Priestley Plays Four

by J. B. Priestley

  KING: (Staring into it.) Just as we thought. Our own face.

  NINETTE: You have to stare hard, sire.

  KING: (Still looking.) We are staring hard. Oh – but who’s this? Looks like Sir Kay – who runs the palace at Camelot. Yes, and he’s thinking about us.

  MELICENT: All of us?

  KING: No – kingly us – me. And – by George – he’s deciding to put us into the same cold draughty apartment on the North side of the palace. But this time we won’t have it. Here – take the thing (Giving her the mirror.) And what’s it got to do with our dwarf? Didn’t you say you sent him to find somebody?

  MELICENT: (Dreamily.) Yesterday I looked in the mirror, and saw a man called Sam who was thinking about me. He was sweet.

  KING: Sam? Never heard of him. But do you mean to say you sent our dwarf with a message to this rascal?

  MELICENT: I asked Master Malgrim, the enchanter, to lend his magic aid so that Grumet the dwarf could find Sam. Because Sam’s not in this realm, nor in any other known to us. Sam’s not in what you’d call real life at all –

  KING: (Relieved, delighted.) Oh – why didn’t you say so? Been stuffing yourself with mythology, legends, fairy tales – eh? Very suitable – so long as you don’t overdo it. Well – well – send the dwarf along –

  MELICENT: But I can’t, father. I told you, he’s gone to find Sam.

  KING: (Angrily.) You can’t send a real dwarf to find somebody who isn’t real –

  MELICENT: I didn’t say Sam wasn’t real – of course he is –

  KING: (Shouting angrily.) If she isn’t in real life, then he isn’t real. He’s imaginary. All right then – send an imaginary dwarf to find him. But what the devil’s the point of sending a real dwarf? No reason, no logic, no sense! You must be suffering from summer greensickness, girl. (He goes to the door, shouting.) Master Jarvie! Master Jarvie!

  The physician enters and bows. He is a very solemn middle-aged man, dressed in the style of a medieval doctor. The King talks as soon as he appears, in a rapid confidential manner.

  Princess Melicent – not us. She says she sent Grumet the dwarf to find some fellow who doesn’t exist in real life. Obviously got a touch of something.

  MELICENT: (Impatiently.) Father, I’m perfectly well.

  KING: Nonsense!

  DR JARVIE: (Approaching solemnly.) Your Highness may feel perfectly well. But to be perfectly well – that is something very different. Permit me, your Highness.

  KING: Keep still, child. For your own good.

  The doctor feels pulse, feels her forehead, pulls an eyelid down, and so forth, talking gravely as he proceeds.

  DR JARVIE: (With immense gravity.) Um – um! The excellent balance of the four primary humours somewhat disturbed. The hot humours are not being sufficiently preserved in the blood by the thick, black and sour humours purged from the spleen. Or as Galen tells us – the vital spirits formed in the heart are not being adequately checked by the natural spirits formed in the liver. Therefore, too quick release of the animal spirits formed in the brain – thus encouraging airy notions and phantasy –

  KING: There you have it. Airy notions and phantasy. The very thing that’s wrong. What physic do you recommend, good doctor?

  DR JARVIE: (With immense gravity.) A pearl dissolved in vinegar mixed with powdered dragon’s tooth, taken night and morning. Mummy paste and mandrake root in hot wine as a noon and evening posset. No venison nor pig puddings to be eaten. No scarlet to be worn. A bat’s wing and a dried toad fastened beneath her shift until the new moon. And perhaps the thumb of a hanged man –

  MELICENT: (In horror.) Never – never – never!

  DR JARVIE: (Condescendingly.) Well, we may omit the thumb. But take the physic –

  KING: We’ll see she does. You may go Master Jarvie, and take our thanks with you.

  (Dr Jarvie bows and departs.) Melicent, you stay close here.

  MELICENT: (Dismayed.) Oh – father – must I?

  KING: You must. Lady Ninette – Mistress Alison – see to it – or we shall be severe with you. Grumet the dwarf, I’ll be bound, is lying drunk somewhere in this castle. But if he should return here, send him to us at once.

  MELICENT: But Master Malgrim swore he could send Grumet out of real life – to where Sam is –

  KING: (Briskly rather than angrily.) Master Malgrim’s a charlatan – Grumet’s a dumb little tosspot – you’re a sick brain-fevered day-dreaming damsel – and your Sam’s a myth, a legend, a fairytale character, a romantic nothing. Now you know our commands, all of you – then obey ’em. And get out your needles and threads. We’re busy. You should be busy. But – (As he goes.) Busy, busy, busy. (As he opens the door, calling.) No trumpets! No trumpets! Made enough noise this morning.

