by Alan Bennett
Eric enters.
Then there is no refuge, even in prison.
Eric There’s a car at the end of the track. They looked at my papers. Has anything happened?
Hilary What sort of car?
Eric Security men. Have they been here?
Bron Here? Nobody’s been here.
Hilary Apart from our visitors. This is Eric, Duff. Eric, Veronica. Our young friend.
Eric I’m sorry to spring myself on you. Only Olga wanted to call in.
Hilary Olga? Why? Perhaps we should stroll down.
Bron No.
Hilary Why not? Duff?
Duff I won’t, if you don’t mind.
Hilary It’s always good for a laugh. V?
Veronica I’m game. I’m game for anything.
Hilary and Veronica go.
Bron Where is Olga?
Eric Down there.
Bron I’d better go too.
Bron goes. Duff looks at a book.
Duff Yes. Ye-es. (Turning decisively into the room.) Yes.
Eric Have you ever been here before?
Duff No. No, I haven’t. I’ve never had a particular reason. I’ve never had the yen. I suppose if I were pressed for a reason I would have to say that I came to Slavonic art only comparatively recently. Yes. Art. That after all is what tempts us out of doors. Beckons us across the street. Across continents. Greece. Italy. Ceylon. Art is the magnet. That is why I have never been to Jersey. Or the Isle of Man. And very seldom to Wales. One can’t see them from here?
Eric No.
Duff The museums here are stuffed with good things. The Impressionists are staggering. And most of them, one suspects, wasted.
Eric We’ve met before.
Duff smiles.
At home.
Duff At home. And where is that? Home?
Eric Gosport. London.
Duff Gosport. No. I think it unlikely. You have seen my face in the press. I am on the Arts Council, a member of several working parties. Occasionally one creeps into the headlines.
Eric You took me back to your flat.
Duff Lately I have been active in promoting some new form of remuneration for the writers of fiction. The outlook for the novel has never been so bleak. I have no flat. I live in St John’s Wood.
Eric You were very nice to me. I stayed the night.
Duff Novels. Poetry. One marvels they get written at all. You spent the night? I don’t think so. I have a daughter at Warwick University.
Eric It was in the National Gallery one Sunday afternoon.
Duff Weekends invariably find me in Wiltshire.
Eric I don’t understand all that. People trooping round. I never know which pictures to stop at. I end up looking at pictures I’ve seen pictures of because I think they must be the best.
Duff Why not? Why not? They probably are. Tried. Tested. I propounded a scheme not long ago (rejected solely on grounds of cost) for galleries to print little flags. Stickers. Of the sort … Skegness, Luxembourg … you see on Dormobile windows. Why not ‘The Laughing Cavalier’, ‘The Hay Wain’, ‘We have seen the Wallace Collection’. On the lines ‘We have seen the lions of Longleat’. We must not be afraid to take art into the market-place.
Eric Have you seen those?
Duff What?
Eric The lions of Longleat?
Duff No. No.
Eric We have. My wife and I. I’m married, too.
Duff Too? You are certainly thinking of someone else.
Eric I had a bit of a moustache then. You were thinner.
Duff One was always thinner.
Eric It was you.
Duff What can be keeping him? One hopes our host hasn’t done anything foolish. The art form hardest to justify in cost-benefit terms is of course opera. On the board of the Royal Opera we are very much aware of this. I never go into Covent Garden, which of course I do constantly, without some feeling if not of actual guilt at any rate certainly of it not being entirely fair. Feelings somewhat allayed now that we have introduced our promenade evenings with tickets to fit the pocket of the office worker. The shop assistant. The bank clerk. In a word Young People. To be young, that is the privilege. What is a box at the opera? What is a seat in the stalls? A cushion. Part of the upholstery of life. What it is not is youth. Beauty.
Eric I thought you just wanted a go in the bogs. Instead you took me back and gave me some tea and I spent the evening sat in my underpants looking at Country Life. It was really civilised.
Duff That is something I never do, if I want to sleep at night. Look at the back numbers of Country Life. The properties. Palaces practically. Sold, for nothing. Ten, even five years ago. Had one but known. No. No. That way madness lies. As for this other I am not sure what is being required. Corroboration, is it? Or nostalgia. Hardly an idyll. And very Angus Wilson.
Eric Who’s he?
Duff Angus Wilson is a … never mind. Have you the correct time? We have a car coming at five.
Eric It’s just that I’d like to come home.
Duff I was warned against blackmail.
Eric Not blackmail. Old times.
Duff It is old times, all that. Cuts no ice nowadays.
Eric You could pull strings. You know people.
Duff What makes you think that? I am virtually a recluse.
Eric No.
Duff A lackey. A mere fonctionnaire. We are talking about the Law. Authority. The immutables. Here you are, and here, short of a radical alteration, you will have to stay.
Eric You’re just a prick.
Duff I think I hear the party returning.
Eric It’s not fair.
Duff It is a distasteful fact but I am fifty-six. You are in Russia. Neither of us can go back. We must both make ourselves at home.
Eric It’s not the same.
