A Voyage Round My Father

by John Mortimer

  TONY. Not at the time.

  ARTHUR. I winkled her away from you.

  TONY. Did you now?

  ARTHUR. Brought her up to bed when you least expected it.

  TONY. Oh, I see.

  ARTHUR. My God, I’d like to have seen the bewildered expression on your face when you found your beautiful bird – caged for the night.

  TONY. Look, Headmaster, this shock I was referring to, it’s made me think – well, I feel we shall have to face things as they are at very long last. Now I know this business has been a source of considerable interest and excitement to us all over a long period of years. It’s kept us going, as you might say, when the results of the squash rackets competition and the state of the weather and the suspicion about who pinched the nail brush off the chain in the downstairs loo have been powerless to quicken the pulse. But it’s gone too far, you know – we should never have started it.

  ARTHUR. Of course you shouldn’t. Now there’s a twinge of conscience.

  TONY. You know as much as I do. There’s never been a breath of anything amiss.

  ARTHUR (singing bitterly). ‘Tell me the old, old, story …’

  TONY. It started as an occupation. Like Halma or sardines. It’s kept us from growing old.

  ARTHUR. Bluff your way out of it, like when the waiter comes with the bill and ‘Most unfortunately my cheque book caught fire in my overcoat pocket’.

  TONY. Must we go on pretending? I don’t even fancy Lily. Hardly my type.

  ARTHUR (aghast). What are you saying?

  TONY. That I don’t love your wife …

  ARTHUR. You don’t?

  TONY. And never have.

  ARTHUR (with quiet fury). You unspeakable hound! (Beginning to shout.) You don’t love her? My God, I ought to strike you Peters.

  TONY. That young Fay Knockbroker remains my ideal. Small and yellow and red hot. The girl you have to keep on protecting from the wicked results of her own innocence.

  ARTHUR. But Bin …

  TONY. Not my sort at all. A very decent, understanding sort, naturally: but the sort you’d always cram into the dicky if you had a girl like Fay to ride with in front.

  ARTHUR. You don’t love Bin?

  TONY. I’m afraid not …

  ARTHUR. She’s given you the best years of her life …

  TONY. Really, Headmaster … I feel we ought to face these facts squarely … otherwise … well it may have, perhaps it’s already had … results we didn’t foresee.

  ARTHUR. Bin. Poor girl. She mustn’t ever guess.

  TONY (gently). You are … fond of your wife, Headmaster?

  ARTHUR. Fond of her. I love her, Peters. When I married I expected it would be for companionship – I’d known friendship before, Peters, genuine friendship. Someone to tramp around Wales with, to give a fill from your pouch, to share a hunk of cold Christmas pudding on a Boxing Day morning by Beachy Head – marriage is different, Peters. It takes place with a woman.

  TONY. So I’ve been led to believe.

  ARTHUR. And with a woman as attractive, soft, yielding, feminine as my Bin.

  TONY. You take that view of her?

  ARTHUR. Who mustn’t ever be hurt … Oh it’s hard. I tell you that at once, Peters, to live with such a feminine person as a woman in your life.

  TONY. Problems arise of course.

  ARTHUR. We had our work to do. We had the school to serve. Our lives aren’t ours I told her. We’re dedicated to the boys. And all the time all I wanted was to stay in bed with her all day only occasionally getting up for bread and marmalade.

  TONY. Really. (A long, embarrassed pause.)

  ARTHUR. Women are sensitive creatures, Peters. Lily mustn’t be allowed to guess at what you’ve just told me.

  TONY (gestures resignedly). But it’s led to this …

  ARTHUR. She mustn’t be hurt. Lily must never be hurt.

  Pause.

  TONY. You’ll perhaps resent my saying this Arthur, and that’s the risk I’m bound to take. But if you don’t want Lily hurt … sometimes, I’m bound to notice …

  ARTHUR (proudly). I shout at her you mean?

  TONY. Well, not exactly coo.

  ARTHUR. That’s love …

  TONY. Oh yes?

  ARTHUR. It takes people in different ways. Now when you want to make love to her I’ve noticed …

  TONY. But really!

  ARTHUR. You make a joke. You pretend to be at the North Pole. You sing a song.