  The three girls look at each other in dismay.

  MELICENT: Oh – now nothing’s going to happen.

  ALISON: (Sadly.) Except tapestry.

  NINETTE: Let’s make something happen.

  ALISON: What’s the matter, Melicent darling?

  MELICENT: (Almost ready for tears.) I’m falling in love with Sam. And I don’t know where he is – when he is – who he is – and now I don’t believe Grumet can ever find him.

  She runs out sobbing as the lights fade and we begin to hear the saxophone and trombone start playing.

  SCENE TWO

  A room in the advertising agency of Wallaby, Dimmock, Paly and Tooks. Very modern type of office with a window and one door. Light walls with large graphs etc. on them. Periodically from outside window is the sound of a pneumatic drill. Through one door comes occasional sound of a recorded singing commercial. Desk with phones, intercom etc., a few light modern chairs, cupboard on left opposite door. Bright morning light.

  DIMMOCK is discovered looking at sample layout with ANNE DUTTON –SWIFT and PHILIP SPENCER-SMITH. DIMMOCK (“D.D.”) is a fat, worried middle-aged type with an American manner and a flat Manchester accent. ANNE and PHILIP are very keen upper-class career types, probably in their early thirties.

  DIMMOCK: (After staring a moment or two.) It doesn’t do anything to me. It won’t do anything to the client. And it’s dead wrong for the Chunky Chat Public. Out!

  PHILIP: Couldn’t agree with you more, D.D.

  ANNE: Public-wise it never looked good to me. Client-wise I’m not sure, D.D.

  DIMMOCK: I am. It’s out. Dead wrong for Chunky Chat. What’s next?

  ANNE: Damosel Stockings. I’m madly keen about this. Could be a big account. They want to spread themselves in the glossies visual-wise. Romantic atmosphere. Sam Penty’s working on it.

  DIMMOCK: (Into intercom.) Peggy, ask Mr Penty to bring in what he’s done for Damosel Stockings – sharp!

  ANNE: What I feel – D.D. – is –

  But the pneumatic drill starts. DIMMOCK takes the opportunity of swallowing two pills. ANNE goes on talking inaudibly. When drill stops.

  Don’t you agree?

  DIMMOCK: Can’t say. Never heard what you said with that dam’ thing goin’ again. (To intercom.) Peggy, send another letter of complaint about that drill.

  Good morning, Sam

  This is SAM who has just entered. He is quite different from these three, in every possible way. He need not be good-looking – but he has a slow easy charm of his own. He is carelessly dressed, is smoking a bent cherrywood pipe, and carries a portfolio.

  SAM: Morning. Nice day.

  DIMMOCK: I haven’t noticed yet. Too much on my mind.

  SAM: Ah! What’s chiefly on my mind is that today is the thirty-first of June.

  DIMMOCK: (Astonished.) Thirty-first of June?

  ANNE: (Laughing.) Don’t be an idiot, Sam. There isn’t such a thing.

  SAM: (Unruffled.) So everyone’s been telling me. But I woke up feeling it was the thirty-first of June, and I can’t get it out of my head.

  DIMMOCK: Sam, why do you keep on working for us? I’ve often wondered.

  SAM: (Thoughtfully but easily.) Because I’m a bad painter. Not your
idea of a bad painter, but my idea of one. So I work for Wallaby, Dimmock, Paly and Tooks – and eat. By the way, who the hell’s Tooks? Or did you, Wallaby and Paly invent him?

  DIMMOCK: Tooks is our financial man.

  PHIL: First-class fellow!

  ANNE: Smart as paint.

  DIMMOCK: That’s right. And – between these four walls – a stinker. No, I oughtn’t to have said that.

  SAM: (Now busy with his portfolio.) It’s the thirty-first of June. Well here we are – (He takes out a picture in bright colours of MELICENT and puts it on a chair between desk and door.) This is what I’ve done for Damosel Stockings. And I sat up until two this morning getting it right. Now just take it in before you start talking. (As DIMMOCK and ANNE start staring at the picture, SAM takes PHIL to one side downstage, to speak to him confidentially.) Phil, who’s this dwarf in red-and-yellow doublet and hose who’s wandering about here?

  PHIL: (Bewildered.) Dwarf? I haven’t seen a dwarf.

  SAM: He’s around.

  PHIL: Somebody in the Art Department must be using him as a model.

  SAM: He never speaks. Just looks in the door – grins – beckons – then vanishes.

  PHIL: Sam, you’re seeing things.

