The LOUDON’S living room at ‘Highland Close School’, Coldsands. It is an extremely dilapidated room given an air of festivity, as the Curtain rises, by the fact that a table is set for four and there are candles in odd candlesticks – one expensive silver, the other a china ‘Present from Coldsands’ – on the table. Doors on each side of the room; one, left, is covered in green baize and has pinned on it a few yellowing curling notices and charts of lessons which haven’t been read for years. The door is closed and leads to the boys’ part of the house. The door on the right is open and light floods through it from a staircase which leads to the bedrooms. Another door backstage right leads to the kitchen. At the back of the room tall French windows, which have never shut properly and let in winds of icy severity, open on to a strip of grey asphalt, the white end of a flag pole and the gun-metal sky of an early evening in March.
Other furniture: a basket-work chair, a fireplace full of paper, a very small electric fire, a horse-hair sofa wounded and bleeding its stuffing; a roll-top desk out of which bills, writs, exercise books and reports are perpetually being shaken by the draughts like the leaves of a dead tree. On top of the desk there is a ukelele and a globe. Among faded photographs of various teams an oar is hanging on the wall.
As the Curtain rises LILY LOUDON has her back to the audience and is tugging at one of the drawers. As she tugs the drawer comes right out and the globe falls down with a sickening crash.
The crash is immediately followed by a roar from the lit door which leads to the bedrooms. It is the voice of a small man entirely consumed with rage.
ARTHUR (off). Imbecile!
LILY picks up the globe with great calmness and puts it back on the desk, thoughtfully spinning it to find England.
ARTHUR (off) Lunatic! Fool! Whatever have you ruined now! What’s broken! Go on. Don’t keep it from me! Confess!
LILY picks up the drawer and carries it towards the table. She is an untidy woman, once inconspicuously good looking, whose face now wears an expression of puzzled contentment. She is wearing a lace evening dress of the late thirties, a number of straps are showing on her pale shoulders and a cigarette is dangling from a corner of her mouth. She shows no reaction at all to the diatribe from offstage.
(Off.) Just try and picture me. Stuck up here. Listening, always listening while you systematically destroy …
LILY puts the drawer down on the table and knocks off a glass.
(Off.) Aaah. What was that? The last of my dead mother’s crockery? Speak up. Put me out of my agony. For pity’s sake … The suspense… . What was it you imbecile? Side plate – dinner plate – not … ? You’re not to be trusted on your own. …
LILY takes out a number of presents wrapped in bright paper and tied with ribbon and arranges them on the table …
(Off.) Where are they? You’ve hidden them again?
LILY smiles to herself. Carefully puts out her cigarette.
(Off.) Do you realize what the time is?
LILY shakes her head.
ARTHUR (off.) Dusk. Have you done it? Answer me, can’t you? The loneliness – of getting dressed.
LILY puts a parcel by the place laid in the centre of the table. ARTHUR erupts into the room. He is a small, bristly, furiously angry man. He is wearing the trousers only of a merciless tweed suit, no collar and his braces are hanging down his back.
(His anger becoming plaintive.) You can’t imagine what a fly you are in the ointment of any little ceremony like this … How you take the edge off my pleasure in any small moment of celebration. My own daughter’s birthday. A thing I’ve been keenly looking forward to and you deliberately … hide … my … clothes.
LILY puts the drawer, empty now, back in the desk and comes back to face her husband.
Perhaps it’s a mental kink in you. Is that the excuse you’d make? Do you plead insanity? If I had a pound for every time you’ve taken a collar stud and … I don’t know – eaten it … rolled it under the chest of drawers. Now, to carefully conceal the club braces … The sort of kink that makes women pinch things in Woolworths. Itching, destructive fingers. Furtive little pickers.
LILY pulls his braces, which are hanging down the back of his trousers, up across his shoulders, and fastens them. Then she kisses his forehead. This quietens him for a moment. Then he bursts out again.
That’s hardly the point. It’s dusk.
He runs to the windows and throws them open. A wind, howling in, makes the candles flicker. ARTHUR is hauling down the flag.
LILY. It’s bitterly cold.
ARTHUR. Found your tongue at last?
LILY. I said, it’s bitterly cold.
ARTHUR (comes back into the room, the Union Jack bundled in his arms. He kicks the windows shut behind him). Of course it’s bitterly cold. That wind’s come a long way. All the way from the Ural mountains. An uninterrupted journey.
LILY. Yes, I know.
ARTHUR (folding up the flag – calm for the moment). Think of that. From Moscow and Vitebsk. The marshes of Poland. The flats of Prussia. The dykes of Belgium and Holland. All the way to Yarmouth. Just think of it. Flat as a playground. That’s what I tell the boys.
LILY. I know you do.
ARTHUR. It’s a geographical miracle. It makes this place so ideal for schooling boys. There’s nothing like a wind from the Ural Mountains, Bin, for keeping boys pure in heart.
LILY. I suppose not.
ARTHUR. Added to which it kills bugs.
LILY. Yes, of course.
ARTHUR. Bugs and unsuitable thoughts. You know that, Bin. You’re in charge of that side of it. Have we had a single epidemic this year?
LILY. They cough in the night time. (She is arranging the presents on the table.) Like sheep.
ARTHUR. Colds admitted. Infectious diseases not. I had a letter only the other day. A school in Torquay. Malaria. Decimated the boys. Brought on by the relaxing climate. Thank heavens, Bin, for our exposed position.
LILY. Yes, dear.
ARTHUR. For heaven’s sake don’t complain about the wind, then. It gets on the nerves of a saint. To have you always carping at the wind. Think of it – one little mountain range between here and Moscow and the boys might all go down with malaria.
LILY. I wonder if Caroline’s going to like her presents?
ARTHUR. Like her presents? Of course she’s going to like her presents. Doesn’t she always like her presents?
LILY. I only wondered …
ARTHUR. If you set out to make her dissatisfied. If you sow the seeds of doubt in her young mind … If you deliberately undertake to puzzle and bewilder a young girl with your extraordinary ideas of what a present ought to be. If you carp and criticize …
LILY. I only wondered … if she wasn’t getting on a bit for Halma.
