Love in Idleness / Less Than Kind

by Terence Rattigan

  OLIVIA. Oh, Michael. I wish you’d forget all these tiresome prejudices of yours and try and like him. Believe me, it’s terribly important for me that you do.

  MICHAEL. Why?

  OLIVIA. Well – because – (Pauses. Desperately.) Because he’s such a very old friend.

  MICHAEL. Oh, well – we’ll argue about it some other time.

  He opens a cigarette box.

  May I have a cigarette?

  OLIVIA. Oh, Michael, you don’t smoke?

  MICHAEL. Oh yes. Not many. Four or five a day.

  OLIVIA. Go on, then. Here.

  She lights his cigarette for him with a table lighter. He draws the smoke carefully into his mouth and then lets it out equally carefully, through pursed lips. OLIVIA watches him, fascinated. Then suddenly embraces him.

  (Laughing.) Oh, darling!

  MICHAEL (nonchalantly). What’s the matter?

  OLIVIA (releasing him). Nothing. It’s just so nice to have you back, that’s all.

  MICHAEL. It’s nice to be back.

  He continues to smoke with the practised air of a man of the world. OLIVIA watches him in silence. Then she wanders away to the window, and when she speaks it is with her back to him.

  OLIVIA. Michael, darling. I’ve got something to tell you.

  MICHAEL. Yes, Mum. What is it?

  OLIVIA turns and looks at him. She seems to find some difficulty in continuing.

  OLIVIA (at length). Darling, do you mind awfully putting that cigarette out?

  MICHAEL. Why?

  OLIVIA. I’m sorry, but I can’t bear to look at you while you’re smoking it. It does something to me here.

  She puts her hand on her diaphragm, then walks forward and kisses him lightly.

  If you ever want a girl to fall in love with you, Michael, all you’ll need to do is smoke a cigarette in her presence, just like that.

  MICHAEL, bewildered, puts the cigarette out with his thumbnail and places the half-smoked stub in his breast pocket.

  Thank you, darling. You can smoke as much as you like when I’ve finished saying what I have to say to you.

  MICHAEL. Go ahead.

  OLIVIA. Michael, do you think of me as terribly old?

  MICHAEL. Oh no, Mum. Not old at all. Sort of early middle-aged.

  OLIVIA. Yes, I see. Well now, you know how fond I was of your father, don’t you?

  MICHAEL. Yes, of course I know.

  OLIVIA. But, after all – you see, darling – it’s not as if the rest of my life were altogether finished –

  OLIVIA is having acute difficulty in coming to the point. MICHAEL is looking at her, puzzled but faintly paternal.

  MICHAEL (reassuring). Oh no. I’ve told you you’ve got a lot more time left yet.

  OLIVIA. Thank you, darling. So you see, there’s really no reason why I should face the prospect of spending the rest of my life entirely alone –

  MICHAEL. But of course you won’t be alone. You’re going to have me from now on.

  OLIVIA. Yes, darling, I know. And I’m more grateful than I can say to have you with me. But, after all, one day you’ll get married yourself, and then I shall have no one –

  MICHAEL. Don’t worry about that. We’ll have you to live with us. (As an afterthought.) Besides, I don’t think I’m going to get married.

  OLIVIA. Why not?

  MICHAEL (thoughtfully). It’s a bit frustrating, I think. It stops one doing good work.

  OLIVIA. Oh, does it?

  MICHAEL. Yes. A chap I knew in Montreal got married. He was a first-class engineer and he went all to pieces.

  OLIVIA. Well – perhaps he married the wrong sort of girl.

  MICHAEL. Yes, but then I think it’s awfully difficult to find the right sort of girl, don’t you?

  OLIVIA. Well, I don’t know, darling. I think it can be managed.

  MICHAEL. I don’t think so. I know I haven’t.

  OLIVIA. Well – after all – you have got a little time left yet before you need give up the problem in despair, haven’t you, darling?

  MICHAEL. Yes, I suppose so. I feel a bit gloomy about it, all the same. Go on, Mum. What were you going to tell me?

  OLIVIA. Oh dear, this is so difficult! (Suddenly, with an access of courage.) Michael, what would you say if I told you I was thinking of getting married again?

  MICHAEL stares at her a second, then laughs.

  Why are you laughing?

  MICHAEL. Poor old Mum!

  OLIVIA. What do you mean, ‘poor old Mum’?

