The Complete Talking Heads

by Alan Bennett

  He said, ‘Well, I’m using the term loosely. They’re technically what we would call a fur-lined Gibson bruised look but bootees is a convenient shorthand. The shade is Bengal bronze.’ I said, ‘Well, they’re a lovely shoe.’ He said, ‘Yes. Cosy, ankle-hugging they make a beautiful ending to the leg. They’re a present, of course.’ I said, ‘Oh, Mr Dunderdale, I couldn’t.’ He said, ‘Miss Fozzard, please. My contacts in the world of footwear procure me a considerable discount. Besides there is a little something you can do for me in return.’ I said, ‘Oh?’ He said, ‘My years in bending over ladies’ feet have resulted in an intermittently painful condition of the lower back which, if you are amenable you have it in your power to alleviate.’ I said, ‘I do, Mr Dunderdale?’ He said, ‘You do, Miss Fozzard. I’m going to put one cushion on the hearthrug here for my head and the other here for my abdomen and now I’m going to lie down and what I want you to do is to step on my lower back.’ I said, ‘Should I take the bootees off?’ He said, ‘No, no. Keep the bootees on — their texture makes them ideal for the purpose. That’s it. Steady yourself by holding onto the edge of the mantelpiece if you want.’

  Then he said something I couldn’t hear because his face was pressed into the carpet. ‘What was that, Mr Dunderdale?’ ‘I said, “Excellent,” Miss Fozzard.You may move about a little if you would care to.’ I said, ‘I’m anxious not to hurt you, Mr Dunderdale.’ He said, ‘Have no fears on that score, Miss Fozzard. Trample away.’ I said, ‘I feel like one of those French peasants treading the grapes.’ He said, ‘Yes. Yes, yes.’ I said, ‘Do you feel the benefit?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, I do. Thank you. If you don’t mind, Miss Fozzard I’ll just lie here for a little while. Perhaps you could see yourself out.’

  So I just left him on the hearthrug.

  When I got back Bernard is sitting on the sofa with Miss Molloy, both of them looking a bit red in the face. ‘We were just laughing,’ Miss Molloy says, ‘because Bernard couldn’t think of a word.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘he must learn to skirt round it.’ ‘Oh, he did that all right,’ she said. ‘You’re an expert at that, aren’t you Bernard?’ And they both burst out laughing.

  Mr Clarkson-Hall’s very pleased with him. Says he’s never known a recovery so quick. Says he didn’t have the privilege of knowing Bernard before but he imagines he’s now quite like his old self. I said, ‘Yes. He is.’

  After Miss Molloy had gone he comes in here while I’m having my hot drink and says he’s thinking of opening the kiosk again and that Mallory is going to help him. I said, ‘Does Miss Molloy have any experience of sweets and tobacco?’ He said, ‘No, but she’s a fun-loving girl with a welcoming whatever it’s called and that’s half the battle.’

  Note from Mr Dunderdale this morning saying his back is much better and that he was looking forward to seeing me next week.

  Estelle suffers in the back department, the legacy from once having had to wield a spare pike at the Battle of Naseby. So I was telling her all about me helping Mr Dunderdale with his, only she wasn’t grateful. Just giggles and says, ‘Ooh, still waters!’

  Floor coverings, they ought to have somebody more mature. She really belongs in Cosmetics.

  FADE.

  I don’t know what’s got into people at work. I come in this morning and the commissionaire with the moustache who’s on the staff door says, ‘Have a good day, my duck.’ I said, ‘You may only have one arm, Mr Capstick, but that doesn’t entitle you to pat me on the bottom. Next thing is I’m invoicing some loose covers in Despatch when one of the work experience youths who can’t be more than sixteen gives me a silly wink.

  I said to Estelle, ‘My Viyella two-piece doesn’t normally have this effect.’ She said, ‘Well they’re just wanting to be friendly.’ I said, ‘Friendly? Estelle, I may not be a feminist (though I did spearhead the provision of pot-pourri in the ladies toilets) but people are not going to pat my bottom with impunity.’ Estelle says, ‘No. The boot’s on the other foot,’ and starts giggling. I said to Joy Poyser, ‘How ever she manages to interest anyone in serious vinyl flooring I do not understand.’

  House dark when I got in. I imagine they’re in the sitting room, the pair of them only I call out and there’s no sound. So I get my tea and read the Evening Post, nice to have the place to myself for a change.

