by Tom Stoppard
will be eight fifty-nine and
twenty seconds….
(PIP PIP PIP.)
(Joy.) It is! … Gladys!
It’s my Gladys!
(Fade.)
SCENE 2
Exterior mid traffic. Big Ben begins its nine a.m. routine. Cut to interior: no traffic. Big Ben fainter.
PORTER (murmurs): Nine o’clock. Here we go.
(What happens is this: MYRTLE, MORTIMER, COURTNAY-SMITH, SIR JOHN and the FIRST LORD OF THE POST OFFICE (LORD COOT) enter from the street on the first, third, fifth, seventh and ninth strokes of Big Ben respectively (the second, fourth, sixth and eighth strokes being heard through the closed door.) Each opening of the door lets in traffic sound momentarily and amplifies Big Ben.)
(Street door.)
PORTER: Morning, Mrs. Trelawney.
MYRTLE (gay): Hello, Tommy.
(And out through door.)
(Street door.)
PORTER: Morning, Mr. Mortimer.
MORTIMER (tired): Good morning, Tom.
(And out through door.)
(Street door.)
PORTER: Good morning, Mr. Courtenay-Smith.
C.-SMITH (vague): Morning, Mr. Thompson.
(And out through door.)
(Street door.)
PORTER: Good morning, Sir John.
SIR JOHN (aloof): Ah, Thompson….
(And out through door.)
(Street door.)
PORTER: Good morning, my Lord.
1ST LORD: Morning, Tommy. (Conspiratorial.) Anything to report?
PORTER: All on schedule, my Lord.
1ST LORD: Jolly good.
(Through door.)
MYRTLE: Good morning, your Lordship.
1ST LORD: Good morning, Mrs. Trelawney.
(Through door.)
MORTIMER: Good morning, my Lord.
1ST LORD: Good morning, ah, Mortimer.
(Through door.)
C.-SMITH: Good morning, Lord Coot.
1ST LORD: Good morning, Mr. Courtenay-Smith.
(Through door.)
SIR JOHN: What ho, Cooty.
1ST LORD: Morning, Jack.
(Through door.)
BERYL: Good morning, sir.
1ST LORD (startled): Who are you?
BERYL: I’m new.
(Pause.)
1ST LORD: I thought I couldn’t account for you…. New what?
BERYL: New secretary, sir … Miss Bligh. They sent me over from Directory Enquiries last night.
1ST LORD: I see. What happened to my old—to Miss—er——
BERYL: Apparently she cracked, sir, at 1.53 a.m. I came at once.
1ST LORD: That’s the ticket. The Post Office never sleeps. Do you know the form round here?
BERYL: Well….
1ST LORD: Quite simple. I’m the First Lord of the Post Office, of course. I’m responsible for the lot, with special attention to the Telephone Services, which are as follows—write them down—
UMP—dial-the-Test-score.
SUN—dial-the-weather.
POP—dial-a-pop.
BET—dial-the-racing-results.
GOD—dial-the-Bible-reading.
EAT—dial-a-recipe.
And so on, with many others, including the most popular and important of them all—TIM, dial-the-speaking-clock. We can’t afford to lose track of time, or we’d be lost. Now, you see, we must keep a continuous check on all of them, because if you don’t keep an eye on them they slide back. The strain is appalling, and the staffing problems monumental.
Shall we start checking, then? To begin with, synchronize our watches, and then check with TIM—ready? I make it just coming up to nine two and forty seconds….
SCENE 3
Follows straight on with the Time signal (PIP PIP PIP).
Heard direct, i.e. not through phone, as is GLADYS now.
GLADYS:
… At the third stroke it
will be nine two and fifty seconds….
(PIP PIP PIP.)
… At the third stroke it
will be nine three precisely.
(PIP PIP PIP.)
Or to put it another way,
three minutes past nine,
precisely, though which
nine in particular, I don’t
say, so what’s precise
about that? …
… nine three and ten seconds….
(PIP PIP PIP.)
The point is beginning to be lost on me.
Or rather it is becoming a different point.
Or rather I am beginning to see through it.
Because they think that time is something they invented,
for their own convenience,
and divided up into ticks and tocks
and sixties and twelves
and twenty-fours …
so that they’d know when the Olympic record has been broken
and when to stop serving dinner in second-class hotels,
when the season opens and the betting closes,
when to retire;
when to leave the station,
renew their applications
when their subscriptions have expired;
when time has run out.
So that they’d know how long they lasted,
and pretend that it matters,
and how long they’ve got,
as if it mattered,
so that they’d know that we know that they know.
That we know, that is.
That they know, of course.
And so on.
(Faint time clock, 2–3 seconds.)
Ad infinitum.
I used to say ad nauseum
but it goes on long after you feel sick.
And I feel sick.
When you look down from a great height
you become dizzy. Such depth, such distance,
such disappearing tininess so far away,
rushing away,
reducing the life-size to nothing—
it upsets the scale you live by.
