Four Plays Read online

  GIRL: Arabella!

  CHAP: Yes. She was twenty-one and I was about ten.

  GIRL: And you ‘would have died for her’.

  CHAP: Yes, I would have died for her. She had a young man, who was an old man of twenty-eight. And we all three of us used to go for walks on the Downs. In the fog with the destroyers wailing and the invisible convoys.

  GIRL: How romantic.

  CHAP: Not at all. He (Pointing to the FATHER) was dying of TB.

  GRANDFATHER: Oh well, they used to die of it then.

  CHAP: Like flies, in my family. My sister went and my God, did I resent it. What she left me lumbered with.

  GIRL: Next.

  CHAP: Next? Oh yes. Then there was Betty. She was a Brown Owl. And then a strapping great Girl Guide. Christ, I was mad about her. I used to follow her down the streets from school – it was a state school I suppose you’d call it – and pretend I wasn’t.

  GIRL: What did she look like?

  CHAP: Can’t quite remember. But very dark blue eyes and hair – thick. Showed her legs off a lot but not too much.

  GIRL: Very sensible. Next.

  CHAP: There was somebody, I think she was called Audrey. She was a frightful bully and had a gang of boys mostly and used to sit on your head and try to suffocate you. Red hair, I think.

  GIRL: Ginger minge in your nostrils. That must have been nice.

  CHAP: Then there was Gladys.

  GRANDFATHER: I used to know a Gladys.

  GIRL: Who doesn’t? What about her?

  CHAP: Nothing much, really. She just said one day she’d only ever really liked me because I had wavy hair.

  GIRL: How awful.

  CHAP: I suppose it was fashionable at the time.

  GIRL: Why does it have to be about anything?

  CHAIRMAN: The Second World War…

  GIRL: Vietnam…

  CHAIRMAN: ‘Luxuriantly bleak’ I would say, wouldn’t you?

  CHAP: Yes, but ‘martially lyrical’.

  GIRL: Images! Who wants them? You can have them any old time.

  OLDER LADY: I suppose it’s all really just about things like music and fucking.

  CHAIRMAN: Yes, but I suppose we’ve got to discuss it.

  GIRL: (To the CHAP.) Yes? CHAP: I don’t think I can.

  GIRL: Oh, don’t start blubbing, it’s too early.

  CHAIRMAN: Much too early.

  CHAP: I can’t go through the whole list.

  GIRL: We’re not asking you to. Next.

  CHAP: Then there was Shirley and her sister.

  GIRL: What about them?

  CHAP: I just wonder what happened to them, that’s all.

  GIRL: Well, we all wonder that sort of thing.

  CHAP: Shut up, you lousy bitch. I wouldn’t tell you anyway.

  GIRL: And then?

  CHAP: Well, believe it or not, there was Fanny.

  BOX MAN: Annie and Fanny!

  CHAP: That’s right. The Fan Dancer who fell down on her Fan.

  BOX MAN: Do you know the one about the crocodile shoes?

  GIRL: Yes.

  OLDER LADY: Oh yes, I’ve heard that one. It’s awfully good.

  BOX MAN: Are you bloody sure you’ve heard it?

  CHAIRMAN: Yes.

  BOX MAN: I’ll bet you don’t know what it’s –

  CHAP: Yes. It’s got three punch lines.

  CHAIRMAN: Next.

  CHAP: Then there was Rosemary.

  GIRL: (To the INTERRUPTER) There’s Rosemary for you.

  INTERRUPTER: We don’t know who any of these people are. What they’re doing. Where it’s taking place. Or anything!

  OLDER LADY: Give the boy a chance.

  CHAP: What? Oh, Rosemary.

  GIRL: Yes, Rosemary.

  CHAP: Ah yes, well, she had the rags up all the time.

  GRANDFATHER: Well, they can’t help it, you know.

  CHAIRMAN: Well, he’s got a point there.

  CHAP: No, but she had it all the bloody time. I mean like all over the graveyard in Norwich Cathedral.

  GIRL: Norwich – you mean like –

  CHAIRMAN Yes. (Wearily) Knickers off ready when I come home.

  CHAP: I mean, Women’s Insides. I’ve been walled up in them and their despairs and agony ever since I can remember.

  GIRL: Perhaps you should try it yourself.

  CHAP: I’m not strong enough.