  Then I go into the sitting room and there’s Bernard sitting there in the dark. I put the light on and he’s got the atlas open. I said, ‘What are you doing in the dark?’ He said, ‘Looking up the Maldive Islands.’ ‘Why,’ I said, ‘you’re not going on holiday?’ He said, ‘No, I’m not. How can I go on bloody holiday? What with?’ And he shoves a bank statement at me.

  I’ve a feeling he’s been crying and I’m not sure where to put myself so I go put the kettle on while I look at his statement. There’s practically nothing in it, money taken out nearly every day. I said, ‘What’s this?’ He said, ‘It’s that tart from Hobart.’ I said, ‘Miss Molloy? But she’s a qualified physiotherapist.’ He said, ‘Yes and she’s something else …she’s a —what do you call it - female dog.’

  I said, ‘Did you sign these cheques?’ He said, ‘Of course I signed them.’ I said, ‘What were you doing, practising writing?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Where is she?’ He said, ‘The Maldive Islands, where I was going to be.’ I said, ‘Well we must contact the police. It’s fraud is this.’ He said, ‘No it isn’t.’ I said, ‘What did you think these cheques were for?’ He said, ‘I knew what they were for. For services rendered. And I don’t mean lifting me on and off the what’s it called. It’s stuff she did for me.’ I said, ‘What stuff?’ He said, ‘You know.’

  I said, ‘Remember what Mr Clarkson-Hall says, Bernard. Trace a path round the word.’ He sand, ‘I don’t have to trace a path round the bloody word. I know the word. It’s you that doesn’t. You don’t know bloody nothing.’ I said, ‘Well one thing is plain. Despite your cerebral accident your capacity for foul language remains unimpaired.’ He said, ‘You’re right. It bloody does.’

  I made him some tea. I said, ‘She’s made a fool of you.’ Bernard said, ‘You can speak.’ I said, ‘You mean talk. I know I can speak. The expression is, you can talk. Anyway why?’ He said, ‘Monkeying about with your foot feller.’ I said, ‘Mr Dunderdale? What’s he got to do with it?’ He said, ‘Little games and whatnot. He’s obviously a …a …’ I said, ‘A what?’ He said, ‘A … thing.’ I said, ‘Skirt a path round the word, Bernard. A what?’ He said, ‘Skirt it yourself you stupid …four legs, two horns, where you get milk.’ I said, ‘Cow. You normally remember that.’

  I was telling Joy Poyser about it and she said, ‘Well, why did you tell him about the chiropodist?’ I said, ‘Mr Clarkson-Hall said that I should talk to him, it’s part of the therapy.’ She said, ‘It’s not part of the therapy for Estelle Metcalf, is it? You told her. She’s not had a stroke.’ Apparently she’s spread it all over the store.’

  Anyway I came upstairs, left him crying over the atlas, when suddenly I hear a crash. I said, ‘Bernard? Bernard?’

  Pause.

  ‘Bernard!’

  FADE.

  Estelle ventured into Soft Furnishings yesterday, first time for a week. Testing the water, I suppose. Said Neville was taking part in the battle of Marston Moor on Sunday. She’s going along as a camp follower but they’re short of one or two dishevelled Roundhead matrons and was I interested? I said, ‘It’s kind of you to offer, Estelle, but I think from now I’d be well advised to keep a low profile.’

  People don’t like to think you have a proper life, that’s what I’ve decided. Or any more of a life than they know about. Then when they find out they think it’s shocking. Else funny. I never thought I had a life. It was always Bernard who had the life.

  He’s worse this time than the last. Eyes used to follow you then. Not now. Log. Same rigmarole, though. Talk to him. Treat him like a person. Not that he ever treated me like a person. Meanwhile Madam is laid out on the beach in the Maldives. He was on
the rug when I found him. Two inches the other way and he’d have hit his head on the fender. Lucky escape.

  I’d written to Mr Dunderdale, cancelling any further appointments. I didn’t say why, just that with Bernard being poorly again it wasn’t practical anyway. Which it wasn’t.

  So it was back to normal, sitting with Bernard, doing a few little jobs. I’d forgotten how long an evening could be.

  Anyway, I was coming away from work one night and a big browny-coloured car draws up beside me, the window comes down and blow me if it isn’t Mr Dunderdale.

