Writing Game
Page 3
MAUDE stops on staircase.
MAUDE (with a sigh of impatience)
You mean you want to exchange rooms?
LEO
No. (Beat) I thought I might share yours.
MAUDE
Oh, I don’t think that would be a good idea.
LEO
Why not?
MAUDE
Well, for one thing, there’s only a single bed, and it’s extremely narrow.
LEO
I could bring my mattress up. We could put the two mattresses on the floor.
MAUDE (laughs, a little forced)
You really have the most extraordinary cheek. What makes you think that I would want to sleep with you?
LEO
It might make a change from Henry.
MAUDE begins to climb the stairs again.
LEO
Maude! Sorry – I shouldn’t have said that.
LEO, still holding the plumber’s mate, moves forward to stand beneath the gallery landing, where MAUDE stops and looks down at him. They are in a Romeo and Juliet posture.
MAUDE
I think we’d better get some things straight.
LEO
Sure. You mean safe sex? Don’t worry – I’ll take care of it.
MAUDE
I mean I don’t find you irresistibly attractive, and I’m not in the habit of sleeping with complete strangers.
LEO
I’m not a complete stranger. You’ve read my work.
MAUDE
And didn’t much like it, as you just reminded me.
LEO
You’ve read my work, I’ve read yours. We already know more about each other than many lovers of long standing.
MAUDE
I don’t know about your books, but mine are works of fiction.
LEO
Ah, yes, fiction. Come on, Maude, you know that everything you write comes out of yourself, ultimately. If it isn’t your experience speaking, it’s your unconscious.
MAUDE
This is all very interesting, but why don’t you save it for the students?
LEO
I’ll level with you, Maude. I didn’t come here because I wanted a change, or because I wanted to check out British creative-writing students. I came to meet you.
MAUDE
Oh? Why?
LEO
You intrigued me. That photograph on your dust jackets – with the Mona Lisa smile. The amazing number of books you’ve written. The sales figures in the Bookseller. Beauty, fertility, and money. An irresistible combination.
MAUDE
The resistance seems to be all on my side. Goodnight. (She moves towards the bedroom door.)
LEO
And then I read the books.
MAUDE stops, turns.
MAUDE
I do hope you’re not going to pay me any insincere compliments.
LEO
Your heroines are all sleeping beauties, aren’t they? Passionate but unfulfilled women, half-longing, half-fearing to be awakened.
MAUDE
And you thought you would play Prince Charming?
LEO
We could play Beauty and the Beast if you prefer.
MAUDE
Goodnight.
MAUDE goes into the bedroom, closes the door and locks it, leaving LEO staring impotently at it. He relieves his feelings by planting the plumber’s mate on the head of Aubrey Wheatcroft.
Blackout.
Act One Scene Three.
Late afternoon of the following day.
The barn. LEO is alone, typing on his word processor at the trestle table. At one end of the table is a pile of manuscripts in folders. There is a tentative knock at the door. LEO, displeased at the interruption, does not look up or round.
LEO
Yeah.
Another knock.
LEO (louder)
Come in!
The door opens and PENNY enters. She is a young woman, who might be in her late twenties or early thirties. She has big eyes and long fair hair. She wears a simple summer dress and carries a floppy sunhat. She has a transparent sincerity of manner which sometimes seems like naivety, and speaks with a perceptible Welsh accent. (NOTE: She could have any kind of looks, providing they contrast with Maude’s, and any provincial accent. MAUDE’s description of her at the beginning of Act One Scene Two, (see here), should be adjusted accordingly.)
PENNY (looking round)
Excuse me, I was looking for Maude Lockett.
LEO
She’s gone for a walk.
PENNY
Oh.
LEO
Down by the river, I think.
PENNY
Oh, I see. (Hesitantly) I was wondering whether she’d had a chance to look at the chapter I left this morning.
LEO
We shared the stuff between us. What was yours called?
PENNY
Lights and Shadows. That’s the provisional title of the novel.
LEO (frowns)
I think I read that one.
LEO reaches for the pile of manuscripts, and sifts through them. He pulls out one.
LEO
You’re Penny Sewell, right?
PENNY
Yes.
LEO
Yeah. The privilege fell to me. Lights and Shadows.
LEO leafs through the manuscript.
PENNY
What do you think of that as a title? Or perhaps you don’t think titles are important?
LEO
Oh, I think they’re very important – to the writer. I always tell my students back home, the title should remind you what your story is supposed to be about.
PENNY
Well, Lights and Shadows does that for me, I think.
LEO
Yeah, it’s OK. It’s about the best thing in here. After the title there’s a steady decline.
PENNY (crestfallen)
You don’t like it?
LEO
Did you expect me to?
PENNY
I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never shown my work to anyone before. What’s wrong with it?
LEO
Well, it isn’t very interesting, and the style is derivative.
PENNY
Derivative?
LEO
From Virginia Woolf, chiefly.
PENNY (submissively)
Yes, I do like Virginia Woolf.
