Alan Bennett: Plays, Volume 1

by Alan Bennett

  ANDY: Come on, Dad, we have a laugh, don’t we?

  GEORGE: (Shouting upstairs) There’s no taxi. I’ll go and try and catch one down the road. Be ready. (POLLY comes down almost at the same moment as GEORGE is putting on his coat.) (To ANDY.) Sorry.

  POLLY: What was that?

  ANDY: The Oxford English Dictionary triumphs again.

  (GEOFF comes downstairs. ANDY goes upstairs. POLLY is all dressed up, ready.)

  POLLY: Nice?

  GEOFF: Very nice.

  POLLY: Can you do this? (GEOFF begins to fasten her ear-rings on. ANDY returns for some milk.)

  ANDY: (He goes upstairs again.) Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt.

  POLLY: He’s only doing my ear-rings, love.

  GEOFF: He knows?

  POLLY: No. Anyway. No. He’s been having a set-to with George. Where are you off to tonight?

  GEOFF: Nowhere.

  POLLY: Nowhere?

  GEOFF: No.

  POLLY: You could stop here and watch George on the telly if you wanted.

  GEOFF: No. Is Brian going to this thing tonight?

  POLLY: Who?

  GEOFF: Brian.

  POLLY: I suppose so. It’s a duty do. MPs and their ladies. You call him Brian? (POLLY should embark on same job at this point entirely out of keeping with her get-up. Dusting or cleaning up or polishing.)

  GEOFF: Why not?

  POLLY: What does he call you?

  GEOFF: Doesn’t call me anything.

  POLLY: Do you think he fancies you?

  GEOFF: Have you seen the chuck? (He is clearing up his tools.)

  POLLY: The what?

  GEOFF: For the drill.

  POLLY: He probably does. What does it look like? Have you ever been in bed with a man?

  GEOFF: Come on. Everybody has some time or other.

  POLLY: Have they? James had it somewhere this morning. George hasn’t.

  GEOFF: Not bed, but at school. As a kid. Something, there must have been.

  POLLY: What I said, but he says not. That’s his generation for you. Things used to be different. More fraught. Is this it?

  GEOFF: And now he’s too old to start. Lend us that. I’ll sweep up.

  POLLY: But you can tell Brian fancies you, the way he never talks to you.

  GEOFF: You’ll get all mucky.

  POLLY: Don’t you think so?

  GEOFF: Maybe, maybe. And if he does, then?

  POLLY: Nothing. Do you know when someone fancies you?

  GEOFF: You tell me.

  POLLY: You told me.

  GEOFF: What’re you after?

  POLLY: Nothing. Just interested. Has he touched you? Brian. He’s very well off.

  GEOFF: Do me a favour. Ask him, why don’t you? If you’re so keen. Get it all mapped out. I’m only part-time here, you know.

  POLLY: Sorry. Well, stop fiddling about and talk to me. (He is about to kiss her, when the taxi hoots outside and GEORGE is heard coming in.)

  GEORGE: Come on. Geoff, we’ll have to drop you at Oxford Circus, there’s not time to go your way. (He opens the stairs door and shouts, only ANDY is either just coming down or has been behind the door all the time.) We’re going now. I don’t know what time we’ll be back. Damn. I never rang Enid. She was going to the hospital today.

  POLLY: There isn’t time now, love. Switch the programme on, you’re missing it. And make sure James does a pee. Your supper’s in the oven.

  (They go.

  ANDY switches on the set. He gets something from the fridge: cake, or a mixture of unsuitable food which he puts beside him on the sofa without a plate. The television warms up. He tries several channels before GEORGE appears.)

  GEORGE (TV): Somehow society ought always to be kept open. There must be a choice. Until you give people a choice there will always be people going up society by the wrong ladders… sex, fashion, crime.

  VOICE (TV): But you say there must be options. What I don’t understand is what changes you would make in the State System as it exists today.

  GEORGE (TV): Look, I am a product of the State System and admirable though it may be in some respects in others it is appalling.

  VOICE (TV): Appalling.