  He said, ‘Good evening, Miss Fozzard. Could I tempt you up to Lawnswood? I’d like a little chat.’ I said, ‘Could we not talk here?’ He said, ‘Not in the way I’d like. I’m on a double yellow line.’ So I get in and he runs me up there and whatever else you can say about him he’s a very accomplished driver.

  Anyway he sits me down in his study and gives me a glass of sherry and says why did I not want to come and see him any more. Well, I didn’t know what to say. I said, ‘It isn’t as if I don’t look forward to my appointments.’ He said, ‘Well, dear lady, I look forward to them too.’ I said, ‘But now that I have to get help in for Bernard again I can’t afford to pay you.’

  He said, ‘Well, may I make a suggestion? Why don’t we reverse the arrangement?’ I said, ‘Come again.’ He said, ‘Do it vice versa. I pay you.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s very unusual.’ He said, ‘You’re a very unusual woman.’ I said, ‘I am? Why?’ He said, ‘Because you’re a free spirit, Miss Fozzard. You make your own rules.’ I said, ‘Well, I like to think so.’ He said, ‘I’m the same. We’re two of a kind, you and I, Miss Fozzard. Mavericks. Have you ever had any champagne?’ I said, ‘No, but I’ve seen it at the conclusion of motor races.’ He said, ‘Allow me. To the future?’

  It’s all very decorous. Quite often he’ll make us a hot drink and we’ll just sit and turn over the pages of one of his many books on the subject, or converse on matters related. I remarked the other day how I’d read that Imelda Marcos had a lot of shoes. He said, ‘She did …and she suffered for it at the bar of world opinion, in my view, Miss Fozzard, unjustly.’

  Little envelope on the hall table as I go out, never mentioned, and if there’s been anything beyond the call of duty there’ll be that little bit extra. Buys me no end of shoes, footwear generally. I keep thinking where’s it all going to end but we’ll walk that plank when we come to it.

  I’ve never had the knack of making things happen. I thought things happened or they didn’t. Which is to say they didn’t. Only now they have …sort of.

  Bernard gets an attendance allowance now and what with that and the envelopes from Mr Dunderdale I can stay on at work and still have someone in to look after him. Man this time. Mr Albright. Pensioner, so he’s glad of a job. Classy little feller, keen on railways and reckons to be instigating Bernard into the mysteries of chess. Though Mr Albright has to play both sides of course.

  At one point I said to Mr Dunderdale, ‘People might think this rather peculiar particularly in Lawnswood.’ He said, ‘Well, people would be wrong. We are just enthusiasts, Miss Fozzard, you and I and there’s not enough enthusiasm in the world these days. Now if those Wellingtons are comfy I just want you in your own time and as slowly as you like very gently to mark time on my bottom.’

  Occasionally he’ll have some music on. I said once, ‘I suppose that makes this the same as aerobics.’ He said, ‘If you like.’

  It’s droll but the only casualty in all this is my feet, because nowadays the actual chiropody gets pushed to one side a bit. If I want an MOT I really have to nail him down.

  We’re still Mr Dunderdale and Miss Fozzard and I’ve not said anything to anybody at work. Learned my lesson there.

  Anyway, people keep saying how well I look.

  Pause.

  I suppose there’s a word for what I’m doing but …I skirt round it.

  FADE.

  Playing Sandwiches

  Wilfred: David Haig

  PRODUCED BY MARK SHIVAS

  DESIGNED BY STUART WALKER

  DIRECTED BY UDAYAN PRASAD

  MUSIC BY GEORGE FENTON

  A MIDDLE-AGED MAN IN THE BASIC UNIFORM (DONKEY JACKET, NAVY BLUE OVERALLS) OF A PARKS ATTENDANT. HE SITS AGAINST THE PLANKS OF A PARK SHELTER, PAINTED BUT WORN AND COVERED WITH GRAFFITI.

  I was in the paper shop this dinnertime getting some licorice allsorts. Man serving me said, ‘I wish I was like you.’ Shouted out to the woman, ‘I wish I was him. Always buying sweets, never gets fat.’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m lucky. Only I cycle.’ She said, ‘Yes, I’ve seen you. You work for the Parks Department.’ He said, ‘Weren’t you a lollipop man once?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I thought I’d seen you, stood at the crossing.’ Racks and racks of magazines. Always men in there, looking.

