by David Hare
Wilson Certainly. That bit. A mistake.
Nash That’s right.
Pause. Wilson inhales deeply.
Wilson Fuck ’em. An’ I know ’ow ’e feels.
Anson How do you think it went?
Silence. They all smoke. Maggie appears talking from a long way off. Laura dancing attendance.
Maggie Mother born in Hitchin, father born in Hatfield, so they met halfway and lived all their life in Stevenage. That’s how my interview begins.
Arthur Oh, Jesus.
Nash, Wilson, Smegs and Inch rise as a man, and leave as quickly as they can.
Maggie Guess I must have been unhappy as a child …
Arthur Oh, my God.
Maggie Laura, I would love something to eat.
Laura Sure.
Laura goes off.
Maggie Well, hello, Candy Peel, I thought it was you.
Arthur Hallo, Maggie.
Maggie Do you know why I call him Candy Peel? Because he has a small scrap of that substance hanging where real men …
Arthur Thank you, Maggie, do the same for you.
Maggie Do you know how you survive in Stevenage? You say this isn’t happening to me. That’s what you say. You say I may appear to be stifling to death in this crabby overheated mausoleum with these cringing waxworks who claim to be my parents. But it’s not true. I’m not here. I’m really some way away. And fifty foot up.
Arthur Right.
Maggie In fact I’m a Viking.
Arthur Have you got this?
Anson I …
Arthur I would write it down if I were you.
Maggie In another age. I was a Viking. Reincarnation. I had a dream last night, I was called Thor, and I was wrapped in furs and I had strips of dried meat tied round my waist.
Arthur Well, I think we can guess what the dried meat means, honey.
Maggie No nourishment in Stevenage. You draw no strength. It’s like living on the moon.
Anson I have heard you saying that before.
Maggie Listen, kid, you ask for an interview, I give you an interview. If you wanna new interview you gotta pay more, understand?
Anson Yes. Sorry.
Maggie Like to rub my back, Arthur?
Arthur Give me the bottle.
Maggie I won’t drink before the show, Arthur. I just like to hold it, OK?
Pause.
Ask us another question.
Anson Would you say …
Maggie Yes?
Anson Would you say the ideas expressed in popular music … have had the desired effect of changing … society in any way?
Pause.
Maggie Hamburger. Dill pickle. That’s what I want.
Laura returns with Snead.
Laura I got the gay boy back.
Arthur Ah, come in, waiter.
Maggie Hallo, ringer, must have been you in the tub just now.
Snead Sir?
Arthur Did you say sir?
Maggie That’s all right, I’m just one of the boys.
Arthur Hamburger, please, Mr Snead. With dill pickle.
Maggie And relish and French fries. Coca-cola. And a banana pretty. And a vanilla ice with hot chocolate sauce. Chopped nuts. And some tinned peaches. And tomato sauce for the hamburger. With onion rings. And mayonnaise. And frankfurters. Frankfurters for everyone, OK? With French mustard. And some toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches. With chutney. On brown bread, by the way, I’m a health freak.
Arthur Got that, Mr Snead?
Snead I’m afraid I’ll have to send out for this. Do you think you could give me some money?
Laura Money?
Maggie Don’t make with the jokes, ringer, they don’t go with the grovelling.
Snead I can get you something from the college kitchen.
Arthur OK, just get us whatever’s nice and greasy and answers to the name of Rover, OK?
Snead Sir?
Maggie Then the first time I heard Bessie Smith, that was somethin’.
Arthur Off you go.
Snead Sir.
Snead goes out.
Maggie That was really somethin’. In a record shop, I was fourteen. Did you know that as well?
Anson Actually I … read your press release.
Maggie Did you?
Pause.
Laura I reckoned he should …
Maggie Yes, well I do have some sort of life outside my press release. I can’t remember where I put it, but I do know I have it.
Maggie gets up and slips the Scotch bottle back in the rank of eight.
Laura Do you want to change for the next set?
