The Complaisant Lover

by Graham Greene

  The door opens and Victor enters. The Valet looks nervously up, and stands. He is completely confused.

  VICTOR: Mary here?

  CLIVE: She went down to find you. I asked if I could use your desk—and your valet.

  VICTOR: Why the valet?

  CLIVE: I have to write a bread-and-butter letter in Dutch.

  VICTOR: Well, make yourself at home, old chap. Make yourself at home.

  CLIVE: Thank you.

  VICTOR: Carry on. Don’t mind me. Just going to wash.

  Victor goes to the bathroom and begins running water. It has a proprietary sound which infuriates Clive.

  CLIVE (to Valet): Sit down. (The poor man is hopelessly confused but he obeys.) “I have so much enjoyed my stay with you.” (Valet hesitates.) Go on. “The windmills were just as I’d always imagined them.”

  The Valet writes. Victor emerges, drying his hands.

  VICTOR: Just going to take my wife shopping. I’ve managed to lose Dr. van Droog. See you in London.

  CLIVE: Give Mary my love.

  VICTOR: Right you are. (He pauses at the bed and picks up the bed-clothes.) Can’t say I like sleeping under these. I like good English blankets. Good-bye, Root.

  CLIVE: Good-bye. (Victor leaves. Clive turns to the Valet.) Go on now with the letter. “I am sorry to see—” No, we’ve done that. “I feel that it is my duty to tell you … that before your arrival … your wife was sharing Room 121 … for four days … with the gentleman who went out to buy a strap. They had behaved very intimately together … and I am quite ready to be a witness in any proceedings …” (The Valet looks up.) Spell it how you like … “that you may wish to take. Your humble servant …Now sign it, and post it a week today.

  VALET: Shall I read it to you, sir?

  CLIVE: No. I don’t want any more to do with the beastly thing. Address the envelope to Victor Rhodes, Esq., 18 South Heath Lane, London, N.W., England.

  Dr. van Droog puts his head inside the door and speaks in Dutch.

  VAN DROOG: Het spyt my ik ben Mr. en Mrs. Rhodes kwytgeraakt?

  VALET (getting to his feet): He wishes to know where is Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes. I do not know who he is. I do not know who you are. I do not understand this (indicating the letter). I do not understand one damned thing.

  Act Two

  SCENE I

  The same scene as Act I, Scene I, about five-thirty of a warm sunny evening.

  The sitting room is empty, but glasses for cocktails have been laid out on the dining-room table.

  Robin’s voice calling: “Mother, Mother.”

  Mary enters the dining room carrying bottles. She is wearing the new ear-rings. The voice goes on calling, “Mother,” but she pays no attention, counting and marshalling the glasses: it is the eternal background noise of her life at home.

  Robin enters the drawing room through the garden window, then shouts again.

  ROBIN: Mother.

  MARY: If you want to speak to me come where you don’t have to shout.

  ROBIN (between the rooms): What’s the capital of Madagascar? MARY: Antananarivo.

  ROBIN: Thanks. What’s a prime number?

  MARY: A number that you can’t divide into equal parts.

  ROBIN: Thanks. What’s Tio Pepe?

  MARY (looking at the bottle in her hand): Sherry.

  ROBIN: Tio means ten in Swedish.

  MARY: Thanks.

  ROBIN: There’s a stamp I haven’t got on one of Father’s letters.

  MARY: What kind?

  ROBIN: Dutch. A new issue.

  MARY: I suppose that will be from Dr. van Droog. I wonder who we can get to translate it.

  ROBIN: Can I peel the stamp off? It’s on the hall table.

  MARY: Not until your father’s opened the letter.

  ROBIN: Who’s coming to the party?

  MARY: Mr. Root and the Howards—the Morgans, the Forsters, I think. I can’t remember.

  ROBIN: Is Ann coming?

  MARY: I suppose so.

  ROBIN: Do you think she’d like an electronic eye? I made one yesterday.

  MARY: It would be an improvement on a stuffed mouse. Help me carry in some of these glasses, and I want to shift some tables into the garden. We’ve got to spread the party. Don’t take too many at a time.

  Robin follows her into the sitting-room, carrying glasses. During the ensuing dialogue they also carry one or two small tables through the garden windows.

  ROBIN: Is Jane Crane coming?

  MARY: No. Why?

