PRIVATE: D’you know the next year
that will happen? (pause) Eh? The next
year you’ll be able to read the date
upside down as well as right way up?
SLEEPER: (bored) No.
SLEEPER moves away towards front
wall and lies down prone on his back,
parallel with the left sidewall.
PRIVATE: I’ll tell you, then, shall I?
(pause) You could work it out, though, if
you wanted to. (pause) It’s six thousand
and nine. Six thousand and nine! You
could guess there’d be sixes and nines
and noughts in it, couldn’t you?
The dolphin is still leaping
unsuccessfully on the film loop; Skylon
remains projected by slide projector.
PRIVATE: (discouraged) The stupidest
thing you can do is to behave as though
you were right.
Hold.
Then PRIVATE reverses his role,
imitates the bearing of a high-ranking
officer, maintains it as he goes over to
look down at SLEEPER and asks:
PRIVATE: (pompously) Why did you
join the Army?
SLEEPER: (youthful persona: another
reversal of roles) Well, because I chose
to sir, I admit that. I could have done all
sorts of things when the moment came to
choose, I suppose, when I left school,
that is. I could have tried to be all sorts
of other things, I knew that, sir. And
when I think of it I could have done
something pretty exciting, too, knowing
what I now know about myself and the
way I am good at certain things. But,
well sir, when I left school it seemed the
best thing open to me to do, joining the
Army. I think we always choose the best
of the choices we think are available to
us, don’t you agree, sir?
PRIVATE: That’s not saying very much,
is it?
SLEEPER: Oh, I don’t mean it always
turns out to have been the best choice,
sir. But it seems so at the moment you
have to make the decision. Well, when I
had to make the choice about what to do
for the next few years, the Army seemed
the best thing. You know how when
you’re young your thoughts are
dominated by sex, completely dominated
— well, mine were, sir, I don’t know
about everyone, though my mates
seemed to think of nothing else as well,
so there must be something in it. But not
many people, especially as they get
older, seem to realise it, or remember it.
When you’re seventeen or so you can be
so eaten up with sex that it seems to
affect everything you do. Certainly that’s
how it was with me — I could see that
girls felt proud to be seen out with a man
in uniform, of being out with a soldier,
sir, which meant you were a man, a real
man. And that’s really why I made the
decision, sir, stupid as it may sound now.
PRIVATE: But you stuck by it, eh?
SLEEPER: Oh yes, I made the best of it,
sir, and I found that in doing that I
actually got something better. Do you
find that happens, sir? It’s as though if
you expect nothing, then anything you
do get is a bonus. And I found after a
while I actually liked the limitations, the
regularity of everything, even the
discipline. When your choices are
limited, so are your responsibilities,
aren’t they sir? For a long while the only
thing irregular about my life has been
my bowel movements. Funny that, isn’t
it, sir? As though some part of me had to
revolt against the routine!
PRIVATE suddenly changes role to that
of a doctor: whips out stethoscope,
listens to SLEEPER’s stomach.
PRIVATE: (serious) Yes.
(pause) Yes. (pause) I think you’ve got a
touch of everything. (pause) Needles! I
see needles! Darning needles! (pause)
Two of them! (pause) At least two!
(then, as an aside, directly to camera)
What we call the Munchausen
Syndrome. Patients who deliberately
swallow objects so that they can get
themselves looked after in hospital. He
probably wrapped the needles in cotton
wool to get them down him. But we
don’t know which sort he is yet. Yet.
There’s two sorts, you see. One kind are
masochists who actually want to undergo
a serious abdominal operation. The other
kind merely want a rest in bed at the
expense of the public, and they almost
always make a run for it as soon as
surgery is mentioned. (fiendishly) But
some of them we catch, of course; and
operate!
SLEEPER stands; rheumatically. He has
SLEEPER: You don’t help. (pause) Does
reverted to role as at start of play.
it mean nothing to you, the old cliché,
you’ll be like me one day?
PRIVATE too now reverts to first role.
PRIVATE: It’s exactly because I’m so
aware I shall be something like you one
day that I’m enjoying not being like you
now!
SLEEPER rubs his scalp, removing his
nightcap to do so.
