He stuffs the Racing Post down the back of his trousers and leans over the chair.
In the spring of 1968 I’m caned by the headmaster for two separate misdemeanours, both of which are sufficiently serious to enhance my standing amongst my classmates.
Sound of the swish of the cane. LUPIN momentarily winces and lets out a suitable expletive.
The flogging itself, at which I’m held down by one member of staff while being caned by another, doesn’t worry me too much –
ROGER. Nor them I imagine. I suspect many of the masters at Eton spend their free time studying the small ads in the hope of experiencing the sensation themselves –
LUPIN. But a subsequent appearance in Maidenhead Magistrates’ Court soon has Dad reaching for his typewriter (Swish.)
ROGER. April 18th. My dear Charles –
LUPIN. Any letter that begins with ‘My dear Charles’ is usually worth avoiding –
ROGER. You may think it mildly amusing to be caught poaching in Windsor Great Park. I would consider it more hilarious if you were not living on a knife-edge, so to speak. No doubt you resent my advice and reproaches now; perhaps in ten years’ time you’ll realise that I was trying, possibly ineffectively, to help you plan for your future.
LUPIN. Sadly for Dad, planning for my future isn’t on my personal agenda unless it involves the procurement of substantial quantities of mind-altering substances. And things soon come to a head after another, more serious offence, for which I’m threatened with the ultimate sanction of all.
Lights snap to a boudoir.
Sound of a slinky solo on a saxophone, suggestive of imminent sexual congress. Lights now change to an insistent pink.
My transgression – or rather, our transgression, for my partner-in-crime is my best friend Jerry – surrounds an ill-fated attempt to lose our virginity.
ROGER. Oh God. (Once more buries himself behind his paper.)
LUPIN. Like most fifteen-year-old boys, we’ve already been discussing our virginal plight for several months. But help arrives in the form of Jerry’s elder brother, who puts us in touch with a professional woman in Soho rejoicing in the name of ‘Denise Bunny’.
Sound of a steam-train whistle.
(Dousing himself in aftershave and smoothing his hair.) Armed with instructions as to where to go, what to wear, and what to do with Miss Bunny once we find her, we sneak out of school and catch the train from Slough. By 9 p.m. we’re standing beneath a first-floor window at 53 Maddox Street. (Presses a grubby doorbell attached to the section of wall.)
Sound of a doorbell.
But we’re in for a shock. The woman who answers the bell is approaching fifty, and by the look of her, from the wrong direction.
ROGER slowly lowers the paper. He is now wearing both the wig and a long-suffering expression. After a slow burn of Jack Benny-esque proportions he swivels round in his chair so he’s facing LUPIN.
ROGER (attempting to warm to the task). Right, boys. Which of you wants to go first?
LUPIN is unsure what to do.
Now don’t be shy. I’m not going to bite. Well, not unless you’re prepared to pay extra.
LUPIN. How much does it cost?
ROGER (hardening). How much have you got?
LUPIN empties out his pockets onto the desktop.
(Counting the change.) One pound eighteen shillings and fourpence. Sorry boys, you’re twelve shillings short. And I don’t take Green Shield Stamps.
LUPIN. I’ve got a chequebook. (Flourishes it in ROGER’s direction.)
ROGER. Sorry, dearie, it’s cash or nothing –
LUPIN. But it’s a Coutts cheque, and Coutts cheques never bounce. It’s as good as cash!
ROGER. Not in a Soho brothel it isn’t, duckie.
ROGER removes the wig, pockets the money and departs.
LUPIN. Dejected on Jerry’s part but hugely relieved on mine, we make our way down into the street and back to Paddington Station.
ROGER. Thank Christ for that…
Sound of a fire alarm! Image of lots of boys in slippers and dressing gowns running along a corridor.
LUPIN. But our luck has run out. There’s been a fire drill during the night and our absence has been discovered. We’re given the sack – expelled, in layman’s terms – and with immediate effect.
LUPIN produces a suitcase into which he begins throwing various items.
ROGER (reappearing as himself). My dear Charles –
LUPIN. But unbeknown to us, salvation is at hand, albeit from the most unlikely guardian angel of them all.