  SAM: I hope so. But why a dwarf in red-and-yellow tights?

  DIMMOCK: (Slowly, pronouncing judgement.) It’s got something.

  ANNE: Just what I was thinking, D.D.

  DIMMOCK: (Dubiously.) On the other hand –

  ANNE: Quite. The Damosel crowd are tough.

  DIMMOCK: What do you think, Phil?

  PHIL: (Answering at once.) Feel what you do, D.D. Yes and No.

  DIMMOCK: Let’s stop looking for a minute, then take it by surprise.

  ANNE: Who was your model, Sam?

  SAM: Didn’t have one. Not in this world anyhow. It’s a story, but I don’t have to tell it.

  DIMMOCK: Why not? Let’s have a drink. The usual? (Into intercom.) Peggy, let’s have four large gin and tonics.

  The singing commercial is now heard again but it is soon drowned by the pneumatic drill on the other side.

  DIMMOCK: (When it has stopped.) Nobody can say I’m not keen and sharp. I worry over the firm and the accounts sixteen hours a day. But now and again I wonder if we aren’t all barmy. (PEGGY, a pretty girl – probably ALISON – enters with four glasses of gin and tonic.) Thanks, Peggy. Hand ’em round.

  SAM: (As he takes his.) Thanks, Peggy. Have any of you girls seen a red-and-yellow dwarf about?

  PEGGY: (Seriously.) No, Mr Penty. Have you lost one?

  SAM: No. But I keep seeing one.

  PEGGY goes out.

  DIMMOCK: Seeing one what, Sam? (He laughs.) For a moment I thought you said a red-and-yellow dwarf.

  SAM: I did. Well, here’s to Wallaby, Dimmock, and Paly and possibly Tooks! (As the others drink, he continues.) Yesterday, when you gave me this Damosel job, I sat at my work table, thinking it over. Damosel – knights in armour – castles – King Arthur and the Round Table – dragons – quests – princesses in towers. You know. And then I saw a girl in a medieval costume – through a kind of illuminated little frame – and she smiled at me. She stayed long enough for me to do a rough sketch. Then, twice later, when I was painting and wasn’t sure about her colouring, she appeared again, very sensibly and charmingly, just when I needed her most.

  ANNE: (Teasingly.) I see you’re devoted to this girl, Sam.

  SAM: Certainly. Above all others. This is the girl for me.

  DIMMOCK: And all imagination!

  SAM: I dare say, but what is imagination? Nobody tells us – at least nobody who has any imagination. And then, after sitting up half the night trying to re-capture the look of her, I woke up this morning feeling it was the thirty-first of June –

  DIMMOCK: (Cutting in, sharply.) Sam, you know I’m your friend as well as one of your employers. Now will you do a little thing for me, as a favour?

  SAM: Certainly.

  DIMMOCK: Good enough. (Into intercom.) Is Dr Jarvis still with Mr Paly? He is? Then ask him to come and see me. (To PHIL and ANNE.) You two had better go before he comes. This is between Sam and me and the doctor. But – look, Anne – before you go – I’ve got some sample Damosel stockings somewhere – (He rummages in his desk and then produces several pairs of very fine nylon stockings and gives them to her as he talks.) Just drape a few of ’em over Sam’s picture – so we can make sure it all hangs together – and one thing isn’t cancelling out another – and so forth –

  ANNE: (As she begins to deal with the stockings.) Damosel will buy this – if we decide on it – but I’ll have to talk to them hard. Especially Maggie Rogers – she’s got a vogue fixation. There!

  PHIL: (As they prepare to go.) Anne duckie, I’m not mad about our Mum’s Chum layout – Minnie and Jeff have fallen down on it – tell me what you think?

  They go out, having finished their drinks. SAM and DIMMOCK look at each other.

  SAM: But why a doctor?

  DIMMOCK: A quick check-up – can’t do any harm, can it? He’s a first-class man. Consultant to the Healthovite Company, among other things. (Enter DR JARVIS. He is exactly as he was in Scene One except that he is now in dark modern clothes.) Hello, Dr Jarvis! This is Sam Penty, one of our best artists. And he’s not getting his proper sleep – he’s seeing things – girls and dwarfs – thinks today’s the thirty-first of June –

  DR JARVIS: (Going nearer to him.) Mr Penty, in my experience very few people indeed are perfectly well, although they may imagine they are. And you’re probably an imaginative type –

  DIMMOCK: He is, he is, doctor.

  DR JARVIS: Now, Mr Penty, just relax. Allow me!

  DIMMOCK: All for your own good, Sam.

  Dr Jarvis does exactly what he did before to MELICENT and speaks in exactly the same way.

