ROSA
Don’t worry about the car. I’ll fetch it later for you. (pause) Wasn’t Auntie Ann subjected to some similar filthy performance? How did she take it? (pause) In the war?
WIFE
In the war. (pause) Oh yes, I remember, it was in the blackout, on her way home. You had to feel your way along, almost, then. She said she could tell there was someone in this doorway, and as she approached he shone his torch on himself (pause) down there.
JERRY
Ah! Hence the origin of the term ‘flasher’!
WIFE
She just ran and ran. Then she bumped into a policeman who asked her what was wrong. When she told him, he said “That’s him I’m after!” and ran off. When Ann told us about it, your father asked her why she hadn’t hit it with her umbrella, but how could she, it was pouring with rain at the time.
HUSBAND is slowly turning the calendar back from 16: 15-14-13-12, one digit at a time. The two women stop to watch him.
HUSBAND
You mustn’t think I condone his action, or approve of it: no one really approves of conduct which is at variance with his own behaviour. . .
JERRY
Epigrams now!
HUSBAND
I myself don’t need to expose myself to elderly women in cemeteries. It’s not something which would give me either pleasure or profit. (pause) The only remotely similar incident I can recall gave me a great deal of embarrassment. I was attending a conference in Moscow at the time, and the sole of my shoe became unstitched along one seam. The weather was inclement, and I’d brought only one pair of shoes with me. I therefore went to the first shoe repairers’ I came to and attempted to communicate my need to the lady behind the counter by hopping on one foot and pointing to the damaged shoe. But far from understanding my problem, she appeared outraged, and went to the back of the shop and fetched her husband. He was even bigger than she was. Again I did my little mime, hopping and pointing. The husband also reacted with anger, and then himself performed a little mime to indicate to me that all this time my flies had been undone.
JERRY roars with laughter, enacts his own version of the mime.
JERRY
I see it! I can see it!
HUSBAND returns to rewinding calendar: 11-10-9-8-7.
WIFE
He’s never been to Moscow!
ROSA
Where was your interpreter? The Russians never let you out without an interpreter!
HUSBAND
You shouldn’t believe all you read in the newspapers. Or what the Foreign Office tells you before they let you go. They put the fear of god into you about spying and being spied upon. Quite unnecessarily, in the vast majority of cases. It stops one having ordinary. . . .
Telephone rings. WIFE is nearest, and answers it. HUSBAND carefully turns back the calendar again: 6-5-4.
WIFE
611 1234. (pause) Yes. (looks distressed) It’s a woman, for you.
HUSBAND (takes phone)
Yes. (pause) No, I’m on call tonight, standby. No. . .(pause) Of course, of course. I’ll phone you tomorrow. (pause) I said I’ll phone you tomorrow! Lunch time. About lunch time.
HUSBAND puts down phone, goes back to calendar: reverses direction of movement 4-5, then stops.
HUSBAND
Yes, the Foreign Office must imagine half the Russian people are trained linguists who sit up listening to tapes of the conversations of their foreign visitors. I couldn’t even have an ordinary, simple friendly relationship with my interpreter. Though she was a pleasant enough girl. The Foreign Office had warned me she would as a matter of course be reporting everything I did and said back to her superiors, to them, whoever they were.
It should be obvious by now that long speeches by HUSBAND are something of a rarity, an occasion: hence the others listen to him at least out of curiosity; and he has a certain authority.
HUSBAND
What she had to report I can’t think. Though there might have been one thing. We were in the south, at a city called Tbilisi, in Georgia. Shortly after she’d seen me to my hotel room I was aware of a painful irritation in my right eye. It had happened before, and I knew that if I couldn’t remove it myself within a few minutes then it had to have expert attention. I couldn’t remove it. And this is where the dilemma began. I’d been told that they barely spoke Russian at reception, let alone English. And of course I knew no Georgian, which is a sort of Turkish. So I was faced with the prospect of presenting myself at my interpreter’s bedroom door and saying I had something in my eye. She couldn’t fail to take this as the crudest of advances. I’d been warned by the Foreign Office in the most solemn way about blackmail in regard to sexual indiscretions, you see. And everything about the girl seemed to fit, if she had been put up to something. That is, she wasn’t a raving beauty, or I might have been suspicious. Nor was she ugly, or obviously I wouldn’t have been tempted. She was just a nice, ordinary, pleasant sweet girl, and of course I thought: That’s just what they’d do! You see now what I mean about poisoning relationships before they even start?
ROSA
I don’t see how it would be possible to blackmail you. Nothing anyone told me about you, however bad it was, could possibly lower my opinion of you!
JERRY
But what did you do? (pause) About the thing in your eye?
