SCENE ONE
A parlour in the Free Kirk Manse1 at Larach, in the West Highlands of Scotland. It is Sunday afternoon. The furnishing is austere. Two walls are occupied by bookcases full of forbidding-looking books. On the other wall are signed engravings of elderly clergymen. There is a presentation black-marble clock on the mantelpiece. There are no further concessions to decorative art. A lanky man in battle-dress is lounging in the only comfortable chair, with his slippered feet on the mantelpiece. His name is CULLY. When he speaks, it is with an ‘educated’ accent. He wears large horn-rimmed spectacles. Through the window is seen an autumnal Highland landscape, illuminated, for the moment, by a watery beam of sunshine. A second soldier enters. He is small, sturdy, Hebraic and disconsolate. His name is COHEN.
COHEN: (singing, dirge fashion) ‘Roll out the barrel; we’ll have a barrel of fun…’ Not half, we won’t.
(He finds a dishcloth in his hands and throws it back through the open door)
CULLY: (in what he imagines to be Scots) Hoots mon! Don’t ye no ken, you cannot sing on the Sabbath Day?
COHEN: Don’t I know it!
CULLY: Where have you been, my dear Mr Gordon Montefiore Cohen?
COHEN: Cleaning up the crimson dinner dishes. That’s where I’ve been.
CULLY: Don’t you get enough polishing to do at the Camp?
COHEN: You’ve said it.
CULLY: Then what’s the matter with you? Gone balmy?
COHEN: Not yet.
(He sits down and absently takes out a cigarette)
CULLY: You can’t smoke in here, cocky.
COHEN: Hell, no. (He puts his fag away) Cor, stone the crows, what a dump! What a billet! Cor darn my socks!
CULLY: You’ve only got your lousy ambition to thank for it.
COHEN: What do you mean ambition? Did I have any ambition to get drafted up North to this perishing cold doorstep of a country? Did I have any ambition to be billeted on an old holy, sour-puss, praying bloody preacher? Tell me, I’m asking you.
CULLY: You were ambitious to be the cleanest, best-behaved man in the battery, and that’s why they picked you.
COHEN: Oh, indeed. And why did they pick you?
CULLY: God knows. They thought I needed a bit of religion, I expect.
COHEN: What’s the good? Lord love me, what’s the good?
CULLY: They’ll make you a bombardier all right. This is only a small spot of purgatory, before they receive you into everlasting glory.
COHEN: Bombardier? Not me, they won’t. Not with a nose my shape and that old Nazi of a B.S.M.2 anti-semiting all over the ship. Tin-eyed old beer-tank. What you reading?
CULLY: Meditations among the Tombs.3
COHEN: So help me, there isn’t a decent cemetery to go to, let alone a cinema.
CULLY: Why did you wash the dishes?
COHEN: Something to do. Just to pass the time.
CULLY: Damned liar.
COHEN: Well… I thought there might be a bit of fun in it.
CULLY: Was there?
COHEN: No fear! They made her go to the matinee — the afternoon service, whatever you call it — the minute I offered. The nasty minds these holy blokes has.
CULLY: Bad luck.
COHEN: I’ll be more careful next time. A bit unsophisticated but quite a pretty little bit of stuff. And a skirt’s always a skirt. And I ain’t seen many round hereabouts.
CULLY: I thought you were a respectable married man.
COHEN: Hell, chum, I wouldn’t be a married man if I didn’t like a bit of skirt. Be reasonable. There ain’t no harm in it. Read us a bit. I’m right browned off, and that’s a fact.
CULLY: ‘Indulge, my soul, a serious pause. Recollect all the gay things that were wont to dazzle thy eyes and inveigle thy affections. Here, examine those baits of sense. Here form an estimate of their real value. Suppose thyself first among the favourites of fortune, who revel in the lap of pleasure; who shine in the robes of honour; and swim in tides of unexhausted riches; yet, how soon would the passing bell proclaim thy exit; and, when once the iron call has summoned thee to thy future reckoning, where would all these gratifications be? At that period, how will all the pageantry of the most affluent, splendid and luxurious circumstances vanish into empty air?…’
COHEN: I ain’t got that. Who’s supposed to have murdered who?
CULLY: Nobody’s murdered anybody.
COHEN: Who’s this bloke supposed to be talking to?
CULLY: To anybody. To you.
COHEN: He is, is he? Then he don’t know me! Swim in tides of unexhausted riches! He don’t say anything about skirts, does he?
CULLY: Oh, yes. There’s a lot about blokes dying and skirts howling over them. Would you like me to read you a bit?
COHEN: No, I thank you. I thank you kindly, I am much obliged, but I should not think of troubling you. I don’t like howling skirts, I like joyful skirts. I’d give a week’s pay to see one this moment.
CULLY: You damp down your libido, cocky. There aren’t any skirts around here.
COHEN: No. And if there were, there ain’t much to make them joyful.
(He goes to the window)
What a country!
CULLY: Well, the sun was shining last time I looked out.
COHEN: Yes. You can see across the loch. They say hereabouts when you can see across the loch it’s going to rain, and when you can’t see across the loch it blooming well is raining.
(JEAN, a tall, cheerful-looking young lady in a dressing-gown appears in the doorway)
JEAN: Hello!
CULLY: Oh, hello!
JEAN: (to COHEN). Hello! you too.
COHEN: Hello! Miss.
CULLY: Who are you?
JEAN: A joyful skirt.
COHEN: You heard us talking?
JEAN: Yes. I heard you. I hesitated for years. I was too shy to come in, till you said what you liked. So then I came.
COHEN: I’m sorry, Miss. I’m not that sort of a chap at all. I’m not really. But you know how it is, when two blokes gets chinning together.
JEAN: Oh yes. That’s all right. May I have a book?
CULLY: Oh, yes. Please.
JEAN: I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
COHEN: Not at all. It’s a pleasure.
JEAN: I’m the Meenister’s niece.
CULLY: No. Really? Are you?
JEAN: Yes. My name’s Jean Ogilvie. What are your names?
CULLY: Cully’s mine.
COHEN: Gunner Cohen, Miss.
JEAN: What are your first names?
CULLY: Tom.
COHEN: Gordon.
JEAN: Do sit down, Tom and Gordon. I won’t be a minute. Are you from the gun position on the hill?
COHEN: Yes.
JEAN: I heard you were billeted here. It must be pretty dull for you.
COHEN: You have said it.
JEAN: Where do you come from? London?
COHEN: Yes. Little shop in the Borough Road.
