by Tom Stoppard
ALBERT: Probably.
FITCH: I’m the same. It’s poetry to me—a perfect equation of space, time and energy——
ALBERT: Yes——
FITCH: It’s not just slapping paint on a girder——
ALBERT: No——
FITCH: It’s continuity—control—mathematics.
ALBERT: Poetry.
FITCH: Yes, I should have known it was a job for a university man….
ALBERT: Like me and you——
FITCH: Well, I went to night school myself.
ALBERT: Same thing, different time.
FITCH: That’s what I say.
ALBERT: I’m your man, Mr. Fitch.
FITCH: You’ll stick to it for eight years, will you?
ALBERT: Oh, I’ll paint it more than once.
(Cut.)
(Breakfast in background.)
FATHER: Now then, Albert, you’ve had your fun. When I was your age I’d got six years of work behind me.
ALBERT: Well, I’m starting work now, Father.
FATHER: Quite so, but don’t think you’re going to start at the top. You’ll get there all right in time but you’ve got to learn the business first. Is there any more tea, Mother?
MOTHER: Ring for Kate, would you, Albert?
ALBERT (going): Yes, mother.
MOTHER: That reminds me.
FATHER: You’ll start where I started. On the shop floor.
ALBERT (approach): Well, actually, Father——
MOTHER: I don’t want to sound Victorian, but one can’t just turn a blind eye.
ALBERT: What?
FATHER: Yes, I never went in for books and philosophy and look at me now.
MOTHER: I suppose that’s the penance one pays for having servants nowadays.
ALBERT: What? father: I started Metal Alloys and Allied Metals—built it up from a biscuit-tin furnace in the back garden, small smelting jobs for the cycle-repair shop.
MOTHER: I’ve suspected her for some time and now one can’t ignore it. Even with her corset.
ALBERT: Who?
FATHER: You can come in on Monday and I’ll hand you over to the plant foreman.
ALBERT: I’ve already got a job. Actually.
FATHER: You haven’t got a job till I give you one.
ALBERT: I’m going to paint Clufton Bay Bridge, starting Monday.
MOTHER: What colour?
ALBERT: Silver.
FATHER: Just a minute——
KATE (off): You rang, madam?
MOTHER: More tea, Kate, please.
KATE: Yes, madam.
MOTHER: And a word.
KATE: Yes, madam.
MOTHER: Are you ill?
KATE: No, madam.
MOTHER: I believe I heard you being ill in the bathroom, this morning.
KATE: Yes, madam.
MOTHER: And yesterday?
KATE: Yes, madam.
ALBERT: What’s the matter, Kate?
KATE: Nothing, Mr. Albert.
MOTHER: Leave this to me. Cook tells me you fainted in the kitchen last week.
KATE: I came over funny.
ALBERT: Kate….
MOTHER: Let’s not beat about the bush. Is it the gardener’s boy?
KATE: No, madam.
MOTHER: Then who is it?
ALBERT: Who’s what?
MOTHER: Well, I’m sorry. You can have a month’s wages, of course. You’d better make sure that the young man does the right thing by you.
(Cut.)
KATE: I never thought you’d do the right thing by me, Albert.
ALBERT: We’ll be all right. It’s a nice room.
KATE: Your mum didn’t like it.
ALBERT: My mother’s got no taste. I’ll make a fire.
KATE: And wrap up warm when you go out—it’ll be freezing up there.
ALBERT: Only a breeze.
KATE: It’ll be ice in a month. If you fell I’d die, Albert.
ALBERT: So would I.
KATE: Don’t you ever fall. They shouldn’t make it a year-round job. It’s dangerous.
ALBERT: No—you don’t know how big it is—the threads are like ladders and the cross-pieces are like piers into the sky.
KATE: You hold on tight, for the spring, and the baby.
(Cut in bridge and painting.)
ALBERT: Slip, slap, brush, dip, slop, slide, slick and wipe….
