by Muriel Spark
MRS. S. Let me know when you’ve worked it out because of the lunch.
Goes out.
CATHERINE. You mustn’t leave, Leonora. I apologise.
LEONORA. I reject your apology.
CATHERINE. Did you come down here in the night and ask Charlie to give you a child?
LEONORA. No.
CATHERINE. He says you did.
LEONORA. He must have had a dream. It’s very sensational. I crave to hear more.
CATHERINE. Leonora, sometimes you bring out the very worst in me.
LEONORA. I think you must be right.
CATHERINE. Charlie is convinced that it happened. He thinks you must be suffering from a nervous disorder. It was embarrassing for Charlie.
LEONORA. It’s embarrassing for me.
MRS. S. puts her head round the door.
MRS. S. Daphne’s boy friend on the ’phone. Coming this afternoon.
CATHERINE. Did he want to speak to me?
MRS. S. No, he wanted not to speak to you.
(Withdraws.)
CATHERINE. Daphne’s boy friend is rather shy. He’s called Charlie and we call him young Charlie to distinguish him from Charlie.
LEONORA. What does he do?
CATHERINE. Nuclear physics. He’s just finished his postgraduate course and got a job, it’s very hush-hush.
LEONORA. Is it a serious affair?
CATHERINE. I incline to think so. There have been several. But of course she must wait till she’s got her degree.
LEONORA. That would be a pity. She ought to get married soon.
CATHERINE. You spoke very differently when I got married to Charlie. You opposed it.
LEONORA. You were a first-rate scholar. Daphne is no scholar at all. If she’s in love with the man, she’ll have a settled married life. She might take a job in a grammar school. There will be no conflict, as there is in your case.
CATHERINE. I have a satisfactory married life as married lives go. You know nothing of married life.
LEONORA. What about your intellectual life?
CATHERINE. It’s satisfied by teaching at the Grammar School.
LEONORA. I don’t believe it.
CATHERINE. Why not?
LEONORA. When you come up to visit me in college you have a hankering look. I feel sorry for you at those times. I think perhaps it stabs you — the knowledge that you had it in you to become a distinguished scholar — and have become merely the mother of an average student and the wife of a second-class scholar.
CATHERINE. You needn’t feel sorry for me. Charlie’s one of the best economists in the country.
LEONORA. That doesn’t prove him to be a first-class one.
CATHERINE. Your standards were always too high, Leonora. Reality forces one to lower one’s standards. In your remote life you know nothing of reality.
LEONORA. I think you hanker after my remote life. I think you desire a form of reality where your standards can be high without discomfort.
CATHERINE. I might return to scholarship one day.
LEONORA. After all these years? A scholar needs continuity, Catherine.
CATHERINE. I haven’t been entirely idle for all these years. I could pick up the threads if I should wish.
LEONORA. You need more than the wish, you need the capacity.
CATHERINE. What makes you think I haven’t got the capacity?
LEONORA. Your manner and expression.
CATHERINE. If I sat down to study a subject, Leonora, I would have a studious look. Naturally I don’t look the scholar when I’m running the house and running Charlie and correcting the fourth-form homework.
LEONORA. A woman of intellectual capacity has a certain manner and expression all the time. They are the manner and expression of detachment, and you can’t pick them up overnight.
CATHERINE. I wouldn’t want to pick them up at all. I like to please men. Do you think it pleases a man when he looks into a woman’s eyes and sees a reflection of the British Museum Reading Room? I don’t envy your expression and your manner.
LEONORA. I think you do. Sometimes you look at me like a jealous woman.
CATHERINE. That’s a curious observation, considering you are so detached. In fact, I only want to know what makes you tick when I look at you.
LEONORA. What conclusion have you reached?
CATHERINE. That you’re in love with something without needing it to love you back. That’s how you look and act. Sometimes it’s terrifying.
LEONORA. And sometimes fascinating.
CATHERINE. Yes … of course I’m attached to you. Don’t you get tired of practising detachment?
LEONORA. I admit sometimes I get tired of being treated as a scholar and a gentleman.