JEAN: You too?
CULLY: More or less, yes.
JEAN: So do I. I’m a typist and teapot carrier at the Ministry of Interference. I was blitzed about a bit, and they sent me for a week’s holiday. That’s why I’m still in bed.
CULLY: I see.
JEAN: I only came yesterday. The hills are nice, don’t you think?
CULLY: Very nice.
JEAN: How do you like my uncle?
COHEN: He seems a very nice gentleman.
JEAN: And there’s no doubt about my aunt being nice, so it’s all very nice together — only dull. I must try to see about getting you cheered up a bit. But my uncle’s so damned strict.
COHEN: He is a bit, isn’t he?
JEAN: Yes. It’s funny. He’s very intelligent too. I’m no match for him. Are you intelligent?
CULLY: I used to think I was. Cohen certainly is.
JEAN: Then we must tackle him tonight after evening service.
CULLY: It will be a pleasure.
JEAN: Will it be a pleasure to you too?… I say, look here, I can’t call you Gordon. Haven’t you another name?
COHEN: The boys sometimes call me Conk.
JEAN: May I?
COHEN: Yes, if you like.
JEAN: Conk, will you help me with my uncle?
COHEN: Well, if it’s not too much of a liberty in the gentleman’s own house.
JEAN: But it’s for his good. There’s lots of things we could teach him.
COHEN: I shouldn’t be surprised.
JEAN: Then that’s settled. I must run now… What’s this book?… Oh, Greek, damn. Never mind. I feel much better. I think I’ll get up.
COHEN: Won’t you stay and talk to us?
JEAN: No, Conk. My uncle doesn’t think naked women are good for soldiers. He’ll be back any minute now. Cheers. I’ll see you later.
(She goes out before the SOLDIERS have time to get to the doorhandle. They make polite rushes and get to the door opposite one another)
COHEN: After you, Claude.
CULLY: Not funny. How do you like her?
COHEN: What do you think of her?
CULLY: I don’t know. I haven’t really seen her yet.
COHEN: It seemed to me like you had a good look.
CULLY: She was putting on an act. She needn’t have troubled. I didn’t come all the way up to the Heilans to be sparkled at. I’m like old Wordsworth, Mr Conk. I am one of them as likes a solitary Highland Lass to be a solitary Highland Lass.4 I can get plenty ‘Come on, you chaps’ stuff where I come from.
COHEN: A bit hard to please.
CULLY: (resuming his chair and his book) Yes.
COHEN: Looked a very high-toned bit of stuff to me. You could see she was a lady.
CULLY: There are no ladies nowadays.
COHEN: In that case, I’ll mizzle up to the canteen. Coming?
CULLY: No. Remember you’ve got to be back for supper at eight.
COHEN: Hell, yes… (at the window)… and there’s the soft refreshing rain coming. And there’s the church coming out. And there’s his holiness coming up the path. I can’t make it. No dodging the column this time, chum!
(He sits down beside the table with a gesture of hopelessness)
A fatalist. That’s me.
(McCRIMMON enters. He is a handsome, serious man of about fifty. He wears a turnover collar and a white bow tie. He carries a silk hat carefully in his hand. Behind him come MRS McCRIMMON, a pretty little woman of forty, and MORAG, the serving-maid, a girl of seventeen)
McCRIMMON: Morag! Put my hat in the box, girl. And take you great care of the nap this time.
(MORAG takes the hat and goes out)
MRS McCRIMMON: Oh, Mr Cully! The Minister’s chair!
CULLY: Sorry, Mrs McCrimmon.
McCRIMMON: Oh, it is all right. It is all right, dear me. A man who defends my country is at liberty to sit in my chair, I’m sure. Sit ye down.
CULLY: No thank you, Sir. Cohen and I were thinking of going out for a walk.
McCRIMMON: It is a nice thing, a walk. You would be too tired maybe to attend the afternoon diet of worship? But I forgot. I am the stupid man. You do not belong to our communion.
MRS McCRIMMON: It’s raining now, Mr Cully. Maybe you’d be better to stay in beside the fire. I’ll put some peats on it, and the Minister will be in his study at his evening sermon, and I’ll be in the kitchen with Morag, so you needn’t be bothering yourself.
McCRIMMON: Oh, there is no harm in the young men going for a walk. No harm at all. You were reading?
CULLY: (showing him the book) Yes.
McCRIMMON: Well, well. Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs. An improving kind of a work in its way, but to my mind he was a greeting bit body, that. And not very sound in his doctrine. But he’s dead longsyne, and no doubt he has done you little harm with his greeting.
(MRS McCRIMMON is busy with the peats. COHEN is helping her)
CULLY: He makes very soothing Sunday-afternoon reading.
McCRIMMON: The Lord did not give his Day that you should be soothed, young man.
CULLY: Oh? I was always told he did.
McCRIMMON: Those who told you so did you no service. The Day was given for rest of the body, improvement of the mind, and the ordinances of public and private worship.
CULLY: Oh, but, Mr McCrimmon, surely…
McCRIMMON: Marget, will you bid Morag put my cup of gruel in the study? You will excuse me, Sir? I have to make some meditations of my own before my sermon.
CULLY: At least I was trying to improve my mind.
McCRIMMON: Indeed, I hope so. And now will you excuse me?
(MRS McCRIMMON and COHEN leave the fireside. Exit MCCRIMMON)
MRS McCRIMMON: Now, there’s a clean fireside, and I think there’s nothing nicer in the whole wide world. Don’t you think so, Mr Cohen, and you a family man?
COHEN: You’re right. Not that I won’t say them turf fires take a bit of getting used to.
MRS McCRIMMON: If you handle them kindly you get a fine steady glow. And the smell of the burning peat is grand.
CULLY: Like a burnt offering on the family altar.
MRS McCRIMMON: You’re making fun of me, and that’s fine; but I wouldn’t make jokes of things like that, Mr Cully. Not of sacred subjects.
CULLY: I didn’t think a good Presbyterian would think altars particularly sacred.
MRS McCRIMMON: Maybe not, but they are no subject for levity.
CULLY: I wasn’t trying to be funny.
MRS McCRIMMON: That’s all right, then.
CULLY: I’ll go up and get my boots on. What about you, Conk?
COHEN: I’ve got my boots on.
MRS McCRIMMON: If you’re going for a walk, I wouldn’t go anywhere you might be seen during the evening service. There might be talk, and you living with the Minister.
CULLY: Right ho.
