MELISSA Can I subscribe to all that has just been said?
Pause.
I would like to subscribe to all that has just been said. I would like to add my voice. I have belonged to many tennis and swimming clubs. Many tennis and swimming clubs. And at some of these clubs I first met some of my dearest friends. All of them are now dead. Every friend I ever had. Or ever met. Is dead. They are all of them dead. Every single one of them. I have absolutely not one left. None are left. Nothing is left. What was it all for? The tennis and the swimming clubs? What was it all for? What?
Silence.
But the clubs died too and rightly so. I mean there is a distinction to be made. My friends went the way of all flesh and I don’t regret their passing. They weren’t my friends anyway. I couldn’t stand half of them. But the clubs! The clubs died, the swimming and the tennis clubs died because they were based on ideas which had no moral foundation, no moral foundation whatsoever. But our club, our club – is a club which is activated, which is inspired by a moral sense, a moral awareness, a set of moral values which is –-1 have to say – unshakeable, rigorous, fundamental, constant. Thank you.
Applause.
GAVIN Yes, I’m terribly glad you’ve said all that. (To the others.) Aren’t you?
DOUGLAS First rate.
LIZ So moving.
TERRY Fantastic.
FRED Right on the nail.
CHARLOTTE So true.
DUSTY Oh yes.
She claps her hands.
Oh yes.
DOUGLAS Absolutely first rate.
GAVIN Yes, it was first rate. And it desperately needed saying. And how splendid that it was said tonight, at such an enjoyable party, in such congenial company. I must say I speak as a very happy host. And by the way, I’ll really have to join this wonderful club of yours, won’t I?
TERRY You’re elected forthwith. You’re an honorary member. As of today.
Laughter and applause.
GAVIN Thank you very much indeed. Now I believe one or two of our guests encountered traffic problems on their way here tonight. I apologise for that, but I would like to assure you that all such problems and all related problems will be resolved very soon. Between ourselves, we’ve had a bit of a round-up this evening. This round-up is coming to an end. In fact normal services will be resumed shortly. That is, after all, our aim. Normal service. We, if you like, insist on it. We will insist on it. We do. That’s all we ask, that the service this country provides will run on normal, secure and legitimate paths and that the ordinary citizen be allowed to pursue his labours and his leisure in peace. Thank you all so much for coming here tonight. It’s been really lovely to see you, quite smashing.
The room lights go down.
The light from the door intensifies, burning into the room.
Everyone is still, in silhouette.
A man comes out of the light and stands in the doorway. He is thinly dressed.
JIMMY Sometimes I hear things. Then it’s quiet.
I had a name. It was Jimmy. People called me Jimmy. That was my name.
Sometimes I hear things. Then everything is quiet. When everything is quiet I hear my heart.
When the terrible noises come I don’t hear anything. Don’t hear don’t breathe am blind.
Then everything is quiet. I hear a heartbeat. It is probably not my heartbeat. It is probably someone else’s heartbeat.
What am I?
Sometimes a door bangs, I hear voices, then it stops. Everything stops. It all stops. It all closes. It closes down. It shuts. It all shuts. It shuts down. It shuts. I see nothing at any time any more. I sit sucking the dark.
It’s what I have. The dark is in my mouth and I suck it. It’s the only thing I have. It’s mine. It’s my own. I suck it.
MOONLIGHT
Moonlight first published by
Faber and Faber Ltd 1993
© Fraser52 Limited, 1993
Moonlight was first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 7 September 1993. The cast was as follows:
ANDY Ian Holm
BEL Anna Massey
JAKE Douglas Hodge
FRED Michael Sheen
MARIA Jill Johnson
RALPH Edward de Souza
BRIDGET Claire Skinner
Directed by David Leveaux
Designed by Bob Crowley
Characters
ANDY
a man in his fifties
BEL
a woman of fifty
JAKE
a man of twenty-eight
FRED
a man of twenty-seven
MARIA
a woman of fifty
RALPH
a man in his fifties
BRIDGET
a girl of sixteen
Three Main Playing Areas
1 Andy’s bedroom – well furnished
2 Fred’s bedroom – shabby
(These rooms are in different locations.)
3 An area in which Bridget appears, through which Andy moves at night and where Jake, Fred and Bridget play their scene.
BRIDGET in faint light.
BRIDGET I can’t sleep. There’s no moon. It’s so dark. I think I’ll go downstairs and walk about. I won’t make a noise. I’ll be very quiet. Nobody will hear me. It’s so dark and I know everything is more silent when it’s dark. But I don’t want anyone to know I’m moving about in the night. I don’t want to wake my father and mother. They’re so tired. They have given so much of their life for me and for my brothers. All their life, in fact. All their energies and all their love. They need to sleep in peace and wake up rested. I must see that this happens. It is my task. Because I know that when they look at me they see that I am all they have left of their life.
ANDY’s bedroom.
ANDY in bed. BEL sitting.
She is doing embroidery.