Maggie What you gawpin’ at?
Anson Looking at you.
Maggie points to where she had been sitting.
Maggie Still looking at the tragedy? That was over there. The girl with no life of her own. I left her over there.
Anson That easy?
Maggie Tragedy’s easy. I pick it up, I sling it off. Like an overcoat.
Pause.
Arthur What is she on?
Laura Arthur.
Arthur Will somebody please tell me what this girl is on?
Pause.
Maggie So I tell you the story of my life. Everyone in Stevenage hated me, they hated me when I was a child. Cos I was big and fat and rich and took no shit from anyone. What’s this for?
Anson A university paper.
Maggie So they sent me to a convent. Anything you heard about randy nuns, forget it. They have tits like walnuts and leathery little minds. But me, I’m like a great slurpy bag of wet cement waiting to be knocked into shape. Everybody at the convent, they hate me too.
Anson You …
Maggie How did I lose it, is that what you want to know?
Anson I didn’t … get …
Maggie I lost it to an American airman on top of a tombstone in Worthing cemetery. He was very scared. I was only thirteen and he didn’t want to lose his pilot’s licence. Write this down for Chrissake, it’s good.
Anson’s pencil obeys.
So then even the American gets to hate me, yes, Laura?
Laura Oh, yes.
Maggie She was at school with me, you see. We both had it, this English education. Takes a long time to wipe that particular dogshit off your shoe.
Anson And Arthur?
Maggie Arthur I meet when I’m seventeen. A case of Trilby. Which is Trilby? I never know.
Arthur The woman is Trilby.
Maggie And the monster is Frankenstein.
Arthur No.
Maggie The doctor is Frankenstein.
Anson The monster doesn’t have a name.
Laura The man is Svengali.
Maggie Anyway. He invents me.
Arthur smiles and shrugs.
Laura Do you want to change?
Maggie Yeah, I’ll change.
Laura organizes a new dress from the bags.
Anson Are there … any other singers you greatly admire?
Maggie Well, it’s a funny thing you’ll find … singers mostly admire Billie Holliday, same as jazzmen admire Charlie Parker. Conductors say they admire Toscanini. It’s something to do with how they’re all dead.
Arthur No competition.
Maggie (smiles) Yes.
Anson Among the living?
Maggie stands behind Anson and puts her hands on his shoulders.
Maggie This is all real you know, kid. None of the others can say that. Never had a nose-job. Or a face-lift. Or my chin pushed in. Or my jaw straightened. No paraffin wax, no mud-packs. All my own teeth. This is it. The real thing. I am the only girl singer in England not to have been spun out of soya bean.
Anson You never seem very happy to have been English. What would you rather have been?
Maggie American.
Anson Why?
Maggie smiles at Arthur.
Maggie America is a crippled giant, England is a sick gnome.
Arthur makes an O with his fingers.
I sing of
the pain. Do you understand?
Anson No.
Maggie The words and music are Arthur’s but the pain is mine. The pain is real. The quality of the singing depends on the quality of the pain.
Pause. She smiles.
Yeah. What you study?
Anson Oh … medicine.
Maggie Great.
Anson Well, yes, in a way except I don’t seem very suited. It’s not my … anyway … I don’t want to bore you with my problems.
Maggie What would you like to be?
Anson Well … I don’t know. If I was free …
Maggie stares at him.
Maggie Round the back of the Odeon? Yes? After the show? Would you like that?
Anson Odeon?
Maggie It’s a figure of speech. Kid.
Arthur You could stand on a beerbox, reach up to her.
Laura Shake hands with Saigon Charlie.
Maggie smiles at them. Then cuffs lightly the top of Anson’s hair.
Maggie First man I knew played rock music, he was nobody, a real nothing. I say rock music, but really it was all that hoopla and fag dancing the groups used to do. This boy got his big break, bottom of the bill with The Who, national tour. At the end of the tour he came back to Stevenage, he threw it in. I said, you got depressed because they’re so good? He said, I got depressed because they’re so very good and yet even they ask the same questions I do every night: where is the money and where are the girls?