  DR JARVIS: An eidetic type – probably hyperthyroid – with an unstable metabolism involving both iodine and calcium deficits. May have been some recent effect of the adrenal cortex on the calcium metabolism antagonistic to the functioning of the parathyroid glands. Some possible kidney trouble – sleeplessness – overstimulation of the eidetic image-creating function – chiefly due to the parathyroid deficiency and a heightening of the thyroid function – so a definite thyroid-parathyroid imbalance – resulting in an apparent objectivisation of the imagery of the eidetic imagination – phantasy states – hallucinations –

  DIMMOCK: That’s it, doctor. Phantasy states and hallucinations. Just what Sam’s suffering from. Now can’t you give him something that’ll put him right?

  DR JARVIS: (Exactly as in Scene One.) I’ll tell my chemist to send round some calcium and Vitamin D tablets to be taken three times a day. I’ll have him make up a mixture with Hexamine, quinnic acid, and theobromine in it – to be taken twice a day. A bromide mixture, night and morning. Avoid an excess of alcohol and too many carbohydrates.

  DIMMOCK: There you are, Sam! First-class, doctor! You went straight to the root of the trouble. Very grateful!

  DR JARVIS: Glad to be of service. Good-morning, gentlemen. (He goes out briskly.)

  DIMMOCK: He’ll put things right. I’ll bet in a day or two you’re not seeing things.

  SAM: I like seeing things.

  DIMMOCK: But you know what can happen to people who see things other people don’t see?

  SAM: Yes – they’re in the National Gallery.

  DIMMOCK: I mean chaps who begin to think it’s the thirty-first of June – you had me guessing there, for a minute, Sam – and chaps who start asking about red and yellow dwarfs in tights.

  GRUMET the dwarf, who is dressed in red and yellow doublet and hose now enters quietly, not by the door but through the cupboard. DIMMOCK continues, without seeing him.

  Even while your own commonsense tells you we don’t have red and yellow dwarfs here – wouldn’t know what to do with one if we had one – that it stands to reason that it’s nothing but your imagination –

  SAM: (Checking him.) Pst! (He
indicates GRUMET, who is now capering, grinning and pointing at Sam.)

  DIMMOCK: (Thunderstruck.) Hell’s Bells!

  (Shouting to GRUMET.) Here – you!

  GRUMET, with a last mischievous flourish at SAM, grabs the picture and stockings, runs with them and dives clean through the cupboard and vanishes.

  SAM: (Angrily.) He’s taken my Damosel portrait! Hoy-hoy!

  DIMMOCK: (Moving, shouting.) Stop him – stop him!

  They fling wide the cupboard doors but now it appears solidly filled with large books, files etc. with of course no trace of GRUMET. DIMMOCK looks at SAM with dismay.

  DIMMOCK: He couldn’t have gone through there.

  SAM: He could. He did. And I think he came in through this cupboard.

  DIMMOCK: Stop it, Sam. You’ve got me going now.

  Enter PHILIP and ANNE.

  SAM: I’m now quitting these premises and don’t propose to return today, which I’m still convinced is the thirty-first of June.

  DIMMOCK: What – you’re going home, Sam?

  SAM: (Firmly.) I am going to my local – The Black Horse in Peacock Place – which should be opening about the time I arrive there. (Moves towards door, then turns.) And if I were you three, I’d pack up all pretence of work. It’s the wrong day. (Goes out.)

  ANNE: D.D. – you oughtn’t to have let him go before we decided about the Damosel thing. Where’s his picture? (Looking round urgently.) Look – D.D. – he must have taken it.

  DIMMOCK: No, he didn’t.

  ANNE: (Urgently.) But – D.D. – it’s not here. Somebody must have taken it.

  PHIL: (Grinning.) Perhaps a red-and-yellow dwarf.

  DIMMOCK: (Into intercom.) Peggy, bring me two aspirins and a glass of water.

  ANNE: (Severely.) Stop clowning, Phil – this is business now. D.D. – did somebody take it?

  DIMMOCK: (Heavily and slowly.) Yes. A red-and-yellow dwarf. He dived into the cupboard with it –

  ANNE: (Smiling reproachfully.) Now – D.D. –

  DIMMOCK: (In a sudden fury, very loud.) I tell you – a red and yellow dwarf came and ran away with it –

  The pneumatic drill starts and DIMMOCK, trying vainly to shout above it, in his rage flings papers in the air and batters the top of his desk. Rapid fade out of both sound and sight. We hear the sound of the lute. Light picks up the lute-player, then we fade in the room in the Castle, as in Scene One.