Writing Home

by Alan Bennett

  16 June. A cease-fire with 250 of our forces dead, one for every twenty civilians of the Falkland Islands – the price, Madam says, of freedom. The ways the freedom of the Islanders seem to have been infringed before the outbreak of hostilities appear to be (i) they had to drive on the right, which, since their roads are mainly one-track, can scarcely have been a hardship; (ii) they were occasionally stood up against a wall, hands above their head, and searched, a humiliation suffered nightly by many citizens of this country – chiefly black – any protest about which is treated by the Conservative Party as humbug. The only actual atrocity seems to have been the death of a dairy cow. The man who would have had a field day with this war is Sydney Smith.

  19 June. Supper at AG’s with Evie Karloff, Boris Karloff ‘s widow.’ Tell me,’ I long to lean over and ask, ‘what was Bela Lugosi really like?’ She’s admirably plucky and lives in an isolated cottage near Liphook, where she’s in the telephone book. On two occasions bricks have been thrown through her windows at night. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I suppose they think, “He frightened me, so now I’m jolly well going to frighten her.”’

  20 June. The papers continue fatuous. Peregrine Worsthorne suggests that, having won this war, our troops emerging with so much credit, Mrs Thatcher might consider using them at home to solve such problems as the forthcoming rail strike or indeed to break the power of the unions altogether, overlooking the fact that this is precisely what we are supposed to object to about the regime in Argentina.

  Since the war (the last war should we now call it?) there has been a noticeable increase in the use of the military metaphor in public debate. Tebbitt, the Employment Secretary, yesterday talked of campaigns, charges and wars of attrition. And the flag figures. The danger of such talk, of course, is that it presupposes an enemy.

  8 July. A drunk comes round tonight shouting at Miss Shepherd and trying to get her out of the van. I go to the door and scare him off, saying, ‘What sort of a man is it who torments old ladies of seventy-five?’ This morning I am passing the van when her hand comes out. ‘Mr Bennett. I’m not seventy-five. I’m seventy-one.’

  10 July. Olivier is much given to excessive and almost laughably insincere flattery; he described Enjoy, I remember, as the best play he had ever seen – this from the balcony of Her Majesty’s to the assembled company at the dress rehearsal, when some of the younger members of the company actually believed him. I saw M. today, who told me of a better instance. Spotting Tom Courtenay at some awards dinner, Olivier congratulates him on his role in The Dresser. Tom’s current girlfriend is the ASM, whose duties include prompting. Tom introduces her. ‘Oh, my dear,’ said the Brighton peer, ‘what wouldn’t I give to be in your shoes! To be able to follow the text of this play every night!’

  3 August. R. tells me that there has been a photo-call for Sefton, one of the horses injured by the IRA bomb in Hyde Park. However, Sefton has so far recovered that his wounds no longer register on camera. So make-up is applied.

  6 September, Weston-super-Mare. To Weston to see Mam. We have lunch in the Cosy Café. Mam’s teeth are loose, which blurs her speech, and she also talks quite loudly, as if she is deaf (and exactly the opposite of the hushed tones she and Dad would always use in cafés), so other diners are startled to hear ‘I do love you, chick’ shouted across the small room. I notice her watching what I do with my knife and fork at the end of the meal, then imitating me.

  I drive her back. ‘Have you got one of these of your own?’ she asks as we are going along.

  ‘What?’

  One of these things where you’re in it by yourself.’

  ‘A car?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  7 September. Douglas Bader dies. I used to imitate him in Beyond the Fringe as part of the Aftermyth of War sketch, coming downstairs with a pipe in my mouth and exaggeratedly straight legs (though I never quite dared make them as stiff as they should have been). One night I was hissed and was very pleased with myself. He died after a dinner for Sir Arthur Harris, the destroyer of Dresden. ‘Probably legless,’ says R. Many other jokes possible, like the loss of his legs going to his head. Certainly had he not lost them he would not have been heard so much of, which he was – and always on the right. Somehow his death is yet another feather in the cap of Mrs Thatcher, of whom he doubtless approved and who certainly approved of him. Describing his death, another veteran says, ‘It was completely clean.’