MRS McCRIMMON: And you’ll be back for supper at half-past eight, will you not? It’s only pease brose, but there will be a wee bit of cold ham for the pair of you.
CULLY: Fine. I’ll remember.
(CULLY goes out)
MRS McCRIMMON: He seems kind of vexed. I hope I was not too sharp with him.
COHEN: Keep your mind easy. He’s been on the mat before sharper-tongued people than you.
MRS McCRIMMON: Maybe he’s not very used to the ways of a Minister’s house, only being here three days; and none of them the Sabbath.
COHEN: That’s it. He’s not used to it.
MRS McCRIMMON: He’s a fine young fellow. It’s a pity he’s an episcopalian.
COHEN: He’s not that, Mum, whatever else he is. He’s C. of E.5
MRS McCRIMMON: Ah, dear me, now, he cannot help his upbringing… Look, the fire’s glowing fine. It’s a homey looking thing, a fire.
COHEN: It is and all.
MRS McCRIMMON: And it growing so dark and gloomy out bye. I think we will have a storm. It is not a nice walk you will be having at all.
COHEN: It helps to pass the time.
MRS McCRIMMON: Och, dear me, with me the time passes without any help. You would think there was scarcely enough of it.
COHEN: It hangs a bit heavy when you’re used to city life.
MRS McCRIMMON: And what would you do, now, if you were in the City at this very moment?
COHEN: Well, now you ast me, I shouldn’t be surprised if I sat down by the fireside and went to sleep. I’d have read all the Sunday papers by this time.
MRS McCRIMMON: Tuts, tuts! Sunday papers!
COHEN: But it’d be a comfort knowing there was places I could go, if I wanted to.
(COHEN heaves a deep sigh and suddenly takes a pocket-book out and pushes a snap-shot at MRS McCRIMMON as if it were a pistol)
MRS McCRIMMON: Oh! What’s that?
COHEN: Me and the trouble and strife.6 Down at Southend. That’s the kid she’s holding up to get took.
MRS McCRIMMON: What a lovely boy!
COHEN: He’s a bit of all right; but he isn’t a boy. He’s a girl.
MRS McCRIMMON: Amn’t I the stupid one! I should have known.
COHEN: Don’t see how you could, with all them clothes on.
MRS McCRIMMON: She’s a bonny wee lass. How old is she?
COHEN: Eleven months there. Had her third birthday last week. There she is. Sitting in the park with her blooming dawg.
MRS McCRIMMON: My, my, how they grow! She’ll be the great chatterbox now.
COHEN: She’s like her ma. Got a lot to say and says it.
MRS McCRIMMON: She’s got a look of you too.
COHEN: Cor blimey! I hope not.
MRS McCRIMMON: It’s about the eyes.
COHEN: She’s a way of laughing with her eyes before the rest of her face gets going.
MRS McCRIMMON: What’s her name?
COHEN: Gladys. Same as the old lady.
MRS McCRIMMON: You must miss them sorely.
COHEN: Not half, I do. Roll on the time.
MRS McCRIMMON: Roll on the time.
(A pause)
COHEN: No news yet from North Africa?
MRS McCRIMMON: Not yet. He’ll be twenty next month. Ninth of November.
COHEN: You don’t look like you’d a grown-up son.
MRS McCRIMMON: There’s whiles I’m surprised myself.
(They turn and look at a photograph of a Seaforth Highlander on the mantelpiece)
MRS McCRIMMON: That was taken the day he got his commission.
COHEN: You’d be proper and proud of him that day.
MRS McCRIMMON: What’s it you say? Not half I wasn’t!
(She laughs)
You’ll have us all speaking the fine, high English before you’ve finished with us.
COHEN: You speak first-class English. There’s a bit of an accent, if you don’t mind my saying so, but I can understand every word you say.
MRS McCRIMMON: Ah, well, now, am I not glad of that? You will be finding us a wild uncivilised lot in the Highlands?
COHEN: I wouldn’t go as far as that. You don’t get the same chanst as what we get up in London, but I wouldn’t call you uncivilised — except on Sundays.
MRS McCRIMMON: Well, well, we’ve all got our ways of doing things, I suppose. Is it a nice place, London? It’ll not be all wickedness with eight million folk in it.
COHEN: I wish you could see our little place in the Borough Road. Above the shop, it is. Nice and handy. And Gladys, she keeps it a treat. Pots and pans shining and a couple of budgerigars in a gilt cage. And always something tasty after we puts up the shutters.
MRS McCRIMMON: She still keeps the shop open?
COHEN: You bet she does. Twicet she’s had the window blown in, but what does she care? Out with the old broom and bucket and on with the job. Cor stone the crows, I shouldn’t have the nerve. And I’m supposed to be a soldier.
MRS McCRIMMON: Och, now, you’re a very brave soldier too, I’m sure.
COHEN: Not me. I get the willies, sometimes, imagining what’s going to happen to me if the Gerries get busy on my gun.
MRS McCRIMMON: You’ll be like us up here. You’ve a strong imagination. There’s whiles I can frighten myself more than Hitler and Goering and that lad Rommel7 could do if they were all in this room waving their pistols and making faces at me. I’ll be lying awake at night with my head under the blankets thinking there’s devils and bogles and kelpies coming down the chimney, though fine I know there’s no such thing. But when they dropped a big bomb on Aberdeen and me at a shop door and knocked over with the blast with all my messages flung mixty maxty, I wasn’t afraid at all, at all. I was just angered.
COHEN: That’s right. It’s the same with Gladys.
MRS McCRIMMON: Not but what I put up a wee prayer, the minute I could think about it.
COHEN: The way you’d hear Gladys howling about the War, you’d think old Hitler got it all up for her benefit. But there’s no more howling when it comes to the bit.
MRS McCRIMMON: It’s our imaginations. They’re an awful nuisance our imaginations.
(Enter JEAN — now fully dressed)
My sorrow and my shame! What are you doing up and about, you bad girl?
JEAN: I’m cured, Aunt Maggie. It’s the Highland air.
MRS McCRIMMON: You should think shame of yourself. I told you to stay in bed till I said you could get up.
JEAN: You know quite well that I never did what you told me.
MRS McCRIMMON: And that’s a true word. You’ve always been little better than a wayward wee rascal.
JEAN: But I’m interrupting you.
MRS McCRIMMON: (in some confusion) Oh, I was just having a wee talk with Mr Cohen. You’ll not have met Mr Cohen. He’s one of the two gentlemen who are billeted with us.
JEAN: I’ve met Mr Cohen and Mr Cully too.