Pause.
And that is it. Where indeed is the money? And where are the girls?
Silence. Peyote walks into the room and lies down, says nothing.
You know Jimi Hendrix gets depressed, he gets livid, because he says people don’t come to hear his music, not really to listen, but simply because they’ve all heard he’s got a big cock and plays the guitar with his teeth.
Arthur Yar.
Maggie And I say, sure Jimi, you’re right to complain, people are cunts, but wouldn’t it be a better idea to stop wearing tight trousers and give up clamping your mouth round the strings?
Laura I think I’d better keep an eye on Peyote tonight.
Maggie He’ll be OK.
Laura He may need looking after.
Maggie If it makes you feel good.
Pause.
The hat.
Laura What?
Maggie I’d like that hat, Laura. Gonna wear that hat tonight.
Laura hands it to her.
Does Peyote have any chicks lined up?
Arthur He didn’t say so.
Maggie Well, where’s he gonna put it then?
Arthur Can’t guess.
Maggie Can’t go around with blue balls all night, Laura.
Laura I get sentimental about my body, Maggie. Everything else I give to the band, but the body … you know … I still like to choose.
Maggie laughs, turns to Anson.
Maggie You couldn’t make her with a monkey wrench. Arthur will tell you all about …
Laura End of interview.
Maggie Laura here is my press secretary.
Laura End of interview. Anything else you need to know …
Maggie rides in over her, definitive.
Maggie I only sleep with very stupid men. Write this down. The reason I sleep with stupid men is: they never understand a word I say. That makes me trust them.
Arthur gets up, moves away, turns his back.
So each one gets told a different secret, some terrible piece of my life that only they will know. Some separate … awfulness. But they don’t know the rest, so they can’t understand. Then the day I die, every man I’ve known will make for Wembley Stadium. And each in turn will recount his special bit. And when they are joined, they will lighten up the sky.
She picks up the dress Laura has laid out.
Come on, kid, I’ll change after. No point in getting another dress dirty.
Anson No.
She leads Anson out. On the way they pass Snead wheeling in a huge trolley of steaming food. Salvers, tureens, etc.
Laura Hey, Maggie, the food.
Maggie Not hungry.
She and Anson go out.
Laura Just … leave it there will you, Mr Snead?
Snead Madam.
Laura And thank you.
Snead goes.
Arthur She knows exactly what she’s doing. Always. That’s what I learnt.
Laura Yes.
Arthur She knows the effect she’s having. Even when she’s smashed, when she’s flat out on the floor, there is still one circuit in her brain thinking, ‘I am lying here, upsetting people.’
Laura Yes.
Arthur (smiles) There you are.
Laura Arthur.
Inch reappears with Nash, then Wilson. They check the place.
Inch ’As she gone?
Arthur Yes.
Inch All right everyone, you can come out now.
Laura The little fellow with her.
Arthur She swallowed him up like a vacuum cleaner.
Laura dips a plastic cup in the tureen, drips green lumps of soup on the floor.
Inch Did she tell the Jimi Hendrix gag?
Laura Of course.
Inch Did she say …
Laura Yes, she said it.
Inch You ’aven’t ’eard it yet.
Laura I haven’t heard it but she said it. Just terrible.
Nash ‘I sing of the pain.’
Laura She said that.
Inch ‘The pain is real.’
Nash The pain is bloody real.
Inch Mostly in the arse.
Arthur All right.
Peyote gets up from the bench and leaps into the air. At the last moment he catches hold of an iron bar across the roof. He hangs there swinging slightly, eight feet above the ground, joint between his teeth. Wilson appears and opens a large book.
Wilson Readings from the London telephone directory.
Inch Oh no.
Wilson The game is:
Inch No.
Wilson The game is: I read from the London telephone directory. You lot remain completely silent. The first person to make a sound is disqualified. The winner is the person who can stand it longest.
