by David Hare
Patrick She wasn’t impressed with my profession. The merchant bank. She didn’t care much for yours, either.
Curly No.
Patrick But it’s more glamorous than just making money.
Curly Just making money?
Patrick (smiling) I’m trying to see it from her point of view.
Pause.
Curly Is that why she left?
Patrick I suppose.
Curly It wasn’t more personal? (Pause.) Had you spoken since she left?
Patrick Not really.
Curly The days I knew her she was brought up like an orchid.
Patrick Well …
Curly That’s how she was cast.
Mrs Dunning Perhaps that was the trouble.
Curly What?
Patrick There isn’t any trouble. She is highly strung. Like many of her generation without the broader-based values …
Curly Of a traditional education.
He replaces the photograph.
Patrick She was unsure of herself.
Curly Did she threaten to kill herself?
Pause.
Patrick She was self-critical, as you know. She thought she was a hateful kind of person. She used to say she had contracted one of Surrey’s contagious diseases – moral gumrot, internal decay. Well, that’s easy to say. She could say it. But nobody else. That’s the point. So here we have paranoia. The fear of other people pointing out to you what you’ve been saying all the time about yourself, much louder, much longer.
Mrs Dunning (still storing) I wonder if Alice bands will ever come back into fashion again.
Curly And you?
Patrick What?
Curly What do you think?
Patrick I thought it was rather lame propaganda. (Pause.) Mrs Dunning, I think we could afford a cup of tea.
Mrs Dunning Of course.
She rises and closes the suitcase.
Patrick Not for me.
Curly Really?
Patrick I always have mine at half past four.
Curly It’s a quarter to midnight.
Patrick Another would be decadence. Right, Mrs D?
Mrs Dunning Fine.
Curly Mrs Dunning. Use my father’s old tea bag, if you like.
Mrs Dunning goes out with the suitcase.
Patrick Curly, you don’t change.
Curly I recur.
Patrick Curly …
Curly Uh. Business, Father. Nothing at the human level, please. After all these years it would be hard to take. Just – tell me what you said to Sarah.
Pause.
Patrick I’ve always thought that life was – volatile. You should tread light. It’s not a point of view Sarah could understand. I think everyone’s entitled to their own illusions. Sarah thought not. Sarah thought everyone should know everything. She told the Bishop of Guildford that his son was known as Mabel and the toast of the Earl’s Court Road.
Curly I see.
Patrick She said it was best he should know.
Curly What does she look like?
Patrick She’s thin and angular. Wears grubby white jeans. Her hair always as if she’s just been caught in a blaze. And the same expression of shock. All bones and big lips. Does that help?
Curly I …
Patrick How long since you saw her?
Curly Twelve years. Since I saw either of you.
Pause.
Patrick I hadn’t seen her for six months. She went to live with Jenny. Then one day the police came to my door.
Curly Do you think she’s dead?
Patrick I do rather. It’s my experience of life that it never misses a trick. And murdered as well. I expect. (Pause.) She was like a buzz-saw in the inner ear. (Pause.) Some man she talked to on the beach.
Curly What about the police?
Patrick That’s the current theory. There’s apparently a man – well-known in Eastbourne – called Dawson.
Known as Dopey. Always out on the street. Reads the Bible to children. Shows them the meat hook he keeps in his mac. Used to be Borough Surveyor. Some years ago.
Curly Is there any evidence?
Patrick Lord, no, no evidence. Sounds rather easy but it’s all they’ve got.
Curly There’s a boyfriend …
Patrick Dupree …
Curly Yeah.
Patrick Not the right type …
Curly Not the right type for Sarah, eh?
Patrick Curly, you know better than that. Not the right type to kill, I meant.
Curly Which type is that?
Patrick Dupree is a remarkably fine young man.
Curly Solid sort of chap.
Patrick As you say.
Curly Must have been great for Sarah.