ARTHUR. You wondered? Caroline takes it for granted. Every year she’ll get her Halma and every year you’ll lose three or four of her men … Swallow them up like collar studs. Of course she likes Halma, you’ve seen her in the evenings playing it with …
He puts the folded flag on top of the desk. Then shouts as he picks up the ukulele.
ARTHUR. He was here again last night!
LILY. Who?
LILY. He’s been here for eighteen years.
ARTHUR. But this wasn’t here yesterday. He’s been lurking about when I didn’t know. Singing to you.
LILY smiles complacently downwards. ARTHUR shouts and holds out the ukulele. She takes it and holds it as if to play it. She stands still in the attitude of someone about to play the ukulele during the ensuing dialogue. The French windows open and TONY PETERS enters. He is tall, debonair and gay, although balding, with the cuffs of his blazer slightly fraying, his suede shoes shiny and his grey flannel trousers faded. He is carrying a string bag full of screw-top bottles of light ale.
TONY. It’s bloody cold.
ARTHUR. It’s you.
TONY. Of course it’s me. Look here, old man. Aren’t you going to dress? I mean it is Caroline’s birthday.
ARTHUR. Oh my God. How far can I be goaded?
TONY (unloads his bag, sets the bottles out on the table and then throws it on top of the Union Jack). I don’t know. It’s amusing to find out.
ARTHUR. You were here last night?
TONY. Certainly.
ARTHUR. Singing to Bin?
TONY. Keeping her company while you gave, to those few unlucky boys whose temperatures are still normal and who can still breathe through their noses, your usual Sunday evening sermon on ‘Life as a stiff row from Putney to Mortlake’.
ARTHUR. So you chose that as a moment for singing … to a married woman.
TONY. She sat in your chair, Arthur. We turned out the lights. The room was softly lit by the one bar of the electric fire. I was cross-legged on the floor. In the half-light I appeared boyish and irresistible. Lily needs no concealed lighting to look perpetually young. From under all the doors and through the cracks of the windows the wind sneered at us from Moscow – but we didn’t feel the cold. In the distance we heard you say that it is particularly under Hammersmith Bridge that God requires ten hard pulls on the oar. Above us the coughs crackled like distant gunfire. My fingers cramped by the cold, I struck at my instrument. (He takes the ukulele from LILY and plays.)
(Singing.) ‘Oh the Captain’s name
Was Captain Brown,
And he played his ukulele
As the ship went down… .’
ARTHUR. That idiotic song.
TONY (singing very close to Arthur).
‘Then he bought himself
A bar of soap,
And washed himself
Ashore.’
LILY puts her hand flat over her mouth like a child to stifle her giggles.
ARTHUR. If either of you had the slightest idea of loyalty. If you had a grain of respect for me, for Sunday evening, for decent, wholesome living.
TONY (singing).
‘Oh we left her baby on the shore,
A thing that we’ve never done before.’
ARTHUR. It’s obscene.
TONY. Obscene?
ARTHUR. Perhaps not the words. The dirty expression you put into it. When I’m not looking.
TONY (singing).
‘If you see the mother
Tell her gently
That we left her baby on the shore.’
The giggles explode past LILY’S hand.
ARTHUR. Bin!
LILY. I’m sorry. It just gets me every time. Poor baby! It’s so damned casual.
ARTHUR. It doesn’t seem to me a subject for joking.
LILY. But the way Tony sings it. Just as if he’d forgotten a baby.
ARTHUR. He probably has.
LILY. What can you be saying?
ARTHUR. I don’t know. How can I know anything? Everything goes on when I’m not there. Furniture falls to the ground. This man sings. Crockery breaks. You pull his ears, stroke his hair as he squats there in front of you. Don’t think I’ve got no imagination. I’ve got a vivid imagination. And my hearing is keen. Remember that. I warn you both. My hearing is exceptionally keen.
TONY. Hear that Lily? Stroke my hair more quietly in future.
As ARTHUR seems about to hit him a clock groans and strikes offstage.
LILY. Arthur. You must get dressed. It’s nearly time. Caroline’ll be down.
ARTHUR. Let her come down. It’s time she found out something. Let her find out the lying and deceit and infidelity that all these years … let her find out that her mother spends musical evenings breathing down the neck of an ex-night-club gigolo, lounge lizard, wallflower, sensitive plant, clinging vine, baby-leaving, guitar-twanging, Mayfair playboy, good-time Charlie, fly-by-night, moonlight flit, who can’t even do quadratic equations. Let her find out all she is. Poor girl. Poor child. You’re right Bin – you’ve brought it on us all. She’s too old for Halma now.
He sits down exhausted. They look at him in horror. He, too, is a little horrified by what he has said.
TONY. Arthur. Look here, my dear old fellow. It’s Caroline’s party. You wouldn’t spoil a party?
ARTHUR. I don’t know that I feel particularly festive.
LILY. Come on, Arthur. You know how you enjoy Caroline’s birthday.
ARTHUR. I always have. Up to now. Ever since she was born.
TONY. And look Arthur, my dear old Head, I bought these for us in the pub. A whiff each after dinner.
He takes two battered cigars out of his breast pocket.
ARTHUR (crackles and smells the cigar). That was thoughtful of you, Peters.
TONY. I know you don’t smoke them as often as one might like. Only when something a little bit festive arises from time to time.
LILY (ecstatic). Oh, Tony Peters! Beautifully managed.
ARTHUR. Perhaps my suspicions are unfounded.
LILY. You manage him so beautifully.
TONY. Why not finish dressing, my fine old Headmaster? Let us both face the fact, you must be bitterly cold.
ARTHUR (starts to work himself up again). I tell you I never feel cold. Anyway it’s never cold here. Only occasionally a little brisk after sunset. Anyway who’s old? Didn’t you tell me, Tony Peters, that in your prep school the Third Eleven Match play was once stopped by a Zeppelin? You didn’t mean to let that slide out did you? What does that make you? Pretty long in bottle for a junior assistant! Ha! Ha!
TONY. I’m not a junior assistant.
ARTHUR. What are you then?
