Tom Stoppard Plays 2

by Tom Stoppard

  MARTELLO: The French are an excitable people.

  DONNER: But they weren’t French, they were German.

  MARTELLO: Rubbish.

  DONNER: Yes they were.

  MARTELLO: Where’s that bloody map? Biscuit, were those lorries French or German?

  BEAUCHAMP: I don’t know, Banjo. One lorry is much like another.

  MARTELLO: I mean the soldiers. Donner says they were German.

  BEAUCHAMP: How does one tell?

  MARTELLO: Well, Donner?

  DONNER: The uniforms.

  MARTELLO: The uniforms. Well, don’t worry. They’re going in the opposite direction. By the time they get to Paris we’ll be in Switzerland.

  DONNER: Do you seriously expect me to walk to Switzerland? You’re crazy, Martello.

  (Dull distant explosion; field gun.)

  MARTELLO: Quarrying.

  BEAUCHAMP: All right, Napoleon, easy, boy …

  DONNER: Beauchamp’s crazy too.

  (Explosion, repeat.)

  BEAUCHAMP: I know!—I’ll call him Beauchamp’s Tenth Horse!—He will be the phantom cavalry that turns the war—now you see him, now you don’t—he strikes, and is gone, his neigh lost on the wind, he leaves no hoofprints; there is only the sound of his hooves on the empty road—He’s not physical!—He’s not metaphysical!—He’s pataphysical!—apocalyptic, clipcloptic, Beauchamp’s Tenth!—Here it comes—!!

  (A squadron of Cavalry gallops in quickly to occupy the foreground with a thunder of hooves; and recedes, leaving the men stunned and sobered.)

  MARTELLO: Good Christ.

  DONNER: Now do you believe me? They were German cavalry.

  BEAUCHAMP: He’s right.

  MARTELLO: We must have got too far east. Don’t worry—good God, if a man can’t go for a walk on the Continent nowadays, what is the world coming to? Come on; I see there’s a fork in the road—judging by the sun the right fork is the Swiss one.

  (Explosion.)

  Take no notice.

  DONNER: Look, what’s that?

  MARTELLO: What?—Ah. Men digging a ditch.

  BEAUCHAMP: Soldiers.

  MARTELLO: It is not unusual for soldiers to do such work in France. Or Germany. The main thing is to ignore them.

  BEAUCHAMP: That’s quite a ditch.

  MARTELLO: Isn’t it? Laying pipes, I shouldn’t wonder.

  BEAUCHAMP: Would you call that a trench?

  MARTELLO: Take no notice.

  DONNER: We’ll probably be interned. I hope they’ll do it with some kind of transport.

  MARTELLO: Beautiful bit of country, this. The road is climbing. That’s a good sign. Come on, Biscuit. What happened to your Tenth Horse?

  BEAUCHAMP: My feet are swelling visibly—Good lord!

  (A shock.)

  MARTELLO (talking up and out): Good morning!

  BEAUCHAMP (ditto): Bonjour!

  DONNER: Gut’n tag …

  (Pause.)

  BEAUCHAMP (whisper): That was a field gun!

  MARTELLO: My dear chap, it’s nothing to do with us. These Continentals are always squabbling over their frontiers.

  DONNER: How are we going to get back?

  BEAUCHAMP: By train. I shall telegraph for money.

  DONNER: There won’t be any trains!

  BEAUCHAMP: Then I shall wait at the station until there are.

  DONNER: They might think we’re spies … and kill us. That would be ridiculous. I don’t want to die ridiculously.

  BEAUCHAMP: All deaths in war are ridiculous.

  MARTELLO: Now look here, you two, you’re talking like tenderfeet. I am older than you; I have a little more experience. I have studied the European situation minutely, and I can assure you that there will be no war, at least not this year. You forget I have an Uncle Rupert in the War Office. I said to my uncle, when they shot that absurd Archduke Ferdinand of Ruritania, Uncle!, I said, does this mean war?—must I postpone the walking tour which I and my friends have been looking forward to since the winter?! My boy, he said—go!, go with my personal assurance. There will be no war for the very good reason that His Majesty’s Government is not ready to go to war, and it will be six months at least before we are strong enough to beat the French.

  DONNER: The French?

  MARTELLO: Go and walk your socks off, my uncle said, and then take the waters-waters at Baden-Baden, to which my auntie added, perhaps that will cure you of all that artistic nonsense with which you waste your time and an expensive education. You live in a sane and beautiful world, my auntie said, and the least you can do, if you must be a painter, is to paint appropriately sane and beautiful pictures. Which reminds me—I’ve stopped being auntie now, by the way—I was going to tell you about my next work, a beautiful woman, as described in the Song of Solomon …

  (Explosions build.)