MRS McCRIMMON: Dear me, when would that be, now?
JEAN: Never mind. And go on with your wee talk. I’ll go and speak to Morag and try to work up a bad cough for next time I come back.
MRS McCRIMMON: You are just terrible, and that’s the only one word for you. She has no respect for her elders, Mr Cohen. I’m real sorry for her poor mother. And you’ll just stay here and cheer Mr Cohen up, and I’ll away ben to the kitchen.
(Enter CULLY in his boots)
Now, Mr Cully, you’re surely not going out on an evening the like of this.
CULLY: It does look pretty black.
MRS McCRIMMON: And there’s the mists coming down from the ben. I have seen me lost a hundred yards from the Manse door.
COHEN: I’m not going out, you can bet your life on that.
CULLY: I’ll go myself, then.
JEAN: I’ll go with you if you aren’t going far. Mr Cohen can lend me his waterproof cape.
MRS McCRIMMON: Jean!
JEAN: Well, Aunt Maggie?
MRS McCRIMMON: You’re just out of your bed.
JEAN: I told you I was all right now.
MRS McCRIMMON: And apart from all else, do you remember what day it is?
JEAN: Yes. Quite well.
MRS McCRIMMON: What will people think? What will your Uncle say?
JEAN: I haven’t the least idea what people will think, and Uncle Mac can say what he likes, and I’ll be delighted. He has a beautiful, thrilling voice.
MRS McCRIMMON: Oh, but, Jean…
JEAN: If you like, I’ll promise you one thing. If Gunner Cully attacks my virtue, I shall defend it heartily. I am feeling very virtuous tonight.
MRS McCRIMMON: Oh, Jean, that’s awful talk! And it’s not like you at all. I don’t know what’s come over you.
JEAN: Get your mackintosh cape, Conk, will you?
(COHEN goes out)
MRS McCRIMMON: I’ve half a mind to fetch your uncle.
JEAN: Yes. Do. I haven’t seen him today.
MRS McCRIMMON: Oh, Jean!… It’s all right in England, dearie, and there’s no harm in it, I suppose; but surely you know what sort of place this is?
JEAN: Yes. It’s got the best record for church attendance and the highest illegitimacy rate in the Kingdom. I don’t respect it for either of these records, much. I’m not very keen on going to church, and I rather like behaving myself decently. So I propose to do exactly what I like. I hope you don’t mind.
MRS McCRIMMON: Well… Don’t go too far away, and see and be back in time for supper. I think I’ll let Morag get the supper ready and go and lie down for a wee bit. I’ve a kind of a headache coming on, and it’s still an hour and a half to the evening service.
JEAN: Oh, poor soul! Would you like an aspirin? I’ve got dozens.
MRS McCRIMMON: No, no. It’s only a wee headache. Don’t be late.
JEAN: No. I won’t be late. We won’t go far.
MRS McCRIMMON: (going) I hope you have a nice walk.
JEAN: Please forgive me, Aunt Maggie. I’m an ill-tempered beast. I must be a bit nervy.
MRS McCRIMMON: Yes. You would be after all those experiences.
JEAN: I wish I weren’t going for that walk, but you see I’ve got to now, don’t you?
CULLY: I say, really, I’m not frightfully keen…
JEAN: Shut up… You see, Aunt Maggie, don’t you?
MRS McCRIMMON: Now don’t be asking me if I see or if I don’t see. Away for your walk and don’t bother me.
JEAN: But we’re friends, aren’t we?
MRS McCRIMMON: Och, I’ve no patience with you. Away with you and your havering.
(She gives JEAN a tearful smile and goes out)
JEAN: The fool I am, fighting about nothing.
CULLY: I don’t know. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
JEAN: This is a Wee Free Parish. They think it’s a mortal sin to be seen on the road with a strange young man — especially on the Sawbath.
CULLY: I gathered that.
JEAN: That’s why they stick to hedges and ditches for their — social occasions. Disgusting, superstitious pigs. And they’re not only immoral and hypocritical. They’re Devil-Worshippers.
CULLY: I’d hardly put it that way.
JEAN: They are. I don’t want particularly to go for a walk in the rain with you, but I’m not going to knuckle under to Devil-Worship.
CULLY: What do you mean by Devil-Worship?
JEAN: Have you read any of these books?
(Indicating the bookcase)
CULLY: Two or three. They’re very interesting. I’ve just been cooling off a bit with Hervey on the Tombs.
JEAN: Have you heard any of my Uncle’s sermons?
CULLY: No. I’ve denied myself that pleasure.
JEAN: They don’t worship God. They worship the Devil. They call him God, but he’s really the Devil. All this holiness and censoriousness is to save their skins from boils and leprosy and their souls from damnation. They think if they flatter this fiend and go through a few—rites of propitiation, he’ll let them alone. They’re like savages tying red rags outside their caves to keep away demons. I know them. I’ve lived among them. I’m one of them.
CULLY: You may be right about the particular deity these people believe in, but I think you’re wrong about the Devil.
JEAN: How wrong?
CULLY: Anybody who has thought a lot about the Devil has a great respect for him.
JEAN: You mean they cringe to him. That’s what I’m saying.
CULLY: No. They don’t cringe. None of the fellows I’m thinking about knew how to cringe.
JEAN: Who are they?
CULLY: Milton, Goethe, William Blake, your own Bobbie Burns.
JEAN: Robert Burns to you, please. Well?
CULLY: Even in the Old Testament all they could find against him was that he was rebellious and had a proper pride in himself and tried to educate people.
(Enter COHEN with soldier’s waterproof cape)
CULLY: Conk’s ancestors made exactly the same charges against Christ himself.
COHEN: Never mind about my ancestors. What was your ancestors like in those far-off times? Painted blue, they was.
CULLY: They still are. Come along, Jean, let’s get some cold, damp, fresh air.
COHEN: You don’t want me to come with you, I don’t suppose?
(He helps JEAN on with the cape)
CULLY: You can come if you like.
JEAN: Yes, do. I’ve got my own mackintosh upstairs.
COHEN: No, thank you. I’ll settle down to a good book.
JEAN: Oh, yes. Good. Do read the Institutes of Calvinism. We want your opinion on them.
COHEN: I’ve already got my opinion of most of these here books, lady. I hope you have an enjoyable swim.
JEAN: Gosh, yes. It’s raining cats and dogs. Still, we must get out sometime. Come on, Cully. We’d better face it. See you later, Conk.
COHEN: Cheery bye.