CATHERINE. You ought to have got married, Leonora, if only for the pleasure of pleasing a man. Hundreds of women academics are married these days. They teach in the universities, run their homes, have babies, write books and feed their husbands — I don’t know how they do it all.
LEONORA. I know how they do it all.
CATHERINE. How?
LEONORA. Badly.
MRS. S. comes in.
MRS. S. You got nothing done this morning, Mrs. D. It’s always the same in the holidays when Leonora’s here, you sit arguing the toss and nothing gets done.
CATHERINE. In our way, we’ve been making progress, Mrs. S.
MRS. S. In my way, I’ve been making the beds, Mrs. D.
LEONORA. I made my bed.
MRS. S. You didn’t.
LEONORA. Didn’t I? How very odd. I usually do.
CATHERINE. Perhaps you were a bit distracted this morning, Leonora?
MRS. S. Back to where we started. You better do something.
CATHERINE. What do you want me to do? I don’t feel up to much. Leonora, why did you forget to make your bed?
LEONORA. I have no idea. I’m only an absent-minded professor. You could open my parcel, Catherine, if you want something to do.
CATHERINE. I’m saving it till this afternoon.
MRS. S. Go on. Open it and get it over.
MRS. S. gets down the parcel.
CATHERINE. Can I trust you, Leonora?
LEONORA. What do you mean?
CATHERINE. Is it something insulting?
LEONORA. No.
CATHERINE. Mrs. S., where are the scissors?
LEONORA. Untie it. It’s easy.
CATHERINE. I want scissors. Kindly allow me to organise my own home in my own way. Mrs. S. — scissors, please.
MRS S. They’ll need finding.
Goes out.
LEONORA. The situation between us is very unhealthy, Catherine.
CATHERINE. What do you mean?
LEONORA. I mean that you’re so anxious about my present. I’ve never given you an insulting present. Really, I must leave this house.
CATHERINE. No, Leonora. I don’t want you to go. I’m upset.
MRS. S. comes in with scissors.
It’s so exciting, opening a parcel.
MRS. S. Think it was a bomb, the way you was going on. I suppose it’s a bed-jacket. Now take it easy, Mrs. D.
CATHERINE (holds up nightdress). It’s a nightdress. A beautiful transparent feminine honeymoon nightdress.
MRS. S. That’s torn it. Take a seat, Mrs. D.
LEONORA. If you don’t like it, I’ll keep it for myself and buy you something else.
CATHERINE. A sexy little, seductive little … Thank you, Leonora. You always give me something suitable for bed. Well, I suppose one spends a lot of one’s life in bed, so it’s quite a good idea. Nobody ever gives me a book, for instance, because it wouldn’t be sensible. They know very well I haven’t got time to read any book, except classics prescribed for the fourth form, even if I had the capacity to read one. I suppose you realise, Leonora, that if I had cared to make a career of scholarship I would have been a far better palaeographist than you are a classicist.
MRS. S. Leonora, if you done this on purpose, you’ll get a judgmen
t on you.
LEONORA. Catherine, I’m appalled. Tell me what book you would like to have and give me back the nightdress. It’s the sort of thing I like to wear myself.
CATHERINE (tossing the nightdress on top of the box of old clothes). You may add it to your niece’s trousseau, Mrs. S.
MRS. S. There’s a way to give, Mrs. D., and a way not to give. However, I make allowance for the conflict raging at present within you between your Ph.D. that was and the nuptial significance of the nightie in question.
LEONORA. This is a pathetic fuss, Catherine. I didn’t realise you were quite so touchy on the subject. You should have a holiday.
CATHERINE, I should never have got married, Leonora. You were right. It was a mistake.
LEONORA. You could not have stood a celibate life. You would always have been divided.
CATHERINE. I’ll tell you where I made the mistake. Marriage — yes. But I shouldn’t have married into the academic world. Can you imagine what it has felt like, as a scholar, to be the mere chattel of another scholar for all these years?
LEONORA. You exaggerate. Charlie doesn’t treat you like a chattel. You’ve had a very pleasant life.
CATHERINE. I shouldn’t have married Charlie. In some ways it was unfair to Charlie. I should have married a stockbroker. I should have married a bank manager, or a butcher or a baker. I had to have my sex, and my child, but I should have married someone who wouldn’t eat up my brain, my mind. I should have married an electrician, a plumber. I should have married a hulking great LORRY DRIVER.