  24 September, Yorkshire. I blackberry up the lane that leads to Wharfe. A big heron in the beck takes wing and flies slowly away up to Crummock. My nightmare when blackberrying (or when I stop the car for a pee) is that I shall find the body of a child, that I will report it and be suspected of the crime. So I find myself running through in my mind the evidences of my legitimate occupation – where I started picking, who saw me park, and so on.

  These days I even imagine Mozart as being arrayed against me – so safe, so consistent and now so universally esteemed, the centre of a great huddle (and a huddle of the great) at the Posterity Cocktail Party.

  27 September. Russell invents a good parlour game: whose underpants would you least like to be gagged by? I say there would be many people jostling for first position. ‘No,’ says R. ‘not jostling. Jockeying.’

  8 October. On the platform at the Conservative Party conference this week sits Mrs H. Jones, the widow of the commando colonel killed at Goose Green. No one remarks on the inappropriate-ness of this. Even were she, as I imagine she is, a fervent supporter of the Conservative Party, to parade her sacrifice in this fashion makes it partial, not national, and in every sense diminishes it.

  13 October. I am rehearsing Merry Wives of Windsor for TV, in which I play Justice Shallow. Today I go for a costume fitting to find I am dressed from head to foot in red brocade. I look like an animated tandoori restaurant.

  22 November, New York. Struck by the completeness of New York, much of it still as it was in 1930. Today is Thanksgiving Day and the streets are emptied of humanity, Prince Street swept clean of people, every detail of the fretted fronts of warehouses clear and sharp, buildings cut up like cheese, segmented against the sky. It was like this the Thanksgiving Day after J.F.K.’s assassination, when I walked down a totally empty Seventh Avenue with not a soul to be seen.

  4 December, New York. One change that has come over public manners was evident at the Falklands homecomings. Combatants (the only airman captured by the Argentinians, for instance), asked what is the first thing they are going to do when they get home, grin cheekily. One says, ‘Well, what do you think?’ and doubtless others actually do say, ‘I’m going to fuck someone silly’ Once upon a time they would have said, at any rate, ‘Have a nice cup of tea.’

  6 December, New York. Ever since 1977, when I first stayed in SoHo, there has been a boutique on the corner of Watts and West Broadway. It’s still there this year, and to the casual passer-by the stock looks much the same. But it isn’t. Despite the flimsy-looking furs and dresses on display, this is now a shop that specializes in ‘protective clothing’. The fur is bullet-proof.

  Opposite, and a fixture there for many years longer, is a shop that sells live chickens (the hot smell of it always bringing back the hen coop at Wilsill where we were evacuated in 1939). The presence of the live-chicken shop and the boutique selling protective clothing would enable J. to make one of his ‘waiting for the right circumstances’ jokes – i.e. not bullet-proof but pullet-proof.

  1983

  8 February, Dundee. A day off from filming An Englishman Abroad and I go to Edinburgh with Alan Bates. We climb the tower near the castle to see the camera obscura. The texture of the revolving bowl and the softness of the reflection convert the view into an eighteenth-century aquatint in which motor cars seem as delicate and exotic as sedan chairs. The traffic is also rendered more sedate and unreal for being silent.

  An element of voyeurism in it. The guide, a genteel Morningside lady, trains the mirror on some adjacent scaffolding where workmen are restoring a ch
urch. ‘I often wonder,’ she muses in the darkened room, ‘if one were to catch them… well, unawares. I mean,’ she adds hastily, ‘taking a little rest.’

  3 March, Yorkshire. I take a version of a script down to Settle to be photocopied. The man in charge of the machine watches the sheets come through. ‘Glancing at this,’ he says, ‘I see you dabble in play writing.’ While this about sums it up, I find myself resenting him for noticing what goes through his machine at all. Photocopying is a job in which one is required to see and not see, the delicacy demanded not different from that in medicine. It’s as if a nurse were to say, ‘I see, watching you undress, that your legs are nothing to write home about.’

  20 March, Weston-super-Mare. To see Mam at Weston. I sit in the dining-room of the home while they locate her coat. Two old ladies are waiting for their lunch, which won’t happen for at least another hour. ‘It went through my mind it was pineapple,’ says one, ‘but I wouldn’t swear to it.’ ‘You have to watch her,’ says the other, pointing to an empty place. ‘She’ll have all the bread.’ Mam’s memory has almost gone, leaving her suffused with a general benevolence. ‘I’ve always liked you,’ she says to one of the other residents and plants a kiss on her slightly startled cheek.