  GIRL: No, you’re not.

  INTERRUPTER: I think this sort of talk is highly embarrassing. My own wife is in the audience and I may say that she is undergoing, what I can only call to someone like you, an extremely difficult –

  GIRL: Period –

  INTERRUPTER: No. I would say more than that. Expected but dramatic experience in her life.

  GIRL: You mean she’s got the Hot Flushes? CHAP: Well, let me tell you, mate, I’ve had them for forty years.

  GIRL: And you look it… So we’ve got to Rosemary.

  CHAIRMAN: Yes.

  CHAP: Oh, I don’t remember them. Then there was Jean, I suppose.

  GIRL: (Dances and sings.) Jean, Jean…’

  BOX MAN: You’ll get no awards for this lot. CHAP: She was really good and big and well-stacked and knew how to –

  GIRL: Get you on the job.

  CHAP: Christ, I was only nineteen! I could do it nine times in the morning.

  CHAIRMAN: Nine times. Could you really?

  GIRL: There’s not much impressive in that.

  CHAP: (In a bad Scots accent.) ‘Oh, there’s not much impressive in that’. We’ve all had colds.

  GIRL: And then there are all those dreary wives of yours. CHAP: That’s right. Those dreary wives of mine… They all

  think I’m a pouf.

  GIRL: I’m not surprised.

  OLDER LADY: I don’t think she should have said that to him.

  GRANDFATHER: I don’t know what they are talking about. Any of them.

  CHAP: The first one was pretty good in the sack.

  GIRL: So you keep telling us. She looks pretty awful now.

  CHAP: My fault.

  CHAIRMAN: I don’t think I’m being compromising but –

  GIRL: But –

  CHAIRMAN: Well, I do feel, and I know you’re going to yawn or laugh –

  BOX MAN: Sing us a song!

  CHAIRMAN: We will, my friend, I’m afraid we certainly will.

  CHAP: Oh yes.

  CHAIRMAN: But there are certain dark, painful places we shouldn’t expose – for our own sakes and those of others.

  CHAP: Actresses are pretty rotten lays.

  GIRL: So are actors.

  OLDER LADY: I’ve just been reading some material that’s been sent to me.

  GIRL: What’s she on about?

  OLDER LADY: They seem to call it pornographic. But it looks quite interesting to me.

  GIRL: So it would, you dirty old bitch.

  BOX MAN: I watch TV most nights of the week and all I can say is that the general standard of programmes is deplorable.

  CHAP: Say that again.

  BOX MAN: Deplorable.

  CHAP: That’s better.

  OLDER LADY: (Reading from brochure) This month we’ve got “The Virgin Bride was to be Raped”.’ How fascinating. This is the lead novelette. Then after “The Letters to Lucille” –’

  GIRL: Who’s Lucille?

  OLDER LADY: I don’t quite know. It doesn’t say. But it goes on: ‘We have a picture story about what a released convict is going to do to the first woman he sees when he gets out.’

  BOX MAN: Come on, let’s have a bit of that, then.

  OLDER LADY: ‘Next comes Part Two of “Sex in a Scout Camp”. After that, Part Two of a novelette called “Young Orgy”.’

  BOX MAN: Get in there, it’s your birthday.

  CHAIRMAN: (Despairingly) We really do have to get rid of him, don’t we? I mean we are all agreed?

  INTERRUPTER: Get rid of the lot of you, I say

  OLDER LADY: (Reading.) Then we finish with a girl masturbating
herself in both her holes at one time.’

  BOX MAN: Brown ale, anybody?

  (The lights dim and on the projection screen appears a column of marching British sailors. In the meantime, on the loudspeaker, the Band of the Royal Marines p fays ‘A Life on the Ocean Waves’, naturally, at fall blast. The BOX MAN joins in. When this has finished, the CHAIRMAN speaks, as do the others, and the same ritual is repeated more or less after each piece of so-called pornography is gravely but interestedly intoned by the OLDER LADY.)

  CHAIRMAN: ‘Oh wad some Pow’r the gifte gie us,

  To see oursels as others see us!

  It wad frae mony a blunder free us,

  And foolish notion.’

  CHAP: ‘Oh England, full of sin, but most of sloth; Spit out thy phlegm, and fill thy breast with glory.’

  GIRL: ‘Love is a circle that doth restless move.’