Your eyes go first, followed by the head,
and if you can’t look away you feel sick.
And that’s my view of time;
and I can’t look away.
Dizziness spirals up between my stomach and my head
corkscrewing out the stopper.
But I’m empty anyway.
I was emptied long ago.
Because it goes on,
this endless dividing up into equal parts,
this keeping track—
because time viewed from such distance
etcetera
rushing away
reducing the lifespan to nothing
and so on—
(Pause.)
The spirit goes first, followed by the mind.
And if you can’t look away you go mad.
(Time clock, 2–3 seconds.)
SCENE 4
FRANK dialling; excited, intense. Ringing tone breaks off.
OPERATOR is heard through phone.
OPERATOR: Number please.
FRANK: Listen, do all you people work in the same building?
OPERATOR: This is the operator—can I help you?
FRANK: I want to speak to Gladys Jenkins.
OPERATOR: What’s the number, please?
FRANK: She works there—she’s in the telephones, you see.
OPERATOR: Hello, sir—operator here——
FRANK: I want to be transferred to Mrs. Jenkins—this is her husband.
OPERATOR: Mrs. Jenkins?
FRANK: Speaking clock.
OPERATOR: Do you want to know the time?
FRANK: No—I want my Gladys! What’s her number?
OPERATOR: Speaking clock?
FRANK: Yes.
OPERATOR: TIM.
FRANK: Her number.
OPERATOR: T-I-M.
FRANK: I demand to speak to your superior——
OPERATOR: Just a moment, sir, put
ting you through.
GLADYS (through the phone):… At the third stroke it will be nine twelve and forty seconds….
FRANK: It’s all right, Glad—it’s me again—Frank!
(GLADY’s timespeak continues underneath.)
Can you hear me now, Glad?—I’ve had a time of it I can tell you—I must say, you gave me a turn! So that’s where you got to—Gladys? Give over a minute, love—it’s Frank——Can you hear me, Gladys? Give me a sign?
(Pause; timeclock.)
I know your voice—it’s you, isn’t it, Gladys—are they holding you?—I’ll get you out of there, Gladys—I’ll speak to the top man—I’ll get the wheels turning, Gladys! I’ll pull the strings, don’t you worry, love——But I’ve got to dash now, love—I’m calling from the terminus and we’re due out——
(IVY, a bus conductress breaks in.)
IVY: Frank Jenkins! The passengers are looking at their watches!
FRANK (to IVY): Just coming. (To GLADYS.) That was Ivy, my conductress—you don’t know Ivy—I’m on a new route now, the 52 to Acton——Keep your chin up, Glad—you can hear me, can’t you? I’ll be giving you another ring later——Good-bye, Gladys—oh, Gladys—what’s the time now?
GLADYS: Nine fourteen precisely——
FRANK: Thanks, Glad—oh, thank you, Gladys! (He rings off.)
IVY (off): Frank—it’s nine fourteen—remember the schedule!
FRANK (going): Hey, Ivy—I’ve found her—I’ve found my Gladys!
SCENE 5
GLADYS (direct voice now):
… At the third stroke it
will be nine fourteen and
twenty seconds….
(PIP PIP PIP.)
… At the third stroke …
I don’t think I’ll bother, I
don’t think there’s any point.
Let sleeping dogs and so on.
Because I wouldn’t shake it off
by going back, I’d only be in
the middle of it,
with an inkling of infinity,
the only one who has seen both ends
rushing away from the middle.
You can’t keep your balance after that.
Because they don’t know what time is.
They haven’t experienced the silence
in which it passes
impartial disinterested
godlike.
Because they didn’t invent it at all.
They only invented the clock.
And it doesn’t go tick
and it doesn’t go tock
and it doesn’t go pip.
It doesn’t go anything.
And it doesn’t go anything for ever
It just goes,
before them, after them, without them,
above all without them,
and their dialling fingers,
their routine-checking, schedule-setting time-keeping clockwork—
luminous, anti-magnetic,
fifteen-jewelled self-winding,
grandfather, cuckoo, electric
shock-, dust-and waterproofed, chiming;
it counts for nothing against the scale of time,
and makes them tiny, bound and gagged to the minute-hand
as though across a railway line—
struggling without hope, eyes busy with silent-screen distress
as the hour approaches—the express
swings round the curve towards them
(and the Golden Labrador who might have saved them
never turns up on time).
(2–3 seconds.)
And they count for nothing measured against
the moment in which a glacier forms and melts.
Which does not stop them from trying
to compete;
they synchronize their watches, count the beats,
to get the most out of the little they’ve got,
clocking in, and out,
and speeding up,
keeping up with their time-tables,
and adjusting their tables to keep up with their speed,
and check one against the other
and congratulate each other—
a minute saved to make another minute possible somewhere else
to be spent another time.