  It is a beautiful day and we walk on the sands. ‘Has Gordon been to see you?’ I ask. ‘Oh yes,’ she says, happily. ‘Though I’m saying he has, I don’t know who he is.’ ‘Do you know who I am?’ She peers at me. ‘Oh yes, you’re… you’re my son, aren’t you?’ ‘And what’s my name?’ ‘Ah, now then.’ And she laughs, as if this is not information any reasonable person could expect her to have. But it doesn’t distress her, so it doesn’t distress me.

  We have our sandwiches on a hill outside Weston with a vast view over Somerset. She wants to say, ‘What a grand view,’ but her words are going too. ‘Oh,’ she exclaims. ‘What a big lot of About.’ There are sheep in the field. ‘I know what they are,’ she says, ‘but I don’t know what they are called.’ Thus Wittgenstein is routed by my mother.

  28 March. A ‘vigorous but not bellicose’ war memorial is to be erected by the Falkland Islanders. It has been on view in High Wycombe. On the news, pictures of three ex-servicemen being taught to ski in Nevada. All have lost feet in the Falklands conflict. The instructor is American. He leads them off down the slopes with the words ‘All together now. Follow moi.’

  17 April. George Fenton, who got an Oscar nomination for his Gandhi music, has been to Hollywood for the ceremony. By far the most striking people attending were young couples, faultlessly dressed and very glamorous, who stood in the aisles throughout the evening. When anyone in the audience left to go to the loo (the ceremony was interminable) their seat was immediately taken by one of these groomed and gorgeous creatures, who then gave it up without demur when the rightful seat-holder returned. Thinking they were hangers-on, George found himself slightly resenting them, as also their grooming and their glamour. Leaving for a break himself, George found a young man promptly sliding into his place and on his lapel a badge: ‘Seat-Filler’. They were all extras employed by the organizers to make sure nothing so shocking as an empty seat should ever appear on the television screen.

  6 May. A second session doing a voice-over for a commercial for Quartz washing-machines. I spend half an hour trying to invest the words ‘This frog’ with some singularity of tone that will distinguish this particular frog from the previous frog, with which it is otherwise identical. It defeats me, and the session is abandoned. Coming away, I feel just as badly as if I’d given a shoddy performance in a definitive recording of the Sonnets.

  20 May. In the evening I often bike round Regent’s Park. Tonight I am mooning along the Inner Circle past Bedford College when a distraught woman dashes out into the road and nearly fetches me off. She and her friend have found themselves locked in and have had to climb over the gate. Her friend, Marie, hasn’t made it. And there, laid along the top of one of the five-barred gates, is a plump sixty-year-old lady, one leg either side of the gate, bawling to her friend to hurry up. I climb over and try to assess the situation. ‘Good,’ says Marie, her cheek pressed against the gate. ‘I can see you’re of a scientific turn of mind.’ Her faith in science rapidly evaporates when I try moving her leg, and she yells with pain. It’s at this point that we become aware of an audience. Three Chinese in the regulation rig-out of embassy officials are watching the pantomime, smiling politely and clearly not sure if this is a pastime or a predicament. Eventually they are persuaded to line up on the other side of the gate. I hoist Marie over and she rolls comfortably down into their outstretched arms. Much smiling and bowing.

  Marie’s friend says, ‘All’s well that ends well.’ Marie says she’s laddered both her stockings and I cycle on my way.

  30 May, Yorkshire. A boy is paddling in the beck. He has rolled up his trousers but not taken his socks off, thus refuting the soldier’s argument against contraceptives.

  I talk to Graham Mort, a young poet who has come to live in the village. He has a wife and three small children and to make ends meet teaches at a prison, the mental hospital in Lancaster and a local school. He says that, compared with the school-children, the murderers and psychotics are models of good behaviour.

  9 June, Yorkshire. On the day that Mrs Thatcher is elected for a second term I spit blood. Last night I was reading Metamorphosis and wondered that Gregor Samsa, having woken and found himself a beetle, could yet drop off to sleep again, or at any rate daydream and pretend it wasn’t true. Yet somehow I manage to doze until around seven, when I come to and lie awake arranging my future, or lack of it.