(Exeunt JEAN and CULLY. When they are well away, COHEN opens the door carefully, leans against the jamb and whistles low and melodiously with his eyes on the passage ceiling. After a few bars, MORAG comes in the door in some trepidation)
MORAG: What is it you want?
COHEN: Me? I was just whistling.
MORAG: You cannae whistle on the Sabbath. The Minister’ll be hearing you.
COHEN: Come in the office.
MORAG: Oh, I couldna.
COHEN: The Missus has gone to lie down. The other two are out. Come in a minute.
MORAG: Well, just for a wee minute.
COHEN: I got something for you.
MORAG: Dear me, what can it be?
COHEN: Packet of chocolate.
(He gives her packet of chocolate)
MORAG: Now, are you not the kind man, man, no indeed yes.
COHEN: Like chocolate?
MORAG: Och, I’m most terrible keen on the chocolates. I could be sitting there eating the like for all eternity, whatever.
COHEN: You’re pretty easy on the eye.
MORAG: Och, I don’t know what you’re saying, easy on the eye.
COHEN: Got a boy friend?
MORAG: What would I be doing with boy friends, away up here in Larach? I’ve no patience with them at all, with their ignorance.
COHEN: What’s the matter with me, then?
MORAG: Nothing doing.
(She pronounces this ‘Nuthun DOOOOun,’ with a dignified coyness unusual in most uses of the phrase. After a brief attack and a token defence, COHEN succeeds in kissing her expertly. They disengage)
Dear me, aren’t you the awful man, and a great danger to the neighbourhood.
COHEN: Not me, and thank you very much. Do you know what that was worth to me?
MORAG: It would not be much to a gallus rascal the like of you.
COHEN: It was as good as a hundred Players, four pints of mild and bitter, and a gallon of Rosie Lee. And now you better hop it. I don’t want you to be getting into no trouble.
MORAG: Deed yes. This is not the thing at all.
(Exit MORAG. COHEN registers mild satisfaction and then goes to the bookshelf. His spirits drop. He wearily chooses a book, without very much hope; takes it to the table and begins to turn over the leaves with a rather disgusted air. Noise of CULLY and JEAN in the passage)
JEAN: No. Wait. I’ll take them into the kitchen. You’d better take your boots off before you go into the parlour.
(COHEN listens, is about to get up, but returns to his book. Presently JEAN comes in, a little bedraggled about the head and carrying her muddy shoes in her hand)
JEAN: Hello, Conk.
(She puts her shoes at the fireside)
Thank God there’s somebody in the British Army with a little sense. What possessed that man to go out on a day like this, I do not know.
COHEN: You didn’t go far.
JEAN: Quite far enough. What a day! It’s getting dark, too. Another ten minutes and we’d have been hopelessly lost. We couldn’t see a yard in front of us.
(She takes off her stockings and hangs them on the fire-irons, while she is speaking)
I asked Morag to bring in a nice cup of tea. She was very doubtful. She rather thought she’d go to Hell if she did. I told her there was nothing in the Bible about having tea between one o’clock and half-past eight. I don’t suppose there is, is there?
COHEN: What of it if there is? All that stuffs a lot of hooey, if you ask me.
JEAN: Are you an atheist?
COHEN: I’m an agnostic.
JEAN: Good. We’ll make Uncle pull his socks up tonight. Talking of socks, I’d better go up and ‘put cla’es on my feet,’ or I’ll be excommunicated.
(CULLY enters, wearing his slippers)
JEAN: Oh, hello! You’ve been very quick. I’m just going to tidy up. You’d better dry your shins at the fire.
CULLY: Yes. Thanks.
(Exit JEAN. CULLY dries his shins at the fire)
COHEN: Any luck?
CULLY: What do you mean by ‘Any luck’?
COHEN: Garn! Errcher!
CULLY: I’ve told you what I think of the young person. I haven’t had time to change my mind. She’s not my type.
COHEN: Any skirt’s anybody’s type in a place like this. You’re a Cissy. That’s what you are.
CULLY: If you call me a Cissy, I’ll fetch you a skelp on the jaw that’ll make your teeth rattle.
COHEN: No offence.
CULLY: Take care that there isn’t, you cock-eyed gutter-snipe.
COHEN: All right, all right.
CULLY: And if you want to make offensive remarks, you’ll kindly keep them strictly impersonal, if you understand what that means.
COHEN: Keep your hair on. Who’s making offensive remarks?
CULLY: You were winding yourself up into your most facetious vein. You’d better unwind yourself. I find your facetiae offensive.
COHEN: Ah, shut up and let me read. It gives me a pain when you talk like a gory dictionary.
CULLY: What are you reading?
COHEN: Never mind.
CULLY: Why can’t you keep your temper?
COHEN: I like that. Who lost his temper? You did.
CULLY: I asked you a perfectly civil question and you answered like a sulky kid.
COHEN: A bloke’s got to be careful what he says to the great Goramity Mister Cully — him that writes to the Reviews… What the Hell’s biting you, chum?
CULLY: Nothing. I’m sorry. It’s funny how chaps begin yapping like terrier pups when the weather changes. Forget what I said.
COHEN: I accept your perishing apology… It’s five o’clock.
Five stricken hours till bedtime.
CULLY: Oh, as it’s turned out, it may not be so bad.
COHEN: Not so bad as what? A blinding Gerry Concentration camp at the blazing North Pole?
CULLY: I think we’ll see some sparks flying.
COHEN: What sparks?
CULLY: Wait and see. Our young lady seems to think she has a mission to assault thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers, and crack their forced hallelujahs.
COHEN: She seems to think what’s it?
CULLY: She’s spoiling for a row with his Reverence.
COHEN: I don’t see much good in that myself.
CULLY: No more do I.
COHEN: Live and let live, I always say.
CULLY: She says that too. Only she says his Reverence won’t let live.
COHEN: Cor blind me, you got to make allowances. If you come to a place where there’s niggers what likes bowing down to idols because it does them good, cor blimey, let them get on with it. They didn’t ask you to come. They don’t want your blooming interference.
CULLY: You’re probably right, but she doesn’t think so. I think we’ll have quite a pretty fight.
COHEN: He won’t fight. He’s too blinking self-satisfied. He’s got the Commanding Officer on his side.
CULLY: If he does, she won’t have a chance.
COHEN: Yes, she will.
CULLY: You underrate his Reverence. I think you’ll find he packs a pretty heavy punch.