  MICHAEL. I’m awfully sorry. I can’t help it. I’m afraid it’s awfully rude of me – only –

  OLIVIA. Only what?

  MICHAEL. Nothing. (Growing quite serious again.) Yes, of course, go ahead and get married.

  OLIVIA. Thank you, darling.

  MICHAEL. Only you really needn’t worry, you know. I swear I’ll look after you all right.

  OLIVIA (impatiently). I’m sure you will, Michael dear, but that isn’t quite the point –

  MICHAEL. Yes, yes, I know. I understand.

  OLIVIA. I wonder if you do.

  MICHAEL. Of course I do. Well, well. We’ll just have to find the right man for you, that’s all.

  He puts his arm paternally on her shoulder.

  It shouldn’t be so difficult, after all.

  He kisses her.

  I do understand about your being lonely. Poor old Mum!

  OLIVIA (in sudden fury). Stop saying ‘poor old Mum’!

  POLTON comes in.

  POLTON. Oh, madam, Miss Dell is here with a package for Sir John from the Ministry of Information. She says, could she see him for a second in the hall?

  OLIVIA. Oh yes. (Opens the study door and calls.) John, Miss Dell’s here with your papers.

  JOHN appears at the door.

  JOHN. Good. Where is she?

  POLTON. In the hall, sir.

  JOHN. Right.

  He goes out by the other door, POLTON following him.

  MICHAEL. Mum, can I light up again now?

  OLIVIA (with a sigh). Yes, dear, go ahead.

  MICHAEL. I mean – that’s all you’ve got to tell me, isn’t it?

  OLIVIA (with a deeper sigh). Yes – that’s all I’ve got to tell you…

  MICHAEL takes out the cigarette stub from his breast pocket and once more his mother lights it for him. She watches him unhappily as he draws in and blows out the smoke. He is a little self-conscious under her gaze and splutters suddenly in an effort to inhale. JOHN comes in with a package.

  JOHN (heartily). Smoking, I see. Splendid.

  OLIVIA turns and glares at him. JOHN is oblivious of her displeasure.

  Why not a whisky and soda?

  OLIVIA. Don’t be absurd, John.

  MICHAEL. I’ll have a whisky. I quite like it.

  OLIVIA. No, indeed, you won’t have any such thing. If you have anything you’ll have a glass of sherry.

  MICHAEL. Oh, all right. I thought sherry was very difficult to get in England.

  JOHN. Difficult, but not impossible.

  OLIVIA has gone to the drink tray.

  I think I’ll have another whisky.

  He joins OLIVIA at the drink tray.

  May I help myself?

  OLIVIA. Go ahead.

  MICHAEL has wandered to the window and for a moment has his back to the other two. JOHN, in soundless speech and pantomime, asks OLIVIA if she has told him. OLIVIA shakes her head. JOHN, still soundlessly, asks why not? OLIVIA shrugs her shoulders despairingly. JOHN by gesticulation and pantomime implies that she must do it now, or he’ll be very angry and that he is going back into the study to give her the chance. OLIVIA shakes her head violently. JOHN continues his gesticulation, stopping abruptly as MICHAEL turns round.

  MICHAEL. Funny how small London looks after Montreal.

  OLIVIA (taking him his sherry). Darling – it’s much bigger.

  MICHAEL. Yes, but the houses are so mean and small-looking. You ought to see the Mount Royal Hotel in Montreal. There
’s a building for you. (To JOHN.) Of course, you must know it – I was forgetting.

  JOHN. It’s a long time since I’ve seen it, though. (Goes towards the study.) Well – I think I’d better go and read this report –

  OLIVIA (sharply). No. You stay here and talk to Michael.

  JOHN. Oh, but surely – haven’t you got a lot more to say to Michael – (Meaningly.) a lot more?

  OLIVIA (wearily). Yes, but not now. Later. After dinner. (Looks at her watch.) I must go and slip into a dress. (Goes to door.) Now do try and make friends, you two, won’t you?

  She looks wearily from one to the other.

  Because if you don’t, I can tell you here and now it’s going to be a nervous breakdown for poor old Mum.

  She goes out. There is an awkward pause after she has gone.

  JOHN (at length). Well, Michael, you have a very remarkable mother.

  MICHAEL. Do you think so?

  JOHN. Very remarkable indeed.

  MICHAEL. Oh, I don’t know.

  Conversation languishes. MICHAEL finishes his cigarette with evident relish and puts it out.

  JOHN. Well, are you glad to be home?

