Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  Flick – there’s no logical reason why we shouldn’t be stuck here all night, not daring to breathe, while he grinds away at the thing. Flick – will he give up after ten flameless flicks? After a hundred? Flick – praise heaven, there’s a flame!

  But now they’re both shaking so much they can’t get the flame and the cigarette to meet! Yes! No! Yes – they’ve done it! ‘Ah, that’s better,’ she sighs contentedly, blowing out a thoughtful column of smoke. But, crumbling sanity, there is no smoke! The cigarette’s gone out again!

  One’s palms sweat. Of course, one keeps telling oneself that it doesn’t really matter, because no one nowadays expects a naïvely literal realism in the theatre. One wants to see the figures on the stage both as the actors acting and the characters acted. In a sense, of course, one’s consciousness of this valuable duality is if anything heightened when one or two little things go slightly …

  Oh God, he’s not going to throw her the revolver! Of course, they rehearse these things for weeks … She’s dropped it. Now she’s picked it up – she’s carrying bravely on. Don’t feel you need to be brave on my account, dear. Honestly, it didn’t embarrass me a bit. No, I had my eyes shut. I mean, I know I caught my breath when he threw it, but … I suppose you can’t possibly have heard me catching my breath, can you? I mean, it wasn’t my catching my breath that made you …? Oh, God!

  I have a haunting fear that one night when I’m present some piece of business is going to go so completely wrong that the play as written cannot proceed at all, and the actors will be reduced to improvising some new line of development entirely. Take the famous Locket scene at the end of ‘Error for Error,’ when young Ferdinand shows Duke Oregano and the assembled court the locket which proves he is the Duke’s son, carried off at birth by a waterspout. Suppose that after the lines –

  A locket sav’d I from that spoutsorne day,

  Most curiously incrib’d. I have it here.

  Ferdinand tosses the vital instrument to the Duke, and the Duke fumbles it and drops it out of sight. What can they do, except make the rest of the scene up as they go along?

  DUKE: Alas! Methinks I have misfinger’d it!

  FERDINAND: Sire, bend thou down thine aged frame

  And do thou smartly pluck it up again.

  DUKE: Bend as I might, I cannot see the thing.

  My lords, do you explore your cloggy beards.

  No sign? Ah me, I fear it must have roll’d

  Amid this mazy grove of cardboard trees.

  FERDINAND: Was not one glance as it came winging by

  Enough to grasp the general sense of it?

  – That here before thee stands thy long-lost son?

  DUKe: A fig for your problems – what worrieth me

  Is how I speak my major speech, which starts:

  ‘Come, locket, let me kiss thee for thy pains,

  And taste the savour of fidelity,’

  Without the bloody locket. Come, let’s shift

  This forest. Take the yonder end and heave.

  FERDINAND: Is this meet welcome for a long-lost son?

  DUKE: Meet welcome for a long-lost son, forsooth!

  What kind of long-lost son is this, that chucks

  Essential props outside my senile reach,

  And cuts his long-lost father’s longest speech?

  Lose thee again, son, till thou learnst at last

  The art of throwing props and not the cast.

  (1964)

  Can you hear me, mother?

  I enjoy the woman’s page of the Guardian. Unlike the men’s pages of newspapers, where Interdepartmental Committees are Set Up, Machine Tool Prospects Look Brighter, and Proposals Deserve Careful Consideration, it seems to be concerned with individual human beings.

  One has an impression of particular women, struggling with children and consciences and loose doorhandles; wondering gloomily whether it’s God or madness tapping on their skulls: getting some strange illogical pleasure out of misconceived holiday ordeals with family, van, and tent through Wester Ross …

  The other day the page made an even more striking excursion into the world of the personal and the particular; and I must say, the knife seemed to me to be getting a little near the bone.

  It was an article by one Mair Thompson about mothers-in-law. Or, rather, about her own mother-in-law. One of the kindest and most generous people she knows, apparently, and she loves her.