COHEN: I never saw a skirt yet get the worst of an argument. All in, of course. No holds barred.
CULLY: We’ll see. It might be quite a Pleasant Sunday Evening after all.
(MORAG comes in with a teapot and three cups and a section of black bun. She is very nervous about it all)
MORAG: Oh, dear me, I wish to thank goodness Miss Jean would go away back to London. We’ll all have our heids in our hands.
CULLY: What’s the matter?
MORAG: Oh, where iss she? Drink your tea now quick, like good lads, before the Minister finds out. My sorrow, you cannae say, ‘No’, to her, she’s that birsey.
(Enter JEAN. She has changed her stockings, shoes and skirt and rearranged her hair)
JEAN: Oh, thank you, Morag. You are a Highland seraph.
MORAG: I may be a seraph or a geraffe or a camomile, but haste ye now, Miss Jean, before the Mistress finds the dirty cups and teapot.
JEAN: Awa wi’ ye, you chittering oinseach! There’s nobody going to eat you.
MORAG: I wouldna be over sure of that, Miss Jean. Ochonorie! It’s a weary day for me.
(Exit MORAG, lamenting. The OTHERS sit round the table)
JEAN: Gather round, chaps. Do you both take sugar?
CULLY and COHEN: Yes, please.
JEAN: What a lot of sugar! I suppose the Army’s the generous donor.
COHEN: They get our ration, you see, and neither of them takes it.
JEAN: Thank the Lord for our gallant defenders. Here’s mud in your eye.
COHEN: And in yours, Miss.
JEAN: (picking up the book cohen has left on the table) ‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft,’ by Reginald Scot. You been reading this, Conk?
COHEN: Glancing at it. The spelling seems a bit cock-eyed to me.
JEAN: When I was a kid I used to stay here for the holidays. I sneaked in when nobody was about and read this book. I didn’t notice much wrong with the spelling then. It frightened me out of my wits. My Uncle found me reading it and gave me the telling off of my life. I still feel beautifully frightened when I only look at the book.
COHEN: Tells you how to raise the Devil and that.
JEAN: Oh, does it? I never got so far as that. You draw cabalistic signs and repeat a spell, don’t you?
COHEN: I shouldn’t be surprised. Like the old boze in the opera.
JEAN: It would be quite fun to try.
COHEN: A waste of time, if you ask me.
JEAN: I don’t know. He might tell us why the Wee Frees behave in that extraordinary fashion.
COHEN: He might if there was any such things as devils.
CULLY: What about the good old Battery Sergeant-Major?
COHEN: Cor stifle me, don’t you go calling him up now. He’s bad enough in the old monkey kit, but think what he’d be like in red tights! Old Mestify-toffles!
(He laughs and chokes on his tea. JEAN thumps him on the back)
JEAN: Take it easy, Conk.
COHEN: I’m sorry. I had to laugh. Think of him blowing out flames instead of beer, with his fore and aft hanging to his near side horn. ‘Battery, tails up!’
(He coughs again. Both JEAN and CULLY take a hand at thumping him on the back)
JEAN: Oh dear, oh dear; the man’ll choke himself.
CULLY: Pull yourself together, Conk.
COHEN: Easy on. Easy on. It’s having a sense of humour. It’ll be the death of me.
(These lines are spoken simultaneously. As they are being spoken, McCRIMMON enters without being noticed and watches the scene with an enigmatic expression on his face. JEAN sees him first; knocks the book off the table onto the floor; picks it up and hides it on a chair. Silence falls)
JEAN: Oh, hello, Uncle Jock.
McCRIMMON: Good evening, Jean. Your aunt did not tell me that you were up and about.
JEAN: I got up this afternoon. I’m ever so much better.
McCRIMMON: That is a blessing.
(He sits down at the table)
JEAN: Will you have a cup of tea?
McCRIMMON: No. I thank you.
JEAN: It has turned into an awful night. Cully and I were out in it for a little.
McCRIMMON: Indeed?
JEAN: Yes. It didn’t seem to like us. It drove us in after a very few minutes. I suppose it was a lesson to us to do as the Romans do.
McCRIMMON: What Romans?
JEAN: You know. When you are in Rome, you should do as the Romans do. I don’t agree with that, do you? I mean, you couldn’t do as the Romans do even if you wanted to. And they’d like you much better if you were just yourself. We used to laugh at the Japanese for wearing bowler hats and trying to talk slang. I think we were quite right. They were much nicer in those lovely silk dressing-gowns.
McCRIMMON: No doubt.
CULLY: Of course, there’s got to be some sort of compromise, hasn’t there? You can be yourself, I hope, without offending the local customs and prejudices.
JEAN: Naturally.
McCRIMMON: We have a very peculiar local prejudice, Mr Cully, in this part of the country. We have a prejudice against desecrating the Lord’s Day.
JEAN: Is that remark intended for our benefit?
McCRIMMON: Indeed, I hope that if you conseeder it seriously you may indeed benefit by it.
JEAN: How have we desecrated the Lord’s Day, as you call it.
McCRIMMON: Your consciences will tell you that. And it is not I who have called it the Lord’s Day.
JEAN: Look here, Uncle, let’s get this straight. What are we supposed to have done?
McCRIMMON: You are my guests, and it is unbecoming that I should rebuke you; but, since you ask me, I have found you eating and drinking at unsuitable hours and indulging yourselves in unseemly levity and in that laughter that is like the crackling of thorns under a pot: and this on the day that we are enjoined to keep holy.
JEAN: Uncle Jock, there are nearly seven hundred millions of Christians in this world, and nearly seven hundred millions of them wouldn’t see an atom of harm in anything we’ve done today.
McCRIMMON: To be called a Christian is not to be a Christian. You will find in the Gospel according to St Luke the words, ‘Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?’
JEAN: When and where did the Lord tell us not to have tea on Sunday afternoon?
McCRIMMON: In the Fourth Commandment.
JEAN: The Fourth Commandment says nothing about tea.
McCRIMMON: Tea is included.
JEAN: And buns. like a Sunday School Trip.
McCRIMMON: I have no inclination to listen to blasphemy.
JEAN: It isn’t blasphemy.
McCRIMMON: It is blasphemous to mock at the Ten Commandments.
JEAN: The Ten Commandments are a set of rules for a wandering desert tribe. And not very good rules either. An American girl said they didn’t tell you what to do. They only put ideas into your head.
McCRIMMON: She would find elsewhere plenty of instructions what to do. And the ideas were there already.
JEAN: Anyhow, they tell us to keep Saturday holy, not Sunday.
