our Lord.

  LILY. What can it matter after all these years?

  ARTHUR. Imbecile. Don’t interrupt me. Of course it matters. It’s the mental discipline.

  TONY. All right, Headmaster. Have it your own way. 1585.

  ARTHUR. 1585. You start to tell them … The Battle of the Armada. When England’s Virgin Queen … Then you’ve laid yourself open …

  TONY (imitating). Sir! What’s a virgin?

  ARTHUR. You see! It’s most undesirable. The lesson may have half an hour to go, and if you start telling them about virgins where will you be when it’s time to ring the bell? Know what I do Peters, if any questions of that type come up?

  TONY. Yes. I do.

  ARTHUR. I run straight out of the room and ring the bell myself. And that’s my advice to you.

  LILY. I suppose it’s natural for them, to be curious.

  TONY. They don’t ask any questions unless they already know the answers.

  ARTHUR gets up and walks about, gradually working himself into a rage again.

  ARTHUR. That’s purely cynical. Their minds are delightfully blank. That’s how it’s got to stay, it’s the only way for Caroline. You start it, Peters. You feed her with bits of geography and history and mathematics. What comes next? Little scraps of information from you about Maidenhead and the Earls Court Road. Little tips from Bin on how to make love to another man while your husband’s upstairs dressing. Little hints from both of you about face powder and silk stockings, free love and Queen Elizabeth and birth control and decimals and vulgar fractions and punts under the willow tree and she’ll be down the slope – woosh! on the toboggan and you’ll never stop her until she crashes into the great black iron railings of the answer which, please God, she mustn’t ever know.

  TONY. Which one is that?

  ARTHUR. That ever since you came here and met Caroline’s mother this decent school has been turned into a brothel! A corrupt …

  He stops at the sound of a baby crying offstage.

  What ever?

  The baby cries again.

  LILY (delighted). A baby crying.

  TONY. One of the boys has asked the right question at last.

  CAROLINE wanders in from the boys’ door, her arms full of jokes. She stops by ARTHUR and hands him the cardboard box which, when she turns it upside down, cries like a baby. ARTHUR turns it and it yells. He slowly relaxes.

  LILY. It’s just a joke …

  TONY. One of her presents from the boys.

  ARTHUR. How very, very amusing.

  TONY. How strange these boys are.

  CAROLINE hands TONY a bottle of beer. He tries to open it and finds it’s made of rubber. LILY gets a squeaking banana. CAROLINE has a pair of glasses which include a nose and teeth which she puts on. They all sit down, CAROLINE quite motionless in her false nose, the others urgently talking.

  TONY. Will you light the candles, Headmaster? Give a warm, shaded, Café Royal touch to the proceedings.

  ARTHUR (lighting the candles). Sausages and mash I see.

  LILY (serving it out). And red jelly to follow.

  ARTHUR. Always Caroline’s favourite menu.

  TONY. Since she was twelve.

  ARTHUR. That’s why we always put it on for the birthday.

  LILY. It marks the occasion.

  ARTHUR. When I was a boy my birthday always fell when I was away from home at cadet camp. My old aunt gave me my cake to take in a tin. I had to keep it under my camp bed until the day came, then I’d get it out and eat it.

  LILY. Let’s be grateful. Caroline doesn’t have to go to cadet camp. She can birthday at home.

  ARTHUR. As often as not when I came to open that tin the bird had flown.

  TONY. Poor old Headmaster. I never knew that about you.

  ARTHUR. Odd thing about it. I suspected that chaplain.

  TONY. Not of scoffing your cake?

  ARTHUR. It’s a fact. I couldn’t get it
out of my head. An effiminate sort of fellow, the chaplain. Welsh. And he had a sweet tooth.

  LILY. I’m giving Caroline some more because it’s her favourite dinner.

  TONY. Yes. I see.

  ARTHUR. It was terribly upsetting for a young boy in my position.

  TONY. Indeed yes.

  ARTHUR. You can’t put your heart into Church Parade when you suspect the padre of nibbling at your one and only birthday present.

  TONY. Let’s hope you misjudged him.

  ARTHUR. I was a sound judge of character. He was a man who let the side down badly.

  TONY. Suspicious of everyone. Even then.

  ARTHUR. What are you trying to infer?

  TONY. Nothing at all. Shall I do the honours again, Headmaster?

  ARTHUR. Yes. And when you come to Caroline’s glass.

  TONY. What?

  ARTHUR. Fill it up.

  LILY. With alcohol? She won’t like it.

  TONY fills CAROLINE’S glass. She drains it thirstily.

  TONY. There, Lily. It appears you were wrong.

  ARTHUR. Thinking it over, Peters, I have thought your earlier remarks weren’t entirely senseless. Caroline has reached a turning point. The time has come when she can be invited to join her father and mother in a light stimulant. It’s a privilege, and like all privileges it brings new responsibilities.