  ROBIN: It’d be just interesting to see her. None of us have.

  MARY: She went straight home by train.

  ROBIN: Jane Crane went home by train. She’ll never be seen here ever again.

  MARY: Why does everybody have to make up rhymes about her? It’s quite an ordinary name, isn’t it?

  ROBIN: Not a very ordinary name. Did she like Amsterdam?

  MARY: Of course. Why?

  ROBIN: What did you do all day?

  MARY: Why we—we looked at museums and things.

  ROBIN: That sounds pretty dreary. You must have been glad when Father came.

  MARY: Of course.

  ROBIN: Did Father like Jane Crane?

  MARY: They never met.

  ROBIN: She is a mystery woman, isn’t she? Nobody’s met her except you.

  MARY: And Mr. Root.

  ROBIN: Oh, was he in Amsterdam too?

  MARY: Yes.

  ROBIN: Ann’s got a crush on him.

  MARY: How do you know?

  ROBIN: I saw them on the heath while you were away. They looked as if they were in an about-to-take-hands condition. It would be terrible, wouldn’t it, if they married.

  MARY: For goodness’ sake stop talking about things you don’t understand.

  Victor enters. He carries the afternoon post in his hand.

  VICTOR: Sorry I’m too late to help. Who’s coming?

  MARY: The usual people. Had a bad afternoon?

  VICTOR: Four fillings, three scalings, and one extraction.

  ROBIN: Did you use gas?

  VICTOR: Pentothal. (He sits heavily down on the sofa.) The new girl makes everything twice as long. She has no sense of order.

  ROBIN: What kind of fillings were they, Father?

  MARY: Don’t worry your father. He’s tired. Have you done your homework?

  VICTOR: One porcelain and three amalgams.

  ROBIN: Don’t you ever use gold now?

  VICTOR: Thank God, gold foil is out of fashion. It took five times as long.

  ROBIN: Why?

  MARY: Robin, I said homework.

  ROBIN (disgruntled): Oh, all right. (He goes.)

  MARY: He’s at a tiresome age.

  VICTOR: Oh, I think he was really interested. It would be amusing, wouldn’t it, to have a dentist son?

  MARY: Would it?

  VICTOR: I could take him into partnership before I retired.

  MARY: And you could consult each other at meals.

  VICTOR: Yes. (He notices the irony too late.) What’s wrong, Mary?

  MARY: Nothing. Read your mail.

  During the ensuing dialogue Mary moves with glasses and bottles between the two sections of the room and the garden.

  VICTOR: There’s nothing interesting. Two bills. Three catalogues and a letter from Dr. van Droog.

  MARY: It is from Dr. van Droog?

  VICTOR: It must be. He’s the only man I know in Holland.

  MARY: Robin wants the stamp.

  VICTOR: He could have taken it.

  MARY: I told him not to, until you’d read the letter.

  VICTOR: Not much good reading it. It’d be double-Dutch to me. (He opens one of the catalogues.)

  MARY: That was a terrible day at The Hague. Except for the Bols. I drank four glasses. I simply had to.

  VICTOR: I don’t know. It wasn’t so bad, was it? The supersonic drill was interesting. True, I didn’t take to it much. That jet of water playing on the patient’s tooth to keep it cool—
I’d be afraid of not seeing the way and cutting the nerve.

  MARY: Victor, can’t you leave dentistry behind in the surgery just for a little?

  VICTOR: I’m sorry, Mary. You see, it’s my life. (He opens another catalogue.) Even my letters are dental. What does a dentist do when he retires? He can hardly write his memoirs. The patients wouldn’t like it.

  MARY: He has to fall back on a hobby like other people.

  VICTOR: You don’t much care for my hobby, do you? You know that shop in Oxford Street. I saw a wonderful rat there the other day. Beautifully made, real craftsmanship. You make it lurk in the shadows of the room. (He throws down the catalogue.) Oh God, I’m feeling tired today. Well, here’s for Dr. van Droog. Why are there so many g’s in the Dutch language?

  Victor opens the letter with the Dutch stamp.

  Mary goes into the dining room and begins to decant some whisky.

  Victor puts the letter on his knee, then picks it up and reads it again.

  MARY (from the other room): Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll tell them the truth and say you’re tired. When they’ve gone I’ll bring you up a tray. It’s a cold meal anyway. (Victor, with sudden decision, tears the letter in two and drops it on the sofa.) What about it, dear?