TONY. A senior assistant.
ARTHUR. You’re the only assistant. I think of you as junior.
TONY (shrugging his shoulders). It’s a fact. I give an impression of perpetual youth. (He slaps his pocket, brings out a half-bottle of whisky.) I thought this might slip down well with the whiffs.
ARTHUR (mollified). It looks like good stuff.
TONY. I’ve always had an eye for a piece of good stuff.
ARTHUR looks up suspiciously.
TONY. Arthur, Head, do believe me. That remark was in no way meant to be offensive.
ARTHUR. I’ll take your word for it.
LILY. So hurry on Arthur, do. We must be just so for when Caroline comes in.
TONY. Go on Head. Spick and span. That’s the order of the day. Look, Lily’s in her best. As always, on these occasions.
LILY and TONY pat him, steer him towards the door; he turns to them before he goes out.
ARTHUR. For God’s sake, you two. Use your imaginations. Think what it’s like being up there, wrestling with a collar in utter ignorance. Tormented… .
TONY. Get a start on the collar now. You’ll be back with us in five minutes.
ARTHUR. Five minutes? Haven’t you ever thought, Peters, the whole course of a man’s life can be changed in five minutes. Does it take five minutes to die? Or catch malaria? Or say the one word to unhinge another man’s wife from him? All right, I’ll trust you. But look here, both. No singing. Don’t torture me with that.
TONY. If I do sing, I’ll sing so quietly that no human ear could ever pick it up. I’ll sing in notes only audible to a dog.
ARTHUR. That’s worse.
LILY. Now go on, really. Caroline can’t sit and gaze at a brass collar stud on her birthday.
ARTHUR. I’m going. For Caroline’s sake, I’m going. Poor child. (He stands in the doorway, the door open.)
TONY. For Caroline’s sake. Goodbye.
TONY shuts the door on him. Then walks over to the basket-work chair and drops into it.
TONY. He’s not right.
LILY. About what?
TONY. About me.
LILY. What about you?
TONY. I can do quadratic equations.
LILY. Another year gone. Another birthday come again.
TONY. Gather all the Xs and Ys on to one side.
LILY. Eighteen years old. (She fiddles with the presents.)
TONY. Remove the brackets.
LILY. Oh Tony, can she possibly be happy?
TONY. Remember that minus times minus makes plus.
LILY. Tony can you hear me?
TONY. As an example. In the problem, if it takes ten barbers twenty minutes at double speed to shave ‘y’ tramps let ‘x’ equal the time taken to shave half a tramp. That’s Arthur’s problem. Arthur can teach quadratics all right. But can he do them? Isn’t that rather the point?
LILY. Everyone here is so taken up with their own concerns.
TONY. I’m sorry.
LILY. I quite understand. You’re naturally anxious for your algebra.
TONY. No, Lily. Not at all. Come and sit down.
LILY. Where?
TONY. Here. (He slaps his knee.)
LILY. I’d be taking a risk.
TONY. All we can take in this mean, tight-fisted world.
She giggles and sits on the floor in front of him, her elbows on his knees, gazing up at him.
LILY. Now is Caroline … ?
TONY. What?
LILY. Happy.
TONY. She shows no signs of being otherwise.
LILY (looks down suddenly, her eyes full of tears). How can she tell us?
TONY. Poor Arthur. It may not be so bad as he thinks.
LILY. When it’s something we must have all noticed why don’t we discuss …
TONY. At first perhaps, it was our headmaster’s fault. When it happened at first I blamed him. But since last birthday I’ve begun to suspect …
LILY. Tony. You’re talking about it. About Caroline …
TONY (talking quickly as if to avoid an awkward moment). Caroline is now eighteen which must mean that she was born in 1940. Dark days with storm clouds hanging over Europe. Poor child she never knew the pre-war when you could weekend in Paris on a two-pound-ten note and get a reasonable packet of cigarettes for elevenpence complete with card which could be collected towards a jolly acceptable free gift. She never borrowed a bus and took a couple of girls from Elstree Studio out dancing up the Great West Road and home with the milk and change left out of a pound.
LILY begins to smile up at him.
LILY. It’s yourself you’re discussing.
TONY. She missed the Big Apple and the Lambeth Walk and the Palais Glide. She couldn’t even come to the party I gave for the Jubilee. Poor child, God knows I’d have invited her. Twenty-three of us in a line gliding down the Earls Court Road at three in the morning. Smooth as skaters. (Takes up his ukelele and sings.)
‘She was sweet sixteen.
On the village green.
Poor little Angeline.’
ARTHUR (offstage shouting). For pity’s sake.
TONY shrugs his shoulders and puts his ukelele down, exasperated.
TONY. Really. He’s like my old landlady in the Earls Court Road. Bump on the ceiling with a broom if you so much as lifted a girl from the floor to the sofa.
LILY (elbows on his knees). Was it so carefree for you then, in Earls Court?
TONY (modestly). Carefree? Look Lily, I knew ten clubs where the drummers were happy to allow me a whirl with their sticks. I knew twenty pubs in S.W. alone which were flattered to take my cheque, and as for the opposite sex …
LILY looks at him admiringly.
I had enough telephone numbers to fill a reasonably bulky pocket diary from January to Christmas. Even the little space for my weight and size of hat, Lily, was crammed with those available numbers.
LILY. What do you think took away all our happy days?
TONY. Are they gone?
LILY. Arthur says so. Driven away, he says, by the Russians and the Socialists and the shocking way they’ve put up the rates.
TONY. We can still have a good time.
LILY. But can Caroline? If she could only tell …
She gets up and wanders to the table, arranging the presents.
LILY. And when she never knew …
TONY. Isn’t that rather the point?
LILY. Deprived, Tony, of all the pre-war we ever had?
TONY. All that pre-war denied her.
LILY. What would become of us, do you suppose, if we hadn’t got that pre-war to think about?
TONY (he gets up from the chair and stands with his arm round her shoulders). It’s not all over. We don’t just let it die out.
LILY. It mustn’t.
TONY. We keep it going you see. And it keeps us going too.
Pause, as they stand side by side.