Patrick Well …
Curly (breaking) Pa …
Patrick The police visit me every night at eight. I will of course pass on to you everything they discover to help your – private search for justice …
Curly It’s not justice I’m after.
Patrick I wish you well.
Curly Then tell me the truth. What about the club? The man that owns it – Malloy. Do you know him?
Patrick Of course. Stockbroker. Not very successful. His hands tremble. It’s – bad for business.
Curly Is that why he bought the club?
Patrick I should think so. He’s almost my age, but he seems to enjoy the company of – young people.
Curly And what does that mean?
Patrick Curly …
Curly Why did Sarah leave home? Tell me why she left.
Patrick (good-humouredly) Life with Sarah was constant self-justification. I don’t propose to start all over with you.
Curly When did the Scots haddock arrive?
Patrick Grace …
Curly The smell of starch and clean living when you come in that door …
Patrick Mrs Dunning …
Curly I bet she dabs Dettol behind her ears.
Patrick She wasn’t here then.
Curly I’d have left home if I saw that coming. I can sympathize. This place is like silver paper between your teeth. I’m back five minutes and I’m …
Patrick As before.
Pause.
Curly (quietly) Don’t cross your legs. It spoils the crease.
Pause.
Patrick Mrs Dunning is a pillar of strength. The best housekeeper I’ve had. You can say anything at all to her. Anything you like. Grace, you have a very large mouth and very small heart. You could say that. She wouldn’t mind. If it were true you could say that. Which it’s not.
Curly Punchbag, eh?
Patrick Do you think, Curly, while you’re here, a guest in my home, you could suppress the all-singing, all-dancing, all-fornicating side of your character which burst out so tellingly before you left – we do hope you’ve grown up.
Mrs Dunning enters with a laden tray.
Mrs Dunning I did know you were coming.
Patrick Matured.
Mrs Dunning I was told to get walnut whips. Your father said you loved …
Curly Yes, well …
Mrs Dunning Walnut whips.
Patrick I wasn’t saying we should have them today.
Mrs Dunning You emphasized the point.
Patrick It was twelve years ago. After all …
Curly Mrs Dunning … (Pause.) You have a very large mouth …
Mrs Dunning (with great pleasure) And a very small heart. That’s what your father always says.
She sits and pours tea.
Patrick I think I must be going to bed.
He rises.
Curly You haven’t told me about Sarah.
Patrick There’s plenty of time.
Curly You do want me to help?
Patrick Curly, I do indeed. Indeed I do.
Curly Then that’s what I shall do. Help and then go.
Patrick Excellent. (Pause.) We’ll wait and see if you measure up.
Curly Pa …
Patrick Ah – we’ll talk more tomorrow.
Grace, my Henry James.
Mrs Dunning By the bed.
Patrick (looking at his watch) The light will go out at a quarter past twelve.
Patrick exits.
Mrs Dunning And now we’ll have a cup of tea.
Curly (dead quiet) Sod the tea. (Pause.) Did you know Sarah?
Mrs Dunning I came after Sarah. I formed the impression of a tremendously vital girl.
Curly Vital?
Mrs Dunning She seemed to care so much about the world.
Curly Sarah and I went to a Martello tower on Aldeburgh beach when we were youngish – I think I was thirteen – there was a poodle playing inside which followed us to the top. Sarah – me – we didn’t have a great deal in common, but at that moment, together, we simultaneously conceived the idea of throwing the poodle over the side of the tower. I can’t tell you why but it was a hypnotic idea. Just to see it fall. So – we lifted this grey thing up to the edge, then we released at either end, at exactly the same moment – it’s the firing squad idea – you don’t know who’s responsible. We felt terrible.
Mrs Dunning Worse for the dog.
Curly Bad for the dog. Also. But also terrible for us. The only barbaric thing I’ve ever done.
Mrs Dunning You’ve quite a reputation as a barbarian.
Curly Ignorance.
Mrs Dunning Ah.