In eight years I’ll be pushing thirty, and the Clufton Bay
Bridge will be a silver bridge—dip-brush, slick, slide, slap
without end, I’m the bridge man,
web-spinning silvering spiderman
crawling between heaven and earth on a
cantilevered span,
cat’s cradled in the sky …
look down at the toy ships
where the sea pounds under toy trains to
toy towns
under my hand.
Am I the spider or the fly?
I’m the bridge man….
The downstairs maid went upstairs to make a bed that I was in—and suddenly——
(Cut out bridge. Cut in crying baby.)
I name this child Albert.
KATE: You can’t.
ALBERT: Very well. I name this child Kate.
KATE: Katherine.
ALBERT: Tomorrow wheel her along to the bridge so I can see you.
KATE: All right. But don’t wave, Albert. Don’t wave. If you waved and fell——
ALBERT: I shan’t wave.
(Cut in bridge and painting.)
Dip brush, dip brush
without end, come rain or shine;
A fine way to spend my time.
My life is set out for me,
the future traced in brown,
my past measured in silver;
how absurd, how sublime
(don’t look down)
to climb and clamber in a giant frame;
dip brush, dip brush, slick, slide wipe
and again.
(Painting stops.)
I straddle a sort of overflowing gutter on which bathtub boats push up and down…. The banks are littered with various bricks, kiddiblocks with windows; dinky toys move through the gaps, dodged by moving dots that have no colour; under my feet the Triang train thunders across the Meccano, and the minibrick estates straggle up over the hill in neat rows with paintbox gardens. It’s the most expensive toytown in the store—the detail is remarkable. But fragile. I tremble for it, half expecting some petulant pampered child to step over the hill and kick the whole thing to bits with her Startrite sandals.
(Painting.)
Don’t look down,
the dots are looking up.
Don’t wave, don’t fall, tumbling down a
telescope, diminishing to a dot.
In eight years who will I be?
Not me.
I’ll be assimilated then,
the honest working man, father of three—
you’ve seen him around,
content in his obscurity, come to terms with public truths,
digging the garden of a council house
in what is now my Sunday suit.
I’m okay for fifty years, with any luck;
I can see me climb
up a silver bridge to paint it for the seventh time,
keeping track of my life spent in painting in the colour of my track:
above it all.
How sublime
(dip brush, dip brush) silvering the brown.
Which dot is mine?
Don’t wave, don’t look down.
Don’t fall.
(Cut bridge.)
KATE: I saw you today.
ALBERT: What was I doing?
KATE: Painting, I suppose. Crawling backwards along a cross-piece.
ALBERT: Pulling silver after me. I didn’t see you. Or I didn’t see which one was you.
KATE: Coming out of the hairdressers. Six and six, I had it cut.
ALBERT: Just goes to show�
��if you get far enough away, six and sixpence doesn’t show, and nor does anything, at a distance.
KATE: Well, life is all close up, isn’t it?
ALBERT: Yes, it hits you, when you come back down. How close it all is. You can’t stand back to look at it.
KATE: Do you like my hair like this?
ALBERT: Like what? Oh—yes. Do you like mine?
KATE: I got whistled at in the street.
ALBERT: It’s always happening to me.
KATE: A lorry driver, at the traffic lights.
ALBERT: They’re the worst, I find.
KATE: Oh, Albert. I had the pram with me too.
ALBERT: You look too young for it. Big sister.
KATE: And I cook very nice, don’t I?
ALBERT: I’d whistle at you.
KATE: I’d come, if you whistled. I’d give you a wink and say, ‘Cheeky!’
ALBERT: Oh, yes—you’d get off with me. No trouble at all. I’d take you down by the canal after the pictures.
KATE: What do you know about it—with your education and all?
ALBERT: Me? I’m a working man.
KATE: You don’t have regrets, do you, Albert?
ALBERT: No.
KATE: It wasn’t a good bargain, on the face of it.
ALBERT: It depends on what you want.
KATE: Me and the baby. Two rooms and a forty-five hour week, hard work and no advancement.