ARTHUR (yelling from offstage). What have you two got to be so damned quiet about?
They smile at each other and TONY breaks away from her and walks round the room rubbing his hands and flapping his arms. He begins to talk in the clipped, stoical voice of an explorer reminiscing.
TONY. The glass stood at forty below when we unpacked our Christmas dinner in Camp A. (He blows on his nails.)
LILY (thoughtfully, softly). I remember the day you arrived. It was summer and Arthur was out taking cricket practice.
TONY. Frozen penguin and a mince pie which my dear sister had sent from Godalming, found, quite by chance, stuffed in a corner of my flea-bag.
LILY. I heard the sound of your two-seater on the gravel.
TONY. We broke the mince pie with our ice axes. Three dogs died in the night.
LILY. Why did you have to sell that two-seater?
TONY … Prayed to God before sharing our penguin. Now a thousand miles from base camp. Had a premonition we should never see England again… .
LILY. I was alone in the middle of the afternoon. I heard you singing outside the window. It opened and you came in … When you saw me standing all alone …
LILY. Yes?
TONY. With silent heroism …
LILY. What?
TONY. Walked out of the tent.
With a dramatic gesture he steps behind the curtain of the French window and is lost to sight.
LILY (standing alone centre stage, her arms extended. A slight wait). Tony! Why won’t you ever be serious with me?
ARTHUR enters, fully dressed, his hair brushed and shining.
ARTHUR. Where the hell’s he got to now?
LILY makes a gesture of despair.
ARTHUR. It’s no use lying, Bin. I can see his filthy suede shoes under the curtain.
He pulls the curtain aside. TONY smiles at him, pats his shoulder and walks out into the room. TONY lights a cigarette with great finesse. ARTHUR sits down at the table, raises his hands as if to say something several times. The words don’t exist for what he feels that he must say.
TONY. Now Arthur. Don’t make a fool of yourself over this.
ARTHUR. I … make a fool?
TONY. It’s quite reasonable.
LILY. Tony, it seems, was discovering the North Pole.
ARTHUR. The North Pole?
TONY. Shut your eyes, Headmaster, and what can you hear? The ice cracking like gunfire in the distance. The wind howling in the guy ropes. The fizz of the solid fuel as it melts a little snow for your evening cocoa.
ARTHUR. Oh my God! (He buries his face in his hands.)
LILY (laughing). Give the poor man a little peace.
TONY. Peace? What does Arthur want with peace? He’d be as bored as a retired general with nothing to do but keep chickens and explore the possibility of life after death. As lonely as a bull without a bull-fighter. As hard up for conversation as an invalid without his operation. Give him peace and you’d bury your husband. What can he listen to in this great frozen institution except the sound of his own eternal irritation? (He claps him on the shoulder.) Keep going, Headmaster, go off every minute. You’re the dear old foghorn that lets us know we’re still afloat.
LILY. Ssh. Caroline!
ARTHUR has raised his two clenched fists and now opens his hands and pushes himself up from the table.
ARTHUR. She’s been out for a walk.
CAROLINE has come in through the French window halfway through TONY’S speech. Now she closes them and comes into the room, crosses it, and hangs her mackintosh on the back of the door that leads to the school.
(Pulling out his watch and looking at it.) She usually does at this time.
CAROLINE comes up to the three of them, and looks at them without expression. She sits down. The others stand. She is eighteen and extremely beautiful, her beauty being such that it is strange, composed and vaguely alarming. She has a look of complete innocence and wears, unexpectedly, the sort of clothes worn by starlets on the covers of very cheap film magazines. These clothes have an appearance of being homemade. She does not speak. While she is on the stage the other characters speak faster as if to conceal the fact of her silence from themselves.
TONY. I wonder where she’s been?
LILY. Usually along the front.
TONY. She doesn’t feel the cold?
ARTHUR. Brought up here, of course she doesn’t notice it.
TONY. She always walks alone?
LILY. Hardly ever picks up a friend.
Pause while they all think of something to say. CAROLINE is still expressionless.
ARTHUR. Well – she’s back just in time.
TONY. Haven’t you got something to say to her?
ARTHUR. You needn’t remind me. Many happy returns of the day.
He puts his hand out. CAROLINE shakes it. Arthur sits down at the table.
TONY. Many, many, happies, Caroline dear. (He stoops to kiss the top of her head.)
CAROLINE lifts her face and kisses him on the mouth. She is still expressionless. He sits down, disconcerted, patting his lips with his handkerchief.
LILY. Caroline, my baby. Don’t grow up any more.
LILY hugs CAROLINE like a child and then sits down.
ARTHUR. She didn’t like you saying that.
TONY. She didn’t mind.
Pause while LILY begins to cry.
ARTHUR (suddenly loses his temper). Will you provoke me, Bin, with these bloody waterworks?
TONY. Look. She hasn’t noticed her presents yet.
ARTHUR. She was upset.
TONY. No she wasn’t.
CAROLINE looks down at her place and lifts her hands in amazement. Her face is still without expression.
LILY (recovering). She’s seen them now.
ARTHUR (eagerly). She may open mine first.
TONY. Well, of all the selfish …
ARTHUR. She’s going to. I hope you didn’t notice me buying it, Caroline, in the High Street yesterday. Creeping out of W. H. Smith’s.
TONY. Now you’ve given the game away.
ARTHUR. What are you hinting?
TONY. The mention of W. H. Smith. Now she can rule out stockings or underwear or any nice toilet water.
CAROLINE shakes the parcel.
CAROLINE shakes her head.
ARTHUR. No, she hasn’t.
CAROLINE opens the parcel; it contains a Halma set and three boy’s adventure books.
TONY. Same old things. She’s bored with Halma.
ARTHUR. No she’s not!
TONY. Yes she is.
ARTHUR. Anyway it’s a wholesome game, Peters, unlike the indoor sports you’re addicted to.
TONY. And these books! You only buy them to read them yourself. Three midshipmen stranded on a desert island. (Picks up one and starts to read.) ‘Give over tickling, Harry, giggled his chum, little guessing it was the hairy baboon that had crept up behind the unsuspecting youngsters …’
ARTHUR. She appreciates it.