McCRIMMON: If you were in a proper frame of mind, I would explain to you why.
JEAN: What do you mean by a proper frame of mind?
McCRIMMON: A state of humility and reverence.
JEAN: You mean I’m to swallow everything I’m told?
McCRIMMON: When you were a child you were not allowed to argue about your medicine.
JEAN: I’m not a child now.
McCRIMMON: Ah, well, now, I’m not so sure of that.
JEAN: I’m nearly thirty.
McCRIMMON: If you were Legion, you’d still be a bairn. You have all the signs and symptoms of infancy.
JEAN: I’m glad to hear it, then. But there’s something about out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, isn’t there?
McCRIMMON: Hath He perfected praise. I did not observe that you were in the exercise of Praise, when I entered just now. And since then I have not been aware of any high spirit of reverence.
JEAN: I can’t revere things I don’t believe in.
McCRIMMON: You do not believe in the Word of God as it is revealed in His Holy Scriptures?
JEAN: Oh, I believe lots of it, and I’d like to believe lots more: but when you put on that hangman’s face and that awful voice and call it ‘The Word of God as it is revealed in His Holy Scriptures’, I go all shivery down to my stomach and I don’t believe a word of it.
McCRIMMON: (with a bland seriousness) Well, now, I have observed the same thing in my conversations with the atheists and infidels from England who come up for the fishing. If I employ the sacred and beautiful words appropriate to the subject, they flinch and flee from my presence. I must even abandon plain English and descend to their baby talk. And yet I find that they have the presumption to set their opinions against the Gospel with not even an educated schoolboy’s vocabulary to support them. It is very peculiar. They are so ignorant that their own episcopalian meenisters, poor bodies, in ministering to them have well-nigh lost the power of human speech. I have to wait till I see Father Mackintosh, the priest from Strathdearg, before I can converse in a civilised language forbye the Gaelic.
JEAN: (helplessly) Do listen to that, Cully. If anybody dares to speak back to him, he makes a beautiful little speech showing that they’re fools and ignoramuses — or ignorami or ignoramae — which is it, Uncle Jock? You know I can only talk baby talk. What am I? An ignorama?
McCRIMMON: The wee bit of Latin I once taught you has gone by the board. Mr Cully will tell you that ignoramus is not a noun.
CULLY: Oh, isn’t it?
McCRIMMON: It is not. But I will talk to you in any language you please. What is it you want to know?
JEAN: I don’t want to know anything. At least, I don’t want to know anything about religion. At least, I don’t want to know anything about religion that you can tell me. Because I think you’re all wrong. Absolutely and entirely wrong.
McCRIMMON: That is your opinion, is it?
JEAN: It isn’t my opinion only. It’s the opinion of all decent sensible people. You contradict your own book of words by making your holy day Sunday instead of Saturday; and by denying that it was made for man and not man for it; and by preaching original sin and election and predestination…
COHEN: Stop the horses a minute. I like a good argument. It’s like the Brains Trust. But I like to know what you’re talking about.
JEAN: Original sin means that a baby is damned to Hell Fire even before it’s born. Election means that only a little clique will ever get into the kingdom of Heaven and the rest haven’t a chance. Predestination means that it doesn’t matter two hoots what you do, because it was all fixed long ago. It’s all a pack of nonsense.
COHEN: It sounds funny, all right.
McCRIMMON: You do not believe in these doctrines?
JEAN: I do not. I think your premises are wrong and your evidence is phoney. There’s nothing in the whole thing that appeals to my reason. And if you don’t appeal to my reason, you need no more expect me to believe you than to believe a man who tells me he’s a poached egg. There might even be some sense in that. Some men look like poached eggs.
COHEN: That’s the stuff to give him. Reason all the time.
McCRIMMON: How far away is the sun?
JEAN: I don’t know.
CULLY: About ninety million miles.
JEAN: Yes. That’s it. I’d forgotten.
McCRIMMON: Who told you?
JEAN: I don’t remember. I read it in some book.
McCRIMMON: And you believe it?
JEAN: Yes. Because it can be checked. If it’s a lie any expert could disprove it.
McCRIMMON: And when an expert had disproved it you would believe that it was a lie. Very well, then. I will tell you a wee story.
COHEN: But if you don’t believe experts, who are you to believe?
McCRIMMON: I will tell you, with your permission, a wee story: Once upon a time there was a wee wee fellow with the finest set of whiskers that ever you saw and his name was wee Stumpie Stowsie.
COHEN: Cor blimey!
JEAN: Shut up, Conk.
McCRIMMON: If there was one thing he was fond of it was a good swim. He would be down in the pond every day and all day swimming with his whiskers.
One day he was swimming and thinking about nothing at all and up comes a snail as big as a whale. ‘I’ll swallow you as if you was Jonah,’ said the snail. ‘Come on. Do it,’ says the bold Stumpie Stowsie. So the snail swallowed him, and it was peaceful and warm in the insides of the snail, and Stumpie was quite joco, like a tourist passenger on a steamboat sailing round the Western Isles. But a time came when he thought and better thought, ‘Now am not I the silly one, dozing away in the insides of a great big snail when I might be settling down in a house of my own with a growing family to keep me cheery?’ So he made a great todo in the insides of the snail till the snail was for no more of it, and he ups with Stumpie Stowsie and his whiskers into a forest that ran down to the seashore. So Stumpie he looks and he looks, and the verdure was that thick he could see nothing. So he climbs up a big palm tree to spy out the land.
COHEN: So along comes his Fairy Godmother on a magic carpet. Good night, children, everywhere.
McCRIMMON: No. It was a kangaroo ass big ass a post office. But I am wearying you, with my havers.
JEAN: No. Honestly. We’re enjoying it. It’s like old times. Do you remember telling stories to Colin and me, on Saturday nights when we were wee tottums?
McCRIMMON: I do, I do.
JEAN: You tell them so well! I believed every word.
McCRIMMON: You don’t believe this one?
JEAN: Of course I do, in a way.
McCRIMMON: In what kind of a way? Would you put your experts on to prove it or to disprove it?
JEAN: No, of course not.
McCRIMMON: But they would be very pleased, whatever, your experts. Indeed, now, a whole clacking of experts have been at that very story, proving it and disproving it till they were nearly black in the face.
CULLY: I see what you mean.
JEAN: I’m afraid I don’t.