Curly Ignorance and jealousy. Don’t tell Pa.
Pause.
Mrs Dunning A wonderful man. He’s undertaken an intensive study of Anglo-American literature.
Curly Mickey Spillane.
Mrs Dunning He’s on the Golden Bowl. He knows an incredible amount.
Curly For a merchant banker.
Mrs Dunning He’s a cultured man.
Curly Sure he’s cultured. What good does that do?
Mrs Dunning His culture enlarges his …
Curly Mrs Dunning. Who ran Auschwitz? A pack of bloody intellectuals.
Mrs Dunning I must go up.
She rises.
Curly Is he your beau?
Mrs Dunning You must have lived in his shadow. When you were a child.
Curly We thought he was a fool.
Mrs Dunning Such a tremendously clever man.
Curly The trick of making money – is only a trick.
Mrs Dunning He said he thought – you’d have grown up.
She goes towards the door.
Curly Do the police always call?
Mrs Dunning At eight o’clock. That’s it. A typical evening. Since Sarah.
Pause.
Curly What’s he doing?
Mrs Dunning Reading his book. (Pause.) Did you never like him?
Curly Not very much.
Mrs Dunning I wonder why all the words my generation believed in – words like ‘honour’ and ‘loyalty’ – are now just a joke.
Curly I guess it’s because of some of the characters they’ve knocked around with. Good night.
He picks up Sarah’s photograph.
Mrs Dunning Good night.
As Mrs Dunning turns towards the door, music – ‘For All We Know’, with strings – fades up.
SCENE THREE
Acton Warehouse. Day.
The stage is bare. A Storeman wheels on a rack of rifles, as large and as many as possible. Curly walks straight on. He takes the revolver the Storeman offers him.
The music stops.
Curly takes two steps downstage. Then he aims with great care and no fuss, and fires six times at six targets just ahead into the audience. It must look perfect.
Curly We’ll take 2,000 Mannlicher-Carcanos, carbine and ammunition, 1,500 Tokarevs, 1,400 Mosin-Nagants, what few bolt-action Mausers you have, and the rest of the Lee-Enfields. Knock-down job lot. My client is also in the market for point thirty-o-six Springfield rifles with extra long chrome-plated bayonets. Believe it or not. And he’d also like an antique Mauser Nazi ‘K’ series Luger for himself. As he’s a bit of a raving lunatic on the side.
Curly stuffs a green wodge of money into the Storeman’s pocket.
And he’ll be paying cash. Swiss francs.
Storeman Anything you say, Mr Delafield.
Curly And God help the poor bloody wogs.
‘For All We Know’ swamps the action again.
SCENE FOUR
The Hospital Grounds. Day.
When the curtain rises the stage is in darkness except for a spot on Curly.
Curly Every man has his own gun. That’s not a metaphor. That’s a fact. There are 750 million guns in the world in some kind of working order. Everyone can have one like every German was going to get a Volkswagen. I don’t pick the fights. I just equip them. People are going to fight anyway. They’re going to kill each other with or without my help. There isn’t a civilization you can name that hasn’t operated at the most staggering cost in human life. It’s as if we need so many dead – like axle grease – to make civilization work at all. Do you know how many people have died in wars this century? One hundred million. And how many of those before 1945? Over 95 million. These last twenty-five years have been among the most restrained in man’s history. Half a million in Biafra maybe, 2 million perhaps in Vietnam. Pinpricks.
The lights come up to reveal a stage bare except for a single bench. Max is sitting on it, slumped forward. His face cannot be seen because he is staring at the ground.
Things are actually getting better. The enormous continuing proliferation of arms since 1945 has actually led to a massive drop in the global numbers of dead. So there. I’m not ashamed of the trade, even if I’m a little tired of it. If every man on earth has a gun already, does he really need a second one? So now we can talk.
Max I asked Jenny what’s his attitude to his profession, and she said – well, he says every man has his own gun, that’s not a metaphor, that’s a fact.
