Plays 5

by Tom Stoppard

Das (delighted) Oh yes! Finally like the empire of Ozymandias! Entirely forgotten except in a poem by an English poet. You see how privileged we are, Miss Crewe. Only in art can empires cheat oblivion, because only the artist can say, ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ There are Mughal paintings in London, in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  Flora I just didn’t like you thinking English was better because it was English. Can’t you paint me without thinking of Rossetti or Millais? Especially without thinking of Holman Hunt. Did you consider my question?

  Das When you stood … with the pitcher of water, you were an Alma-Tadema.

  Flora Well, I don’t want to be painted like that either – that’s C. B. Cochran, if only he dared.

  Das I don’t understand why you are angry with me.

  Flora You were painting me as a gift, to please me.

  Das Yes. Yes, it was a gift for you.

  Flora If you don’t start learning to take you’ll never be shot of us. Who whom. Nothing else counts. Mr Chamberlain is bosh. Mr Coomaraswami is bosh. It’s your country, and we’ve got it. Everything else is bosh. When I was Modi’s model I might as well have been a table. When he was done, he got rid of me. There was no question who whom. You’d never change his colour on a map. But please light your Goldflake.

  Pause. Das lights his cigarette with a match.

  Das I like the Pre-Raphaelites because they tell stories. That is my tradition, too. I am Rajasthani. Our art is narrative art, stories from the legends and romances. The English painters had the Bible and Shakespeare, King Arthur … We had the Bhagavata Purana, and the Rasikpriya which was written exactly when Shakespeare had his first play. And long before Chaucer we had the Chaurapanchasika, from Kashmir, which is poems of love written by the poet of the court on his way to his execution for falling in love with the king’s daughter, and the king liked the poems so very much he pardoned the poet and allowed the lovers to marry.

  Flora Oh …

  Das But the favourite book of the Rajput painters was the Gita Govinda which tells the story of Krishna and Radha the most beautiful of the herdswomen.

  The ceiling fan starts working.

  Flora The electricity is on.

  Das You will be a little cooler now.

  Flora Yes. I might have a sleep.

  Das That would be good.

  Flora Mr Durance has invited me to dinner at the Club.

  Das Will you be well enough?

  Flora I am well now.

  Das That is good. Goodbye, then.

  Flora Were Krishna and Radha punished in the story?

  Das What for?

  Flora I should have come here years ago. The punkah boy can stop now. Will you give him a rupee? I’ll return it tomorrow.

  Das I will give him an anna. A rupee would upset the market.

  Das leaves.

  Flora remains in the bed.

  Act Two

  The Jummapur Club after sundown. Gramophone music. Three couples are dancing: Flora and Durance, the Resident and the Englishwoman, and a third couple, an Englishman and English Lady.

  Somewhat removed from the dance floor is a verandah, which is spacious enough not only for the necessary furniture but also for two gymnasium horses, fitted out with stirrups and reins. These ‘horses’ are used for practising polo swings and there are indeed a couple of polo sticks, a couple of topees and odd bits of gear lying in the corner.

  Pike is sitting alone on the verandah. He is tieless, wearing a Lacoste-type short-sleeved sports shirt.

  Englishwoman Are you writing a poem about India, Flora?

  Flora Trying to!

  Englishman Kipling – there’s a poet! ‘Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, by the living Gawd that made you, you’re a better man than I am Gunga Din!’

  Resident The only poet I know is Alfred Housman. I expect you’ve come across him.

  Flora (pleased) Oh yes, indeed I have!

  Resident A dry old stick, isn’t he?

  Flora Oh – come across him –

  Resident He hauled me though ‘Ars Amatoria’ when I was up at Trinity.

  Flora ‘The Art of Love’?

  Resident When it comes to love, he said, you’re either an Ovid man or a Virgil man – omnia vincit amor – that’s Virgil – ‘Love sweeps all before it, and we give way to love’ – et nos cedamus amori. Housman was an Ovid man – et mihi cedet amor – ‘Love gives way to me’.

  Flora I’m a Virgil man.

  Resident Are you? Well, it widens one’s circle of acquaintance.

  Englishwoman Will you be here for the Queen’s Ball, Flora?