ANDY Where are the boys? Have you found them?
BEL I’m trying.
ANDY You’ve been trying for weeks. And failing. It’s enough to make the cat laugh. Do we have a cat?
BEL We do.
ANDY Is it laughing?
BEL Fit to bust.
ANDY What at? Me, I suppose.
BEL Why would your own dear cat laugh at you? That cat who was your own darling kitten when she was young and so were you, that cat you have so dandled and patted and petted and loved, why should she, how could she, laugh at her master? It’s not remotely credible.
ANDY But she’s laughing at someone?
BEL She’s laughing at me. At my ineptitude. At my failure to find the boys, at my failure to bring the boys to their father’s deathbed.
ANDY Well that’s more like it. You are the proper target for a cat’s derision. And how I loved you.
Pause.
What a wonderful woman you were. You had such a great heart. You still have, of course. I can hear it from here. Banging away.
Pause.
BEL Do you feel anything? What do you feel? Do you feel hot? Or cold? Or both? What do you feel? Do you feel cold in your legs? Or hot? What about your fingers? What are they? Are they cold? Or hot? Or neither cold nor hot?
ANDY Is this a joke? My God, she’s taking the piss out of me. My own wife. On my deathbed. She’s as bad as that fucking cat.
BEL Perhaps it’s my convent school education but the term ‘taking the piss’ does leave me somewhat nonplussed.
ANDY Nonplussed! You’ve never been nonplussed in the whole of your voracious, lascivious, libidinous life.
BEL You may be dying but that doesn’t mean you have to be totally ridiculous.
ANDY Why am I dying, anyway? I’ve never harmed a soul. You don’t die if you’re good. You die if you’re bad.
BEL We girls were certainly aware of the verb ‘to piss’, oh yes, in the sixth form, certainly. I piss, you piss, she pisses, et cetera.
ANDY We girls! Christ!
BEL The term ‘taking the piss’, however, was not known to us.
A
NDY It means mockery! It means to mock. It means mockery! Mockery! Mockery!
BEL Really? How odd. Is there a rational explanation to this?
ANDY Rationality went down the drain donkey’s years ago and hasn’t been seen since. All that famous rationality of yours is swimming about in waste disposal turdology. It’s burping and farting away in the cesspit for ever and ever. That’s destiny speaking, sweetheart! That was always the destiny of your famous rational intelligence, to choke to death in sour cream and pigswill.
BEL Oh do calm down, for goodness sake.
ANDY Why? Why?
Pause.
What do you mean?
Fred’s bedroom.
FRED in bed. JAKE in to him.
JAKE Brother.
FRED Brother.
JAKE sits by the bed.
JAKE And how is my little brother?
FRED Cheerful though gloomy. Uneasily poised.
JAKE All will be well. And all manner of things shall be well.
Pause.
FRED What kind of holiday are you giving me this year? Art or the beach?
JAKE I would think a man of your calibre needs a bit of both.
FRED Or nothing of either.
JAKE It’s very important to keep your pecker up.
FRED How far up?
JAKE Well … for example … how high is a Chinaman?
FRED Quite.
JAKE Exactly.
Pause.
FRED You were writing poems when you were a mere child, isn’t that right?
JAKE I was writing poems before I could read.
FRED Listen. I happen to know that you were writing poems before you could speak.
JAKE Listen! I was writing poems before I was born.
FRED So you would say you were the real thing?
JAKE The authentic article.
FRED Never knowingly undersold.
JAKE Precisely.
Silence.
FRED Listen. I’ve been thinking about the whole caboodle. I’ll tell you what we need. We need capital.
JAKE I’ve got it.
FRED You’ve got it?
JAKE I’ve got it.
FRED Where did you find it?
JAKE Divine right.
FRED Christ.
JAKE Exactly.
FRED You’re joking.
JAKE No, no, my father weighed it all up carefully the day I was born.
FRED Oh, your father? Was he the one who was sleeping with your mother?
JAKE He weighed it all up. He weighed up all the pros and cons and then without further ado he called a meeting. He called a meeting of the trustees of his estate, you see, to discuss all these pros and cons. My father was a very thorough man. He invariably brought the meetings in on time and under budget and he always kept a weather eye open for blasphemy, gluttony and buggery.
FRED He was a truly critical force?
JAKE He was not in it for pleasure or glory. Let me make that quite clear. Applause came not his way. Nor did he seek it. Gratitude came not his way. Nor did he seek it. Masturbation came not his way. Nor did he seek it. I’m sorry – I meant approbation came not his way –
FRED Oh, didn’t it really?
JAKE Nor did he seek it.
Pause.
I’d like to apologise for what I can only describe as a lapse in concentration.
FRED It can happen to anybody.
Pause.
JAKE My father adhered strictly to the rule of law.
FRED Which is not a very long way from the rule of thumb.
JAKE Not as the crow flies, no.
FRED But the trustees, I take it, could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as a particularly motley crew?