  VICTOR: No. I’ll stay.

  Pause.

  MARY (from the other room): Did you remember to write to Sally for her birthday?

  VICTOR: Yes.

  MARY (from the other room): We’ve only got one bottle of sherry, but the men will take whisky, won’t they, or martinis? Let me make the martinis if you’re tired. (She comes into the living room with a cocktail shaker.) Poor dear. You do look all in.

  VICTOR: Is Root coming?

  MARY: Yes, I think so. Why? He was so kind, you know, to Jane. Took her round to museums and art galleries—all the places that bore me. We need more ash-trays. (She is quite unconscious of the situation and the effect of her words on Victor.) Did I tell you I got a letter from Jane this morning? She’s so sorry that she missed you in Amsterdam. Now there she is, back in the frozen north. She’s quite a hermit, but perhaps she’ll come to London after Christmas and then you’ll meet her.

  VICTOR (who can bear no more): It seems unlikely.

  MARY: Unlikely?

  VICTOR: Mary, was Root sleeping with you in Amsterdam?

  A long pause.

  MARY: Yes.

  VICTOR: It was stupid of me not to guess. You married a stupid man.

  MARY: You aren’t stupid, Victor. I was beastly and clever with my lies. I hated them.

  VICTOR: I suppose I ought to be glad the lies are over, but I’m not. I just don’t know how to take the truth.

  MARY: How did you find out?

  VICTOR: This letter. From the valet in the hotel.

  MARY: The valet!

  VICTOR: A bit sordid, isn’t it?

  MARY: You tore it up.

  VICTOR: I thought for a moment I could pretend it hadn’t come. But I’m not strong enough. And what’s the use of my lying, too?

  MARY: Let me see it.

  VICTOR: I’ll read it to you if you like. It’s in English. (He puts the two pieces of the letter together.) “Dear sir, I am the valet who looked after you in room 121.” You remember the man. He translated for Dr. van Droog. “I am sorry to see a gentleman like you so sadly deceived.” His spelling is not very good. “A beautiful woman your wife …”

  MARY: What a foul letter.

  VICTOR: It gets a bit confused here. I don’t know what he means. He writes, “I have so much enjoyed my stay with you. The windmills were just as I always imagined them.”

  MARY: He must be mad.

  VICTOR: What difference does it make? You said you slept with Root. He goes on, “I feel it is my duty to tell you that before your arrival your wife was sharing room 121.” I don’t have to read any more, do I?

  MARY: No.

  VICTOR: Are those his ear-rings you are wearing?

  MARY: Yes.

  VICTOR: An expensive present. I couldn’t buy you much on my ten-pounds-a-day allowance. He seems to know the ropes better than I do.

  MARY: He went to a black marketeer in Knightsbridge. A currency specialist.

  VICTOR: It’s the only romantic thing a man can do in these days, risk prison for a woman. I can’t even do that. I’m a father. I can only give you a scarf with a map of Amsterdam on it. They look as though they’re good diamonds.

  MARY: You talk as though he bought me.

  VICTOR: He did buy you. He bought you with novelty, anecdotes you hadn’t heard before, books instead of teeth. I know what you think of my job. You didn’t feel that way when we started. You used to talk quite poetically about dentistry. Only you called it “curing pain.”

  MARY: You are causing it now.

  VICTOR: Me causing it? I remember a poem by Swinburne about a woman who loved a leper and washed his sores with her hair. Is it so much more difficult to love a dentist?

  MARY: There never was such a woman. Or if there was it didn’t happen that way. The sores would have got on her nerves very soon.

  VICTOR: Like my dentist’s chair?

  MARY: Like your rat and your burning cigar and your dribbling glass. Victor, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be angry. I don’t know why I am. It’s you who ought to be angry.

  VICTOR: I was angry just now, but I couldn’t keep it up. What are you going to do?

  MARY: I wasn’t planning to do anything until you found out.

  VICTOR (getting up from the sofa): I wish I hadn’t. Oh, how I wish I hadn’t. If that damned valet hadn’t written … Does Root want to marry you?

  MARY: Yes.

  VICTOR: Do you want to marry him?

  MARY: I want to be with him, when I can, as much as I can. VICTOR: That wasn’t what I asked.

