by David Hare
Curly Max. You and me. (He gestures around him.) The real world. And Jennifer. You’re not saying you’ve missed Jennifer. The one with the legs. And the incandescent vagina. You of all people – Max – must have noticed. Being so intelligent. And ambitious. Yet choosing to go on living in this town, when you don’t have to. Letting yourself become the Guildford stringer. Tying yourself down. Why would that be? Maximillian?
Max Maxwell.
Curly Max.
Max (sitting) Jenny and Sarah. Of course one would see them side by side. An unfair comparison. Jenny so bright and capable and lovely. Sarah ungainly with a slight moustache. And politically – erratic, I would say, an emotional kind of conviction. Whereas Jenny soars above us all. Just – beautiful. We all grew up together, went to the same club. Sniffed the same glue. Aspirins in the Pepsi, and French kissing. But Sarah was always – loss leader. And I’m afraid it seems to fit that she was killed. No doubt by some frightfully maladjusted person. (Pause.) And I promise you that’s what I really think.
Curly I don’t doubt your account.
Max Thank you.
Curly I just doubt the intense sense of relief with which you tell it. (Pause.) I’ll see you tomorrow. Same time. Same place.
Max I …
Curly Tomorrow.
Max goes out.
(alone) You chew all the meat until you hit the lump of gristle.
SCENE FIVE
The Delafields’ drawing-room. Night.
Patrick is sitting reading a sheet of music. Curly comes in.
Curly I’ve been to see Max Dupree.
Patrick Come in, come in. I’m reading some most enjoyable music.
Curly Great.
Patrick The horns have just come in. Would you like a drink?
Curly Do you want to know what Dupree said?
Patrick I have an idea.
Curly It’s all right. He’s very hopeful. He hopes she was murdered. Everyone hopes that. Including you. (Pause.) Not because you want her dead. I didn’t say that. But given that she’s dead you want her murdered because then it’s nobody’s fault except some poor psychopath and there’s nothing anyone can do about those. Whereas if she killed herself she’s going to squat on your shoulders for the rest of your life.
Pause.
Patrick Have a drink.
He rises.
Curly Never touch it. Time?
Patrick Ten to. The police will be here at eight. Are you staying?
Curly I’ll stay – as long as I can.
Patrick You’re living here …
Curly I know, but I couldn’t last an evening. It’s – what – not yet eight and already I’m half the man I am …
Patrick It’s just lack of practice. If we tried …
Curly Sure …
Patrick Sitting together …
Curly Sure …
Patrick Having a normal conversation …
Curly Sure …
Patrick Behaving normally …
Curly As if I hadn’t been away twelve years.
Patrick Quite so. Ten minutes to eight.
Curly OK.
Pause. He takes off his coat and moves to sit.
I’d be pressed – Father – to put my finger on the quality that makes you impossible to spend an evening with …
Patrick That subject’s taboo. Anything else …
Curly For God’s sake …
He moves to leave.
Patrick Sit down.
Curly sits.
Have you read much Henry James? Washington Square.
Curly No.
Patrick Tremendous quality of civilization.
Curly That’s what it is. (Pause.) I’m not getting very far. The man. The girl. And the father. She turns out to be a hysterical kind of person whom nobody likes. Least of all Max, who’s meant to be the boyfriend. There’s none of the innocence that word suggests. In fact an outright narcissist. And in love with Jenny I would say. Because he thought they would look good together. Walking past mirrors, that sort of thing. I don’t think he enjoyed having to make do with Sarah. I should think he winced every time she opened her mouth. For myself I’d like to meet Malloy. As he must have seen Sarah every night in the club. But Malloy, everybody, has disappeared. Time?
Patrick Bit later.
Curly Yes, my friends, vanished. My day spent battering at his door. But he has gone.
Patrick What’s gun-running like?
Curly (rising) For Christ’s sake.
Patrick Sit down. I’m asking.
Curly I don’t run them. I sell them. It’s a perfectly legal profession. Like selling insurance.
Patrick Is there a great deal of travel?
Curly Lots. I was in Acton today.
Patrick Acton?