  GEORGE (TV): But it isn’t education simply. You see, I believe that some people are better than others, better not because they’re cleverer or more cultivated or God knows … (he laughs) because they’re better off. But because they’re more … more human. I used to believe that the relation between such people and education was one of cause and effect…

  ANDY who has been watching it for a long time with his hand on the switch either switches it off or switches it over. He takes a long swig from the milk bottle and switches it off altogether as the lights fade briefly, and go up again on GEORGE, BRIAN and POLLY, sitting round the kitchen table.)

  GEORGE: It’s autumn. Autumn. The start of term. The real beginning of the year. I’ve always kept terms, ever since I was five years old. Autumn when you moved up a class, changed teachers, got a new exercise book. New satchel, school socks. I even went into the RAF in September. And Oxford in October, trunks in the lodge, leaves down Park Road. Track suits. And now Parliament again. Still in terms.

  There are people whose year begins with the calendar. Begins, as Fleet Street decrees it should begin, with travel brochures and sales in Oxford Street. How many? Most people, I suppose. Wish class away there would still be this: we are two nations because our years have different bones. Terms are part of the crumbling skeleton of the Christian year. Advent, annunciation, birth, passion and pentecost.

  Our year begins as theirs does. Theirs … whose? The masses. The people. The voters. I was in America a year on a scholarship. After Oxford. There were no terms there. It was time with the stays taken out of it, no rhythm to the calendar, no Christian holidays, no Easter or Whitsuntide. A secular state. There were sudden holidays in the middle of nowhere. Like missing a step on a stair. Lincoln’s birthday. Labour Day. Odd, capricious. I like ceremony. I like pattern.

  (The lights go up as he addresses these last remarks to his wife and BRIAN.)

  Perhaps I am a Christian. Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with me. Or boredom.

  POLLY: If you’re so bored you could put the milk bottles out.

  BRIAN: Boredom at least implies there’s something better. (GEORGE does put the milk bottles out. POLLY is referring to a printed list, getting together some clothes. She holds up a little pink blazer.)

  POLLY: Look at his little jacket. Doesn’t it look pretty?

  GEORGE: How much is this Greyfriars trousseau going to cost?

  POLLY: Nothing. It’s coming out of Aunt Betty’s money.

  (GEORGE fingers a waspish football jersey.)

  GEORGE: I particularly resent money spent on kitting him out for competitive games.

  POLLY: All games are competitive.

  GEORGE: How’s he going to get to the flaming school, with the streets thick with sex maniacs?

  POLLY: They have a rota. I’ve got into a group. It’s Thursdays our day.

  GEORGE: Thus dragging us willy-nilly into association with all the other educational queue jumpers. If there’s one thing I don’t fancy at nine o’clock in the morning it’s chauffeuring round a cartload of Jasons and Jeremys.

  POLLY: Half-past eight.

  GEORGE: Cash name tapes. They were always great dividers. Like three initials. What’s this?

  POLLY: His hair.

  GEORGE: All this?

  POLLY: It says they prefer it short.

  GEORGE: Short? (He runs upstairs.) It’s not a flaming monastery.

  POLLY: You all right, love?

  (BRIAN nods.)

  It’s all show is this. Andy’s the one. Now he’s back at school what does it matter.

  BRIAN: He is back?

  POLLY: Never left. It was all talk. In this house it generally is. You have to take it all with a piece of cake.

  GEORGE: He looks like a little lavatory brush. I wonder are there any other alter
ations to the fabric the school requires. Eyelashes clipped to regulation length? Circumcision perhaps?

  POLLY: If he doesn’t mind, I don’t.

  BRIAN: Anyway, all games are not competitive.

  POLLY: All competitive games are.

  GEORGE: Yes. I suppose now we’ve seen him safely on to the escalator you’ll start worrying about Elizabeth. Already at five more eccentric than Edith Sitwell ever was. I wonder whether there’s a handily situated atheist convent?

  POLLY: I shouldn’t worry. She’ll probably slump into marriage same way as I did. I was a bright girl, you know.

  GEORGE: You were not a bright girl. You talked like a man and you smoked cigars. That is not intellect.

  POLLY: I was brighter than anybody else in my year.

  GEORGE: And where are they now, your year? Gossip columnists on the Evening Standard, publishers’ readers, hostesses on late-night television programmes, the commanding heights of the economy. You’re well out of it.

  POLLY: I ought to say at this juncture that since I didn’t manage to get to Salisbury’s there is nothing for supper.