CULLY: He’s been telling us the story of the Liver Fluke. It swims about in pools until it’s swallowed by a water-snail. And then it’s puked up onto a blade of grass. And a kangaroo eats the grass and the Fluke lays its eggs in the kangaroo’s liver. Unless he does all these things the Fluke can’t live. He seems to be very well named.
McCRIMMON: So we are told.
JEAN: What a cad’s trick!
McCRIMMON: Are you referring to the Distoma Hepaticum or to your humble relative by marriage?
JEAN: To you. I call it cheating.
McCRIMMON: But you believe my story now, I think.
JEAN: Yes, I suppose so.
McCRIMMON: In both ways?
JEAN: How in both ways?
McCRIMMON: When I took you into a world outside this world you readily suspended what you call your reason and believed in Stumpie Stowsie. When Mr Cully brought you back to earth and told you the story in another way, you believed it in another way without stopping to think. Your marvellous power of reasoning hadna much say in it either way, I’m thinking.
(He gets up, but stays at the table)
It comes to this, that you wish to have the eternal world outside our wee temporal world explained to you in the language of the tuppeny-ha’ penny general knowledge text-books. Such language is neither adequate nor exact. But I’ll do my best. Use your eyes and look round you. Mr Cully and Mr Cohen, you’d be bonny-like soldiers if you had no discipline. For three hundred years Scotland disciplined itself in body, brain and soul on one day of the week at least. The result was a breed of men that has not died out even in this shauchly generation. You don’t believe in Original Sin, Jean, you are telling me? Well, now, you could easily have had ten babies by this time if you had not preferred talking and sentimentalising about them. Then you would have found the truth that a baby has every sensual vice of which it is anatomically capable with no spirituality to temper it. You do not believe that mankind is divided into the sheep and the goats — the Elect and the Damned? Use your eyes and look around you. You may pity the Damned — and indeed it is your duty so to do. But you cannot deny that they exist.
You do not believe in Predestination? That is because you do not like it. If you only believe what is nice and comfortable, our doctrine is of no service to you. If I give you a crack on the head with a stick, you need not believe it; you need not believe in your dentist’s drill or in the tax-gatherer’s demand. Go on. Believe what is agreeable to you. I do assure you that you will be in such a continuous state of surprise that your eyebrows will jump off the top of your head. Even your heathen philosophers knew that Predestination was a fact, like Ben Nevis. You can go round it. You can go over it. But you are foolish to ignore it.
Do you believe that the body rises from the grave on the Great Day?
JEAN: I believe that the spirit does.
McCRIMMON: In all my days I have never seen the interment of a spirit. You do not believe that the body can rise again, though every spring and every day in a myriad forms you see that actual thing happening. But it is folly to talk to you. The Lord gave you a spiritual mind with which you might see the truth of these things. But you are afraid of your spiritual sight. And ’deed I can hardly blame you. Yet it is with that sight alone that you can apprehend spiritual truths. Reason is a poor instrument for such a purpose.
CULLY: The Fathers of the Church cultivated the spiritual mind?
McCRIMMON: I believe some of them did.
CULLY: They found in the world outside reason a lot of unreasonable phenomena. They believed in transubstantiation and miraculous liquefaction and the remission of sins by priests and the efficacy of prayers for the dead. They found warrant for all these things on the spiritual level. Yet they are outside reason. Do you believe in them?
McCRIMMON: No.
CULLY: Why? Because your reason rejects them?
McCRIMMON: When I said that reason was a feeble instrument, I did not refer to my own reason. But I must ask you to excuse me. My evening diet of worship is in ten minutes. It is in the Gaelic; and I must think for a little in the Gaelic before I am ready to speak it. In the meantime I would feel very much obliged if you would respect my serious and conseedered opinion that today is a sacred day and should be observed, within these walls at least, with all due decorum.
CULLY: Oh, yes, of course, but…
McCRIMMON: I thank you. That is all I wished of you. I shall see you at the evening meal.
(Exit MCCRIMMON)
COHEN: (with the gestures of one drowned or dizzy) Help! Throw me a lifebelt, somebody.
JEAN: I think you scored a hit, Cully. His eyes flashed for a minute, but he broke off the engagement very quickly.
CULLY: And very neatly. He won handsomely on points.
JEAN: Why didn’t you chip in earlier?
CULLY: What’s the good? He’s a professional and we’re only drivelling amateurs. We’re apt to forget that parsons are professionals. Our English parsons are a bit like our professional soldiers. They want us to forget that they know their job.
COHEN: Why don’t you shout him down, like you used to do in the barrack room?
CULLY: He’d beat me at that too. He’s a chest on him like a bull.
JEAN: He’d talk the hind leg off the Devil himself.
CULLY: Would he?
JEAN: I suppose so. And he’s so utterly wrong. It kills everything that’s gay and decent in life. The other churches let you alone. They sometimes go haywire and burn a few heretics, but most of the heretics are Calvinists, so it doesn’t matter.
CULLY: He made it look so damned logical for a bit. It’s his infernal totalitarianism I can’t stand, though.
JEAN: They seem to have a sadistic love for persecution for its own sake.
COHEN: A lot of Nazis.
CULLY: I don’t know.
COHEN: What do you mean, you don’t know?
CULLY: Do you know who invented modern democracy?
COHEN: The thing we’re fighting for? No. Lloyd George?
CULLY: No. Calvin.
JEAN: I don’t believe it.
CULLY: You can look it up. His system was a theocracy; but all its officials were elected by vote and responsible to God and to the electors. And everybody in the community voted, so long as he behaved himself.
JEAN: You’re on his side?
CULLY: I’m on nobody’s side. I’m a sort of Devil’s Advocate.
JEAN: I wish we could raise the Devil and get him to speak for himself.
COHEN: You seemed to me to be doing your best.
JEAN: Conk! Your book!
(She finds REGINALD SCOT on the floor)
We’ll follow the printed instructions and have a shot.
CULLY: That’s an idea. It will help to pass the time for Conk.
JEAN: They are all in bed before ten. We could sneak down quietly and try at, say, about midnight.
COHEN: What’s this? a séance?
JEAN: Yes. A sort of a séance.
COHEN: I went to a séance. Spoke to my grandfather. Cor blimey, the poor old perisher had gone off his head. Said he was happy.
JEAN: But what about your beauty sleep?
CULLY: That’s all right. Four hours’ sleep’s enough for the likes of Conk and me.
JEAN: That’s a date, then. We’ll have to be very quiet.
(At door)
CULLY: Where are you going to?
JEAN: I’m going to church.
COHEN: Cor blimey.
(Exit JEAN)