by David Hare
Maggie Really?
Arthur Bit of fun.
Pause.
How’ve you bin?
Maggie All right.
Arthur Haven’t seen you for a long time. Must be six months. What have you been up to?
Maggie Nothing really. I had the flu.
Arthur What else?
Maggie Do you have some cigarettes?
Arthur Sure.
Maggie Can you give me the pack? It’s just if I’m gonna be arrested I’m gonna need some.
Arthur Of course. Here.
Maggie Thank you.
A match flares. We see their faces as they light their fags.
Arthur What were you doing?
Maggie What?
Arthur The tent. Just making sure?
Maggie Oh yes. Just making sure.
The match out. Darkness again.
Arthur I can get you a lawyer.
Maggie Don’t be stupid. What else?
Arthur Oh, you know. Larry says, come and see him soon. Martha says will you cover the new Dusty Springfield for the supermarket? Derek says … Derek says …
Maggie Yeah, what does Derek say?
Arthur Derek says … I don’t know what Derek says. Far out. Out of sight. Wow man. Jeez. That’s what Derek says.
Pause. Arthur begins to cry.
I can’t live without you. I can’t get through the day.
Maggie What else?
Arthur You said you loved me.
Maggie I did. I did love you. I loved you the way you used to be.
Arthur But it’s you that’s made me the way I am now.
Maggie I know. That’s what’s called irony.
Pause.
We better go back.
Arthur Maggie.
She shouts into the night.
Maggie Nothing’s going to stop me. No one. Ever. Let me do what I want.
Pause. Arthur lying on the ground.
So much for small talk. Will you walk me back?
Arthur Right.
Maggie Poor Arthur. You’d like to be hip. But your intelligence will keep shining through.
She laughs, and they begin to go.
Watch where you drop that fag.
Arthur Ha ha.
Maggie Don’t want to start a …
She peals with laughter. At once the lights come up. The stage is empty. But thick with smoke. They’ve gone.
SCENE EIGHT
At once Laura wheels a flat porter’s barrow on through the smoke. Inch appears from the other side.
Inch I jus’ drove the van across the cricket pitch.
Laura Well done.
Inch I reckon it’ll be takin’ spin this year.
He and Laura begin to dismantle the equipment. Maggie and Arthur appear.
There some people lookin’ for you.
Maggie Really? Where?
Inch About seven ’undred and fifty of ’em. An’ all round, I’d say.
Saraffian appears squirting a soda syphon.
Saraffian My dear.
Maggie Saraffian.
Saraffian Well done. Very educational. We have all learnt something tonight.
Maggie What’s that?
Saraffian Always put an arson clause in the contract. I’m going to have to pay for this.
He hands Inch the syphon.
Might as well nick it.
Inch Right.
Saraffian My God, but that was fun.
He bursts out laughing and embraces Maggie.
Bless you my dear. At a stroke the custard is crème brulée. You’ve totally restored my faith in the young.
Arthur Is anyone hurt?
Saraffian Can I tell you a story? I really must tell you a story now.
Wilson passes. He has scored a fireman’s helmet.
Wilson Congratulations.
Maggie Thank you.
Wilson It’s really beautiful.
He kisses her.
Maggie Better than taking your trousers down?
Wilson Oh yea. It’s jus’ a different thing.
Maggie Right.
Wilson If yer don’t mind, I’ve ’eard there’s a psychology tutor on fire, I’d really like to see it you know.
Maggie Sure.
Wilson heads out.
Wilson It’s so stupid it’s just wonderful.
Inch Hey, ’old on, Wilson, I think I’ll come and drag some naked women from the flames.
Inch leaps off the stage and follows Wilson.
Saraffian I’ll tell you of my evening at the Café de Paris. March 9th, 1941.
Nash crosses with a bucket of water.
Arthur You won’t put it out with that.
Nash This ain’t for the fire. It’s for Peyote.
He laughs and goes into the dark.