ALBERT: I’m not ambitious.
KATE: You could have had so much—a white wedding, nice house, an office job with real prospects, the country club … tennis…. Yes, you could have had Metal Alloys and Allied Metals—the top job, responsibility, your own office with telephones….
ALBERT: Yes, I’m well out of that.
(Cut in bridge and painting.)
Progress. Two lines of silver meeting in an angle bracket—and tickle in there behind the rivet—slip slop and wipe and on we go up the slope.
Does the town look up? Do they all gawp and say to each other, look at him! How ridiculous he looks up there, so small, how laughably inadequate. Or do they say, How brave! One man against the elements! Pitted against so much!
The lone explorer feeling his way between the iron crevasses, tacked against the sky by his boots and fingers.
Dots, bricks and beetles.
I could drown them in my spit.
(Cut bridge, cut in baby’s rattle in background.)
KATE: That isn’t nice, Albert.
ALBERT: Spitting?
KATE: Talking like that.
ALBERT: It doesn’t represent desire. I’ll let them live. I’m only trying to tell you what it’s like.
KATE: I know what it’s like. It’s painting a girder. There’s other jobs.
ALBERT: It’s my bridge—I wish you’d stop her rattling, it’s getting on my nerves.
KATE: That’s very advanced for six months.
ALBERT: I’m not doubting her progress. If she played the trumpet it would be even more advanced but it would still be sending me round the twist. Here, give——
(He dispossesses the rattler, who bawls.)
KATE: Now you’ve set her off. She doesn’t understand. (Comforting.) Come on, then….
ALBERT: Well, see you later.
KATE: Where are you going?
ALBERT: Work.
KATE: It’s your Saturday off.
ALBERT: No, it’s my Saturday on.
KATE: Last Saturday was your Saturday on.
ALBERT: Well, I’ll take two off in a row.
(Cut in bridge.)
Listen …
The hot sun makes you think of insects,
but this insect hum is the whole city
caught in a seashell….
All conversation is hidden there,
among motors, coughing fits, applause,
screams, laughter, feet on the stairs,
secretaries typing to dictation,
radios delivering the cricket scores,
tapes running, wheels turning, mills grinding,
chips frying, lavatories flushing, lovers sighing,
the mayor blowing his nose.
All audible life in the vibration
of a hairdryer in the room below.
(Painting.)
Dip brush, slide, stroke,
it goes on as smooth and shiny
as my sweat. I itch.
Paint on my arm,
silver paint on my brown arm;
it could be part of the bridge.
(Painting stops.)
Listen. The note of Clufton is B flat.
The whole world could be the same.
Look down. Is it a fact
that all the dots have names?
(Cut bridge.)
KATE: Jack Morris is taking Maureen and little Leslie to Paris.
ALBERT: Who’s Jack Morris?
KATE: Next door, Albert.
ALBERT: Oh yes. Who’s Maureen?
KATE: Mrs. Morris.
ALBERT: So little Leslie would be their little girl.
KATE: It’s a little boy.
ALBERT: Ah. Why are we talking about them?
KATE: They’re going to Paris for a holiday. Where are we going?
ALBERT: When?
KATE: That’s what I’d like to know.
ALBERT: What?
KATE: Don’t you have a holiday?
ALBERT: Oh. I suppose I must. Everybody does. Yes, I expect Fitch took that into account.
KATE: You’re not going to dodge your holiday—I know what you’re up to, you’re already working full Saturdays, don’t think I’m such a fool that I don’t know…. And you’re working till dark.
ALBERT: Overtime. I lose time in the winter.
KATE (sniffing): It’s because you don’t like it here, being at home.
ALBERT: Oh, Kate … I’ve got a schedule, you see.
KATE: You’re miles ahead of it.
ALBERT: I’ve got to have some in hand in case of accidents.
KATE: I told you! You’ll fall off, and me and Katherine will be alone.
ALBERT: No, no, no … stop crying. We’ll have a holiday. I’ll take a week.