  TONY. My weakness: I’m not serious.

  ARTHUR. But when I see all that I love about my wife. The way she twists the hair over her ears when the time comes to make out a list. The soft smile she gives when no one’s looking. How she shuts in laughter with the palm of her hand … Then, I feel so small and angry. I see myself so powerless, so drawn into her that once I let myself go, all I believe in, all I’m dedicated to would be spent on afternoons of bread and marmalade. Then I shout. I don’t know why it is. The terms of endearment I’m meaning to say just come out screaming. Is it a natural reaction?

  TONY. I hardly know.

  ARTHUR. And the agony of being in a room without her. The doubt and the anxiety that she’ll be taken from me by the time I get back.

  TONY. Really. We’ve got to stop it. This performance of ours has had its influence on Caroline …

  ARTHUR. Caroline? She’s innocent of it all. She doesn’t enter …

  TONY. It has to stop, Headmaster.

  ARTHUR. Who’s going to stop it?

  TONY. I am.

  ARTHUR. You couldn’t stop a catch.

  TONY. I’m in duty bound … (Standing up.)

  ARTHUR. To tell Bin you don’t love her …

  TONY. To tell the truth. For Caroline.

  ARTHUR (standing up, facing him). Tony Peters. I need you. I know I have a sense of dedication which my wife doesn’t altogether understand. In a way I’m a hard row for a woman like Bin to furrow. I shout. I’m a prey to irritation. I can’t imitate snowstorms. I’ve forgotten all the jokes I’ve ever heard. She needs the bright lights, Peters, the music. The interest of another man. I knew that soon after I married her. I can’t tell you how relieved I was the day you walked through those French windows. Then I knew my married life was safe at last.

  TONY (sitting down, bewildered). Headmaster. This is a thought I would have put well beyond you.

  ARTHUR (solicitous). I’ve shocked you?

  TONY. Deeply. Deeply shocked.

  ARTHUR. Together, all these years, we’ve kept Lily so happy.

  TONY. You seem, Headmaster, to have the most tenuous grasp of morality.

  ARTHUR. My temper and your songs – what a crowded, eventful time we’ve given her. And you must confess, Peters, it’s been an interest for you. I mean there can’t still be so many irons in your fire these days, whatever your part in Earls Court may have been.

  TONY. Oh, Headmaster. I don’t know what you’re trying to find, but you’re getting dangerously warm.

  ARTHUR. We depend on each other, Peters. You mustn’t tell her. We all depend on each other …

  TONY. But the younger generation? What are we doing for it?

  ARTHUR. Our best, Peters. Let’s allow ourselves that …

  TONY. But when I walked through these French windows …

  ARTHUR. You took on a job, Peters. You can’t get out of it now.

  TONY. I shouldn’t have been singing. That was when I made my great mistake …

  The kitchen door opens. LILY enters smoking a cigarette, carrying a plate of bread and butter.

  LILY. Has Caroline had her tea? I’ve been cutting all this bread and butter. The trouble with living here, the butter gets as hard as the rock of Gibraltar. It blasts great holes in your sliced bread.

  TONY. Don’t mention Gibraltar, Lily.

  ARTHUR. There you go. Trying to pretend it’s cold.

  LILY drops cigarette ash on the bread, blows it off and sits down.

  LILY. Out in the kitchen I heard men’s voi
ces rising and falling, rising and falling. What’ve you two been talking about now?

  TONY. About you.

  LILY. How nice.

  ARTHUR. Tony’s confessed.

  LILY. Confessed?

  ARTHUR. What he feels about you.

  LILY. What he feels. (She looks delightedly at Tony.) Have you Tony? (She’s biting bread and butter and smoking at the same time.) What did you say?

  ARTHUR. Do you want to tell my wife, Peters? Do you want to put a stop to this whole business, once and for all?

  They both look at him. TONY gasps, smiles, and then gets up and walks up and down talking in clipped naval accents.

  TONY. Ladies and gentlemen. It is my duty to inform you that we have struck an iceberg. At nine-o-hundred hours, fish were noticed swimming in the first-class bath water. All ports have been alerted and in approximately ten-o-o hours they will start looking for us by helicopter. If the ship has already sunk we will rendezvous at latitude 9.700 and bob about in the water together as long as possible …

  He comes to rest behind LILY’S chair.