  Janet was dressmaking, doing the twins’ christening frocks. I said, ‘They put on you, Janet. Before these frocks there’s been no word for long enough.’ She said, ‘Well, whose fault is that?’ Apricot satin, little buttons down the front.

  Mr Trickett nosing round this afternoon at what he calls ‘grassroots level’ ordains a blitz on the bushes behind the playground. Privet mostly, all stinking of urine and clogged up with every sort of filth …sheaths; jamrags; a shoe; some tights; sick; dog muck. They come over the wall on a night after The Woodman’s turned out, lie down drunk in all that filth and stench and do it. They do it in the playground too, laid down over one end of the slide where the kiddies slide along with their bottoms, then just chuck the evidence down anywhere.

  I’m nearly finished when Mr Kumar stops with his barrow and brushes and we walk back to the yard together. He’s from Bombay so he takes all this filth in his stride. Born a street sweeper, apparently, what they call an untouchable, though he’s very neat, you’d never think it. Going on about getting his wife over from India. Got some decent digs in the Brudenells only a person from Liverpool comes and kicks the door in in the middle of the night. Thinks the English don’t like the Indians; says the only Indians the English like are the Gurkhas. The Gurkhas cut people’s heads off so that makes them the salt of the earth.

  As we’re going by the office Mr Parlane calls me in and says he’s heard from Wakefield but they still can’t trace my records. Foreman, dinner supervisor, lollipop man, I must have left some trace, was I sure I’d got all the digits right? I reeled the number off again and he said, ‘Well, I’ll try Pontefract, Wilfred, but it’s been six months now.’

  I went the long way round, pushing the bike. Just one kiddy by herself on the swings. Kiddy black. Mother, white, having a cig, watching.

  FADE.

  Against anonymous wallpaper; a bedroom, say.

  I don’t like a cargo of relations; I never have. I wasn’t particular to go to the christening only Janet wanted to see what her frocks looked like on and anyway, as she said, who are Barry and Yvonne to look down their nose, their Martin’s been had up twice for drunken driving.

  Slight hiccup round the font because, since Martin hasn’t actually managed to turn up they’re short of a godfather. Yvonne wants to go ahead without but the young lad who’s in charge says that though he personally is very relaxed about it, the church does tend to insist on there being a full complement of godparents.

  We’re all standing round looking a bit stumped when little Rosalie, who’s seven, pipes up and says, ‘Why can’t Uncle Wilfred be it, he’s my godfather.’ Barry straight off clouts her only the priest who doesn’t look much more than seventeen and new to the parish says, ‘Would Uncle Wilfred be a possible solution?’ I don’t say anything at all only Yvonne gets in quick, ‘No, Wilfred wouldn’t be a possible solution because …’ and Janet looks at her ‘ …because they’re not currently motorised.’ The priest lad looks as if he’s about to say that wheels aren’t part of the job description when Yvonne spots Grandpa Greenwood who’s just been out to spend a penny and says, ‘He’ll do’. The priest says, ‘Isn’t he a bit on the ol
d side?’ Yvonne says, ‘No he isn’t. He still goes ballroom dancing.’ So it ends up being him. I said to Janet, ‘At least baby Lorraine won’t have any problems with the Military Twostep.’

  Afterwards we adjourn to Sherwood Road where Pete and Gloria had laid something on, beer chiefly by the looks of it, one of those dos where the women end up in one room and the men in another. There are kiddies all over the place, though, and what with Pete’s alsatian plunging around, sheer bedlam. That’s irresponsible in my view, a dog that size when there are kiddies about. One snap and they’re scarred for life. A lot of larking about with the children, Barry throwing their two up in the air till they screamed then pretends to throw one to me but doesn’t. Ginger tash. Big fingers. Does a bit of decorating now and again, was in a remand home when he was young.

  Then Pete starts telling his so-called jokes. ‘Now then, which would you rather have, Wilf, a thousand women with one pound or one woman with a thousand pound?’ ‘Else neither,’ says Barry and I saw him wink but I didn’t take on. I thought I’d go and help wash up only no sooner were all the women in the kitchen when Janet has to embark on the saga of her womb, how we could have had children only the angle of it was wrong. So Yvonne chips in, ‘It’s not your angle, love, it’s his that matters.’ So there’s a lot of smutty laughter and I go out and sit on the back step.