LILY (soothingly). Of course she does, don’t let’s quarrel. Not on the birthday.
TONY (putting down the book). I suppose it takes all tastes.
LILY. Perhaps now she’ll open mine.
CAROLINE picks up a parcel.
LILY. I made it for you, dear. It took so long. I seem to have been making it all my life.
CAROLINE opens the parcel. A long sweater, white and endless with the school colours at the neck. She holds it in front of herself. It’s far too long.
LILY. Oh Caroline. There’s too much of it. I had far too much spare time.
TONY (putting his hand on LILY’S shoulder). She likes it. She thinks it’ll keep her warm.
ARTHUR. Warm? Keep her warm did you say? I tell you it’s perfectly warm here, all the year round.
TONY. There now, Headmaster. Lily’s right. We shouldn’t quarrel on the birthday. And look. She’s knitted in the school colours. That’ll cheer you up, you know. When you see those colours always round your daughter.
ARTHUR. At least it shows some sense of loyalty.
TONY. Of course, not being, strictly speaking, a parent my present gets opened last.
ARTHUR (resentfully). A treat saved up for you.
CAROLINE picks up TONY’S present. Holds it against her cheek. Listens to it.
TONY. I believe … Yes. I think I am right in saying (radio commentator’s voice): ‘The ceremony is just about to begin. It’s a wonderful spectacle here today. The Lady Mayoress has released the pigeons. The massed bands are striking up. The Boy Scouts are fainting in unprecedented numbers and …’
CAROLINE undoes the parcel, produces a gilt powder compact.
ARTHUR. What can it be?
CAROLINE opens the compact and sprinkles powder on her nose.
LILY. My baby …
ARTHUR. Take that muck off your face. I forbid it. Go straight upstairs and wash.
TONY. Headmaster!
LILY. Surely Tony. She’s still too young.
TONY goes behind CAROLINE, his hands on each side of her head he directs her face to one parent, then another.
TONY. Can you be such unobservant parents? Your daughter has now been using cosmetics in considerable quantities for many years.
ARTHUR. Is this true, Bin?
LILY. She’s still a child.
TONY. Her table upstairs is covered with tubes, little brushes and the feet of rabbits. In an afternoon, with nothing better to do, she can turn from a pale, coal-eyed, fourteenth wife of an oil sheik to a brash, healthy, dog-keeping, pony-riding, daddy-adoring virgin with a pillar-box mouth. Her beauty spots come off on the face towels and when she cries she cries black tears.
ARTHUR. Your appalling influence.
TONY. The passage of time, Headmaster. What can you and I do to prevent it?
ARTHUR. I see her as a little girl.
TONY. Then you don’t bother to look.
ARTHUR. Did you notice Bin?
LILY. When the sun falls straight on her I do have my suspicions. We’ve had so little sun lately.
The clock groans and strikes. CAROLINE puts down the powder compact and goes out of the room, through the door to the boy’s department.
She’s gone.
TONY. To collect her presents from the boys.
ARTHUR. Of course. I was forgetting.
TONY. She always does that next. Then she comes back to show us what they’ve given.
ARTHUR. Of course … of course.
ARTHUR and LILY are staring thoughtfully in front of them. TONY walks about nervously, about to broach a difficult subject.
TONY. My old friends. (He gets no reaction and starts again.) Colleagues. Of course I’m not a parent.
ARTHUR (angrily). If only I could be sure of that.
TONY (smiling flattered). Not in any official sense. But I have at least been a child.
LILY (looking at him affectionately). Yes, Tony, of course you have.
TONY. Now frankly speaking, isn’t eighteen a bit of a cross roads? Isn’t there something, can’t you feel, that Caroline ought to be told?
ARTHUR. Told?
TONY. Yes.
LILY. What sort of thing, Tony, had you in mind?
TONY (suddenly at a loss). We must have something to tell her. At least I should have thought so. Nothing to embarass anyone to tell, of course … But (more positive) … her education. Aren’t there a few gaps there?
ARTHUR. You don’t find everything in the covers of books, Peters. That’s why I always lay the emphasis on organized games.
TONY. Yes. I noticed. (He picks up his ukelele and begins to play odd notes, tuning it as he speaks, more vaguely and with less assurance.)
LILY goes out and, during TONY’S speech, comes back with a tray, including a dish of sausages and mash which she puts down to keep warm by the electric fire.
It’s not that I’m all that keen on education myself. In fact I merely drifted into it. It was a thé dansant on the river, Maidenhead. The waiter was feeding the swans, he had an apron full of bread-crumbs. I was dancing with a girl called Fay Knockbroker. She was so small and yellow and it was hot to touch her. Like a red-hot buttercup.
ARTHUR makes an explosion of disgust. LILY looks up at him from the dishes and smiles and goes out again.
… ‘Tony,’ she said, ‘Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you work?’ It appeared her father, Knockbroker, what did he deal in, taps? – I really forget, has said marriage was forbidden unless I worked. I had five shillings in my trousers that afternoon. I couldn’t have covered the cucumber sandwiches.
ARTHUR. Grossly irresponsible.
TONY. In fact marriage was far from my thoughts. I only wanted to get Fay launched in a punt and pushed out under the willows.
ARTHUR. Disgusting.
TONY. Probably. But it’s that punt, those willows, that have kept me going in all our cold winters.
LILY comes in again with the tomato ketchup.
That and …
ARTHUR. Don’t say it! I can guess …
TONY. How do you live, Headmaster, without any of those old past moments to warm you up?
ARTHUR. I have my memories. A cry from the megaphone on the tow path. A cheer under Barnes Bridge.
TONY. But Miss Knockbroker wasn’t stepping on board that afternoon. ‘You get a job,’ she said, ‘or I stay on dry land and marry Humphrey Ewart. He works!’
ARTHUR (interested grudgingly). Did he?
TONY. She met him at the Guards’ Boat Club. Blowing safes turned out to be his profession. Knockbroker was very livid when it all came out after the marriage.
ARTHUR. And you?