Enter DAPHNE followed by CHARLIE BROWN, hulking great lorry driver.
DAPHNE. Hallo, Mother. I got a lift on a lorry. I’ve asked the driver in for a cup of tea.
CATHERINE. Oh !
DAPHNE. Let me introduce … what’s your name?
CHARLIE B. Just call me Charlie, we’re all called Charlie.
DAPHNE. Mother, Leonora, this is Charlie. Where’s Mrs. S.? We want a cup of tea, don’t we, Charlie?
CHARLIE B. Lot a books you got.
CATHERINE. Perhaps Charlie would be more comfortable in the kitchen with Mrs. S. She has tea brewing all day long.
DAPHNE. Certainly not. Sit down, Charlie. I’m very grateful to Charlie, he’s saved me a train journey, not to mention the fare, and given me a most amusing morning. Charlie, do tell that story about the professor’s wife you gave a lift to who made a pass at you. I’ll go and get you some of Mrs. S.’s tea. Does anyone else want some?
Exit.
LEONORA. Not on top of that foul coffee.
CATHERINE. We shall try to improve our standards in future.
CHARLIE B. You got a guest house here?
CATHERINE. More or less.
CHARLIE B. Lot of books you got. I got a book at home, might interest you. LEONORA. Goodness, the time! I have to be off.
CATHERINE. Leonora, you’re not leaving?
LEONORA. I’m only going to the British Museum.
CATHERINE. What are you doing at the British Museum?
LEONORA. Research.
DAPHNE comes in with CHARLIE BROWN’s tea.
DAPHNE. Charlie, it’s my mother’s birthday today. Actually it was last week but we decided to hold it today. She doesn’t look her age, does she?
CHARLIE B. No. (To CATHERINE) You must a been a nice-looking woman.
DAPHNE. I’ve got a present for you in my case, Mother.
CATHERINE. What sort of research are you doing, Leonora?
LEONORA. Assyrian palaeography. I have to be off—
CATHERINE. But that was my subject. It was my subject.
LEONORA. You didn’t exhaust it. I’ve been doing this for two years, I’m writing a short book — only a monograph.
CATHERINE. I don’t see why you can’t stick to Greek. I don’t see why you want to dabble in my subject.
Exit LEONORA.
I’ll leave you to look after Charlie. I’ve got nothing done this morning. Perhaps Charlie needs to be off, if he’s had his tea.
CHARLIE B. No, I’m not in any hurry. Plenty time.
MRS. S. comes in.
MRS. S. You go and unpack your things, Daphne.
DAPHNE. Thanks for the lift, Charlie, anyhow.
Exit.
MRS. S. You finished your tea?
CHARLIE B. Yes thanks.
MRS. S. Well I better clear away, then. It’s gone twelve — I suppose you want to be off.
CHARLIE B. No, I’m in no hurry. If it isn’t your own time you might as well relax. Lot a books. Have they read them all?
MRS. S. They don’t use them for reading, they are educated people, they refer to them. You better get off. The old father might come in and find you.
CHARLIE B. Oh, I’m used to that. Funny sort of guest house, this.
MRS. S. ‘This is the home, situated near Regent’s Park, of the celebrated economist, Charles Delfont and his charming wife and daughter who is at present doing a postgraduate course in sociology at Oxford. Mrs. Delfont, before her marriage a scholar in her own right, told Life and Looks that she has found it perfectly easy to reconcile her capacity for intellectualism with the duties of wife and mother. “After all,” she said with a serene smile, “higher education broadens the horizons, and is especially helpful to married relations when one’s husband is also a bit of an egg-head.” At present she has a job — teaching boys in a grammar school. “It helps to keep the pot boiling,” said Mrs. Delfont, an eminently practical woman in spite of her learned background.’
CHARLIE B. I don’t follow your drift.
MRS. S. It was all in Life and Looks journal.
CHARLIE B. Remarkable memory you got.