  At nine I go down to the Health Centre in Settle to see Dr. W., whom I first met twelve years or so ago when he was a student at Airedale Hospital. He examines me, finds some evidence of bronchitis, and sends me down to Skipton for an X-ray. By ten-thirty I am back at home, the whole process having taken less than two hours. The result (‘nothing sinister’) comes through later in the day. It’s a model of how the NHS should work, and does in small communities like this, where the patients know the receptionists, the GPs know the hospital, and bureaucracy and waiting are reduced to a minimum. There can be very few private patients, I imagine, in our area because the NHS provides a better service.

  12 June, Yorkshire. The verges full of gypsies these last two weeks, on the road to and from the horse fair at Appleby. Someone must have gone into business reproducing their traditional hooped carts, as there are far more this year than previously. I pass some of them on the back road to Settle, two horse-and-carts coming down the steep hill above Swabeck. To brake the carts they trail an old car tyre behind with a child perched on it.

  23 June. As A. and I are walking in Regent’s Park this evening we stop to watch a baseball game. A police car comes smoothly along the path, keeping parallel with a young black guy who is walking over the grass. The police keep calling to him from the car, but he ignores them and eventually stops right in the middle of the game. A policeman gets out and begins questioning him, but warily and from a distance. The baseball players, unfortunately for the suspect, are all white and they mostly pretend it isn’t happening. Some laugh and look at their feet. Others break away and talk among themselves. Only a few unabashedly listen. Someone shouts, ‘What’s he done?’ ‘I want you to bear witness,’ the man shouts. ‘You all bear witness.’ For his part the policeman ignores the players, sensing that he is at a disadvantage and that the middle of a game is some kind of sanctuary and too public for the law’s liking. It’s the sort of refuge Cary Grant might choose in a Hitchcock movie. Meanwhile reinforcements are on the way, and, as a police van speeds over the grass, another policeman gets out of the car and the two of them tackle the suspect. Still one watched, nobody saying anything, those nearest the struggle moving away, their embarrassment now acute. Eventually the police bundle the man into a van and he is driven off. The game is restarted, a little shamefacedly at first, then gathering momentum as we walk on. But the players must have lost heart
, because five minutes later the pitcher passes us with his baseball mitt and a young man in a funny hat.

  4 July. Recording The House at Pooh Corner for Radio 4. One story ends, ‘“Tigger is all right, really,” said Piglet lazily. “Of course he is,” said Christopher Robin. “Everybody is really,” said Pooh.’ The true voice of England in the thirties.

  8 July. Two strips of pale-blue shirt fabric arrive in the post with a letter asking me to wear them as an armlet on 25 August, which is Leonard Bernstein’s sixty-fifth birthday. This will testify to my regard for Lenny and my desire for peace. Actually I don’t know Lenny and fear that wearing a sky-blue armband is an opaque if not an ambiguous gesture, so I send my Van Heusen sample to Patricia Routledge, who does know Lenny and is as much concerned about dying from radiation as I am, but less concerned about dying of embarrassment.

  1 October. I mend a puncture on my bike. I get pleasure out of being able to do simple, practical jobs – replacing a fuse, changing a wheel, jump-starting the car – because these are not accomplishments generally associated with a temperament like mine. I tend to put sexual intercourse in this category too. The contents of a puncture outfit are like a time capsule, unchanged from what they were when I was a boy, and probably long before that. Here are the rubber solution, the dusting-chalk, the grater on the side of the box, and the little yellow crayon I didn’t use then and I don’t use now. I ask the cycle shop if anyone has thought of making self-adhesive puncture patches. No one has.

  15 October, Yorkshire. If Mr Parkinson and Miss Keays would only get together they could call their baby Frances Parkinson Keays.

  20 December, New York. A sign on Seventh Avenue at Sheridan Square: ‘Ears pierced, with or without pain.’

  I am reading a book on Kafka. It is a library book, and someone has marked a passage in the margin with a long, wavering line. I pay the passage special attention without finding it particularly rewarding. As I turn the page the line moves. It is a long, dark hair.