Curly There are 150,000 guns in Acton, west London. A warehouse off the A40.
Patrick I always thought you were in Peru.
Curly I go where there’s a war.
Patrick Acton?
Curly Or people want one.
Patrick I thought you were in danger.
Curly There’s no danger. The people who supply the arms should not be confused with the soldiers. In the trade we tend to keep soldiers at some distance. They bring bad luck. There’s one man – mercenary – claims a straight flush since 1939. Indo-China, Algeria, the Congo, the Yemen, Biafra, not forgetting Hitler’s war – our side, of course – Cuba, South America, back to the Congo. Then Nigeria. There’s a saying in the trade.
Patrick Yes?
Curly
You don’t stand downwind
Of Franz Leopold von Lind.
Patrick I thought you said he was on our side in the Second World War.
Curly Eventually. (Pause.) Pa …
Patrick Yes?
Curly What do you like so much about Max?
Patrick Max called me. He said he’d seen you. All you’ve succeeded in doing is putting his back up. I’d miscalculated. Your particular talents seem quite useless in this matter.
Curly Listen …
Patrick You haven’t grown up. You’ll never grow up until you appreciate the value of tact.
Curly I’m off.
Patrick Sit down. (Pause.) That’s typical. You’ve no self-control. (Pause.) You should be happy to sit and be humiliated.
Curly moves very slightly.
If you wish to destroy an ant heap, you do not use dynamite.
Curly You read them Henry James.
Patrick Just so. It’s a question of noise. There is a saying in our trade. Or there ought to be. In the City. The saying is: ‘The exploitation of the masses should be conducted as quietly as possible.’
Curly laughs slightly.
Quite right. I’ll tell you of an incident before she left. It made me admire – my own daughter. I don’t handle money as you know. I mean, actual notes.
Curly Cabbage.
Patrick (trying it) Yes, cabbage.
Curly Notes are cabbage. A bank is therefore a cabbage patch and a bouncing cheque is a bruised tomato.
Patrick Good. I had the cabbage. For various reasons – to do with Grace – I came home with two-fifty in ones.
Curly You had the hots in your pocket.
Patrick Quite. I brought them back home. I’m a romantic. I put them in the piano, played ‘Scheherazade’ and went to bed. The next morning they’d gone. And so had Sarah. She’d run away to Surbiton. (Pause.) I was furious. It was rude and messy and – loud. But last week I went to the flat for the first time. I went into the kitchen. She’d pasted them to the wall. I admired the elegance of the gesture. It was perfectly discreet. Bless her.
Pause.
Curly I saw a girl once in a bar in Laos, whose trick was an inverted sphincter. She smoked a cigarette through her arse. The most impressive feature was the hush. Just complete silence as this thing worked and blew and puffed. And nobody spoke. And the action itself was perfect. It summed up for me – the pleasures of the world.
Paus
e.
Patrick You get the idea.
Curly Do you know what Sam said?
Patrick Sam?
Curly Sam Cummings. International arms king.
Patrick Ah.
Curly Sam said to me: ‘Open up. Let ’em have it.’
Patrick laughs.
Sam said to me: ‘That’s what civilization was, is and will always be. Open up. Let ’em have it.’
Patrick laughs again.
‘That is why mine is the only business that will last for ever.’
Patrick Goodness me.
Curly He said that to me when I was fifteen.
Curly swings round the bottle of whisky to the table in front of him.
See that? I like the taste of whisky. Good whisky, Dad. But that’s all I like. I don’t like the effect.
He empties his pockets.
Fags. Two kinds. Cigars. Sweets. Condoms.
He puts them all down.
Do you know what I say?
Patrick No.
Curly No pleasure that isn’t more pleasurable for being denied.
He gestures at the pile.
Don’t use any of them.
Patrick Goodness me.
Pause.
Curly I need nothing.
Patrick Good. You’re growing up.
Pause.
Curly How we doing?
Patrick (looking at his watch) Seven minutes.
Curly Bloody good. (Pause.) Did you ever talk to Sarah? After she left?