  Oh Lily. I can’t tell you how complicated it’s all become.

  ARTHUR. No. You can’t.

  CAROLINE enters from the boys’ side, left. She is carrying her suitcase which she puts down on the floor.

  LILY. Caroline!

  CAROLINE unhooks her mackintosh from the back of the door and slowly puts it on. ARTHUR and LILY watch her fearfully. She picks up the suitcase and stands in front of the French windows.

  ARTHUR. She’s going for a walk.

  LILY. Probably that’s it.

  TONY. Haven’t you noticed the suitcase? Does she usually go for a walk with a suitcase?

  LILY. Caroline. Put it down.

  She gets up and goes towards CAROLINE. TONY puts out his arm and stops her.

  TONY. Better to let her do what she wants.

  LILY. What does she want? How can she tell us?

  CAROLINE opens her mouth. Long silence in which she is making an enormous effort until she says –

  CAROLINE. I want to go to London.

  They look at her in amazement. In dead silence CAROLINE puts down her suitcase.

  I’ve got a job with the Threadneedle Street Branch of the Chesterfield and National Bank. I start at a salary of seven pounds ten shillings a week.

  She takes the letter and hands it to LILY. LILY, crying, looks at it and hands it to ARTHUR. ARTHUR reads it and gives it to TONY.

  TONY. There seems to be some truth in what she says.

  LILY. Stop her. Stop her leaving us, Arthur.

  ARTHUR. She spoke. Our daughter spoke.

  TONY gives CAROLINE back the letter.

  CAROLINE. I have a third-floor room at 109 Great Bidford Street which costs four pounds ten shillings a week, with board. I shall therefore have three pounds fifteen shillings a week left over… .

  TONY. Caroline … I hate to disillusion you.

  ARTHUR. She’s talking. She’s talking to me.

  CAROLINE. Goodbye. (She shakes ARTHUR’S hand.)

  ARTHUR. Forgive me.

  CAROLINE. Goodbye. (She shakes LILY’S hand.)

  LILY. What have we done wrong?

  CAROLINE. Goodbye. (She shakes TONY’S hand.)

  TONY. Goodbye.

  LILY. It’s too late to go now… .

  CAROLINE. The train leaves at 7.15 from Coldsands Station. Platform One. Change at Norwich. (She goes out and closes the French windows. For a moment she stands looking in at them through the glass. Then she disappears.)

  TONY. Let’s hope she’s right about that.

  LILY. Why didn’t you stop her?

  ARTHUR (sitting down). She spoke to me. She said goodbye.

  TONY. Well, that’s right, she did.

  LILY (standing distractedly in the middle of the room). What shall I do?

  TONY. Clear away the tea.

  ARTHUR. Lily. There’s something you ought to know about Caroline. She hasn’t said anything for a long time.

  Silence. Then TONY says.

  TONY. We’d noticed that.

  ARTHUR. You didn’t comment?

  TONY shrugs his shoulders.

  ARTHUR. You didn’t like to?

  TONY. It seemed unnecessary.

  ARTHUR. Kindness held you back?

  LILY. We must stop her going.

  TONY. She won’t meet any harm.

  ARTHUR. But you don’t know why she didn’t speak? I told you, Peters, all the terms of endearment start shouting and screaming when I utter them. When I love someone all my love turns to irritation. I lost my temper with Caroline! I hit her! I actually hit her!

  LILY (crossing towards him). No dear. You didn’t.

  ARTHUR. How do you know?

  TONY. We were here in the room. You didn’t hit her, Headmaster.

  ARTHUR (deflated). I did. I wanted to hit her. After that, I thought she didn’t speak. The nervous shock. Was it the nervous shock do you think, either of you?

  LILY. Perhaps she didn’t want to.

  TONY. Or she had nothing to say to us. Although we had enough to say to her …

  LILY. Who shall we talk to now?

  TONY. Each other, Lily. Always to each other.

  LILY. Caroline! Why should she have to go, Tony?

  TONY. She has to go sometime.

  ARTHUR. I made her go. I hit her. I must have hit her. There’s no other explanation.