LEO (reads)
‘Was this all there was, then, all there was to life, her life anyway, she thought, peeling the potatoes at the sink, and looking out through the kitchen window at the small square of lawn, where the toys abandoned by Ben and Jessica lay scattered like the remnants of some horrible accident, a car crash or an air crash, touched poignantly by the golden beams of the sun that was setting like an inflamed eye behind the red roofs of the neighbouring houses.’ (Looks up) If the sun is inflamed, which means red, would the sunbeams be golden?
PENNY
No, of course not. How stupid of me.
LEO
It comes from over-using the pathetic fallacy.
PENNY
What’s that?
LEO
Making the external world reflect metaphorically the emotions of the perceiver.
PENNY
Oh.
LEO
Like ‘touched poignantly’ and ‘inflamed eye’.
PENNY
But apart from that …
LEO
There isn’t much apart from that, is there? The whole chapter is saturated in the pathetic fallacy.
PENNY
You don’t think I should persevere with it?
LEO
I don’t see that it’s likely to get any better. Do you?
LEO holds out the manuscript. Pause.
PENNY (quietly)
No, I’m sure you’re right.
PENNY takes her manuscript from LEO and almost runs out of the barn. The door slams shut behind her.
LEO rises from the table and moves towards the door as if to call her back. But then he stops, shrugs and returns to the table. He settles himself to work again. He begins to type. The outside door opens and MAUDE enters, rather aggressively.
MAUDE
Penny Sewell seems to be upset. She ran straight past me.
LEO continues to type.
MAUDE
Was that your doing?
LEO sighs and pushes back his chair.
LEO
She asked me a straight question and I gave her a straight answer.
MAUDE
What was the question?
LEO
She asked me if she should go on with her novel.
MAUDE
And you said ‘No.’
Pause.
My God, I can hardly believe it. And you call yourself a teacher?
LEO
With more right than you, I believe.
MAUDE
A teacher is supposed to encourage, isn’t he? To make the most of people’s potential?
LEO
A teacher is supposed to tell the truth, whether it’s welcome or not.
MAUDE
Even if it means strangling talent at birth?
LEO
I want to strangle no-talent at birth. It’s merciful in the long run.
MAUDE
How can you be so sure that she has no talent.
LEO
Nobody on this course has any talent. (He thumps the pile of manuscripts) They’re all a bunch of amateurs. They’re the literary equivalent of Sunday painters.
MAUDE
What’s wrong with that? If they get some satisfaction out of expressing themselves in words …
LEO
Writing is not just self-expression. It’s communication.
MAUDE
But that’s precisely what this place is for! To give people an audience – a critical, but sympathetic and supportive audience. People who’ve been writing in complete isolation, for years perhaps, hiding their novel in a drawer, afraid to show it to their husband or their wife, or to friends, for fear of being laughed at, misunderstood. They come here to be read.
LEO
This isn’t real reading, what goes on here.
MAUDE
What d’you mean?
LEO
It’s reading under duress. The students know that. What they really want to learn from us is, how to get published. But they haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this stuff into print (he indicates the manuscripts), and they might as well be told now.
MAUDE
I don’t agree.
LEO
Otherwise little Mrs Penny Sewell, as well as all the other frustrations and disappointments of her life, which, I infer from her novel, include a career prematurely terminated by marriage, a husband who doesn’t appreciate her, a mother-in-law who spoils her two children, and a loathing for the pattern of the bedroom wallpaper which she chose in a rash moment because the one she really wanted was too expensive – on top of all that she’s going to have to cope with a steady stream of rejected manuscripts in self-addressed envelopes falling on to the doormat every morning for the rest of her life.
MAUDE
Well, that’s her choice. You shouldn’t presume to make it for her.
Pause.
LEO
Have you talked to Brigstock?
MAUDE
Brigstock?
LEO
The military-looking guy, with the moustache.
MAUDE
Oh, Lionel. What about him?
LEO
Did you know that he has written twelve unpublished novels?
MAUDE
Really?
LEO
Twelve. Twelve full-length books. Approximately one million words. All garbage, to judge by this specimen of number thirteen.
LEO pulls a thick folder out of the pile of manuscripts and flips over a page or two.
MAUDE
I take it he’s tried to get them published.
LEO
Has he tried! He told me he’s collected two hundred and thirty-nine rejection slips. He seemed proud of them in a weird kind of way.
MAUDE (amused and appalled in spite of herself)
Poor Lionel! He should be in the Guinness Book of Records.
LEO
It’s the only way he’ll get into print, believe me. And d’you know this guy retired early, on a reduced pension, to write? He sacrificed a perfectly good career in insurance to this futile ambition, no doubt because some ‘sympathetic and supportive’ tutor on a creative writing course encouraged him.
MAUDE (bridling)
Perhaps he’s happier writing books, even books nobody wants to publish, than he would be in some dreary nine-to-five job. He looks cheerful enough.