Enough to soft-boil a third of an egg:
hard-boil a fifth.
Precisely….
(PIP PIP PIP.)
(3–4 seconds.)
Of course, it’s a service if you like.
They dial for twenty seconds’ worth of time
and hurry off contained within it
until the next correction,
with no sense of its enormity, none,
no sense of their scurrying insignificance;
only the authority of my voice,
the voice of the sun itself,
more accurate than Switzerland—
definitive
divine.
(2–3 seconds, very faint.)
If it made a difference
I could refuse to play,
sabotage the whole illusion
a little every day if it made a difference,
as if it would, if I coughed or jumped a minute
(they’d correct their watches by my falter).
And if I stopped to explain
At the third stroke it will be
At the third stroke it
will be…. (Continues
3– 4 seconds.)
too late to catch up, far
far too late, gentlemen….
they’d complain, to the Post Office.
And if stopped altogether,
just stopped, gave up the pretence,
it would make no difference.
Silence is the sound of time passing.
(1–2 seconds, faint.)
Don’t ask when the pendulum began to swing.
Because there is no pendulum.
It’s only the clock that goes tick tock
and never the time that chimes.
It’s never the time that stops.
(1–2 seconds, quick fade.)
SCENE 6
VOICE THROUGH PHONE: … thirty minutes in a Regulo 5 oven until it is a honey coloured brown…. Serves six.
1ST LORD (ringing off): Well, that’s that one. Next.
BERYL: That was the last one, sir.
1ST LORD: Then start again at the beginning—continuous attention, you see. You’ll have to take over this afternoon—I have a board meeting.
BERYL: Very good, sir.
1ST LORD: You don’t have to call me sir. Call me my Lord.
BERYL: Very good, my Lord.
(Phone rings.)
Hello?
FRANK (through phone): This is Frank Jenkins.
BERYL: Yes?
FRANK: It’s about my wife.
BERYL: Yes?
FRANK: Is she there?
BERYL: This is the First Lord’s office.
FRANK: I want the top man in speaking clocks.
BERYL: What name please?
FRANK: Jenkins—it’s about my wife, Gladys. She’s the speaking clock.
BERYL: Hold on, please.
My Lord, it’s a Mr. Jenkins—he says his wife is the speaking clock.
1ST LORD: How extraordinary. Tell him we don’t know what he’s talking about.
SCENE 7
GLADYS (direct):
… At the third
stroke it will be eleven
thirty precisely….
(PIP PIP PIP.)
Old Frank….
Yes, we met dancing, I liked him from the first.
He said, ‘If you’re Glad
I’ll be Frank….’
There was time to laugh then
but while I laughed a bumblebee
fluttered its wings a million times.
How can one compete?
His bus passed my window twice a day,
on the route he had then,
/> every day, with a toot and a wave and was gone.
toot toot toot
everything the same
if only you didn’t know,
which I didn’t
which I do.
He took his timetable seriously, Frank.
You could set your clock by him.
But not time—it flies by
unrepeatable
and the moment after next the passengers are dead
and the bus scrap and the scrap dust,
caught by the wind, blown into the crevasse
as the earth splits and scatters
at the speed of bees wings.
Old Frank. He had all the time
in the world for me,
such as it was.
(PIP PIP PIP.)
SCENE 8
In the street FRANK’s bus comes to a rather abrupt halt, the door of his cab opens, slams shut as he runs across the pavement and through a door. He is breathless and in a frantic hurry.
FRANK: Hey, you—who’s in charge here?
PORTER: I am. Is that your bus?
FRANK: Who’s the top man—quick!
PORTER: You can’t park there after seven if the month’s got an R in it or before nine if it hasn’t except on Christmas and the Chairman’s birthday should it fall in Lent.
FRANK: I have an appointment with the chairman.
PORTER (to the sound of horns): Seems to be a bit of a traffic jam out there.
FRANK: What floor’s he on?
PORTER: He’s not on the floor this early. Is this your conductress?
(As the door flies open.)
IVY: Frank—what are you doing!
FRANK: All right, all right! (To PORTER.) Listen—I’ll be passing your door again at one-fourteen. Tell him to be ready——
CONDUCTRESS: Frank—we’ll get behind time!
FRANK (leaving hurriedly): It’s all right, I got ninety seconds ahead going round the park….
(And out; and break.)
SCENE 9
In the street FRANK’s bus draws up once more; same slam, same feet, same door, same frenzy.
FRANK: Where is he? I’ve got ninety-five seconds.
2ND PORTER: Who?
FRANK: Who are you?
2ND PORTER: What do you want?
FRANK: Where’s the other porter?
2ND PORTER: Gone to lunch—it’s one-fourteen.
FRANK: Never mind him—where’s the chairman?
2ND PORTER: They eat together.
(Door crashes open.)
CONDUCTRESS: Frank Jenkins!
2ND PORTER: Like brothers.