MRS. S. If you’d a been here the day that Life and Looks came for the interview you’d a remembered it too. I been here six years. It’s been an education in itself. Nice people. No television.
CHARLIE B. Bit unnatural, that.
MRS. S. They don’t take no notice of natural and unnatural. Experienced people. They get a bit Freudian at times, of course, but it all comes out in the wash. Now you get out of here quick. Annie’s coming this afternoon.
CHARLIE B. Who?
MRS. S. Cousin Annie.
CHARLIE B. That’s funny. I got a sister called Annie.
MRS. S. Our Annie is a person of means, of glamour and also of democratic instincts.
CHARLIE B. I’ll keep that in mind. Ta-ta.
MRS. S. Au revoir.
CURTAIN
END OF SCENE
ACT ONE
SCENE II
THE SAME, IN THE afternoon.
DAPHNE and CHARLIE.
DAPHNE. An enormous scene, just because I gave her a nightdress. It cost thirty-seven and six. She gave it away to Mrs. S. She’ll have to see a psychiatrist.
CHARLIE. You just mind your own business and leave your mother’s neurosis alone. She’s had it as long as I’ve known her, and if it’s good enough for me it’s good enough for you. It’s a damned ridiculous present, in any case, to bring home to your mother. A nightdress!
DAPHNE. It’s a perfectly normal present for a normal woman.
CHARLIE. Yes, but I’m talking about your mother. And remember your grant doesn’t extend to giving birthday presents at the price of thirty-seven and six. It’s got to come out of my pocket, that thirty-seven and six. If you’d got her a book it would have been eighteen and six at the most, less thirty-three and a third per cent discount through the trade. If you’d come to me I could have got you an interesting book for your mother for twelve and fourpence. Plus postage and packing. Tenpence at the outside. Instead of which, what do you do? You sail into some exclusive shop and order a nightdress at thirty-seven and six. If you’d got your mother a book on the other hand, you would have saved me close on twenty-five shillings and your mother a fit. And when you consider the question that the book could have been set off against tax …
DAPHNE. I wish I had normal parents.
CHARLIE. I didn’t have normal parents, why shoul
d you have normal parents? My father was a Tory and my mother believed in God. I couldn’t bring my friends home. You’ve got it easy, my girl, compared with me.
DAPHNE. Your parents sound marvellous to me. I’ve got Charlie Weston coming to tea this afternoon. Suppose he takes it into his head to bring her a nightdress?
CHARLIE. He’s only met her twice. DAPHNE. Yes, but one never knows. And then there would be a scene. And then I could never face Charlie again because he would know the sort of stock I came from.
CHARLIE. You know she doesn’t make scenes in front of strangers, don’t exaggerate.
DAPHNE. She would make a worse scene with us after he’d gone.
CHARLIE. Is he likely to arrive here with a nightdress in his hand? I’m asking you as a girl whose faculty of reasoning I’ve spent a fortune on. If it seems probable to you, who have had the opportunity to observe Weston’s social instincts, that he’s likely to offer his hostess the gift of a nightdress, then I don’t want his sort here.
DAPHNE. I have been over twenty-one for some time, Father.
CHARLIE. So have I. It’s been a heavy responsibility. Have you seen Leonora today by any chance?
DAPHNE. I can choose my own friends. I could leave home if I wanted. Chuck my studies. Take a job …
CHARLIE. Have you seen Leonora today?
DAPHNE. Only for a few moments after I arrived. She went off to the British Museum. She wasn’t here for lunch.
CHARLIE. Did you notice anything unusual about her?
DAPHNE. No.
Enter CATHERINE.
CATHERINE. Daphne, it’s just occurred to me, does that young man of yours know it’s my birthday?
DAPHNE. Yes.
CATHERINE. Well, you shouldn’t have told him. He might bring me a present. I’m sure he can’t afford it. It’s appallingly bad manners to mention birthdays.
DAPHNE. Perhaps he’ll forget.
CATHERINE. Perhaps he won’t.
DAPHNE. He’s hardly likely to give you a nightdress, now is he?
CATHERINE. Daphne dear, I have nothing against a nice nightdress, but Leonora gave me a nightdress as well.
CHARLIE. How did you find Leonora this morning?