LEO
Oh, sure, he looks cheerful. That’s what’s so pathetic about him. He’s like a guy who’s idea of fun is to get into the ring with a pro boxer and have the shit knocked out of him. The publishers keep counting him out, and he keeps getting up off the floor and coming back for another knockout punch. ‘You didn’t like that novel? Never mind, here’s another one.’ Pow! (LEO mimes having his head knocked back by a punch on the jaw) He’s flat on his ass again. Somebody should have thrown in the towel for him years ago. You want to condemn Penny Sewell to that kind of punishment?
MAUDE
You’re not trying to tell me, are you, that all your students in America become successful writers?
LEO
A number of them have had their work published.
MAUDE
But only a minority? A tiny proportion?
LEO
All right, yes. But there’s a difference. Several differences. First, I don’t enrol anyone unless they can show evidence of some talent. Secondly, I warn them that if they have any ambition to be writers by profession, they’re inviting a long and slow crucifixion. Years of hard, lonely work. Writing and rewriting and rewriting again. Getting rejected, getting blocked, seeing others succeed where you have failed.
MAUDE
My God, I wonder you have any students at all. You make the whole business sound so grim.
LEO
That’s right. I think writing is a grim business.
MAUDE
But it can be such fun, too!
LEO
Fun?
MAUDE
Yes. I don’t know anything like the satisfaction that you get when you find some phrase that you know is right; or some joke that you know will make people laugh aloud; or some brilliant idea for a twist in the plot comes to you out of the blue, in mid-sentence, and you could whoop with delight. And that lovely feeling as the pages mount up, and you get to that point when you know you can finish the book, and finish it well. And when you do finish it, when you write the last word, you feel quite exhausted, drained, but deeply contented. There’s nothing like that feeling. Well, there is, actually, one thing.
LEO
Sex?
MAUDE
No, childbirth.
LEO
Ah.
Pause.
The phone rings twice and stops. LEO and MAUDE look towards the phone.
MAUDE (crossly)
I bet that’s Henry again.
LEO turns up volume control on answerphone.
HENRY’S VOICE
… look, it’s a frightful bore but I don’t seem to be able to turn off the shower in our bathroom. What’s the name of the plumber we use, I mean I know I could just look up somebody in the Yellow Pages but I’d rather have the usual chap because I may have to leave him alone in the house …
LEO
You want to take it?
MAUDE
No.
LEO turns off sound. MAUDE picks up a briefcase and takes a loose-leaf folder out of it.
MAUDE
I need to look over the piece I’m going to read this evening.
LEO
&
nbsp; I look forward to it.
MAUDE
I doubt if it will be your cup of tea
Blackout.
Act One Scene Four. The evening of the same day.
MAUDE is seated in an upright chair, facing the audience (who thus represent the circle of students listening to her reading). She is lit by a spotlight. The main set is blacked out or curtained off. Beside her is a small table with, on it, a glass of water. She has in her hands a typescript in a loose-leaf folder.
MAUDE
I’d like to read from a novel I started recently. It seemed to come very easily at first, and then it just stopped. I’ve never had that happen to me before. It’s rather disturbing. I thought that if I read it to you this evening, it might somehow loosen the blockage, get the gears moving again.
I haven’t decided on a title yet, but the heroine is called Marion Brownlow, a widow of about forty-five, still quite good-looking, but going through the change of life, in more ways than one. I might call it Change of Life, as a matter of fact. Her husband died a couple of years before, and proved to be bankrupt, so Marion is obliged to live with her daughter, who is married to an Oxford don, and bullies her. In the second chapter Marion is invited to dinner by some friends, Vera and Dennis Moreton. However, what she has really been invited to is drinks, though she doesn’t realise this until the hostess brings in a tray of dainty canapés and starts handing round plates and napkins.
MAUDE drinks from the glass and begins to read.
By this time Marion had consumed two gin-and-tonics and three glasses of Entre-Deux-Mers on an empty stomach. She had a headache, double vision, and her intestines were gurgling like old plumbing. She piled her plate with as many canapés as seemed halfway decent; but the almost transparent slivers of smoked salmon on wafer-thin slices of brown bread, the fragile vol-au-vents that burst like powdery bubbles in the mouth, the two or three black beads of lumpfish roe reposing on tiny cushions of cottage cheese, were hardly sufficient to counteract the effect of the alcohol she had imbibed, or to satisfy her hunger.
If she had been the only guest she could, of course, have confessed her error, asked for an omelette, and they would all have had a good laugh together. But there were three other people present: Dennis’s superior at the Bodley and his wife, and another man whom she hadn’t met before, Hamish Sedley, whom she was fairly sure had been invited for her own benefit. He was apparently an old friend who had just come back from a British Council post in South America. He seemed rather nice.
In this carefully assembled and delicately balanced company, Marion dared not admit that she was starving and demand proper sustenance. No, the only thing to do was to refuse any more wine, and hold on tight to the arms of her chair until the coffee appeared. Unfortunately, on top of all her other symptoms, she now felt her entire body break out in perspiration and her cheeks glowing like coals. Vera looked anxiously at her.