Saraffian I was with this girl. She’s related to a marquis on her mother’s side and me a boy from Tottenham whose dad ran a spieler in his own back room. So I’m something of a toy, a bauble on her arm. And she said, please can we go to the Café de Paris, I think because she wants to shock her pals by being seen with me, but also because she does genuinely want to dance to the music of Snakehips Johnson and his Caribbean band.
Laura picks up as much equipment as she can manage and goes out. Saraffian, Maggie and Arthur left alone with the piano.
So I say fine, off to Piccadilly Circus, Coventry Street, under the Rialto cinema, the poshest … the jewelled heart of London where young officers danced before scattering across four continents to fight in Hitler’s war. You won’t believe this but you went downstairs into a perfect reproduction of the ballroom on the Titanic. I should have been warned. And there they are. A thousand young blades and a thousand young girls with Marcel waves in their hair. So out of chronic social unease, I became obstreperous, asking loudly for brown ale, and which way to the pisshouse, showing off, which gave me a lot of pleasure, I remember they enjoyed me, thinking me amusing. And I was pretty pleased with myself. The glittering heart of the empire, the waiter leaning over me to pick up the champagne. And then nothing. As if acid has been thrown in my face. The waiter is dead at my feet. And the champagne rises of its own accord in the bottle and overflows. Two fifty-kilo bombs have fallen through the cinema above and Snakehips Johnson is dead and thirty-two others. I look at the waiter. He has just one sliver of glass in his back from a shattered mirror. That’s all.
Maggie gets up and moves away to sit on the stage.
So we’re all lying there. A man lights a match and I can see that my girl friend’s clothes have been completely blown off by the blast. She is twenty-one and her champagne is now covered in a grey dust. A man is staring at his mother whose head is almost totally severed. Another man is trying to wash the wounded, he is pouring champagne over the raw stump of a girl’s thigh to soothe her. Then somebody yells put the match out, we’ll die if there’s gas about, and indeed there was a smell, a yellow smell.
I looked up. I could see the sky. It’s as if we are in a huge pit and above at the edges of the pit from milk bars all over Leicester Square people are gathering to look down the hole at the mess below. And we can’t get out. There are no stairs. Just people gaping. And us bleeding.
Then suddenly I realized that somebody, somehow, God knows how, had got down and come among us. I just saw two men flitting through the shadows. I close my eyes. One comes near. I can smell his breath. He touches my hand. He then removes the ring from my finger. He goes.
He is looting the dead.
And my first thought is: I’m with you, pal.
I cannot help it, that was my first thought. Even here, even now, even in fire, even in blood, I am with you in your scarf and cap, slipping the jewels from the hands of the corpses.
I’m with you.
So then a ladder came down and the work began. And we climbed out. There we are, an obscene parade, the rich in tatters, slipping back to our homes, the evening rather … spoilt … and how low, how low can men get stealing from the dead and dying?
And I just brush myself down and feel lightheaded, for the first time in my life totally sure of what I feel. I climb the ladder to the street, push my way through the crowd. My arm is grazed and bleeding. I hail a taxi. The man is a cockney. He stares hard at the exploded wealth. He stares at me in my dinner jacket. He says, ‘I don’t want blood all over my fucking taxi.’ And he drives away.
There is a war going on. All the time. A war of attrition.
He smiles.
Good luck.
Maggie Bollocks. I just wanted to go to jail.
Silence. Then Laura appears.
Laura They really do seem to want you, Maggie. Can they have you now?
Maggie What a load of shit. You’re full of shit, Saraffian. What a crucial insight, what a great moment in the Café de Paris. And what did you do the next thirty years?
Pause.
Well. I’m sure it gives you comfort, your nice little class war. It ties things up very nicely, of course, from the outside you look like any other clapped-out businessman, but inside, oh, inside you got it all worked out.
Pause.
This man has believed the same thing for thirty years. And it does not show. Is that going to happen to us? Fucking hell, somebody’s got to keep on the move.