  ‘Yet she drives me crazy. Her mannerisms irritate me, her elderliness irritates me. I don’t like her face, and her feet are silly-looking. Her conversation infuriates me. I let off steam by mimicking and muttering silently when she talks to me from another room. When she tells the same story for the umpteenth time it is with great difficulty that I restrain myself from either giggling or saying it along with her, word for word; I am amazed at my husband’s ability to look interested and ask prompting questions.’

  I must admit, I felt the beads of nervous sweat start forth when I read this. I’m all for the unvarnished truth; I’m all for delivery by candour from inhibition and frustration. All the same – poor old mother-in-law! I take it that ‘Mair Thompson’ is a pen-name … I take it that mother-in-law never reads the Guardian … But, all the same …!

  Of course, once you’ve got the problem into the open like this, everyone wants to help. Barbara Nuttall, of Leeds, writes to the Guardian to say that Mair Thompson’s mother-in-law ‘ought gently to be told to come less often to her children’s home.’ (Mrs Nuttall’s own mother-in-law ‘has never failed to help when needed,’ but at the same time ‘has never forced her attention’ on the family.) But it’s all the fault of the husband, according to Mrs E. M. Selby, of Loughborough, who writes to say that ‘the weakness in the family structure mentioned lies more in the mother–son relationship … The fact that the husband can sit patiently and listen to repetitive stories of his mother shows a childish dependence on her approval.’

  So poor old husband, too! It really is group therapy on the heroic scale, this candid assessment of one’s relations’ shortcomings in the public prints. Perhaps the impersonal abstractions of the men’s pages have something to be said for them after all. I should certainly hate to pick up the paper one morning when my children are grown up and find some son-in-law of mine holding forth about me in the middle of the business news.

  ‘A finer man than my father-in-law never drew breath,’ I can imagine the young puppy declaring sententiously, ‘when it comes to washing-up, carrying messages, waiting at our dinner-parties, and looking after our pet ocelots while we go on holiday.

  ‘But ye gods, the price one pays for these small services! Take one’s eye off him for an instant and he’s poured himself a generous measure of one’s best Scotch, and sprawled himself out at his ease in one’s favourite armchair with the evening paper.

  ‘Like as not he’s also taken his shoes off to aerate his feet. Moreover, he hums to himself endlessly, with a strange, infuriating shushing noise, which I believe is supposed to represent the sound of a symphony orchestra. We all make fun of him behind his back, of course. But somehow that no longer seems enough.’

  After a lead like this, I should think, the floodgates would open, and the Letters to the Editor column would be full of brutally candid letters from everyone in the family.

  ‘Sir, – May we say how heartily many of us ordinary aunts and uncles agree with your correspondent’s remarks about our nephew? It is high time that the conspiracy of silence about his personal habits was broken. – Yours, etc., Arthur Wroxby, Millicent Wroxby, Clara Frayn Steadfast.’

  ‘Sir, – I regret to add to the melancholy tale of my cousin’s shortcomings, but I have been present on at least two occasions when he has told deliberate untruths, Indeed, I have often been struck by his inability to look one straight in the eye. I wonder if this is an experience which has been shared by any other of your readers? J. N. G. Portly-Walker, Godalming.’

  ‘Sir, – Your readers may be interested to know that
Michael’s indifferent social behaviour was the despair of his parents from an early age. But many of us in the family felt that they had only themselves to blame. They should have been much stricter with the boy, as I myself told them on more than one occasion, though small thanks I got for it. If only they could have foreseen what their thoughtless indulgence would lead to! – I am, &c., (Mrs) Louisa Ironmaster, Southsea.’

  ‘Sir, – When he comes to our house, our granfather wissles through his teeth and makes boreing jokes which bore me and my brothers and sisteres. He is a tall man, but boreing to have as a granfather. – (Miss) Phyllida Frayn (aged 4).’