Patrick We met once. Neutral ground. Trafalgar Square. She took to wearing white. We had to argue things out. We talked about – no, I can’t tell you …
Curly What?
Patrick We talked about what we believed.
Curly How disgusting.
Patrick I suppose you have to get your hands dirty sometimes.
Curly And what did she believe?
Patrick I can’t remember.
Curly Well, no wonder, as you paid such close attention to her views …
Patrick Hush, hush. Over the top. Way over the top again. We don’t know she’s dead. And if she is, there’s no purpose to be served by booting your way through the local population like a mad Hussar. This is England. Surrey. Your approach is wrong. You’re peg-legging along screaming your head off fifteen paces behind the local police. You’ve no idea.
Curly gets up.
Curly Jesus. I try to wipe my slate as clean as yours. Alcohol. Sex. I have left them behind. But I still can’t quite manage your state of Zen. I still have a smudge of indignation. You still drive me fucking mad. I left this house because I was sick to death with Lord Earthly-bloody Perfection. If only you’d admit …
Patrick What?
Curly Just – something. Just own up. For instance, to your genius for mislaying your children.
Patrick Curly …
Curly I can’t stand it.
Patrick Please.
Curly I thought when I came back you might be showing just a little petticoat below your hem. But no. (He shows.) Perfection. (Pause.) I’m clocking out. World Champion at nine minutes. I quit the game.
He makes to go out.
Patrick Curly.
Curly pauses.
Please take your condoms off my table.
Curly is about to exit and the music of ‘We Gather Lilacs’ is heard, as the curtain falls.
SCENE SIX
The Shadow of the Moon bar. Night.
Jenny is sitting at the table, crying. The Barman is behind the bar. Curly enters and goes straight to him.
Barman The lemonade, is it, sir?
Curly No. Yes. I’ll stick to lemonade.
Barman Pleasure to serve you, Mr Delafield.
Curly just looks away.
You know this can be a pretty wild bar some nights.
Curly Lordy.
Barman A little too wild. Without a piece.
Pause. Curly does not answer.
Oh, yes. Everyone needs a piece nowadays, eh?
Curly (half at Jenny) Who is this creep?
Barman Right, Mr Delafield.
Curly And a Scotch, I suppose.
Barman I’m talking about a hot rod, Mr Delafield. As you call it in the trade. (Pause.) Naturally we’ve got the security boys, private army, you know. But they don’t have the lead …
Curly No …
Barman Perhaps you could – cross my palm with metal, Mr Delafield.
Curly Perhaps. (He pauses, then smiles.) Open up, let ’em have it.
Barman (smiling) Right, Mr Delafield.
Curly walks over to Jenny with the drinks.
Curly What a creep. I wouldn’t sell him a water-pistol.
He sets down the bottle.
Well, Potato-face, your lucky day. This is Repulsive speaking. I am offering you a night on the tiles. What do you say? We could maybe both go look for Malloy.
Jenny You can find Malloy. Down the mortuary. (Pause.) The wrists are cut. With the razor blade. Not easy. You really have to go at them. He went at them. So it looked like gardening shears. The only way to do it.
Pause.
Curly Jen.
Jenny Who the hell am I? I bet you don’t even know my second name.
Pause.
Curly Have another Scotch.
Jenny What’s it to you? (Pause.) So that is why he does not answer the door. Because he is lying on the floor. With a suicide note. Bequeathing me the Shadow of the Moon. (Pause.) Malloy had ears like a dachshund. And a voice like two trees rubbing together. In short, a slob. He liked to put a brown paper bag over his head – this will amuse you – then take all his clothes off. He did this in the company of other Englishmen of the same age and class. They ran round in circles. With straps. They never saw each other’s faces. Malloy said – the pleasure was not in the whipping. Or in the paper bags. The pleasure was in going to the Stock Exchange next day and trying to work out which of your colleagues you’d whipped the night before. (Pause.) He was funny. I liked him.
Curly Jen.
Jenny He sat in this bar, gin dripping from his chin, from his eyes, gin in the palms of his hands, talking about England. And the need to be whipped. His liver, at the end, was a little orange thing.
Curly Who found him?