Sound of stirring Dambusters-type music. LUPIN looks out into the middle distance.
Dad may be powerless to reverse the decision, but not so Jerry. His family has powerful allies, and just as we’re packing our bags and preparing to leave for ever, a car is already rolling up the main drive, containing Viscount Montgomery of Alamein; Jerry’s godfather, hero of the war, and saviour of the free world.
The music is swelling. ROGER has joined LUPIN and is also now staring into the distance, imagining the scenario.
(Pointedly, as if prompting ROGER.) I said Viscount Montgomery of Alamein; hero of the war, and saviour of the free world!!
ROGER (the penny dropping). Oh right, won’t be a moment.
ROGER locates a beret.
LUPIN. Our headmaster may be feared by the boys, but he’s no match for the man who defeated Rommel.
ROGER (now as Monty with a beret, and perhaps with a thin strip of black gaffer tape stuck on his top lip to denote a moustache). I don’t care what the ruddy hell you do with the boys, Headmaster –
LUPIN (desperately). Louder, Dad. You’re Monty, for God’s sake –
ROGER (now offering a surprisingly good Monty, louder and complete with characteristic weak ‘R’s throughout). I don’t care what the ruddy hell you do with the boys, Headmaster, but you will not be expelling them. And that’s not a request – THAT’S A RUDDY ORDER!!
LUPIN. The enemy is wouted – routed – the expulsion is revoked, and Jerry and me are allowed to remain. (Produces a huge cigar.)
ROGER (still as Monty). Mortimer – you’re a ruddy disgrace, not only to your school, but to your parents, your country, and the British Empire. Goodness only knows what poor Roger did to deserve a randy little reprobate like you. (Tears off the gaffer tape, winces, and stomps off.)
LUPIN (mimicking Monty’s weak ‘R’s). Oh well, I suppose that’s what you get by associating with heroes – a wight good wollicking. Nevertheless it’s agreed by all parties that I should leave at the end of term.
ROGER re-enters, now as himself.
ROGER. Dear Lupin. Your mother and I were profoundly dismayed to hear of your latest escapade. What worries me is that in ten years of costly education you have never once got down to hard work. I know you are capable and you have the useful ability of getting on with people, but up till now you have been, in racing parlance, ‘a non-stayer’. (Sits disconsolately.)
LUPIN. Sorry, Dad. (Begins removes the items of school uniform.)
ROGER. If the notion of sitting in an office repels you, why don’t you go into the Army or the RAF or something like that? Presumably it’s because any code of discipline, and that includes self-discipline, is abhorrent to you. Anyway, we’ll talk about it when you next come home.
You’ll find everything here much the same. The De Mauley’s came for lunch last week; Lady De Mauley is putting on weight and her husband is clearly not a member of the local Temperance Association. We decided to have a barbecue, though at my age consuming charred pork chops and Co-op Chianti in a searing north-east wind provides only a modicum of pleasure. I fell asleep with a glass in my hand and spilt the contents over my new ‘special offer’ trousers. Of course, ill-natured persons suggested I’d peed during my brief period of repose, which I am happy to say was, for once, an unfounded allegation.
ROGER hands LUPIN some money.
I enclose twelve pounds for leaving presents. Be so kind as to deduct
ten shillings and have your hair cut. As you shall soon no longer be a schoolboy, there’s no necessity for you to look the part.
LUPIN (now back in shirt and jeans). The term after I depart, another boy in my house is caught smoking. When the housemaster punishes him he objects: ‘That’s not fair, sir. You allowed Mortimer to smoke.’ ‘Now,’ says my old house tutor with suitable gravitas, ‘There was a boy who really needed to smoke.’
Sound of Peter O’Sullevan describing the final furlongs of the 1970 Grand National.
In 1970 trainer Fred Rymell wins the National for the third time with fifteen-to-one outsider Gay Trip. Back home in Newbury, with no qualifications and nothing much to keep me at home, I decide to embark on my own gay trip.
Sound of a powerful car engine idling and anxious to be off.
A thousand-mile drive across drive across Europe in a vintage Racing Riley!
LUPIN sits on the front of the desk and turns on the desk fan to simulate wind in hair. He mimes letting off the handbrake and grasping a steering wheel.
