The Short Plays of Harold Pinter
Page 46
SUKI Aren’t you pushing the tits bit a bit far?
RUSSELL Me? I thought you did that.
Pause.
LAMBERT Be careful. You’re talking to your wife.
MATT Have some respect, mate.
LAMBERT Have respect. That’s all we ask.
MATT It’s not much to ask.
LAMBERT But it’s crucial.
Pause.
RUSSELL So how is the strategic consultancy business these days?
LAMBERT Very good, old boy. Very good.
MATT Very good. We’re at the receiving end of some of the best tea in China.
RICHARD and SONIA come to the table with a magnum of champagne, the WAITER with a tray of glasses. Everyone gasps.
RICHARD To celebrate a treasured wedding anniversary.
MATT looks at the label on the bottle.
MATT That’s the best of the best.
The bottle opens. RICHARD pours.
LAMBERT And may the best man win!
JULIE The woman always wins.
PRUE Always.
SUKI That’s really good news.
PRUE The woman always wins.
RICHARD and SONIA raise their glasses.
RICHARD To the happy couple. God bless. God bless you all.
EVERYONE Cheers. Cheers …
MATT What a wonderful restaurant this is.
SONIA Well, we do care. I will say that. We care. That’s the point. Don’t we?
RICHARD Yes. We do care. We care about the welfare of our clientele. I will say that.
LAMBERT stands and goes to them.
LAMBERT What you say means so much to me. Let me give you a cuddle.
He cuddles RICHARD.
And let me give you a cuddle.
He cuddles SONIA.
This is so totally rare, you see. None of this normally happens. People normally – you know – people normally are so distant from each other. That’s what I’ve found. Take a given bloke – this given bloke doesn’t know that another given bloke exists. It goes down through history, doesn’t it?
MATT It does.
LAMBERT One bloke doesn’t know that another bloke exists. Generally speaking. I’ve often noticed.
SONIA (to JULIE and PRUE) I’m so touched that you’re sisters. I had a sister. But she married a foreigner and I haven’t seen her since.
PRUE Some foreigners are all right.
SONIA Oh I think foreigners are charming. Most people in this restaurant tonight are foreigners. My sister’s husband had a lot of charm but he also had an enormous moustache. I had to kiss him at the wedding. I can’t describe how awful it was. I’ve got such soft skin, you see.
WAITER Do you mind if I interject?
RICHARD I’m sorry?
WAITER Do you mind if I make an interjection?
RICHARD What on earth do you mean?
WAITER Well, it’s just that I heard all these people talking about the Austro-Hungarian Empire a little while ago and I wondered if they’d ever heard about my grandfather. He was an incredibly close friend of the Archduke himself and he once had a cup of tea with Benito Mussolini. They all played poker together, Winston Churchill included. The funny thing about my grandfather was that the palms of his hands always seemed to be burning. But his eyes were elsewhere. He had a really strange life. He was in love, he told me, once, with the woman who turned out to be my grandmother, but he lost her somewhere. She disappeared, I think, in a sandstorm. In the desert. My grandfather was everything men aspired to be in those days. He was tall, dark and handsome. He was full of good will. He’d even give a cripple with no legs crawling on his belly through the slush and mud of a country lane a helping hand. He’d lift him up, he’d show him his way, he’d point him in the right direction. He was like Jesus Christ in that respect. And he was gregarious. He loved the society of his fellows, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Igor Stravinsky, Picasso, Ezra Pound, Bertholt Brecht, Don Bradman, the Beverley Sisters, the Inkspots, Franz Kafka and the Three Stooges. He knew these people where they were isolated, where they were alone, where they fought against savage and pitiless odds, where they suffered vast wounds to their bodies, their bellies, their legs, their trunks, their eyes, their throats, their breasts, their balls –
LAMBERT (standing) Well, Richard – what a great dinner!
RICHARD I’m so glad.
LAMBERT opens his wallet and unpeels fifty-pound notes. He gives two to RICHARD.
LAMBERT This is for you.
RICHARD No, no really –
LAMBERT No no, this is for you. (To SONIA.) And this is for you.
SONIA Oh, no please –
LAMBERT dangles the notes in front of her cleavage.
LAMBERT Shall I put them down here?
SONIA giggles.
No I’ll tell you what – you wearing suspenders?
SONIA giggles.
Stick them in your suspenders. (To WAITER.) Here you are son. Mind how you go.
Puts a note into his pocket.
Great dinner. Great restaurant. Best in the country.
MATT Best in the world I’d say.
LAMBERT Exactly. (To RICHARD.) I’m taking their bill.
RUSSELL No, no you can’t –
LAMBERT It’s my wedding anniversary! Right? (To RICHARD.) Send me their bill.
JULIE And his.
LAMBERT Send me both bills. Anyway …
He embraces SUKI.
It’s for old times’ sake as well, right?