TONY. I went up to London to get a job. I had to leave her to pay for tea. What could I do? I didn’t know anything. I had to teach. I had no great enthusiasm for education. I might have come to love it. As tutor cramming a young millionaire in the South of France, with his widowed mother bringing us long pink drinks to wash down the logarithms …
ARTHUR (suddenly roaring with laughter). And you ended out here!
TONY. I only came temporarily. Till something else offered.
ARTHUR. You are still temporary. As far as I’m concerned.
LILY. You don’t regret it Tony?
TONY (looking round at her, then brassly). Of course not. No regrets. I’ve no enthusiasm for education. But I can’t help thinking. There are things Caroline should be told.
ARTHUR. What for instance?
TONY. We’ve had experience of life.
LILY (lovingly). Ah yes. How very true. Great experience of life.
TONY. Now, shouldn’t we be passing on that experience to her?
ARTHUR. I’m against passing on experience. Boys find it very embarrassing.
TONY. But Caroline, Headmaster, isn’t this rather the point we have to face? Is not, and can never be, barring all accidents, a boy.
ARTHUR. The principle’s the same. I have it so often in class. You start by telling them something unimportant like the date of the Spanish Armada, 1585.
TONY. 1582.
ARTHUR. 1585.
ARTHUR. Fifteen hundred and eighty five. The year of our Lord.
LILY. What can it matter after all these years?
ARTHUR. Imbecile. Don’t interrupt me. Of course it matters. It’s the mental discipline.
TONY. All right, Headmaster. Have it your own way. 1585.
ARTHUR. 1585. You start to tell them … The Battle of the Armada. When England’s Virgin Queen … Then you’ve laid yourself open …
TONY (imitating). Sir! What’s a virgin?
ARTHUR. You see! It’s most undesirable. The lesson may have half an hour to go, and if you start telling them about virgins where will you be when it’s time to ring the bell? Know what I do Peters, if any questions of that type come up?
TONY. Yes. I do.
ARTHUR. I run straight out of the room and ring the bell myself. And that’s my advice to you.
LILY. I suppose it’s natural for them, to be curious.
TONY. They don’t ask any questions unless they already know the answers.
ARTHUR gets up and walks about, gradually working himself into a rage again.
ARTHUR. That’s purely cynical. Their minds are delightfully blank. That’s how it’s got to stay, it’s the only way for Caroline. You start it, Peters. You feed her with bits of geography and history and mathematics. What comes next? Little scraps of information from you about Maidenhead and the Earls Court Road. Little tips from Bin on how to make love to another man while your husband’s upstairs dressing. Little hints from both of you about face powder and silk stockings, free love and Queen Elizabeth and birth control and decimals and vulgar fractions and punts under the willow tree and she’ll be down the slope – woosh! on the toboggan and you’ll never stop her until she crashes into the great black iron railings of the answer which, please God, she mustn’t ever know.
ARTHUR. That ever since you came here and met Caroline’s mother this decent school has been turned into a brothel! A corrupt …
He stops at the sound of a baby crying offstage.
What ever?
The baby cries again.
LILY (delighted). A baby crying.
TONY. One of the boys has asked the right question at last.
CAROLINE wanders in from the boys’ door, her arms full of jokes. She stops by ARTHUR and hands him the cardboard box which, when she turns it upside down, cries like a baby. ARTHUR turns it and it yells. He slowly relaxes.
LILY. It’s just a joke …
TONY. One of her presents from the boys.
ARTHUR. How very, very amusing.
TONY. How strange these boys are.
CAROLINE hands TONY a bottle of beer. He tries to open it and finds it’s made of rubber. LILY gets a squeaking banana. CAROLINE has a pair of glasses which include a nose and teeth which she puts on. They all sit down, CAROLINE quite motionless in her false nose, the others urgently talking.
TONY. Will you light the candles, Headmaster? Give a warm, shaded, Café Royal touch to the proceedings.
ARTHUR (lighting the candles). Sausages and mash I see.
LILY (serving it out). And red jelly to follow.
ARTHUR. Always Caroline’s favourite menu.
TONY. Since she was twelve.
ARTHUR. That’s why we always put it on for the birthday.
LILY. It marks the occasion.
ARTHUR. When I was a boy my birthday always fell when I was away from home at cadet camp. My old aunt gave me my cake to take in a tin. I had to keep it under my camp bed until the day came, then I’d get it out and eat it.
LILY. Let’s be grateful. Caroline doesn’t have to go to cadet camp. She can birthday at home.
ARTHUR. As often as not when I came to open that tin the bird had flown.
TONY. Poor old Headmaster. I never knew that about you.
ARTHUR. Odd thing about it. I suspected that chaplain.
TONY. Not of scoffing your cake?
ARTHUR. It’s a fact. I couldn’t get it out of my head. An effiminate sort of fellow, the chaplain. Welsh. And he had a sweet tooth.
LILY. I’m giving Caroline some more because it’s her favourite dinner.
TONY. Yes. I see.
ARTHUR. It was terribly upsetting for a young boy in my position.
TONY. Indeed yes.
ARTHUR. You can’t put your heart into Church Parade when you suspect the padre of nibbling at your one and only birthday present.
TONY. Let’s hope you misjudged him.
ARTHUR. I was a sound judge of character. He was a man who let the side down badly.
TONY. Suspicious of everyone. Even then.
ARTHUR. What are you trying to infer?
TONY. Nothing at all. Shall I do the honours again, Headmaster?
ARTHUR. Yes. And when you come to Caroline’s glass.
TONY. What?
ARTHUR. Fill it up.
LILY. With alcohol? She won’t like it.
TONY fills CAROLINE’S glass. She drains it thirstily.
TONY. There, Lily. It appears you were wrong.
ARTHUR. Thinking it over, Peters, I have thought your earlier remarks weren’t entirely senseless. Caroline has reached a turning point. The time has come when she can be invited to join her father and mother in a light stimulant. It’s a privilege, and like all privileges it brings new responsibilities.
TONY. In my humble opinion there are very few responsibilities involved in a glass of beer.
ARTHUR. There are responsibilities in everything, running a school, getting married, living at all. That’s what we’ve got to tell Caroline. She’s got to have faith in something bigger than herself.