  GEORGE: Eggs?

  POLLY: No.

  GEORGE: Can’t you raid the store cupboard?

  POLLY: Yes, if you fancy gooseberries on toast. Couldn’t we go out?

  GEORGE: No sitters. Incidentally, Geoff rang when you were out.

  POLLY: Geoff? What about?

  GEORGE: Nothing much. Talk. He hasn’t been round for a bit, has he? I’ve not seen him anyway.

  POLLY: If you can think of anything else for him to do. I can’t.

  GEORGE: I’d just got used to him. I quite like him. He said he might come round.

  POLLY: Here? When?

  GEORGE: Any time. Tonight, I suppose.

  POLLY: What time?

  GEORGE: Didn’t say. Doesn’t matter, we’re not going out.

  POLLY: I was just thinking could we not go out? To eat.

  GEORGE: How can we? Why do you suddenly want to go out, anyway? There’ll be enough meals out starting tomorrow. Why do we have to eat at all? Couldn’t we just give it a miss?

  POLLY: I suppose you’re bored with eating now?

  GEORGE: Yes. In at one end of the tunnel and out the other.

  POLLY: Shall we go out or shan’t we?

  BRIAN: Don’t bother about me. I don’t mind one way or the other.

  POLLY: I didn’t have any lunch. We haven’t been out for ages. (Pause.)

  GEORGE: No. Look. Why don’t I go out to the Koh-I-Noor and fetch some? Then you won’t have to do anything.

  POLLY: It’s not that… all right.

  (GEORGE goes out.)

  Oh, God. Why is it always me that gets the tap end of the bath? (POLLY puts the oven on. BRIAN says nothing.)

  Have you seen Geoff?

  BRIAN: Have I seen him?

  POLLY: You do see him, don’t you?

  BRIAN: Yes. Sometimes.

  POLLY: Sometimes. I wondered whether that was what you were glum about.

  BRIAN: No. Oh, no.

  POLLY: Because he’s going away. Did you know that?

  BRIAN: Yes.

  POLLY: Do you know where?

  BRIAN: Yes.

  POLLY: Where?

  BRIAN: Torremolinos.

  POLLY: What to do?

  BRIAN: He has this friend who’s opening a restaurant.

  POLLY: Another friend. So. There we are.

  BRIAN: What? Oh. Yes.

  POLLY: Don’t you want to know how I found out?

  BRIAN: Found out what?

  POLLY: You and Geoff.

  BRIAN: It wasn’t that much of a secret.

  POLLY: You never told me.

  BRIAN: No, I suppose not.

  POLLY: He started wearing your after-shave lotion.

  BRIAN: You can buy it in shops. I don’t have it specially blended.

  POLLY: That and… vibes.

  BRIAN: Vibes.

  POLLY: You can tell you knew each other better than you let on.

  BRIAN: Not much better. He’s still a bit of a mystery to me.

  POLLY: So in the end I asked him point-blank. And he told me.

  BRIAN: Yes. He told me he told you. He may be coming round later on to collect his stuff.

  POLLY: He didn’t tell me.

  BRIAN: He told me about you.

  POLLY: He didn’t tell me about you. Why is that, I wonder?

  BRIAN: He knew I wouldn’t mind. In my situation one can’t really afford to. I was… a bit shocked about you.

  POLLY: Shocked. You were shocked? What had you to be shocked about?

  BRIAN: Polly, you are married.

  POLLY: Yes. But I loved him. (Pause.)

  No, I didn’t. Did you?

  BRIAN: No.

  POLLY: Did he love you?

  BRIAN: Oh, no. He obliges, but he’s not that way, anyway.

  POLLY: But it’s a good job I didn’t love him. Otherwise I should have been a bit, you know, cross.

  BRIAN: Cross. What a funny word.

  POLLY: I should have had a right to be cross.

  BRIAN: It’s like a French farce. I go out one door, you come in at the other.

  POLLY: I suppose this is what’s meant by talking it over like grown-up people, i.e. neither of us could care a damn.

  BRIAN: I care. He wasn’t in love with you, though?

  POLLY: No. What did he talk about to you?

  BRIAN: Questions mainly. Lots of questions.

  POLLY: What about?