Then she smiles, very buoyant.
Laura, come here, you look after Arthur.
Laura Yes.
Maggie You can have your hat back, all the hats he wants to give you, you can have. Anything I said about you, I withdraw. The tightness of your arse I apologize. You’re Mahatma Gandhi, you’re the Pope. Arthur, you’re Cole Porter. Or at least you will be. Or at least nobody else ever will be.
She smiles again.
Laura Shall I let you know how it goes in Stoke?
Maggie If you make it.
Laura What?
Maggie I’m only guessing. But I’d take a bet this band never plays again. When did you cancel Stoke?
Saraffian About a week ago.
Maggie There.
Saraffian You know me too well.
He goes out.
Maggie So I go to jail. Nobody is to think about me, nobody is to say, ‘How is she these days?’ Nobody to mention me. Nobody to say, ‘How much does she drink?’ Nobody is to remember. Nobody is to feel guilty. Nobody is to feel they might have done better. Remember. I’m nobody’s excuse.
If you love me, keep on the move.
She heads out. She makes as if to take the bottle of Scotch from on top of the piano but stops dead, her back to us, and raises her hands instead. A pause. Then she goes out. Silence. Arthur and Laura alone.
Laura What are you on?
Arthur On?
Laura Transport.
Arthur Oh. Motor-sickle.
Laura Is there room on the back?
Arthur Sure.
Laura Will you give us a tune? One of those awful old ones you like …
He stares at her. Then Inch, Wilson, Nash and Smegs return laughing.
Wilson That was the best night I ’ad in years.
Nash Really brightened up the evenin’.
Wilson Yeah.
Nash I thought we was gonna ’ave a real flop on ’our ’ands.
Inch Funny ’ow plastic burns in’ it?
Wilson Yeah, all sorta blue wiv little fringes.
Inch And formica doesn’t.
Nash That’s right. I noticed that.
Inch I kept ’oldin’ it in the flames but nothin’.
He starts loading the equipment on to the barrow.
Smegs So what do we do?
Laura The police said we can all bugger off.
Inch Then we go ’ome, that’s what we do.
Wilson Great.
Inch The van’s over there.
Wilson Anyone fancy a game?
Smegs Sure.
Wilson Seven-card stud? I got some cards in the back. Perhaps we could try some new rules I got …
Nash, Wilson, Smegs, Inch go off, pulling off the trolley loaded with equipment.
Laura Where did you put your helmet?
Arthur I used to think it was so easy, you know. If I leave her, she’ll kill herself. I thought she’s only got one problem. She doesn’t know how to be happy. But that’s not her problem at all. Her problem is: she’s frightened of being happy. And if ever it looked as if she might make it, if the clouds cleared and I, or some other man, fell perfectly into place, if everyone loved her and the music came good, that’s when she’d kill herself. Not so easy, huh?
Pause.
Laura Play us a dreadful old tune.
Arthur Laura. It just wouldn’t work between us. Not now.
Inch returns.
Inch There’s ’ardly any petrol left in the van. I can’t find the spare can.
Arthur Maggie took it. To burn down the tent.
Inch That’s a bit fuckin’ inconsiderate, she mighta noticed we was short o’ gas. Lend us a couple of quid somebody. Arfer?
Arthur Don’t have it.
Inch Well, sorry to say this, Laura, but we’re gonna ’ave to sell your body. And pretty bloody fast. Somewhere between ’ere an’ Baldock you’re gonna ’ave to do it in the road.
Inch goes off.
Laura I’ve only waited six years. You might have mentioned it before.
Arthur Yes. Yes. It was silly.
Pause. Saraffian returns, picks up the situation at once.
Saraffian I had a look at the cellars.
Arthur Ah.
Saraffian The stock is remarkable. The 1949 Romanée St
Vivant is like gold-dust you know.
Arthur Did you, er …
Saraffian Unfortunately, not. They’d padlocked the racks.