HUSBAND
Well, there was a further complication in that I didn’t know the number of my interpreter’s bedroom. All I knew was the direction she’d seemed to be taking when she left me. So I would have had to have gone along the corridor knocking at every door until I found her. You can imagine how I regarded that prospect!
ROSA
No.
JERRY
But you’re so good at mime. . . .
HUSBAND
I sat down and shut my eyes to think about the situation, and suddenly noticed that the pain was eased greatly when my eye was shut. So I therefore decided to try to get to sleep. (pause) And fortunately I did, fairly easily.
JERRY
Is that all?
HUSBAND
Next day I told her about it, and she arranged for me to see one of their top eye men. It was a tiny sliver of glass.
JERRY
No, I mean. . . .
WIFE
But he’s never been to Russia! He’s never been there!
HUSBAND touches the knob of the calendar, pauses, then twirls it sharply. The calendar goes quickly through 5-4-3-2-1 and comes to rest at 0. The bizarreness of a calendar with 0 on it should not go unremarked.
WIFE
I’d have known if he’d been to Russia! (pause) Sometimes he frightens me!
WIFE is clearly very distressed again.
ROSA stands up, goes directly to her father.
ROSA
Sometimes I think the things we’re frightened of are more frightened of us!
HUSBAND
Like cancer, for instance? Like cancer?
ROSA turns back to her mother.
ROSA
Mother, if I go to fetch the car now, will you be all right? I’ll take a taxi, so I shouldn’t be more than half an hour.
WIFE nods; clearly she is not all right, but ROSA staying will not make her any better. ROSA turns to go. HUSBAND restrains her by her arm at the door.
HUSBAND
If it is all chaos, then any attempt to understand is just useless. Don’t you see? Pointless! Or even if it only seems to be chaos, then trying to rationalise about it is just so much wasted effort! Wasted.
ROSA ignores him, removes his hand from her arm distastefully.
ROSA
Mother, do you still leave the car keys under the front seat?
WIFE looks up, nods. Exit ROSA.
JERRY
She’s still trying to win the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award for Courage and Initiative.
WIFE (slowly)
Sometimes I feel like. . .a spectator of my own life. . .outside. . .you know?
JERRY
comes over, sits down besides his mother, comforts her.
JERRY
Yes, yes. (pause) Now, what did he say, mummy?
WIFE
Who?
JERRY
The flasher, mummy. The nasty man.
WIFE
Never you mind, darling. Mummy protect you from nasty men. Don’t you bother your little head about such things. . . .My baby. . . .
HUSBAND
My mother said. . . .
JERRY
Your mother!
HUSBAND
Your grandmother would. . . .
JERRY (raucously but unjocularly)
My grandmother would be a hundred and thirty-three today if she’d lived!
(sings)
Happy birthday dear Gran,
Happy birthday dear Gran,
Happy birthday dear Granny,
Happy birthday to you!
If she’d lived, of course, if she’d lived!
Close on HUSBAND.
JERRY
And what about Auntie Ann?
HUSBAND
Sue me!
HUSBAND goes over to television set, switches it on, seats himself in front of it.
WIFE has clearly regressed to some earlier stage of her life: her voice is fainter, her eyes partly closed.
WIFE
We never left you alone even for ten minutes, you know. Never. There was always someone there to look after you, someone fully competent. . . .
JERRY
Competent. . . .
WIFE
Fully competent, oh yes, you deserved nothing less, you little darling. I would never grudge paying out to give you the best, the very very best. You do understand that, don’t you?
JERRY has become more and more concerned about the state in which his mother appears to be.
JERRY
Yes, mummy.
WIFE
And whatever happened we always tried to do what we thought was the best for you, for. . . .
The phone begins to ring. JERRY has his arm round WIFE, is too concerned with her to answer. When this becomes clear to HUSBAND, he protestingly gets up.
WIFE (cont.)
. . .your future, that was all we cared about, I could put up with . . . the . . . other . . . things . . . if . . . only.
HUSBAND (on phone)
Yes. (pause) When? (pause).
JERRY
She’s ill!
WIFE may be going through the early stages of a heart attack; or she may be faking in order to gain sympathy: it is difficult to determine which.
HUSBAND
I’ll come at once.
HUSBAND puts down phone. JERRY is holding WIFE as they sit together on sofa.
JERRY
She’s ill! Look at her!
HUSBAND
They want me at work now.
JERRY
It’s mummy! It’s your own wife!
HUSBAND
I must go to work now!
JERRY tries to get up: but he dare not for fear of worsening the condition of WIFE. He is reduced to shouting at his father.
JERRY
Bastard! Bastard!
Exit HUSBAND. Pause. The front door bangs.
JERRY
Bastard!