  ‘Sir, – I was interested, to see Mr Portly-Walker’s reference to my cousin’s dishonesty. I am myself only a second cousin once removed, but on the few occasions we have met, Mr Frayn has invariably breathed into my face and attempted to borrow money, saying that he has left his change in his other trousers, or got to the bank too late. It is high time that this man was hounded out of private life. – Yours faithfully, T. Wesley Topples, Stroud.’

  I don’t like it, men – I don’t like it one little bit. Let’s stick with those grand old Interdepartmental Committees after all.

  (1967)

  Chez crumble

  One of the principal benefits that matrimony confers on the young professional class is that it enables us to give up that tiresome pretence of being interested in spiritual and cultural matters – forced on us by our education and our courtship rituals – and lets us settle down to a frank and total absorption in our financial and material circumstances.

  When, for instance, you call on the newly married Crumbles – formerly socially conscious Christopher Crumble and sensitive, musical Lavinia Knudge – do you talk about the problems of secondary education, or English choral music of the sixteenth century, as you would have done back in the good old days of Crumble and Knudge? You do not. Because Lavinia says …

  Lavinia: Before you do anything else, you must come and look over the flat!

  Christopher: … that’s right, just take your coat off – I’ll hang it on this automatic coat-rack …

  Lavinia: … which Christopher made himself, didn’t you, darling?

  Christopher: Got a kit from Rackkitz of Wembley – costs about half the price of an ordinary automatic coat-rack …

  Lavinia:… and it’s fire-resistant, too …

  Christopher:… now this is the hall, of course …

  Lavinia:… which we made ourselves by partitioning off part of the bedroom …

  Christopher:… with half-inch Doncaster boarding, at a shilling a foot, if you know the right place …

  Lavinia:… Christopher got it from the brother of an old school-friend of his, didn’t you, darling? Now – mind your head on that steel brace – this is the bedroom …

  Christopher:… we picked up the bed for a song in a little shop I know in Edmonton …

  Lavinia:… and fitted it out with a Dormofoam mattress. They’re so much the best, of course. In fact there’s a waiting-list for Dormofoams, but we had tremendous luck and got one ordered for someone who died …

  Christopher:… and this is the kitchen opening off in the corner here. It was really the handiness of having the kitchen opening directly into the bedroom that made us take the flat …

  Lavinia:… you should have seen it when we first moved in! But Christopher had the brilliant idea of covering up the holes in the floor with some special asbestos his uncle makes …

  Christopher:… so we got a discount on it. We’re frightfully proud of that stainless steel bootrack, by the way. I don’t know whether you saw it recommended in Which? last month …?

  Lavinia:… it’s so much more practical than all those silver-plated ones you see in the shops. According to Which? they pounded it with 140 average boot-impacts an hour for 17 days before it collapsed …

  Christopher:… I’d take you out to show you the lavatory, but it is raining hard. Remind us you haven’t seen it next time you come, won’t you, and we’ll make a point of it …

  Lavinia:… and here we are in the living-room …

  Christopher:… have you seen this Plushco plastic carpeting before? We think it’s awfully good, don’t we, darling? Half the price of ordinary carpet, and terrifically hard-wearing. We’ve had it down, what, two weeks now? Not a sign of wear on it …

  Lavinia: … I see you’re looking at all those old books on music and education. You won’t believe it, but we had those shelves built for five pounds, timber and all …

  Christopher:… by a marvellous little man we found by sheerest chance in Muswell Hill. Remind me to give you his address …

  Lavinia:… though I think he did it specially cheaply for us just because he happened to take to us …

  Christopher:… by the way, would you like a glass of Sardinian sherry?

  Lavinia:… we’ve developed rather a thing about Sardinian sherry, haven’t we darling?