Arthur Ah.
Inch (off) Laura, get your fat butt in ’ere.
Saraffian looks at Laura who now has tears running down her face.
Saraffian Of course, this college was once famous for its port.
Arthur I didn’t know that.
Saraffian The finest cellar of vintage port in England. Then in 1940 when the dons heard Hitler was coming … Hitler was coming …
They both look at her. She is now having hysterics, hitting the ground.
Arthur Laura, can you stop crying …
Saraffian Hitler was coming …
Arthur I can’t hear what Saraffian is saying.
Saraffian They drank it. So he wouldn’t get his fat German hands on it. Their contribution to the war effort. Four thousand bottles in just eleven months.
Saraffian as if to move.
Arthur Leave her.
Peyote enters.
Peyote Fantastic.
Arthur Yeah.
Peyote Fuckin’ on a fire engine, you wouldn’t believe it.
He goes.
Arthur What’s the time?
Saraffian Just gone four.
Laura When are you going to tell them?
Saraffian Who?
Laura The band.
Saraffian Oh, tomorrow. Enough for one day.
Wilson has appeared upstage.
Wilson Laura. You comin’ wiv us?
Laura Yes. Yes. I’m coming with you.
She stands a moment crying. Wilson looks at them all as if anew.
Wilson I don’t know why you lot make it so ’ard for yerselves.
Laura picks up Maggie’s bag and goes out.
Wilson Right. Well. Back into the little tin hell. Always makes me feel like bloody Alec Guinness. You know, into the ’ot metal ’ut. And at the other end, well we may be a little sweaty about the lip an’ doin’ that funny walk but fuck me if we ain’t whistlin’ Colonel Bogey. Goodnight all.
He goes.
Saraffian Goodnight lads.
Arthur Goodnight.
Saraffian and Arthur alone.
I knew a guy, played in a band. They were loud, they were very loud. What I mean by loud is: they made Pink Floyd sound like a Mozart quintet. I said to him, why the hell don’t you wear muffs? In eighteen
months you’re going to be stone deaf. He said: that’s why we play so loud. The louder we play, the sooner we won’t be able to hear. I can see us all. Rolling down the highway into middle age. Complacency. Prurience. Sadism. Despair.
Saraffian gets out a hipflask.
Saraffian Don’t worry. Have some brandy.
Arthur What?
Saraffian Napoleon. Was waiting till those buggers had gone.
He offers it. Arthur refuses. Arthur sits down at the upright piano on the deserted stage. Randolph comes in.
Randolph I rung the wife.
Saraffian Thank you.
Randolph Bloke answered.
Saraffian So.
Pause.
We must go.
Arthur Who’s the bloke?
Saraffian Where did I put the car?
Arthur Who’s the bloke?
Saraffian Oh, Mrs Saraffian’s friend. Called Wetherby. Secretary of the local golf club, I’m afraid. Mean with a nine iron. She likes his manners. I rev the Jag in the drive, rattle the milk bottles, you know, wait ten minutes, then … enter my home.
Pause.
God bless you and … Saraffian goes. Come on, Tony, long way to go. Too late to count number plates, you’ll just have to sit and think.
Saraffian and Randolph go out. Arthur alone on stage with the piano.
Arthur Where is the money? And where are the girls?
Pause. Then he begins to play.
Arthur’s Song
My relatives and friends all think I’m barmy
Because I went away and joined the Foreign Legion
My funny little ways
Have got the others in a mess
I think it’s time that I came clean
Decided to explain
It isn’t just the season
That has given me the opportunity to do
What I have always wanted to do
And though we’re stranded in the rain
Leaving on a midnight boat
At ease upon our chairs before the mast
The world round is spinning round decidedly too much
We must hang on or lose our sense of drama
Never seen faces so empty
Never spent money so fast
You can’t touch the important things
They keep them under glass
Your good friends always tell you lies
Doing what your bad friends would never do