Jenny I sent for the police.
Curly Does the note explain, say anything, to do with Sarah? The disappearance.
Jenny It depressed him. He says that.
Curly But …
Jenny But he knew nothing concrete. He’d told me that when he was alive. The note’s mostly about my getting the club. He’d only bought it originally so that I could manage it. I was out of a job. So he set me up. A bauble.
Curly What did you do in return?
Jenny I did nothing. He was never my lover. It was Sarah he had. (Pause.) Getting Sarah to sleep with you. I don’t know. I imagine rather a squalid operation. Some nights you could have gathered her up off the floor, and arranged the limbs how you wanted them. She was mad about him. He spilt a whole bottle of gin all over her. She never washed for weeks. Sentimental.
Curly What …
Jenny (at once) If you shut up I’ll tell you. (Pause.) She thought he was like Patrick. Only human. She was obsessed with her father because he was so complete. Sarah used to say he had a personality like a pebble. There was no way in. Then she met Malloy. A man from her father’s world. From her father’s class. Of her father’s age. A man like her father. But able to be agonized. Capable of guilt. She was enthralled.
Curly How long did it last?
Jenny Few weeks.
Curly Then …
Jenny There was a row. A few months ago.
Curly What about?
Jenny Sarah said it was about the whipping. That she’d just found out.
Curly Did you believe her?
Jenny No – the whipping would have been an added attraction. Another weakness. She’d have loved him more.
Curly Then she lied.
Jenny Sarah nev
er lied. She said people should know everything.
Pause.
Curly Have you ever met my father?
Jenny Yes.
Curly Have you seen inside the City of London? Inside the banks and the counting houses? It’s perfect. Men with silver hair and suits with velvet pockets. Oiling down padded corridors. All their worries papered over with £10 notes and brilliantine. I first went there when I was seven. The crystal city. You could just hear the money being raked in like autumn leaves. My father moved as silkily as anyone. A clear leather desk in a book-lined room. A golden inkwell. That was all. That and the sound of money gathering like moss on the side of a wet building. When he got home at night, out with the cello and the Thackeray. He made his money with silent indolence. Part of a club. In theory a speculator. But whoever heard of an English speculator who actually speculated and lost? Once you were in, you had it sewn up from paddock to post. Sarah would know what I’m talking about.
Jenny The two of you.
Curly So I chose guns. The noisiest profession I could find. I used to set up a client’s demonstration of the AR10. You fire tracer bullets at tin cans filled with gasoline. Did you ever see a tracer bullet hit a bean can full of petrol? It’s better than a John Wayne movie. The oohs and ahs. I used to saddle up and ride into the sunset leaving the range a smouldering ruin. We sold a hell of a lot of guns. Poor Sarah. I just know what she felt.
‘Blanket Of Blue’ is played off, Lomax-style.
Let me smell your Scotch. (He smiles into the Scotch, then sniffs.) Did anyone – love Sarah?
Jenny Bum business. Look what I got out of it. The Michael Lomax Trio scraping their balls off in an upstairs room. Dipso …
Pause.
Curly Tell me who killed her?
Jenny It would only have needed the barest suggestion. Sarah, just put your head under the water. Moving from grey to grey. She’d have done it. If you asked her. She would have covered herself in kerosene and set light to it. To win your affection. (Pause.) How Malloy could have touched her.
Curly Know what Bernie said?
Jenny Bernie?
Curly Bernie Cornfeld said to me: ‘Humanity’s a nasty racket to be in.’ (Pause.) Miss Wilbur. You see, I even know your second name. I know everything I have been able to find out. A little obscure. I know all about your great-great-grandfather, the Armenian Jew who fucked his way through the nineteenth century like an Alka-Seltzer. I know it all since you came over here at fourteen. And I know dwelling-place, size of flat, name of dog, even dog’s diet, even dog’s distaste for Lassie meaty chunks. (Pause.) I’m propositioning you. (Pause.) You’d be the first for some time. For some years. The first in fact since the Sheikh of Mina Said’s daughter. She went with an arms deal. A little Arab Stardust might rub off.