Duff Why is it not the same?
Eric I don’t know. Because … it’s not my fault I’m here.
Duff Fault. Fault. It’s not my fault I’m fifty-six. Time … just went. It dribbled away.
Eric You had your life. What have I had?
Duff We must both of us strive after resignation. We all have to be somewhere.
Eric Pisspot.
Enter Veronica.
Veronica I see we’ve broken the ice.
Duff What precisely is happening?
Veronica Nothing. A black car. Four men in overcoats looking like commissionaires. ‘Have you any jeans?’ Nothing very ominous at all. They talked to your wife.
Eric They would.
Duff What did Hilary say?
Veronica Big joke. What time is our car coming?
Duff Soon. On schedule. Our friend would like to go with us.
Veronica To Moscow?
Duff Home.
Veronica Why is that?
Duff It appears he is not happy here. He is homesick. I’ve told him he must buckle to. One can’t be flitting about the world just because one isn’t happy. One would never be still.
Veronica Anyway you wouldn’t recognize London. London’s frightful. So smelly. Onions. Fried chicken, that sort of thing. Your wife on the other hand seems at home here. Chatting.
Eric She was at home in Holloway.
Duff Was it Holloway? I know the Governor there. Delightful woman. And a lion in committee. I must find out if they ran across each other.
Eric I was in Wakefield.
Duff Yes. That’s quite a small gaol, isn’t it? I don’t actually know it. I know the bishop. Splendid man. One of these train fanatics.
Hilary enters with Bron.
Hilary I should have been a bishop by now, if I’d taken orders.
Duff What of our friends? Were they forthcoming?
Hilary One gathers it’s a routine visitation. In that line of work there’s very little that isn’t routine.
Veronica Including pulling finger-nails out.
Hilary I think you’d find that’s rather old-fashioned. It’s curious, isn’t it, that whereas the man who gets pleas
ure out of his job will generally do it better, a torturer who gets pleasure out of it will invariably do it worse. It has to be routine. Though of course I don’t believe it happens. Oh. Curiouser and curiouser. He’s got a little friend.
Bron Hilary. What is happening?
Hilary We seem to be the object of some attention. Now why is that, Duffy? I hope you’ve been behaving yourselves.
Duff Our car is coming at five, and we’re bidden to the ballet this evening so we have a fairly tight schedule. I must ask you again. As a friend. Will you come back? It isn’t an idle question.
Hilary Oh, I thought it was. ‘Slot it in at the back of your mind,’ you said. However. I have to decide. Come down on one side or the other. And without recourse to irony. Which is not to decide at all but have it both ways. The English speciality. I wonder with the new European vogue that we don’t have a referendum on it. Irony, is it a good thing? And on the voting paper two boxes, one to read Yes or No. The other Yes and No. The whole thing would have to be held under the auspices of an institution impervious to irony … the Egg Marketing Board suggests itself, or the Royal School of Needlework. Except there is the problem: no institution you can name but the choice is tinged with irony. Utterly absent, it is never more present. Irony is inescapable. We’re conceived in irony. We float in it from the womb. It’s the amniotic fluid. It’s the silver sea. It’s the waters at their priestlike task washing away guilt and purpose and responsibility. Joking but not joking. Caring but not caring. Serious but not serious.
Duff I am serious. It is serious.
Hilary Bron?
Bron Why ask me?
Hilary Weigh it all up. No Gamages. No Pontings. No more trains from Kemble to Cirencester. No Lyons. On the other hand I read of the renaissance of the small bakery; country breweries revive. Better bread, better beer. They come from Florence to shop in Marks and Spencer. It is not an easy decision.
Bron You never get tired of it, do you? Shoving your arse out of the car window. Pissing on the Cenotaph. Spitting on the graves. People died. And not merely died. Eventually died. Good people. Friends.
Hilary That is true. It isn’t altogether fair, but it’s true.
Duff (blandly) Dear Bron. To talk of guilt in a world where the purchase of an orange, for instance, is fraught with implications … the endorsement of tyranny, the sweating of labour … to talk of guilt in a world where the individual is incapable of calculating the economic consequence of his simplest action … is to talk of the air we breathe. Yes. There are germs in the air. Microbes. But how should they be eliminated? And if they should be, would we find ourselves to have been dependent on those microbes for the condition of our lives? We would. So let there be no talk of guilt at this juncture. As soon talk of cause and effect.
During this speech Hilary has been looking for a book.
Hilary Talking of microbes I was reading somewhere that there are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
Duff Hilary.
Hilary How can I come home? I am home. I am a Soviet citizen.
Veronica I didn’t know that.
Hilary Duff did.
Duff A technicality. To do with ordinary people.
Veronica Since when?
Duff 1939. The Nazi-Soviet pact.
Veronica A curious time to choose.
Bron What do you expect?
Duff You see we could go today. Now. When the car comes. I think you’ll find that there won’t be any problem with your people here. Rather the reverse.
Hilary I see. Hence our friends in the garden. With Olga.
Duff It would be convenient. For everyone.