Sound of a squeal of tyres. LUPIN lurches backwards to suggest sudden impetus – a device he will continue with during the following exchanges.
Meanwhile ROGER, now in a state of some alarm, begins clattering away at the typewriter again.
ROGER. Dear Lupin, with regard to your trip to Greece, I wish to make the following points. Number one –
LUPIN (thoroughly enjoying himself). I can’t hear you, Dad!
ROGER (more loudly). Number one. Make sure your passport is in order and that you have the required visas for yourself and your car. It is very important to make sure you have full insurance –
The car accelerates alarmingly.
Where did you say you were going?
LUPIN (joyously). The Greek islands, Dad. Samos to be exact. Two-thousand-miles round trip…
ROGER (pressing on gamely). Number two.
Sound of huge lorry screaming past.
LUPIN (above the engine). YEE-HAAAAAA!!!!
ROGER. Number two – please drive carefully. In Europe they are far tougher on motorists than they are here, and if you get involved in an accident, it would be beyond even Monty’s powers to extract you, let alone mine –
A horn blares.
Number three. Try not to look like some filthy student who has renounced personal hygiene. The unwashed with long hair are looked on with great hostility and it would be silly to be arrested because you like wearing your hair like a 1923 typist.
A police siren barrelling past (perhaps also a brief strobe of a flashing blue light).
Number four. Have nothing to do with drugs unless you’re particularly keen to spend the next seven years in prison.
The car screeches to a violent halt. A moment’s silence as LUPIN realises he’s made it in one piece. LUPIN gets out of the car.
ROGER. Number five. Take a shady hat and plenty of bromo. I don’t want you suffering diarrhoea, as apart from it being a sordid discomfort it’s not an easy word to spell.
LUPIN begins setting himself up with a deckchair on the beach.
Be careful who you get talking to. Stick to girls, they are safer and more amusing –
LUPIN. Sadly my proclivities already lie in another direction –
ROGER. Be careful how much you drink –
LUPIN. Good old Dad. Ever the optimist –
ROGER. And finally, enjoy yourself and don’t do anything you’ll regret. But in case you do, please find enclosed some French letters.
LUPIN produces the sachet from his pocket.
LUPIN. I haven’t the heart to tell him, but Dad’s shutting the stable door after my horse has bolted.
ROGER. Dear Lupin, I hope you’ve arrived in one piece. Your poor mother continues to worry about everything, and your future in particular. We have a number of people coming for dinner tomorrow, so as I write this she is busily engaged in doing hideous things to a chicken in the kitchen. She’s bought a microwave cooker which makes everything taste like old gym shoes cooked in yesterday’s washing-up water but I don’t dare say so.
LUPIN blows up a condom.
Please keep safe and don’t do anything stupid. I’m very fond of you but you really do drive me round the bend.
LUPIN releases the condom into the air.
LUPIN. This is PARADISE!!! The sun shines, the wine is cheap, and the locals jaw-droppingly handsome. With Eton a world away, I finally get to grips with sex, drink, and… (Thinks for a moment.) Well, just sex and drink actually.
Sound of thunder, rain.
But eventually it’s time to pack up and come home.
ROGER (entering with letter and calling off excitedly). Nidnod – it’s a letter from Lupin! He’s still alive and he’s coming home. He’s landing at Heathrow on the 24th!!
LUPIN. Both my parents are thrilled to see their prodigal son still in one piece, and Nidnod celebrates my safe return by preparing a special meal.
Sound of the ‘ping’ of a microwave cooker coming to the end of its timing. ROGER appears in a pinny and carrying two dinner plates, each one containing an old gym shoe in yesterday’s washing-up water.
ROGER (mildly). Here we are. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
He sets them down carefully on the desktop, after which he sits at one end and tucks his napkin into his collar. LUPIN sits at the opposite end.
You missed a treat last week. It was cousin Tom’s birthday dinner. Among the guests were Sir Desmond Plummer, head of the Betting Levy Board, and his wife Lady Plummer. During the meal Lady Plummer dipped her nut a bit too far into the Martini bucket and became more or less unplayable. We got Lady Plummer up to bed early but she kept sending messages down to her husband, intimating he was to come up at once and she couldn’t wait for him. Whatever the reason, next day at breakfast she looked like a pug recovering from distemper.