SLEEPER: (almost to himself) Bald as a
badger.
PRIVATE: Badgers aren’t bald.
SLEEPER: Bald as a badger.
PRIVATE: Your trouble’s alliteration.
SLEEPER: One of them, one of them.
SLEEPER ‘pulls himself together’,
moves purposefully towards the door in
back wall, collecting tea tray as he goes:
the tea undrunk.
PRIVATE: (mockingly, with antique
flourish) Godspeed!
SLEEPER: Has he? That accounts for
the atrocious weather we’ve been
having.
SLEEPER opens door. Immediately,
Express noise as before, sharply.
PORTER enters as before, hands plug
lead in to SLEEPER, takes tray in other
hand, shuts door.
Sound off.
SLEEPER drops plug lead on floor
unplugs his own lead, goes over to his
slide projector and begins to pack it
away.
PRIVATE goes over to his projector,
begins to pack it away.
While they do so:
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: The Duel
of Dictionary Words.
Superimpose each of the following
captions over recipient’s appropriate
reaction.
SLEEPER: (venomously) Gasconnade!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION:
Gasconnade equals Boaster
(pause)
PRIVATE: (surprised, then hitting back)
Saurian!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Saurian
equals reptile.
(pause)
SLEEPER: Dacoit!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Dacoit
equals thief.
(pause)
PRIVATE: Android!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Android
equals man-like automaton.<
br />
(pause)
SLEEPER: Magma!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Magma
equals dregs.
(pause)
PRIVATE: Palterer!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Palterer
equals equivocator, etc. etc.
(pause)
SLEEPER: Androgyne!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Androgyne
equals hermaphrodite.
(pause)
PRIVATE: Hermaphrodite!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION:
Hermaphrodite equals androgyne.
(pause)
PRIVATE: Roinish coenobite!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Roinish
coenobite equals scabby monk.
(pause)
PRIVATE: Eccrisis!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Eccrisis
equals an excretion.
(pause)
SLEEPER: (triumphantly — role-
changing again) Coprolite!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Coprolite
equals fossil turd.
PRIVATE opens mouth, hesitates,
closes it, defeated.
SLEEPER: (pressing home) Coprolite,
coprolite!
SUPERIMPOSE CAPTION: Coprolite,
coprolite! equals fossil turd, fossil turd!
PRIVATE is still for a long pause,
thinking.
Then he suddenly leaps up and dances a
long, weird dance round SLEEPER
(actor to improvise).
SLEEPER relaxes in his triumph,
ignoring PRIVATE.
PRIVATE finally stops dancing, goes
PRIVATE: You know, in the twenties it
over to his carpet bag and places
was said that anyone in the second half
projector inside it.
of this century who could not use a
typewriter and a camera would be a new
sort of illiterate!
SLEEPER laughs; PRIVATE joins in
almost immediately; until they are both
laughing immoderately.
PRIVATE stops; at length.
PRIVATE: Ah well, back to work.
PRIVATE takes out surveyor’s tape
measure from bag, begins measuring the
squash court. Business with tape pulling
each end in turns; snapping back into
case; ad lib.
SLEEPER watches incuriously.
When PRIVATE does succeed in
measuring a dimension he writes it in
large black felt-tip characters on white
side wall right.
SLEEPER: (straight to camera)
Streamers, we call them, I don’t know
why. I’ve known them stay two, even
three years in one place, set up a home,
garden, a kid. Then off they go. And
when the poor girl tries to check, they
can’t find a trace of him before she knew
him, either. Streamers. What do you say
to the kid? You say, of course, now
you’re a child and can understand: you
know you were once a baby, and now
you’re a child? Well, next you’ll be a
teenager, then a girl, then a woman,
perhaps a mother, then a matron, then a
lady, then an old lady, and then you’ll be
dead, you’ll make a lovely corpse,
perhaps, if all goes well.
SLEEPER goes across to front wall,
starts writing with a large red felt-tip
the following slogans:
1) Never is the most terrible word.
2) I’m not talking metaphors, I mean the
lot!
3) Your life has been bought: steal it!
4) One can learn lessons from anything,
Well Done God! Page 27