  Flora The …?

  Englishwoman It comes off next month, Queen Victoria’s birthday, and there’s the gymkhana!

  Flora Oh … I can’t, I’m afraid. I’ll be going up the country soon; is that the expression?

  Resident Of course, you’re here on doctor’s orders, I believe.

  Flora Why … yes …

  Resident If there’s anything you need or want you tell David – right, David?

  Durance Yes, sir.

  Flora Thank you. He’s already promised me a go in the Daimler.

  Durance (embarrassed) Oh … Flora’s keen on autos.

  Englishwoman If you like cars, the Rajah has got about eighty-six of them. Collects them like stamps.

  Another record begins to play.

  Resident Well, don’t let us stop you enjoying yourselves.

  Durance Would you like to dance, Flora?

  Flora I’m out of puff. Do you think there might be more air outside?

  Durance On the verandah? Any air that’s going. Should we take a peg with us?

  … The Kipling fan, unseen, is singing:

  Englishman

  ‘On the road to Mandalay

  Where the flyin’ fishes play,

  An’ the dawn come up like thunder outer China crost the Bay!’

  The dancers disperse.

  Dilip, now smartly dressed in a jacket and tie, enters the verandah from within, in something of a hurry, carrying a jacket and a tie. The jacket is a faded beige gabardine with metal buttons, the skimpy jacket of a servant. On the breast, however, not instantly apparent, is a short strip of grimy campaign ribbons.

  Dilip Here I am at last! – I am so sorry, my fault entirely for not thinking to mention – but, look – all will be well in a jiffy! – and I have terrifically good news.

  Pike (getting up) Thank you, Dilip – what …?

  Dilip (helping him on with the jacket, which is too small for Pike) Put it on and I will tell you. The jacket is a miserable garment, and our benefactor, I’m afraid, isn’t quite your size.

  Pike (implausibly) This is fine.

  Dilip The tie, on the other hand, is tip-top, Jummapur Cricket Club. My friend Mr Balvinder Lal keeps a small stock on the premises. I spared you the blazer.

  Pike obligingly starts putting on the striped tie.

  Pike Do you mean you can’t come in here without a jacket and tie, not ever?

  Dilip Not in the dining-room after sunset. Oh these rules are absurd! But – Eldon – something wonderful has come of it. I have discovered the name of your painter!

  Pike You have?

  Dilip I have! His name was Nirad Das. Now we can research!

  Pike But Dilip – but that’s – how did you –?

  Dilip It was God. If you had been wearing a jacket we would still be in the dark. But in borrowing the jacket, you see – oh, don’t think that I discuss your affairs – it only seemed, shall I say, tactical to point out your distinction –

  Pike Dilip, never mind about that –

  Dilip Nor, for that matter, was the owner of the jacket indulging in impertinent curiosity about your private business, I assure you – actually, I know him well, he is an Old Soldier, formerly in the 6th Rajputana Rifles –

  Pike Dilip – please!

  Dilip He remembers the English lady who stayed in the dak house.

  Pike He … he re
members …? But are you sure it was the same –?

  Dilip Oh yes – he saw Miss Crewe having her portrait painted.

  Pike (when he recovers) I have to talk to him.

  Dilip Of course. After dinner we will –

  Pike After dinner? He could die while I’m eating! Where is he? Ask him to have dinner with us.

  Dilip Oh, that is not possible, you see.

  Pike Why not?

  Dilip He would not like that. Anyway, he does not have a jacket.

  Pike We’re getting off the point there –

  Dilip Also, he is working now.

  Pike What, he works here?

  Dilip Exactly. He works here. He is in charge of supervising the cloakroom.

  Pike Well, that’s wonderful. Show me the way.

  Dilip Eldon, please be guided by me. We will not rush at the fences in the lavatory. (He points at the ribbons on Pike’s breast.) One of these is the ribbon for ’39 to ’45. This one, I think, is the Burma Star. He is without one leg. He has no sons. He has three daughters, two of them unmarried and to marry the third he sold his army pension and secured for himself a job which is cleaning toilets. Tomorrow there is time, there is reflection, there is … esteem … We can take a cup of tea together on the maidan and talk of old times. Believe me.