LILY. Caroline’s a woman now. Isn’t that right, Tony? Didn’t you say that?
TONY. Almost a woman, I should say.
LILY. Then there are things only a woman can tell her?
ARTHUR. There are bigger things in life than knitting patterns and … bottling fruit.
I mean there are things a person can sacrifice himself for. The side. The school. The right comrades, sweating at the oar.
TONY. There speaks the cox of the West Woolwich rowing club.
ARTHUR. Will you mock everything Peters?
TONY. The small man yelling through a paper megaphone while the comrades lug themselves to death at forty from fatty degeneration of the heart.
ARTHUR. Is nothing to be sacred?
TONY. There are better ways of getting heart failure.
ARTHUR. It all comes down to that.
TONY. Caroline’s young. Every day she should collect some small pleasure, to keep her warm when the years begin to empty out. She should try everything, and not mind making mistakes. When she reaches our age it won’t be her mistakes she’ll regret …
ARTHUR. What are you telling her?
TONY. When I remember those girls at Maidenhead, their thumbs up, their faces smiling, doing the Lambeth Walk … It’s not the ones I got away for the weekend I regret. It’s the ones I never had the courage to ask.
ARTHUR. I was trying to give Caroline something to believe in, and you will everlastingly chip in with your unsavoury reminiscences …
TONY. Headmaster, are we attempting too much? Suppose we just give her some accurate information. Such as … where Gibraltar is.
ARTHUR. Gibraltar?
ARTHUR. At the bottom of Spain.
TONY. The bottom?
ARTHUR. Coming round the corner. Cadiz on the right.
TONY. You mean the right?
ARTHUR. The left then. Malaga on the right. Do I mean the left?
TONY. Headmaster. Are you sure you have any information to transfer?
ARTHUR. All right Peters. (Getting up.) You’ve managed it. You’ve cast a blight. You’ve had your mockery. You’ve sneered at the most respected club on the river. You’ve spoiled the birthday for me now. I’m not staying. It’s no use beseeching.
TONY. But Headmaster.
ARTHUR. You’ve rubbed the bloom off the birthday for me. I’m leaving you two together. Remember – a child is watching.
He goes out slamming the door to the bedrooms.
LILY. He’s gone.
TONY. Yes.
CAROLINE sighs and sits down in the basket chair.
TONY. If only he wouldn’t take it as such a personal matter. It’s not my fault where they put Gibraltar. (He picks up the ukelele and tunes it.)
LILY. Ssh. Caroline’s expecting a song.
TONY. An old one …
LILY. That Turk and the extraordinary Russian?
TONY (singing).
‘Oh the sons of the prophet are hardy and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the greatest by far
In the courts of the Shah –
Was Abdul the Bul Bul Emir.’
LILY. Of course Caroline adores this one …
TONY. ‘If they wanted a man to encourage the van or shout …’
LILY (shouts). ‘Atta boy.’
TONY (singing).
‘In the rear
Without any doubt
They always sent out …’
Damn. I almost forgot. I owe the pub for those whiffs. I’m duty bound to slip back.
LILY. Oh Tony.
TONY. They were an expensive gesture …
LILY. Have a look in that box. The egg money …
TONY finds five shillings in a box on the mantelpiece. Pockets it in triumph.
LILY. Must you go tonight?
TONY (dramatic voice stifling sobs, tough American accent). I’m only a small guy, not very brave. I guess this is just one of the things that comes to a small guy and well, he’s just got to go through with it if he ever wants to be able to shake his own hand again this side of the Great River. Maybe if I go through with this Lily, hundreds of little guys all over the world are going to be safe to shake their own hands and look themselves in the whites of their eyes. Maybe if I don’t they won’t. Kinda hard to tell. (Looks out of the French window.) It’s just about sun-up time. Guess Arthur Loudon’s boys are sawing off their shot guns ’bout now down there in the alfafa. So long folks. If ma sobers up tell her Goodbye. Let’s hit the trail now. Don’t forget the empties. (He hitches up his trousers, picks up the string bag of empties and lurches out of the French window.)
LILY is laughing hard. CAROLINE is quite impassive.
TONY (offstage). Bang, bang, bang.
LILY. Tony, you’ll kill me.
TONY (staggering in backwards, his hand on his heart). They killed me too, honey. Tell ma I’m feeling just fine, can’t hardly notice the difference. (Looks religiously upwards.) O.K. Mr Gabriel Archangel. I heard you. I’m a-coming. Maybe take a little time on account of this old webbed foot of mine.
Limps out of French window.
LILY. Oh Tony Peters. What should I do without you?
Pause.
Caroline, they try to tell you things – but what can they tell you? We’re not men you see, we’re something different. Lots of men don’t realize that. All men except, except Tony.
CAROLINE still sits impassively. LILY kneels on the floor in front of her.
LILY. I’m a woman, Caroline. And you’re going to be one as well. Nothing can stop you. I’m a woman and what does Arthur call me? He calls me Bin. Bin, when my name is Lily. Now does Bin sound like a woman’s name to you? You know why he calls me Bin? Because he wants me to be his friend, his assistant, his colleague, his thoroughly good chap. To rough it with him on a walking tour through life. He’s said that to me, Caroline. How can I be a good chap, I wasn’t born a chap. My sex gets in the way. That’s why he gets so angry. (She gets up and moves about the room.) Look Caroline, do you know why he calls me Bin? Because my father did and my uncle did and so did my five brothers who all married soft-hearted tittering girls in fluffy pullovers which came off on them like falling hair and white peep-toe shoes and had pet names for their hot-water bottles. Those brothers called me Bin. Good old Bin, you can put her on the back of the motor bike. Bin’s marvellous, she can go in the dicky because her hair’s always in a tangle and her cheeks are like bricks and the wind can’t do her any harm, but Babs or Topsy or Melanie has to sit in front because she’s such a fusspot and so I can change gear next to her baby pink and artificial silk and get her angora all tied up in my Harris tweed. If you take Bin out it’s for great slopping pints and the other one about the honeymoon couple in the French hotel, and then you can be sick in the hedge on the way because Bin’s a good chap. We’re women Caroline. They buy us beer when we long to order protection and flattery and excitement and crème de menthe and little bottles of sparkling wine with silver paper tops and oh God, we long to be kept warm. Aren’t I right? Isn’t that how we feel? Mothers and daughters and wives … (Kneeling again.) Oh Caroline tell me I’m right. Caroline. Speak to us. What have we done wrong?