  CHAP: (At GIRL) ‘I’ do love, I know not what; Sometimes this, and sometimes that.’

  GRANDFATHER: ‘Some days before death

  When food’s tasting sour on my tongue,

  Cigarettes long abandoned,

  Disgusting now even champagne;

  When I’m sweating a lot

  From the strain on a last bit of lung

  And lust has gone out

  Leaving only the things of the brain;

  More worthless than ever

  Will seem all the songs I have sung,

  More harmless the prods of the prigs,

  Remoter the pain,

  More futile the Lord Civil Servant –’

  CHAIRMAN: I think that perhaps at this stage we should say something else.

  INTERRUPTER: You’re telling us!

  CHAIRMAN: Yes, well, you may have your chance later, my friend.

  ‘I see phantoms of hatred and of the Heart’s Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness.’

  (The CHAIRMAN comes downstage and addresses everyone)

  Yes, just wait a moment.

  ‘I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair

  Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth

  In something that all others understand or share;

  But oh! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth

  A company of friends, a conscience set at ease,

  It had but made us pine the more. The abstract joy,

  The half-read wisdom of demonic images,

  Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy.’

  BOX MAN: We don’t wish –

  CHAIRMAN: No, my friend, and you may well be right. But we are all plagiarists, as even you. As Brecht said once and Shakespeare better than us all.

  GIRL: He’s getting quite good, isn’t he?

  OLDER LADY: (Reading again.) ‘“Waterloo Bridge”. The classic story as in the film of a young girl met and seduced by an officer during the Blitz of London. She gets fucked in a bomb shelter while sitting beside some people that take no notice –’

  CHAP: Take no notice?

  GIRL: Well, I suppose it’s sort of sophisticated.

  OLDER LADY: ‘Then when he leaves her, she meets a lesbian who puts her on the street as a brass nail.’

  GIRL: What’s a brass nail?

  CHAP: Don’t ask me, I’m only here for the beer.

  BOX MAN: Ha ha di-bloody ha ha! Taking the piss out of us little people again.

  (On the projection screen an image of a shy and beautiful Edwardian girl From the loudspeakers the sweet draining sound of the soprano in Handels ‘The Ode to Saint Cecilia ‘s Day’.)

  ‘But oh, what art can teach,

  What human voice can reach,

  The sacred organ’s praise.’

  CHAIRMAN: ‘Now we maun totter down, John,

  And hand in hand we’ll go,

  And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo.’

  GIRL: ‘Men are suspicious; prone to discontent;…’

  CHAIRMAN: ‘Subjects still loathe the present Government’

  GRANDFATHER: ‘This is the time of day when the weight of bedclothes

  Is harder to bear than a sharp incision of steel.

  The endless anonymous croak of a cheap transistor

  Intensifies the lonely terror I feel.’

  (The CHAP goes over to his FATHER at the piano)

  CHAP: (Gently.) Come and sit down. It’s all over for you.

  GRANDFATHER: Well, it was all over for him thirty years ago.

  FATHER: (Allowing himself to be led to a chair) I am as old as the century.

  GIRL: So you say

  OLDER LADY: (Reading.) ‘Number fifty-three. Did you ever fancy getting hold of a pretty young girl-scout and fucking her up the arsehole? Well, the two lucky lads in this picture story did just that. You see this lovely young girl was canvassing through their apartment block while they were in the process of screwing this girl, from both front and back. Well, when the girl-scout rang their bell they got the girl to get dressed and coax her in; once they got her inside they stripped her and gave her such a fucking she’ll never forget it. Both of them get up her tiny little arsehole. GREAT.’

  (On the projection screen, a scene from the final ensemble of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’, the sweeping melody for the Marschallin, and so on.)

  ‘Hab mirs gelobt, ihn lieb – zu haben?

  CHAIRMAN: ‘She is a winsome wee thing,

  She is a handsome wee thing,

  She is a lo’esome wee thing.

  This sweet wee wife of mine.’

  BOX MAN: Nancy Gobble Job, you mean!

  GIRL: (To CHAP) ‘Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score;

  Then to that twenty, add a hundred more:

  A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on,

  To make that thousand up a million.

  Treble that million, and when that is done,

  Let’s kiss afresh, as when we first begun.’

  CHAP: Oh, shut up, you silly bitch.