  TONY (sits down in the basket chair and picks up his ukelele). How shall we ever know?

  ARTHUR. What do you mean. For God’s sake explain what you mean?

  TONY. Was it your temper or her temper that stopped her speaking? Was it just the complete lack of interest that overcomes all children at the thought of the parents who gave them birth?

  ARTHUR. I wasn’t responsible?

  TONY. What’s responsible for Caroline as she is? What you told her? What you didn’t tell her? The fact we told her a lie? The fact we told her the truth? Look back, Arthur. Look back, Lily do. What made us what we are? Anything our fathers and mothers said? More likely something that happened when we were all alone. Something we thought of for ourselves, looking for a passable disguise in a dusty attic, or for a path that didn’t exist in the hot summer in the middle of a wood that smelt of nettles.

  ARTHUR. Is that how you found things out?

  TONY. My dear old Headmaster. I’ve never found out anything. I’m not a parent, but in my weak moments, like this afternoon, I’ve wanted to tell things to the young. Why do we do it? Not to give them information, but to make them repeat our lives. That’s all. It’s finished with us and we don’t want it to be finished. We’d like them to do it for us – all over again. It’ll be better for Caroline to work in the bank. If only her adding weren’t quite so shaky. Let’s hope she errs, Headmaster, on the side of generosity.

  LILY gets up and begins to put things on a tray.

  ARTHUR. What are you doing, Bin?

  LILY. Clearing away the tea. (She goes out with the tray.)

  TONY (looking at his watch). Just ten minutes and the boys have to stop their so-called ‘free time’ and be hoarded into prep. I shall sit with them in silence. I’m not tempted to communicate with them any more.

  ARTHUR. I’d better start to get the history corrected. Then I must take the roll-call. Let’s hope the boys are all … still with us.

  He goes over to the roll-top desk. Starts marking exercise books.

  TONY (singing softly).

  ‘Here we sit like birds in the wilderness,

  Birds in the wilderness.

  Birds in the wilderness.

  Here we sit like birds in the wilderness …’

  ARTHUR. Peters.

  TONY (singing). ‘Down in Demerara… .’

  ARTHUR. Was Henry the Third the son of Henry the Second?

  TONY. He certainly wasn’t his daughter.

  ARTHUR. It doesn’t look right somehow.

  TONY. I suspect him of having been the son of
King John.

  ARTHUR. This boy misled me!

  TONY. You can’t rely on them. Not for accurate information.

  ARTHUR. Peters.

  TONY. Yes, Headmaster?

  ARTHUR. Bin hasn’t taken it too well, Caroline going off like that.

  TONY. A loss for us all, of course.

  ARTHUR. It’s taken a great deal from her.

  TONY. Yes.

  ARTHUR. It’s more important than ever …

  TONY. What is?

  ARTHUR. That we should keep going. Like we always have. If we stopped quarrelling over her now …

  TONY. Yes Headmaster?

  ARTHUR. Think how empty her poor life would be.

  TONY. And our lives?

  ARTHUR. Empty too, perhaps.

  TONY. You know, it must be almost twenty years ago that I came in through that window and made a joke. And now, it seems, I’ve got to live on that joke for ever.

  LILY comes in. She shivers, rubs her hands and crouches by the electric fire to warm them.

  LILY. It’s cold.

  ARTHUR. Nonsense.

  LILY. It seems strange. Just the three of us. Shall we always be alone now?

  ARTHUR. There it is.

  TONY. You never know. Just when you felt most lonely in Earls Court, I always noticed this, it was always the time when you met a bit of new. I remember feeling damned lonely one spring evening, about this time, walking down the Earls Court Road, and there was this beautiful girl, about eighteen, no older than Caroline in fact, her gloved finger pressed to a bell.

  ARTHUR. I hope there’s nothing disgusting about this reminiscence Peters.

  TONY. So I said nothing. I went and stood beside her. She gave me a glance. It wasn’t exactly marching orders. Then the door was opened by another girl, slightly older. ‘Come in darling,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad you could bring your husband.’ So we sat us down to four courses and later as it came on to fog, it was carte blanche of the spare bedroom for the night. You see the hostess, it all turned out, had never seen the husband.