  Pike Esteem. If he dies I’ll kill you.

  Dilip (laughs) He will not die. Let me go and see if our table’s ready. Oh, how terrible –! with all this excitement I have not offered you an aperitif.

  Pike What’s his name, Dilip?

  Dilip Mr Ram Sunil Singh, formerly Subadar, B Company, 6th Rajputana Rifles.

  Pike He must be pretty ancient.

  The gramophone music creeps back in. Flora, alone, comes out onto the verandah.

  Dilip No, not at all. He was only a small boy, you see. One day the Memsahib was sick and Ram Sunil Singh worked the punkah to cool the air. Mr Nirad Das gave him two annas. One does not forget such things. (Leaving now.) I won’t be a jiff. I must say, I could eat a horse! (He leaves.)

  Flora ‘My suitor – I suppose I must call him that, though I swear I’ve done nothing to encourage him – came to fetch me in an open Daimler which drew such a crowd, and off we went with people practically falling off the mud-guards, rather like leaving Bow Street – my God, how strange, that was ten years ago almost to the day.’

  Pike In fact, nine. See ‘The Woman Who Wrote What She Knew’, E. C. Pike, Modern Language Review, Spring 1979.

  Flora ‘And everyone at the Club was very friendly, going out of their way to explain that although they didn’t go in much for poetry, they had nothing against it, so that was all right, and dinner was soup, boiled fish, lamb cutlets, sherry trifle and sardines on toast, and it beats me how we’re getting away with it, darling, I wouldn’t trust some of them to run the Hackney Empire. Well, it’s all going to end. That’s official. I heard it from the horse’s mouth –’

  The Resident and the Englishwoman dance into view, in a cheerful mood.

  Resident (dancing) (a) It is our moral duty to remain and (b) we will shirk it.

  The Resident and the Englishwoman, dancing, spin out of view.

  Flora ‘I thought the Club would be like a commercial hotel in the hotter part of Reigate, but not at all – it was huge and white and pillared, just like the house of your first memory, perhaps – poor mama’s nearly-house, which was ours for six months and then no more. I’ve never been back to Maybrook. Perhaps we should make a pilgrimage one day.’

  Pike The Crewe family met Sir George Dewe-Lovett of Maybrook Hall, Lancashire, in August 1911 on the promenade at Llandudno.

  Durance appears now, followed by a servant with two tumblers of whisky and a soda syphon on a salver.

  Durance Here we are. Two burra-pegs.

  Pike Catherine Crewe never returned to the house at Ashbourne.

  Flora Lots of soda with mine, please.

  Pike She eloped with Dewe-Lovett, a director of the White Star Shipping Line, and took her daughters to live at Maybrook.

  Durance I’ll do it.

  The servant bows and leaves.

  Pike Percival Crewe proved to be co-operative and divorce proceedings were under way when the girls returned to Ashbourne to stay with their father for the Easter holidays of 1912, while their mother joined Dewe-Lovett at Southampton.

  Durance Say when. (He deals with the drinks.)

  Flora When.

  Pike The Titanic sailed on April 10th and FC never saw her mother or Maybrook again.

  Flora Cheers.

  Durance Cheers.

  Dilip reappears with the menus.

  Dilip Eldon! We can eat! I hope you will like my Club. The Jummapur Palace is a beautiful hotel, naturally, but this was the place in the old days when the palace was still the private residence of the rajah.

  Pike (following him out) Where does he live now?

  Dilip (leaving) In the penthouse! The fish curry is usually good, and on no account miss the bread-and-butter pudding!

  Flora I’m sorry I packed up on you.

  Durance This is nicer. So you’ve come to India for your health …

  Flora Is that amusing?

  Durance Well, it is rather. Have you seen the English cemetery?

  Flora No.

  Durance I must take you there.

  Flora Oh.

  Durance People here drop like flies – cholera, typhoid, malaria – men, women and children, here one day, gone the next. Are you sure the doctor said India?

  Flora He didn’t say India. He said a sea voyage and somewhere warm. I wanted to come to India.