  MICHAEL. Oh yes, thanks.

  JOHN. I bet you are.

  MICHAEL. Yes, I am.

  JOHN. Jolly good, I should think.

  MICHAEL. Yes.

  There is another pause during which MICHAEL eyes JOHN as though he were an odious halfwit.

  JOHN (extending his case). Cigarette?

  MICHAEL. No, thanks. I’ve just finished one.

  JOHN. Oh yes, of course. Mustn’t encourage you to smoke too much, must I?

  MICHAEL. No.

  JOHN lights a cigarette for himself and takes a sip of his drink in embarrassment.

  JOHN. Well, Michael, has your mother told you about coming to work for me?

  MICHAEL. Yes. (Unwillingly.) Thank you.

  JOHN. Not at all.

  MICHAEL. What is the job?

  JOHN. You’ll be in Symonds’ department – he’s one of my undersecretaries. I don’t suppose he’ll try you too heavily, just at first. (Jocularly.) You’ll probably spend most of the first couple of weeks making tea for the office.

  MICHAEL (frowning). Making tea for the office?

  JOHN. I was joking.

  MICHAEL. Oh, I see.

  JOHN. Still, you mustn’t expect too much responsibility at first. We’ve all got to start somewhere, you know.

  MICHAEL. Naturally.

  JOHN. Anyway, you’ll be getting a jolly fine screw for a lad of your age. Do you know how much I got when I first started?

  MICHAEL (without interest). No. How much?

  JOHN. Thirty-five bob a week. I started as an office boy.

  MICHAEL. Really? I thought you inherited Fletcher-Pratt from your father – Black Fletcher who fought the Canadian Trades Unions.

  There is a faint pause, while JOHN eyes MICHAEL meditatively.

  JOHN. Black Fletcher was not the name I knew my father by, but let that pass. As regards my inheriting Fletcher-Pratt, it is quite true that my father James Fletcher – was Chairman of the Board of the Canadian branch at the time, but I had to work my way up like anyone else –

  MICHAEL (pleasantly). Yes, but surely from slightly nearer the top than anyone else –

  JOHN (ruffled). Possible. Possible.

  Pause.

  Tell me – are you very left-wing or something?

  MICHAEL. Oh no. Not more than most people. I should think I’m what you call a progressive.

  JOHN. That’s all right, then. I’m a progressive myself.

  MICHAEL. Are you?

  JOHN. Why are you so surprised? We’re all progressives these days.

  MICHAEL. I was only thinking that it wasn’t an awfully progressive speech you made at Liverpool.

  JOHN. Where did you read that?

  MICHAEL. It was fully reported in Canada.

  JOHN. What was wrong with the speech?

  MICHAEL. You attacked post-war planning and reconstruction.

  JOHN. I did nothing of the kind. I merely attempted to answer those crackpot extremists who appear to believe that a peacetime utopia can be simply organised by a mass of rules and regulations issued by despotic government departments –

  MICHAEL. You run a despotic government department yourself, don’t you?

  JOHN. Yes. By necessity and for a particular emergency. But that necessity and that emergency will cease with the war –

  MICHAEL (jumping up). What utter rot! The emergency will be just as big after the war as it is now. If you can organise for war, why can’t you bally well organise for peace?

  JOHN (also getting up). My dear child, there is such a thing as the liberty of the individual –

  MICHAEL. Liberty of the individual, my fanny! You reactionaries always shout a lot about individual liberty when all you mean is liberty for yourselves to go on exploiting other people for your own private profit. Liberty to you personally means a big, fat dividend for Fletcher-Pratt preferred.

  JOHN (hotly). On the contrary, liberty to me personally means freedom from the tyrannical control of a soulless oligarchy. It is freedom, in the highest, Periclean sense: freedom for private enterprise to flourish healthily for the good of all, unhampered by petty, stifling restrictions. Freedom for every individual to carve out his own career –

  MICHAEL. The way you carved yours out by selling steel to Japan in ’31?

  JOHN (roaring). That is a lie, a filthy canard concocted and circulated by a few hare-brained left-wing fanatics whom it isn’t worth my while to sue for slander –

  MICHAEL. I can quite see why it isn’t worth your while. It might lead to further revelations of how you managed to sell armaments to both sides before ’39.

  JOHN. You offensive little rat! By God, I swear that if you weren’t Olivia’s son, I’d put you across my knee here and now and flog you within an inch of your life for that –

  OLIVIA enters. She has changed into a dress. She looks quickly from one to the other and sighs deeply.