Curly It’s my party piece. You sell guns, people come up to you. They can spot a moral issue. And I’m a tissue of moral issues. Like having a very loud suit. You get used to it.
Max OK.
Curly I have to get the subject out of the way.
Max OK. (Pause.) Well, she worked over there. In that lovely old house. And by all accounts was a very fine nurse.
Curly What would you say was wrong with her?
Max Why does there have to be something wrong? Sarah was unhappy, that’s all. She needed character massage.
Curly She wasn’t ill?
Max Ill?
Curly Mentally?
Max I’ve written stories about this hospital for the national newspapers. One about a man who wrapped his hands in copper wire and plugged himself into the mains. Another who believes there’s a colony of rats lodged in his stomach wall. He drinks Domestos. Friend. So if a girl’s unhappy because her father sits smiling all day with his arse in a bucket of cream, and because she thinks her brother’s a twenty-four carat shark, I don’t get very worked up. As far as I’m concerned she’s just ambling round the foothills of the thing, and is unlikely to come to very much harm.
Curly (sitting beside Max) Is that true? About why she was unhappy?
Max Certainly …
Curly I’d heard she was living with you.
Max (smiling) Neanderthal type.
Curly Well?
Max She stopped over.
Curly Lucky girl.
Max She was free.
Curly Do you think she’s run away?
Max No, I don’t.
Curly Don’t you think she’s killed herself?
Max I don’t understand your involvement.
Curly I’m her brother.
Max I thought she was just axle grease …
Curly This is different …
Max Make civilization work …
Curly You think she killed herself …
Max Mr Delafield …
Curly Mr Dupree … (Pause.) One shark to another: tell me the truth.
Max I’m not a shark. (rising to behind the bench) And I don’t think she killed herself.
(Pause.) But, of course, she had threatened it.
Curly Go on.
Max She wasn’t quite mature. She had a misleading reputation. She was known as Legover Sarah. That was fine by me. But it wasn’t true. In fact she was more possessive than she appeared. She blackmailed me – (He smiles, embarrassed.) – by saying she would kill herself. If I left her.
Curly Well …
Max So.
Curly Quite a man, Mr Dupree.
Max She was immature.
Curly Sure. Sure.
Max It was a terrific responsibility.
Curly Sure.
Max So when I first heard she’d disappeared I was terrified. But as soon as I heard about the purse …
Curly Of course.
Max Two railway tickets on the beach …
Curly Right.
Max I knew she couldn’t have killed herself.
Curly So that’s all right. (Pause.) It’s beautiful here.
Max It’s a lovely place to go mad. There’s a woman in there who thinks she’s Napoleon.
Curly Sure. That I can understand. But who the hell did Napoleon think he was?
Max smiles.
Mr Dupree, I’m told you’re a Communist. What would you say?
Max Not a Communist exactly.
Curly That sort of thing.
Max Certainly.
Curly And you lived with Sarah …
Max Off and on …
Curly While entertaining other women …
Max That’s true.
Curly Fair enough. I’m not accusing you. It seems a reasonable way of life.
Max Well?
Curly I just don’t understand why a middle-aged, god-loving merchant banker should describe the lazy, promiscuous, self-righteous bolshevik who’s meanwhile screwing his daughter as ‘a remarkably fine young man’.
Max No.
Curly No.
Max Perhaps Patrick just liked me.
He moves away.
Curly Max, what’s happened to Malloy?
Max What?
Curly The owner of the club, Malloy, what’s happened to him?
Max I don’t know.
Curly Why would it be he doesn’t answer his door? And where was he on the night Sarah disappeared? Where is he now? Where indeed were you? Do you have an alibi?
Max Of course.
Curly All good questions. Plus: how does Jenny come into this?
Max Sarah’s best friend, that’s all.
Curly Not bad looking, Jenny.
Max If you say so …
Curly Oh, Max …
Max Nothing to do with me.