Arthur Oh, my God.
Wilson Arfer, you’ll get yerself disqualified before we begin.
Arthur Is that a …
Wilson Now, where shall I begin? I think I was jus’ gettin’ inta the Smiths …
Saraffian enters. He is in his early fifties with a paper hat, camel hair coat and streamers round his neck.
Saraffian Saraffian comes.
He releases a balloon full of water which squirts away into the air.
And at once we have a party.
Arthur Saraffian. My God.
Randolph follows on. He is heavily made up, you cannot tell his age. He is carrying a crate of champagne. Saraffian takes a chicken from inside his coat.
Wilson ’Ello, Boss.
Saraffian Poulet farci aux champignons. Loot from the ball, my dears. And twelve bottles of a bleak little non-vintage Dom Perignon. Za za.
Inch Fantastic.
Nash Za za.
Saraffian Just in case we don’t get paid. Wilson, you old dog, I’ve come to show you this … thing.
He gestures at Randolph.
Put the crate down. Come here. Look. Look at my glittering pigeon-chested youth. How do you like it? My future star.
They all look at Randolph.
Nash Great.
Saraffian Beautiful, isn’t it? I’m really proud. He’s going to wipe up the queer market, no question.
Randolph I …
Saraffian Uh, don’t risk it, just don’t spoil it, lad. Don’t mess with the words, OK? Don’t risk them, they only get you into trouble.
Randolph Pl …
Saraffian He wants to protest his heterosexuality. Just don’t mention it, underplay it and we might believe in it. Might.
Pause.
Much better. So. Hallo, Peyote, don’t bother
to come down, just stay up there if you want. So. I’m a fine surprise.
Laura Saraffian.
Saraffian My dear.
Laura What are you up to?
Saraffian Come to hear the band.
Laura I’ve been trying to ring you these last few days.
Saraffian Ah.
Laura Have you seen her?
Peyote The sun goin’ da’an. A tha’asand golden chariots. Leather. Metal. Horseflesh. Careerin’ da’an through the sky.
He drops from the beam simply to the floor.
Ten tha’asand angels in a single file.
Laura Have you seen her?
Saraffian Well …
Wilson Did you ’ear the first set?
Saraffian Certainly I heard it. I heard it all. From beginning to end. And I’m hoping it will have earned me some small remission in hell. (to Randolph) Look lively, open the bottles, son.
Laura When are you going to talk to her?
Saraffian Well, this is nice. Peyote, I saw your old woman last night. Would you believe it, she has another husband, she’s still only nineteen.
Wilson Wot’s ’e like?
Saraffian Very charming. Easy-going bloke. Nose-flute player in a monastery band.
Laura She’s not very well, Saraffian.
Nash Let’s ’avva game.
Saraffian Snap.
Wilson Poker.
Nash Monopoly.
Wilson Lost the board.
Laura Saraffian.
Wilson And Peyote swallowed the boot.
Saraffian Poker.
Laura And she’s drinking again.
Saraffian Yes.
Laura Arthur, will you tell him?
Arthur I …
Laura Why do you think she drinks?
Saraffian I never ask, in my profession you expect to spend a portion of your time sitting by a hospital bed …
Laura Listen …
Saraffian I’ve got very good at it. I think the ultimate accolade of my profession should not be a disc, it should be a golden hypodermic.
Laura Saraffian.
Saraffian What is this? I pay a courtesy call on one of my bands …
Laura Don’t be stupid. Courtesy call. When did you last see a band on the road?
Saraffian Glenn Miller, I think.
Laura Saraffian, why does she drink?
Saraffian Why do we discuss her all the time? That’s why she drinks. So we’ll discuss her. You know, so we won’t have time to do things like cut our fingernails or make love to our wives. That’s why she drinks. So as to stop any nasty little outbreaks of happiness among her acquaintances. Are there any glasses for this stuff?
Inch goes to get some.
Laura So tell me why you thought Arthur should come.