  Durance Good for you. Live dangerously. In a month, you can’t imagine it, the heat. But you’ll be gone to the hills, so you’ll be all right. (referring to the chair) There we are. Long-sleever. Good for putting the feet up.

  Flora Yes – long-sleever. Thank you. It’s a nice Club.

  Durance Yes, it’s decent enough. There are not so many British here so we tend to mix more.

  Flora With the Indians?

  Durance No. In India proper, I mean our India, there’d be two or three Clubs. The box-wallahs would have their own and the government people would stick together, you know how it is – and the Army …

  Flora Mr Das called you Captain.

  Durance Yes, I’m Army. Seconded, of course. There are two of us juniors – political agents we call ourselves when we’re on tour round the States. Jummapur is not one of your twenty-one-gun salute states, you see – my Chief is in charge of half a dozen native states.

  Flora In charge?

  Durance Oh yes.

  Flora Is he Army? No – how silly –

  Durance He’s Indian Civil Service. The heaven-born. A Brahmin.

  Flora Not seriously?

  Durance Yes, seriously. Oh no, not a Brahmin seriously. But it might come to that with I-zation.

  Flora …?

  Durance Indianization. It’s all over, you know. We have Indian officers in the Regiment now. My fellow Junior here is Indian, too, terribly nice chap – he’s ICS, passed the exam, did his year at Cambridge, learned polo and knives-and-forks, and here he is, a pukkah sahib in the Indian Civil Service.

  Flora Is he here?

  Durance At the Club? No, he can’t come into the Club.

  Flora Oh.

  Durance Cheers. Your health, Flora. I drink to your health, for which you came. I wish you were staying longer. I mean, only for my sake, Flora.

  Flora Yes, but I’m not. So that’s that. Don’t look hangdog. You might like me less and less as you got to know me.

  Durance Will you come riding in the morning?

  Flora Seriously.

  Durance Yes, seriously. Will you?

  Flora In the Daimler?

  Durance No. Say you will. We’ll have to go inside in a minute if no one comes out.

  Flora Why?

  Durance There’s nothing to do here except gossip, you see. They’re all agog about you. One of the wives claims …
Were you in the papers at home? Some scandal about one of your books, something like that?

  Flora I can see why you’re nervous, being trapped out here with me – let’s go in –

  Durance No – I’m sorry. Flora …? Pax? Please.

  Flora All right, Pax.

  He kisses her, uninvited, tentatively.

  Durance Sealed with a kiss.

  Flora No more. I mean it, David. Think of your career.

  Durance Are you really a scandalous woman?

  Flora I was for a while. I was up in court, you know. Bow Street.

  Durance (alarmed) Oh, not really?

  Flora Almost really. I was a witness. The publisher was in the dock, but it was my poems – my first book.

  Durance Oh, I say.

  Flora The case was dismissed on a technicality, and the policemen were awfully sweet, they got me away through the crowd in a van. My sister was asked to leave school. But that was mostly my own fault – the magistrate asked me why all the poems seemed to be about sex, and I said. ‘Write what you know’ – just showing off. I was practically a virgin, but it got me so thoroughly into the newspapers my name rings a bell even with the wife of a bloody jute planter or something in the middle of Rajputana, damn, damn, damn, no, let’s go inside.

  Durance Sit down, that’s an order.

  Durance, who has been standing, swings himself aboard one of the gymnasium horses.

  Flora Oh dear, you’re not going to be masterful, are you?

  Durance (laughs) Do you like polo?

  Flora Well, I don’t play a lot.

  Durance Measure your swing, you see … (He swings the polo mallet.) How’s your whisky?

  Flora Excellent. All the better for being forbidden. My God, where did that moon come from?

  Durance Better. I love this country, don’t you?

  Flora What’s going to happen to it? The riot in town this morning … does that happen often?

  Durance Not here, no. The jails are filling up in British India.

  Flora Well, then.

  Durance It wasn’t against us, it was Hindu and Moslem. Gandhi’s salt march reached the sea today, did you hear?

  Flora No. I want to know.

  Durance Our Congress Hindus closed their shops in sympathy, and the Moslems wouldn’t join in, that’s all it was about.

  Flora My cook came home minus two chickens.