OPERATING THEATRE
A pair of hands being washed in a hand basin; pull back to show arms; the forearm turns off the long lever tap. Come up to see that it is HUSBAND with a look of seriousness, dedication on his face which he has not shown before so far.
A NURSE hovers behind HUSBAND with gown, mask, and so on. As she prepares him for the operation. . . .
HUSBAND (voice over)
Yes, it is a terrible word. A frightening word. . .
Cut to file/case history: pick out key words in montage of notes, charts, x-rays: (1) terminal carcinoma (2) Dr. Noone (3) urgent. The one BCU of the patient concerned: a woman about sixty, worried, but with an intelligent, open face.
HUSBAND (voice over)
. . . but something like five times as many people are cured of cancer as die of it. . . .
HUSBAND’s voice is infinitely concerned, compassionate, reassuring: in as many ways as possible his manner is diametrically different from his earlier behaviour.
HUSBAND (voice over)
. . . I’ve had people sent to me who had been told “No one can save you.” And I’ve pointed out to them that if you take away the space between ‘no’ and ‘one’, then it spells my name. No one can save you, Noone can save you, d’you see?
BCU patient’s face: hesitantly smiles, relieved, thankful, admiring, and so on.
BCU NOONE’s face: tense, dedicated. The mask is placed over the lower half of the face.
An abdomen with broad, coloured felt-tip marks on it. A scalpel makes a precise, large incision appropriately.
BCU NOONE’s face: concentration, compassion.
Montage of operating theatre details, bringing out that this man who has been seen behaving so cruelly, abominably, as an object of hatred, a failure socially and as a father, is in fact worthy of admiration and respect for the one thing at which he is superbly skilful and compassionate.
BCU NOONE’s eyes: the concern, the care.
Fade in Philips B07148: Billie Holiday/Teddy Wilson “When You’re Smiling”: vocal lasts for 40 seconds for end credits.
Compressor
EDITORS’ NOTE
Compressor is one of the most mysterious of Johnson’s later works. The manuscript is dated May 1972, but it is not known who – if anyone – commissioned this play for television. Possibly it was intended as another contribution to the BBC’s Thirty Minute Theatre series. It includes some speeches originally written for One Sodding Thing After Another, and also some material which was shortly afterwards incorporated into Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry.
CHARACTERS
PRIVATE*
SLEEPER
PORTER
WOMAN SQUASH PLAYER ONE
WOMAN SQUASH PLAYER TWO
*This part was written with the actor WILLIAM HOYLAND in mind.
Tight on a Matchbox model saloon car:
a white, battered Austin 1100.
SUPERIMPOSE title:
COMPRESSOR
Hand comes into shot, pushes car along
Car noises, starting and moving off,
red line as if along road. Track with it,
made vocally over by PRIVATE.
widening slightly to show the red line is
painted on a polished woodblock floor.
Widen further to show arm of hand is in
battledress sleeve; hold; continue
tracking along red line with car.
SLEEPER: (vo) You know we’ve always
said there were no new ideas? (pause)
Nothing new? (pause) Ever? (longer pause)
Continue tracking as before, without
response or reaction.
Car reaches a tee junction on red lines:
from the ‘road’ at right angles suddenly
appears a large road tanker (same scale
Matchbox model) propelled by the other
hand, also in battledress sleeve. The
SLEEPER: (vo) Well, I think I’ve had a
tanker is halfway across the road,
new idea! (pause) Check me!
turning into the direction of the 1100,
when the latter is sent hurtling into it.
Hands arrange the accident more
satisfactorily: that is, tanker jack-knifed,
1100 on its side and nearer tanker than it
finished up after being violently pushed.
Widen to show that the man ‘playing’
with the two model vehicles is a
PRIVATE soldier, dressed in his ‘best’ or
‘walking-out’ uniform of circa 1945. He
is in his mid-20s. We do not yet see his
face, as camera is looking down and
from behind.
Those who play the game may recognise
the red line markings as being those of a
squash court: to others there is no
indication of the place yet.
Widen as PRIVATE reaches out to an
SLEEPER: (vo) After some unspecified
old plumber’s carpet toolbag, takes out a
number of years, he decides to change
model motorcycle and rider, returns to
the rules of the game. For this purpose
point at which 1100 started and sets off
he feels it necessary to split himself into
guiding motorcycle fast in same
three. One part stays wherever it is, but
direction. Just before the motorcycle is
sends the second part down to insert a
about to hit the 1100/tanker pileup, he
bun in the oven of a virgin living at the
stops:
eastern . . .
PRIVATE: Damn!
PRIVATE lifts off motorcycle, reaches
SLEEPER: (vo). . . end of the
Well Done God! Page 25