Lunch was equally vexing. A former jockey called Stan Clayton, who now breeds budgerigars, was good enough to tell me about his blood pressure, while a tall lady in an azure wig explained at some length why she loathed her husband so much. Perhaps I am a sympathetic listener; possibly I just lack the energy to move away.
Your mother’s cooking may not the best but we must be thankful for small mercies. The other evening she popped my dinner into her car and drove off with it saying she was going to give it to the poor. I was a little surprised therefore, to find she had dropped it off at our neighbours the Bomers, who are considerably younger and better off than we are. She’s now known as ‘Meals On Wheels in Reverse’, removing hot dinners from the old and needy. Seconds?
Sound of another ‘ping’ from offstage.
ROGER. Ah, sounds as if dessert is ready. (Taking LUPIN’s plate.) Can you microwave mandarin segments in syrup, I wonder?
He exits.
LUPIN (producing a copy of the local paper). It’s nice to be back; and yet the mood of domestic harmony is soon shattered when I’m arrested for possession of drugs and a flick knife at a Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park. My mother is especially annoyed that I make the front page of the Newbury Weekly News, overshadowing the mention on the back page that her Dalmatian, Pongo, has taken first prize in the fancy-dress class as the Captain of HMS Pinafore. Added to which, my return home for a family dinner in my newly acquired purple bubble car with faux-tiger-skin seat covers does little to improve my father’s mood –
ROGER (reappearing). Dear Lupin. As a bourgeois reactionary I am inclined to think you pursue your code of being scruffy a little too far. Last night you parked the bubbler flush with the front door so that elderly guests arriving for dinner could hardly get in the house at all. And even allowing for the fact that you cannot yet tie a bow tie, a sweat rag coiled round your neck is a somewhat unattractive form of evening dress. Your hands looked as if they had been greasing a number nineteen bus. I don’t expect you to be a second Lord Chesterfield, but I rather wish that in appearance and conduct, you were slightly less typical of a transport café on the Great North Road.
By the way, your mother is convinced that a poltergeist whipped away a sausage she was cooking for breakfast this morning. No doubt the Reverend Jardine will be called in to perform an exorcism, which your dear mother insists on describing as a circumcision.
He leaves.
Sound of a racing commentary from the 1970 Epsom Derby.
LUPIN. After all I’ve already put him through it’s difficult to think of anything further that might shock Dad; but a few months later I manage to come up a real stonker.
ROGER (entering in some incredulity). You’ve done what?
LUPIN (standing to attention). I’ve signed up, Dad.
ROGER. You mean the Army?
LUPIN. Not just the Army. Your old regiment. The Coldstream
Guards! I start induction training in September.
ROGER. Have you any idea what you’ve let yourself in for?
LUPIN (firmly). I want to do you justice, Dad. I want to get my life back on track and make you proud to call me your son.
ROGER (quietly approaching LUPIN, and smelling his breath). Have you been drinking?
LUPIN. No. That is, yes. Three bottles of cut-price Merlot to be precise. But my mind is made up.
ROGER. Well, I hope you know what you’re doing. You’d better leave me to tell your mother…
He exits.
LUPIN. After the initial shock, Dad soon softens. This, after all, is more than he could possibly have hoped for.
ROGER (entering with a bottle of champagne and two flutes). Dear Lupin, words cannot express how thoroughly delighted we all are to hear that you’ve decided to enlist in the Coldstreamers. I really believe that this time you are determined to rouse yourself from your previously squalid inertia. (Begins pouring.)
LUPIN. But there’s a problem.
ROGER hears this and stops.
Owing to my previous drug conviction I’m not eligible to become a commissioned officer. Starting out as a basic recruit is my only option. The Colonel-in-Chief explains the situation to me at my initial interview.
LUPIN produces a Commander’s peaked cap which he hands to ROGER, who puts it on at once without ceremony. (Throughout the following ROGER must be adept at producing and removing various military headgear slickly and without fuss to keep the dynamic going.)
Dear Lupin Page 2