  OLDER LADY: (Reading.) ‘A picture story of hard rape! Six men drinking in a small bar in Germany decide to grab the pretty little blonde barmaid and have a giggle with her but, as many things do, it went wrong. She resisted! They ganged up on her and tore her clothes off of her and proceeded to violate her in every way that they could. Each one had a go at fucking her, some in her bum, some in her mouth. They held her on the table and screwed until she finally passed out from the spunk forced down her throat. I have seen some rape scenes while I have been in this business, but WOW.’

  CHAIRMAN: ‘Tho’ poor in gear, we’re rich in love.’

  CHAP: ‘Bid me to live, and I will live Thy Protestant to be:…’

  BOX MAN: Watch it, you’ve got some of your bleeding Catholics out here!

  CHAIRMAN: Just ignore him.

  CHAP: ‘Or bid me love, and I will give

  A loving heart to thee.

  A heart as soft, a heart as kind,

  A heart as sound and free As in the whole world thou canst find,

  That heart I’ll give to thee.’

  GIRL: ‘My true love hath my heart and I have his,

  By just exchange one for the other giv’n;

  I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,

  There never was a better bargain driv’n.’

  GRANDFATHER: “O words are lightly spoken”

  “Said Pearse to Connolly, “

  Maybe a breath of politic words

  Has withered our Rose Tree;

  Or maybe but a wind that blows

  Across the bitter sea.’”

  OLDER LADY: ‘Homo Action Number Five. As the cover picture shows we have found a young man who is double jointed enough to suck his own cock whilst he is being fucked by a big prick.’

  (On the projection screen a large rose)

  CHAIRMAN: I suppose they’ll play something from ‘Cosi fan tutte’ now.

  Naturally, the loudspeakers do)

  GIRL: Of course.

  CHAIRMAN: Well, I’ll say this bit about the Rose anyway, and get it over with.


  (Fade music)

  ‘And my fause lover stole my rose

  But ah! he left the thorn wi’ me.’

  CHAP: Or, as he’d have said himself:

  ‘Don’t let the awkward squad fire over me.’

  GRANDFATHER: I suppose it’s all right. It seems a bit sad.

  CHAP: Well, at least you can’t frighten the horses any longer.

  OLDER LADY: (Reading.) ‘Free offer. Two young teenage Sea Scouts are in the apartment of randy man; they were collecting for charity but they collected more than they bargained for. It didn’t take him long to get their panties down and his big prick into their young mouths and cunts. Second Number Three. An efficiency expert comes into a humdrum office to get it running smoothly, then he gets the old maidenly bookkeeper in and shows her how to fuck, when he gets them all at it he leaves. VERY FUNNY AND GOOD!’

  (The FATHER begins to play and GRANDFATHER stands up and sings)

  GRANDFATHER: ‘Life like an ever-rolling stream

  Bears all its sons away.

  They fly forgotten as a dream…’

  (All join in including BOX MAN)

  ALL: ‘Dies at the opening day.’

  BOX MAN: (Applauding himself as much as anybody) That’s a good one, that is.

  INTERRUPTER: It’s still filth and it always was.

  (Note: During the singing of the Hymn by the GRANDFATHER the projection screen shows an enormous ascending jet plane with the words ‘If you want to get away, jet away’.)

  OLDER LADY: ‘“Panther Kidnap.” Two young members of the Black Panthers kidnap a white girl on the street and take her back to their pad. There they tear her clothes from her and make her perform all sorts of sexual perversions. She tries to fight them off but these two blacks are much too powerful for her. Lots of good action.’

  (The FATHER does another Jack Buchanan and sings a few bars of Two Little Bluebirds.’)

  GIRL: I dare not ask a kiss;

  I dare not beg a smile;

  Lest having that, or this,

  I might grow proud the while.

  No, no, the utmost share,

  Of my desire shall he

  Only to kiss that air,

  That lately kissed thee.’

  CHAIRMAN: ‘Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes intendeth,

  Which now to my breast o’ercharged to music lendeth?

  To you, to you, all song of praises due;

  Only in you my song begins and endeth.’

  GIRL: ‘Thy fair heart my heart enchained.’

  CHAP: ‘“Fool!” Said my Muse, to me, “Look in thy heart and write.’”

  (The stage lights dim a little while the loudspeakers play a few bars from’ The Lark Ascending’.