CAROLINE says nothing, but, for the first time, she smiles slowly and puts her hands on her mother’s shoulder. LILY gets up, gets the tray which she has left leaning against the wall and begins to stack the plates.
LILY. Anyway all my friends got married and there was only Arthur. He was small and violent and believed in everything. Life wasn’t much fun at home, my brothers got married and their wives refused to take on their pets. After the youngest left I was walking out with five Alsatian dogs. Father economized on the wedding. ‘We needn’t hire a car for Bin,’ he said. My brother Tommy took me to the church on the back of his motor bike. My first long dress and I was rushed up to my wedding wearing goggles and waving in the wind like a flag. We’re women, Caroline. There’s supposed to be a mystery about us. We should be sprung on our men like a small surprise in the warmth and darkness of the night – not delivered by a boy on a motor bike like a parcel that’s come undone in the post. It shouldn’t be like that for you Caroline. The day after the marriage I told Arthur I loved him. ‘There are more important things than love,’ he said. ‘What more important things?’ ‘Companionship,’ he said, ‘helping one another. Now we’re dedicated, our lives are dedicated.’ ‘What to?’ I asked him. ‘The boys.’ Can you believe it? Those dreadful children coughing like old sheep upstairs. I was dedicated to them. I went to look at them. They were in striped pyjamas, they looked like little old convicts with cropped heads and matchstick arms and legs. They had hard, sexless voices and the faint, cold smell of lead pencils. And you know what? Arthur said it would make them think of me as more of a sport. He told them to call me Bin. I ask you. Is that a name for a woman?
ARTHUR (shouts offstage). What are you doing, Bin?
LILY (suddenly shouts back). Clearing away. (Then quietly.) That day was so empty. It seemed I’d been born a woman for nothing at all. Yet I couldn’t be a man. Arthur wanted me to play cricket with the boys – can you imagine that Caroline? My legs were still young, and his idea was to see them buckled up in cricketing pads. My soft hands in the gloves of a wicket keeper …
ARTHUR (offstage shouts). I heard singing. Then the singing stopped. What’s he got round to now?
LILY. I was a woman and there was no time for me.
ARTHUR (offstage). Don’t you realize? I went to bed because of the way you all treated me. I can’t get out again. It’d be ridiculous!
LILY (shouts). I’ll be up in a minute. (Quiet.) Just a succession of days. Saints’ days with no lessons before breakfast. Sundays when the boys hit each other in the evening. Mondays when Arthur loses his temper. Nothing. Like a party when no one’s remembered to send out the invitation … Then Tony came …
She leaves the dishes stacked on the tray and sits near CAROLINE.
ARTHUR. Bin! Come here, Bin! Don’t leave me alone.
LILY. You know Tony can never be serious. Perhaps he’s not very honest. Does he speak the truth all the time? I don’t care. He treats me as if I was born to be a woman. Lily, Lily, all the time and never a nickname. And he’s made Arthur jealous. (Triumphant.) They quarrel over me Caroline. They’ve been fighting over me for years. Imagine that! Good old Bin. She won’t mind going home alone now we’ve met you girls …
LILY gets up. Turns to the middle of the room.
But now it’s Lily Loudon and Arthur’s developed jealousy.
ARTHUR (shouting offstage). Are you going to rob me of my sleep? It’s the semi-finals tomorrow.
LILY (shouting). What semi-finals?
ARTHUR (shouting back). Squash. Masters v Boys.
LILY (contemptuously). Squash! What did Tony say today? ‘Lily,’ always Lily you see, ‘needs no half-light to look perpetually beautiful.’ He said that. A man with all those available telephone numbers.
ARTHUR (plaintifully off). The boys’ll make a fool of me if I don’t get some sleep.
LILY. It’ll come to you Caroline. If you’re a woman it’s bound to come. In the middle of the afternoon, perhaps. During cricket practice. You’ll hear a sound in the gravel, someone singing outside the window. You stand quite still holding your breath in case they should go away. And then, when the windows opens … Caroline, I’m telling you. It’s the only thing that matters …
ARTHUR (shouts). Am I never to see you again?
LILY. One day he’ll do his insides mischief, shouting like that. Just put the tray in the kitchen would you. We’ll wash up in the morning. I shouldn’t have told you all that. I’ve enjoyed it though, telling myself. Don’t remember it all. Only remember you’re Caroline – make them call you that. Don’t let them call you a funny name.
ARTHUR (offstage). Bin!
LILY. Coming Arthur. I’m coming now.
She looks at CAROLINE and then goes out of the door. CAROLINE sighs, stretches and then gets up and carries the tray out of the room. The stage is empty. CAROLINE comes back and looks round the room. She takes out her powder compact. Standing over by the mantelpiece, powders her nose. She puts out the light. The stage is dark, only the electric fire glowing. She draws the curtains in front of the French window showing a square of grey moonlight. She goes and sits down to wait. She waits. There’s a footstep. She stands, her arms outstretched.
TONY (offstage, singing).
‘… “Do you hold life so dull.
That you’re seeking to end your career?”
Vile infidel know
You have trod on the toe …’
TONY comes in at the French window. Stumbles in the darkness.
What’s up? Everyone gone to bed?
CAROLINE makes a slight sound and falls on him, her arms round his neck, her mouth pressed on his. In the square of moonlit French window he is struggling to release his neck from her hands. When he frees himself he dashes to the door and switches on the light.
TONY. Caroline. What have they been telling you now?
She moves towards him.
Whatever it was – you can’t have understood. You must have got it wrong.
He opens the door behind him. He disappears rapidly through the door. CAROLINE faces the audience. She is not unduly upset. Her hands turn palm outwards, she heaves a small sigh, her eyes turn upwards in mock despair. On her, the Curtain slowly falls.