Hilary Have I a choice?
Duff You would be doing me a great personal favour.
Hilary But have I a choice?
Duff When has one a choice? I am your friend. If you felt you had it would be … nice.
Enter Olga from the garden.
Olga (to Duff) But they are not ready.
Bron We haven’t quite decided yet.
Olga You had better get ready. There will be two cars. You will go in the first car. The others in the second car.
Duff I wanted him to feel it was his decision. I should have felt easier if it had been your decision. You would have felt better.
Olga We don’t have time for any of that.
Duff One didn’t want a scene.
Olga The British have someone we want. We have no one they especially want. But you will do.
Duff You and a disgruntled flautist who is also coming out. Denied opportunity to practise. Works on the roads. Sounds a little second rate to me.
Hilary It’s funny that the word that best describes all these disaffected people is ‘Bolshy’. I’ll be of no use to you. I have no information other than what I read in the English newspapers. And if I had, who would believe me now?
Duff No, no. I’m sure. No. It’s none of that. None of that at all. Just think of it as a gesture. A tidying up. Part of the spin-off of détente.
Olga Anyway you are sixty-five.
Bron Sixty-four.
Olga The age of retirement.
Veronica It’ll be nice to have you home.
Hilary Home. The dustbin.
Duff That happens to us all. I did so much want it to be your decision.
Eric What about me?
Duff It makes everyone feel better. Me. You. People at home. Coming home to face the music, sua voluntate as it were. That will strike a chord. But willy nilly arrangements had to be made. Security are so tedious. You will be handed over on Tuesday at Vienna.
Eric What about me?
Duff I’m longing to see their new Cosi but I don’t think that there’ll be time. You don’t care for opera, do you?
Hilary No.
Duff Pity. It’s another world.
Bron Nobody really wanted us here from the start.
Veronica Well, you don’t want to stay where you’re not wanted.
Hilary I do. That’s the only place I feel at home. And what about you, liebchen. When will they send you home?
Olga I have no home. Here is home.
Hilary For how long? Jewish bitch.
Duff On the contrary, this lady has been very helpful.
Bron What about Eric?
Duff That’s not for me to say. We have this lady’s feelings to consider.
Olga You should pack. If the cars are on schedule you have five minutes.
Veronica Is there anything I can do?
Bron No, I’m getting used to it. (She goes off.)
Hilary Did I tell you the joke about why is a mushroom like working for the party?
Pause,
I did, didn’t I?
Veronica Yes.
Hilary wanders round among the books.
Hilary We’ve forgotten now… it’s too recent to remember… that for a short period just after the war England seemed on the verge of a Christian revival. Eliot, Fry. The converted Auden. God was suddenly quite smart. The same people who’d felt vaguely benevolent towards communism in the 30’s now felt as kindly, and as vaguely, towards its antithesis.
Veronica I hope you don’t think I knew about this. Nobody tells mother.
Eric I wouldn’t mind going back to prison. That wouldn’t bother me.
Duff Do you know how much it costs to keep a man in prison? Something in the region of £150 a week. From a cost-benefit point of view prisons should be scrapped tomorrow and the prisoners put up in Trust Houses. Do them just as much good.
Eric You can talk. He’s a puff!
Bron Eric.
Eric Who’s embarrassed now?
Hilary If my hands were to be cut off and put in a bucket with a lot of other hands, and someone said, ‘Now pick out yours,’ I don’t think I’d know them.
Pause.
Bron I would.
Hilary We shall be able to go to church. Although I gather they’ve got rid of the old Eucharist and are experimenting with something called Series 1, Series 2 and Series 3. That doesn’t sound like religion to me.
Pause,
It sounds like baseball. Did you go to church, ever?
Eric A bit. But only for the ping-pong. The vicar used to lock up the bats. That’s not Christianity, is it?
Hilary Moscow comes under the diocese of Fulham. Ever come across him, Duff? Barry, our Bishop. One of these ecumenical merchants. All join hands. Forget our differences. No fear.
Duff No sign of them?
Hilary A nice book would be the Anglican church in Europe. Riviera vicars. Embassy curates. A rich haul of eccentrics. Incidentally, does the embassy have a chaplain?
Duff No.
Hilary How on earth do they manage?
Veronica What happened to the ban on irony?
Hilary That’s the dilemma. Its presence is intolerable, its absence inexcusable. Where you could set my mind at rest, Duff. Or you, Veronica, is whether (having paid the penalty, wiped the slate clean, whatever) I will still be in time to catch a decent afternoon tea. By that I mean tea, bread and butter, scones and jam. Not to mention Fuller’s walnut cake.
Bron Oh stop it. Stop it. You’ve no need to keep it up now.
Hilary Nothing to keep up, as you should know by now. The best disguise of all is to be exactly what you say you are. Nobody ever believes that.
Duff No sign.
Olga No.
Eric If she really cared about me she’d want what I wanted.
Bron Eric.
Eric Don’t keep saying, ‘Eric, Eric.’ That doesn’t mean anything either. You’re no different from her. What am I going to do?