KATE: A fortnight.
ALBERT: All right, I don’t mind.
KATE: Can we go to Paris?
ALBERT: I’ve been to Paris. There’s nothing there, believe me. We could go to Scotland.
KATE: Touring?
ALBERT: Certainly. The Firth of Forth.
KATE: We haven’t got a car. Maureen said we could go with them.
ALBERT: But they’re going to Paris.
KATE: We could afford it. It wouldn’t be hard, it’s easier with two children and joined forces…. It would be lovely, I’ve always wanted to see the Champs Elysée and the Arc de Triumph and the Seine and the Eiffel Tower….
(Cliché French accordion music. Cross-fade to Eiffel Tower. It’s the same as Clufton Bridge.)
(Distant. Shouting up.) Albert! A-a-albert! (Repeated, fading, despairing.) Come down! Please come down!
ALBERT: I thought as much. Dots, bricks, beetles … in B flat. Still, I’m glad I came. The pointlessness takes one’s breath away—a tower connects nothing, it stands only so that one can go up and look down. Bridge-builders have none of this audacity, compromise themselves with function. Monsieur Eiffel, poet and philosopher, every eight years I’ll scratch your name in the silver of Clufton Bay Bridge.
KATE (distant, despairing): Al-bert!
ALBERT (quiet): Coining down.
(Cut Eiffel Tower.)
(Crockery smashes, flung against wall.)
KATE: What’s her name?
ALBERT: Kate….
KATE: What a bloody coincidence!
ALBERT: You’ve got it all wrong, Kate, there’s no woman——
KATE (crying): I can smell her on your coat!
ALBERT: It’s paint—I tell you I was up on the bridge.
KATE: All night!
ALBERT: I just thought I would. It was nice up
there.
KATE: You’re barmy if you expect me to believe that, you’re round the twist——
ALBERT: It’s true——
KATE: And I believe it, I am round the twist! I’m as barmy as you are, but I believe it——
ALBERT: That’s better——
(Another cup smashes.)
KATE: No it isn’t—it’s worse! A woman would be normal. (Breaking down.) You don’t talk to me, you don’t talk to Katherine, you can’t wait to get out of the house and up your favourite girder. (Quieter, sobbing.) You don’t like me any more, I know you don’t—I’m boring for you, I haven’t got what you want, and you don’t want to hear the things I tell you because I’ve got nothing to tell you, nothing happens….
ALBERT: I like a quiet life, that’s all.
KATE: Gutless. You’ll spend your whole life painting that bridge….
ALBERT: It’s a good job.
KATE: You know damn well it’s a stupid job which any thick idiot could do—but you’re educated, Albert. You had opportunities. There was Metal Alloys and Allied Metals—you could have gone right up the ladder—we’d have a house, and friends, and we’d entertain and Katherine would have nice friends—you could have been an executive!
ALBERT: I was lying in bed one day when the maid came in to make it…. She was all starchy. When she moved, her skirt sort of crackled against her nylons…. I never had any regrets, but I did want her to be happy too.
KATE (sobbing): I’ve begun talking to myself, over the sink and stove…. I talk to myself because nobody else listens, and you won’t talk to me, so I talk to the sink and the stove and the baby, and maybe one day one of them will answer me. (Baby gurgles, almost a word.)
(Cut to bridge and painting.)
ALBERT (crooning flatly amid and around the tune of ‘Night and Day’):
Night and day, I am the one …
day and night, I’m really a part of me …
I’ve got me under my skin.
So why
don’t I take all of me.
When I begin the beguine….
I get accustomed to my face,
The thought of me makes me stop
before I begin.
Yes, I’ve got me under my skin,
and I get a kick out of me….
Day and night, night and day….
Shall I compare me to a summer’s day,
’Cos I can’t get me out of my mind
I saw me in Monterey …
and I’m all right by me,
yes I’m all right, I’m all right,
I’m all right by me….
(Applause, two-handed, from quite close. Painting stops.)