  OLIVIA. Oh dear!

  MICHAEL. We were having a little political discussion.

  OLIVIA. Yes. That’s just what I was afraid of.

  JOHN. It was my fault. I lost my temper. I should have remembered that I was arguing with a very small child.

  OLIVIA. Oh, so now he’s a very small child, is he?

  JOHN. Politically, anyway.

  OLIVIA (turning to MICHAEL). I’m very cross with you, Michael. I specially asked you to be nice to Sir John –

  MICHAEL. Sorry, Mum – only I get a bit worked up about politics. I think I shall go in for politics after the war.

  OLIVIA. Yes, dear, and I’m sure you’ll make a great success of it, only you must remember meanwhile that Sir John is very much older than you, and he knows a good deal more about these things than you do.

  MICHAEL. Yes, Mum. (To JOHN.) I’m sorry, Sir John, if I was rude.

  JOHN. That’s all right. I’m sorry too.

  OLIVIA. That’s better. Now go upstairs and get ready for dinner. Polton will show you your room.

  MICHAEL. Polton?

  OLIVIA. The maid.

  MICHAEL. Oh, the old geezer? (Goes to the door, then turns to JOHN and smiles winningly.) Truce for dinner?

  JOHN (with a sickly smile). Truce for dinner.

  MICHAEL. It’s a bet.

  He goes out. OLIVIA looks at JOHN’s crestfallen face and laughs delightedly.

  OLIVIA. Poor little Johnny! Was he bullied then! (Pats his cheek.) Perhaps now you’ll be a little more sympathetic to me about my problem.

  JOHN. I gather he takes after his father.

  OLIVIA. Oh no, I think he takes after me.

  JOHN. Then I regret to say, Olivia, that I am seeing you now for the first time in a totally different light.

  OLIVIA. Oh, but don’t you think he’s rather attractive.

  JOHN. Only in the sense that a young rattlesnake is not entirely without charm.

&n
bsp; OLIVIA. Darling – you mustn’t be prejudiced, just because he doesn’t agree with you politically.

  JOHN. Does ‘not agreeing with politically’ include the right to accuse me of incompetence, nepotism, fraud, peculation and treachery?

  OLIVIA. Did he really? Isn’t he naughty?

  JOHN. At times, Olivia, you have a positive genius for understatement.

  He goes to the drink table and pours himself out another drink.

  OLIVIA. Poor darling! He has got you into a state, hasn’t he?

  JOHN. He has not got me into a state. I am a very weary public servant, Olivia, and after just having had the experience of a young jaguar suddenly being loosed at my head without warning, I rather naturally feel the need of a little additional stimulant.

  OLIVIA. He was a rattlesnake a moment ago. Now he’s a jaguar. He’s really just a very ordinary little boy who happens to have picked up some rather odd notions which I suppose I shall have to get out of his head somehow or other.

  JOHN (returning with his drink). If you should run out of ideas on that score, Olivia, I’d be delighted to provide you with some of my own. I have an inventive mind. What’s more, you can count on my wholehearted cooperation.

  OLIVIA (warmly). Don’t you dare! He’s mine and I won’t have you or anyone else interfering with him.

  JOHN. The tigress defending her cub.

  OLIVIA. Tiger cub now.

  JOHN. Certainly. In addition, I haven’t yet touched on any of the more dangerous forms of insect life.

  OLIVIA kisses him on the cheek.

  OLIVIA. You are sweet.

  JOHN. Why am I sweet?

  OLIVIA. I don’t know. You just are.

  JOHN. I don’t feel very sweet.

  OLIVIA. You’re just as fond of him as I am – really – at heart. Aren’t you?

  JOHN. No.

  OLIVIA. You will be, anyway. You’ve always wanted a son, haven’t you?

  JOHN. Not one like that.

  OLIVIA. He’s a darling. He always was. He hasn’t changed a bit.

  JOHN. You mean he was born like that?

  OLIVIA (laughing). Don’t you worry, my precious. I’m quite sure that in two or three weeks I shall be jealous of the way you and he are getting along. Everything’s going to be wonderful, I know it. (Kisses him again.) I must go and see Cook a second about Thursday.

  She goes to the door, where she stops and regards herself thoughtfully in a mirror.

  He really looks very young, doesn’t he, John? Joan’s going to be at The Savoy tonight.