SUKI Right.
RICHARD See you again soon?
MATT Absolutely.
SONIA See you again soon.
PRUE Absolutely.
SONIA Next celebration?
JULIE Absolutely.
LAMBERT Plenty of celebrations to come. Rest assured.
MATT Plenty to celebrate.
LAMBERT Dead right.
MATT slaps his thighs.
MATT Like – who’s in front? Who’s in front?
LAMBERT joins in the song, slapping his thighs in time with MATT.
LAMBERT and MATT Who’s in front?
Who’s in front?
LAMBERT Get out the bloody way
You silly old cunt!
LAMBERT and MATT laugh.
SUKI and RUSSELL go to their table to collect handbag and jacket, etc.
SUKI How sweet of him to take the bill, wasn’t it?
RUSSELL He must have been very fond of you.
SUKI Oh he wasn’t all that fond of me really. He just liked my … oh … you know …
RUSSELL Your what?
SUKI Oh … my … you know …
LAMBERT Fabulous evening.
JULIE Fabulous.
RICHARD See you soon then.
SONIA See you soon.
MATT I’ll be here for breakfast tomorrow morning.
SONIA Excellent!
PRUE See you soon.
SONIA See you soon.
JULIE Lovely to see you.
SONIA See you soon I hope.
RUSSELL See you soon.
SUKI See you soon.
They drift off.
JULIE (off) So lovely to meet you.
SUKI (off) Lovely to meet you.
Silence.
The WAITER stands alone.
WAITER When I was a boy my grandfather used to take me to the edge of the cliffs and we’d look out to sea. He bought me a telescope. I don’t think they have telescopes any more. I used to look through this telescope and sometimes I’d see a boat. The boat would grow bigger through the telescopic lens. Sometimes I’d see people on the boat. A man, sometimes, and a woman, or sometimes two men. The sea glistened.
My grandfather introduced me to the mystery of life and I’m still in the middle of it. I can’t find the door to get out. My grandfather got out of it. He got right out of it. He left it behind him and he didn’t look back.
He got that absolutely right.
And I’d like to make one further interjection.
He stands still.
Slow fade.
About the Author
Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 and they married in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime’s achievement in literature. In 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime’s achievement in theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and, in the same year, the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry and the Franz Kafka Award (Prague). In 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize and, in 2007, the highest French honour, the Légion d’honneur. He died in December 2008.
By the Same Author
plays
ASHES TO ASHES
BETRAYAL
THE CARETAKER
CELEBRATION and THE ROOM
THE COLLECTION and THE LOVER
THE HOMECOMING
THE HOTHOUSE
LANDSCAPE and SILENCE
MOONLIGHT
MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE
NO MAN’S LAND
OLD TIMES
ONE FOR THE ROAD
OTHER PLACES
(A Kind of Alaska, Victoria Station, Family Voices)
PARTY TIME
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST (with Di Trevis)
THE ROOM and THE DUMB WAITER
A SLIGHT ACHE AND OTHER PLAYS
TEA PARTY AND OTHER PLAYS
THE PRES AND AN OFFICER
PLAYS ONE
(The Birthday Party, The Room, The Dumb Waiter, A Slight Ache, The Hothouse, A Night Out, The Black and White, The Examination)
PLAYS TWO
(The Caretaker, The Dwarfs, The Collection, The Lover, Night School, Trouble in the Works, The Black and White, Request Stop, Last to Go, Special Offer)
PLAYS THREE
(The Homecoming, Tea Party, The Basement, Landscape, Silence, Night, That’s Your Trouble, That’s All, Applicant, Interview, Dialogue for Three, Tea Party (short story), Old Times, No Man’s Land)
PLAYS FOUR
(Betrayal, Monologue, One for the Road, Mountain Language, Family Voices, A Kind of Alaska, Victoria Station, Precisely, The New World Order, Party Time, Moonlight, Ashes to Ashes, Celebration, Three Sketches)
screenplays
HAROLD PINTER COLLECTED SCREENPLAYS ONE
(The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, Accident, The Last Tycoon, Langrishe, Go Down)
HAROLD PINTER COLLECTED SCREENPLAYS TWO
(The Go-Between, The Proust Screenplay, Victory, Turtle Diary, Reunion)
HAROLD PINTER COLLECTED SCREENPLAYS THREE
(The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Heat of the Day, The Comfort of Strangers, The Trial, The Dreaming Child)
prose, poetry and politics
COLLECTED POEMS AND PROSE
THE DWARFS (a novel)
100 POEMS BY 100 POETS (an anthology)
99 POEMS IN TRANSLATION (an anthology)
WAR
VARIOUS VOICES: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948–2008
Copyright
First published in this collection in 2016
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This collection ©FPinter Limited and Fraser52 Limited, 2018
All rights reserved
Harold Pinter is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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ISBN 978–0–571–34992–0