JAKE Neither motley nor random. They were kept, however, under strict and implacable scrutiny. They were allowed to go to the lavatory just one and a half times a session. They evacuated to a time clock.
FRED And the motion was carried?
JAKE The motion was carried, nine votes to four, Jorrocks abstaining.
FRED Not a pretty sight, by the sound of it.
JAKE The vicar stood up. He said that it was a very unusual thing, a truly rare and unusual thing, for a man in the prime of his life to leave – without codicil or reservation – his personal fortune to his newborn son the very day of that baby’s birth – before the boy had had a chance to say a few words or aspire to the unknowable or cut for partners or cajole the japonica or tickle his arse with a feather –
FRED Whose arse?
JAKE It was an act, went on the vicar, which, for sheer undaunted farsightedness, unflinching moral resolve, stern intellectual vision, classic philosophical detachment, passionate religious fervour, profound emotional intensity, bloodtingling spiritual ardour, spellbinding metaphysical chutzpah – stood alone.
FRED Tantamount to a backflip in the lotus position.
JAKE It was an act, went on the vicar, without a vestige of lust but with any amount of bucketfuls of lustre.
FRED So the vicar was impressed?
JAKE The only one of the trustees not impressed was my Uncle Rufus.
FRED Now you’re telling me you had an uncle called Rufus. Is that what you’re telling me?
JAKE Uncle Rufus was not impressed.
FRED Why not? Do I know the answer? I think I do. I think I do. Do I?
Pause.
JAKE I think you do.
FRED I think so too. I think I do.
JAKE I think so too.
Pause.
FRED The answer is that your father was just a little bit short of a few krugerrands.
JAKE He’d run out of pesetas in a pretty spectacular fashion.
FRED He had, only a few nights before, dropped a packet on the pier at Bognor Regis.
JAKE Fishing for tiddlers.
FRED His casino life had long been a lost horizon.
JAKE The silver pail was empty.
FRED As was the gold.
JAKE Nary an emerald.
FRED Nary a gem.
JAKE Gemless in Wall Street –
FRED To the bank with fuck-all.
JAKE Yes – it must and will be said – the speech my father gave at that trustees meeting on that wonderfully soft summer morning in the Cotswolds all those years ago was the speech either of a mountebank – a child – a shyster – a fool – a villain –
FRED Or a saint.
MARIA to them, JAKE stands.
MARIA Do you remember me? I was your mother’s best friend. You’re both so tall. I remember you when you were little boys. And Bridget of course. I once took you all to the Zoo, with your father. We had tea. Do you remember? I used to come to tea, with your mother. We drank so much tea in those days! My three are all in terribly good form. Sarah’s doing marvellously well and Lucien’s thriving at the Consulate and as for Susannah, there’s no stopping her. But don’t you remember the word games we all used to play? Then we’d walk across the Common. That’s where we met Ralph. He was refereeing a football match. He did it, oh I don’t know, with such aplomb, such command. Your mother and I were so … impressed. He was always ahead of the game. He knew where the ball was going before it was kicked. Osmosis. I think that’s the word. He’s still as osmotic as anyone I’ve ever come across. Much more so, of course. Most people have no osmotic quality whatsoever. But of course in those days – I won’t deny it – I had a great affection for your father. And so had your mother – for your father. Your father possessed little in the way of osmosis but nor did he hide his blushes under a barrel. I mean he wasn’t a pretender, he didn’t waste precious time. And how he danced. How he danced. One of the great waltzers. An elegance and grace long gone. A firmness and authority so seldom encountered. And he looked you directly in the eye. Unwavering. As he swirled you across the floor. A rare gift. But I was young in those days. So was your mother. Your mother was marvellously young and quickening every moment. I – I must say – particularly when I saw your mother being swirled ac
ross the floor by your father – felt buds breaking out all over the place. I thought I’d go mad.
ANDY’s room. ANDY and BEL.
ANDY I’ll tell you something about me. I sweated over a hot desk all my working life and nobody ever found a flaw in my working procedures. Nobody ever uncovered the slightest hint of negligence or misdemeanour. Never. I was an inspiration to others. I inspired the young men and women down from here and down from there. I inspired them to put their shoulders to the wheel and their noses to the grindstone and to keep faith at all costs with the structure which after all ensured the ordered government of all our lives, which took perfect care of us, which held us to its bosom, as it were. I was a first-class civil servant. I was admired and respected. I do not say I was loved. I didn’t want to be loved. Love is an attribute no civil servant worth his salt would give house room to. It’s redundant. An excrescence. No no, I’ll tell you what I was. I was an envied and feared force in the temples of the just.
BEL But you never swore in the office?
ANDY I would never use obscene language in the office. Certainly not. I kept my obscene language for the home, where it belongs.
Pause.
Oh there’s something I forgot to tell you. I bumped into Maria the other day, the day before I was stricken. She invited me back to her flat for a slice of plum duff. I said to her, If you have thighs prepare to bare them now.
The Short Plays of Harold Pinter Page 39