  MARY: I never thought about marriage until he talked about it.

  VICTOR: Don’t think about it now. Mary, marriage isn’t the answer. First editions can be just as boring in time as dentist’s drills. He’ll have his hobbies, too, and you won’t care for them in a year or two. The trouble about marriage is, it’s a damned boring condition even with a lover.

  MARY: I didn’t know you’d been bored too.

  VICTOR: I can put up with any amount of boredom because I love you. It’s the way of life that’s boring, not you. Do you think I’m never bored with people’s teeth? One has to put up with it. Boredom is not a good reason for changing a profession or a marriage.

  MARY: We haven’t been married properly for years.

  VICTOR: Oh, yes, we have. Marriage is living in the same house with someone you love. I never stopped loving you—I only stopped giving you pleasure. And when that happened I didn’t want you any more. I wasn’t going to use you like a pick-up in the park.

  MARY: How did you know that?

  VICTOR: You were always very quiet when we made love, but you had one habit you didn’t know yourself. In the old days just before going to sleep, if you had been satisfied, you would touch my face and say, “Thank you.” And then a time came when I realized that for months you had said nothing. You had only touched my face. (In sudden pain:) Do you say thank you to Root?

  MARY: I don’t know. Perhaps.

  VICTOR: You are always so damnably honest—that’s the awful thing about you.

  MARY: What do you want me to say, Victor?

  VICTOR: I want you to make absurd promises, to say you’ll give him up, I want you to lie to me, but it never even occurs to you to pretend. You never pretended even in bed. It was thank you or nothing.

  MARY: I never knew you noticed so much.

  VICTOR: I’m not more stupid than other men.

  MARY: You are talking to me as though I was a woman, and not just your wife. Do I have to sleep with another man before you do that?

  Robin’s Voice with its maddening wail: “Mother, Mother.”

  VICTOR: You’d better go to him.

  MARY: I promised nothing.

  VICTOR: I meant Robin
.

  MARY: He can wait. He only wants help with his homework.

  VICTOR: We are all of us asking you for help, aren’t we? Poor Mary. (Robin’s Voice: “Mother. Mother.”) How I wish all those people weren’t coming.

  MARY: It’s too late to stop them now. It’s a wonder the Howards aren’t here already. They’re always so punctual.

  VICTOR: Mary, what do I say to Root? How do I behave in front of them? They don’t know, but he does. How does a cuckold meet a lover the first time? It’s funny how even now I depend on your advice.

  MARY: I can’t advise you.

  VICTOR: You chose the furniture, you chose my shirts and my ties. I bring you patterns of my suits. You’ve always chosen for me. I’m lost when I’m not in my surgery. Mary, I can’t live in a surgery.

  ROBIN’S VOICE: Mother. Mother.

  MARY: I’ll have to go. He won’t stop until I do.

  VICTOR: Mary, please stay with me.

  MARY: Don’t make me choose. I can’t choose. (Robin’s Voice: “Mother.”) I’ll have to go.

  As Mary passes him Victor clutches her arm.

  VICTOR: Have I got to meet him?

  MARY: I can’t put him off now.

  VICTOR: I’m just not accustomed … I need you, Mary.

  MARY: So does he.

  VICTOR: He hasn’t sixteen years of habit behind him.

  Mary goes. Victor stands for a moment; then without thinking what he is doing he collapses on to the musical chair and puts his face in his hands.

  The chair starts playing “Auld Lang Syne,” but Victor doesn’t hear. He is crying behind his hands.

  As the music grinds to a close Mary returns.

  MARY: What on earth …? (The music stops. She goes to him and tries to pull his hands away, but he is ashamed of his tears.) Victor, please, Victor. Be angry. I’m an unfaithful wife. Victor. (She kneels beside him.) You have to divorce me. Please do something, Victor. I can’t.

  VICTOR (taking his hands from his face): I’m sorry. The new girl, she’s so careless. No oil of cloves. No guttapercha. It’s been a bad day at the surgery. Just give me time to think.

  The front door bell rings and Mary rises to her feet to go and greet her guests. The first to enter is Clive. Victor rises reluctantly. Both are at a loss.

  CLIVE: Good evening.

  VICTOR: Good evening.

  CLIVE: I hope you had a good time in Amsterdam.

  A pause.