  BRIAN: Anything. What did I think of President Kennedy. Had there been a plot. Would there be another war. Had I ever spoken to the Prime Minister.

  POLLY: Yes, that’s it. That’s like it was with me.

  BRIAN: And looking for a way in, somehow. As if it were all to do with being clued up. Question and answer, but not to any purpose.

  POLLY: And you can’t put him off, can you? He gets moody. I know I wasn’t much help. I got a bit bored.

  BRIAN: I wasn’t bored. I felt … a bit sorry for him.

  POLLY: I didn’t.

  BRIAN: You’re not coming out of this very well.

  POLLY: Did you smoke with him?

  BRIAN: I don’t smoke. Oh smoke. No. No. He asked me. I wouldn’t.

  POLLY: I did.

  BRIAN: Nice?

  POLLY: No. Made it less boring. I was sick once. Just like having a baby. ’Course I’ve seen more of him than you. Perhaps you’d have got bored. Except that was what I wanted really, a good boring man. George is so interesting all the time it gets boring. Whereas having a boring man was rather interesting.

  BRIAN: I don’t think you were all that well suited.

  POLLY: What about … sex?

  BRIAN: It was actually quite a bit before we got on to sex.

  POLLY: Do you know, I found that. I think these days it seems to come quite low down on the list. There’s a good deal of … I don’t know … well just cuddles.

  BRIAN: Yes.

  POLLY: I find that a bit disturbing.

  BRIAN: Do you? It’s what they like. It’s one of the differences nowadays. I’ve noticed it before.

  POLLY: Why don’t they get on with it, do you think?

  BRIAN: They … are … the young … him, Andy … nicer than we were, I reckon. I think things are different.

  Drifting, not pushing. Accepting.

  POLLY: You?

  BRIAN: Me, I suppose. Things in general… not scoring. And it’s not pot. It’s them. And it’s admirable. I wish it were me.

  POLLY: He said I was very warm. Didn’t he say that to you?

  BRIAN: No. He said … no. He didn’t say that.

  POLLY: I suppose I am rather warm, really. George says I’m warm. You never know, do you?

  BRIAN: What?

  POLLY: You do, I suppose. But what you’re like. Until there’s been someone else, and there never was, you see – so I didn’t know I was warm … anything … I thought that was just George. But now there’s been someone el
se, I suppose, I must be. And you find you’re something else besides. Someone else he, George, doesn’t know, and now I’ve got to go back to being just what I was. And it’s going to be so… (she is crying) boring.

  (ANDY is heard coming down the stairs and POLLY quickly switches on her transistor.)

  ANDY: What’s up?

  POLLY: (Above the music, which is very loud and martial, say Sousa) Nothing, love. (She blows her nose.) I’m just affected by the music.

  ANDY: Is it George?

  POLLY: Dad? No. Honestly. Is it, Brian?

  BRIAN: No. We were just having a jolly good cry together. It’s our age, you know.

  ANDY: What’s happened to all the food?

  POLLY: George has just gone out for something. Look in the store cupboard if there’s anything you fancy.

  (ANDY looks and comes out with a bottle of gooseberries, which he opens and begins spooning them out, occasionally drinking the juice from the bottle.)

  ANDY: You’re sure you’re all right?

  POLLY: Positive. Honestly. (They sit in awkward silence for a bit while ANDY spoons in the gooseberries, and they watch him.)

  ANDY: Good these are.

  POLLY: Good. They’re last year’s. This year they were nothing at all. (To BRIAN.) Nothing at all.

  BRIAN: Were they?

  POLLY: Nothing. Greenfly. (She still sniffs silently.)

  ANDY: (To BRIAN) Do you want any?

  BRIAN: No. I… No. (Knock at the door.)

  POLLY: (Leaping up) That’ll be Geoff. (She runs very quickly upstairs. ANDY shrugs and answers the door.)

  GEOFF: How do.

  ANDY: She’s upstairs. You know Brian?

  (GEOFF raises hand to BRIAN.)

  GEOFF: I called round to collect the rest of my gear.

  ANDY: (Through stairs door) Mum. Geoff. Do you know where it all is?

  GEOFF: More or less.

  (ANDY sits down again, goes on with the gooseberries. The silence is still pretty awkward.)