  Christopher:… we get it by the gallon from a little shop in Sydenham. Found the place by sheer chance …

  Lavinia:… tremendously practical, and it works out at six-and-four a bottle …

  Christopher:… incidentally, what do you think we pay for the flat? No, go on, have a guess … Well, I’ll tell you – five pounds a week …

  Lavinia:… it’s an absolute bargain, of course. We only found it through a friend of my mother’s, who just by sheerest chance happened to be …

  Christopher: I say, you’re looking rather groggy. Lavinia darling, run and fetch him some Asprilux. I don’t know whether you’ve tried Asprilux, but we think it’s much better than any of the other brands of aspirin … No, sit in this chair – it’s got a rather ingenious reclining back – we just got the last one to be made. Comfortable, isn’t it? What do you think of Lavinia, by the way? Such practical, easy-to-clean hands and feet. You won’t believe it, but I picked her up by the sheerest chance at a little bookshop I know down in Wimbledon …

  (1962)

  Child and superchild

  It’s terrible to think of the manpower the world has wasted up to now by failing to commence the education of the young in earliest infancy. Children have been allowed just to throw away the first five years of their lives; when all the time they could – as researchers, journalists and anxious parents all over the world are now coming to realise–have been learning to get ahead and lay the foundations of successful careers.

  Now all that’s a thing of the past. These days, the mother who has her child’s future at heart sets to work before it’s even born, and spends part of each day during pregnancy inside a decompression suit to increase the supply of oxygen to its brain, with the result that it subsequently learns to crawl and walk (and presumably also to graduate and get a peerage) earlier than less fortunate children from underdecompressed homes.

  The privileged infant has not long opened its eyes upon the world, of course, before its loving mother is holding up Teach Your Baby to Read cards in front of it, and developing its ‘need for achievement’ (the n Ach rating, as identified by Professor McClelland of Harvard) by setting ‘moderately high achievement goals’ and helping the child to reach them in a ‘warm encouraging and non-authoritarian’ way.

  And now, I see from the series of articles on ‘Success before Six’ in the Sunday Times, it’s been discovered that parents have ‘a potent chance to accelerate the intellectual development of their children’ by the way they talk to them. The helpful parent should speak to his child in a rich vocabulary, using ‘modelled’ conversation techniques rather than ‘systematic expansion,’ and an ‘elaborated code’ rather than a ‘restricted’ one.

  According to a book called ‘Educating Your Baby’ which is quoted in the series, ‘a parent can help the child by repeating consonant and vowel sounds, slowly and deliberately … by letting the baby see lip movements, and pausing to let him imitate them. One compresses the lips into a thin line and parts them with the sound, “ba”. Smiling at the baby may induce him to smil
e in return; lips parting then produces the syllable and mother and child laugh gleefully. The syllable can be made repeatedly; “ba-ba-ba” until the child is ready for something else.’

  The next part of the training course, according to the article, is the Naming of Parts. ‘If this is started early enough then by the time he is 12 months old he will be able to point to parts of his body when asked. “Can you touch your mouth? Touch your mouth.” Show him how. “Good boy. You’re touching your mouth.” Not: “You are doing it.”’

  Certainly not! With that kind of teaching he could fail his one-plus! Anyway, from the age of 18 months the object is to get the child to repeat after his mother or father the names of familiar objects. Then we get on to the more severe disciplines involved in advanced studies.

  ‘Once the child can talk,’ says the article, ‘it is best to ask for complete responses to questions. “How many days are there in a week, Alice?” “Seven.” “Good. But it could be better. The correct answer is ‘There are seven days in a week.’ Say for me, ‘There are seven days in a week.’”’

  It sounds to me as if they’re having trouble with this Alice child. Isn’t this casual, slipshod approach to academic work, this lackadaisical mumble of ‘Seven,’ only too typical of youth today? I bet Alice has a sugar cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth during lectures – I bet she tries to cut compulsory hopscotch! The next thing you know, she’ll be sprawling on the floor with a banner outside her father’s study, demanding another threepence a week pocket money and a bigger say in planning her syllabus.

  Where did Alice’s parents go wrong? Was the pressure in her mother’s decompression suit not low enough? Did her father hurry her on to ‘dad-dad-dad’ before she’d fully mastered ‘ba-ba-ba’? In any case, she’s sadly retarded in her development compared with Algernon, a child of my acquaintance whose intellectual life was accelerated in accordance with really modern methods.