  I shall paint her navel as a round goblet which wanteth not liquor, her belly like a field of wheat set about with lilies, yea, her two breasts will be like two young roes that are twins, her neck as a tower of ivory, and her eyes will be like the fishpools in Hebdon by the gate of Bath-rabbim, her nose like the tower of Lebanon which looketh towards Damascus … Behold she will be fair! My love will have her hair as a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead, her teeth like a flock of sheep that are even shorn … I shall paint her lips like a thread of scarlet!, and her temples will be like a piece of pomegranate within her locks …!

  (Explosions.)

  End of Flashback

  (The three young men are chanting out directions, sometimes in unison, sometimes just one or two voices.)

  ALL THREE: Left! … left … right … left … right … right … turn … right a bit … left a bit … turn … left … turn … stop!

  DONNER: Well?

  SOPHIE: I am exactly where I started, standing with my back to my chair.

  DONNER: Are you quite sure of that, Miss Farthingale?

  SOPHIE (sits): There!

  (Gasps; laughs.)

  BEAUCHAMP: You win—but we might have moved the chair.

  SOPHIE: I assumed that you would move it back if necessary, or at least catch me in your arms.

  BEAUCHAMP: Yes, you may be sure of that.

  DONNER: Indeed, yes. In fact, why don’t we do it again?

  SOPHIE: Not this time, Mr. Donner. I’ve stayed much longer than I intended, and I don’t want them to worry about me at the school.

  BEAUCHAMP: Then we’ll walk back with you.

  SOPHIE: Thank you. But there is really no need to trouble you all.

  BEAUCHAMP: I should like to.

  SOPHIE: Well, if you would like to, Mr. Beauchamp.

  DONNER: We would all like to.

  SOPHIE: Goodness, I will raise their eyebrows—oh!!

  (She has knocked over the tea-table.)

  BEAUCHAMP: Martello!—you moved the tea things!

  SOPHIE: I’m so sorry—how clumsy—

  BEAUCHAMP: It wasn’t your fault one bit—please get up—really—There!—oh——

  SOPHIE: What is it?

  BEAUCHAMP: Only that you are wearing blue stockings!

  (SOPHIE and BEAUCHAMP laugh.)

  MARTELLO: You seem to be in very good hands, Miss Farthingale. I’m sure you don’t want to be accompanied by a whole gang of people, so permit me to say good-bye, and I hope that you will come again.

  SOPHIE: Oh, Mr. Martello—of course. Thank you so much again. And good-bye to you both.

  DONNER: Oh … Good-bye, Miss Farthingale.

  MARTELLO: I hope Mr. Beauchamp will not leave you without inviting you to dinner.

  BEAUCHAMP: Wouldn’t dream of it.

  SOPHIE: I should love to come to dinner. Oh—and there will be no need to dress … Come then, Mr. Beauchamp … may I hold your hand on the stairs?

  BEAUCHAMP: If we are going to hold hands, I think I ought to know your name.

  SOPHIE: It’s Sophie.

  DONNER: Don’t fall …

  BEAUCHAMP: I won’t!

&nb
sp; (Their laughter receding down the stairs.)

  DONNER (close, quiet): Don’t fall.

  (Door closes on the laughter.)

  End of Flashback

  (Faint accordion as before. Feet descending the stairs, starting outside the closed door of the room, and getting fainter with each succeeding floor. They are still faintly audible at the very bottom, and the last sound, just audible, is the front door slamming. This whole business probably takes half a minute. After the slam, SOPHIE speaks close up.)

  SOPHIE: I feel blind again. I feel more blind than I did the first day, when I came to tea. I shall blunder about, knocking over the occasional table.

  (Cries out.) It’s not possible!—What is he thinking of?—What are you thinking of, Mouse? … We can’t live here like brother and sister. I know you won’t make demands of me, so how can I make demands of you? Am I to weave you endless tablemats and antimacassars in return for life? … And is the servant girl to be kept on? I cannot pay her and I cannot allow you to pay her in return for the privilege of reading to me in the evenings. And yet I will not want to be alone, I cannot live alone, I am afraid of the dark; not my dark, the real dark, and I need to know that it’s morning when I wake or I will fear the worst and never believe in the dawn breaking—who will do that for me? … And who will light the fire; and choose my clothes so the colours don’t clash; and find my other shoe; and do up my dress at the back? You haven’t thought about it. And if you have then you must think that I will be your lover. But I will not. I cannot. And I cannot live with you knowing that you want me—Do you see that? … Mouse? Are you here? Say something. Now, don’t do that, Mouse, it’s not fair—please, you are here … Did you go out? Now please don’t … How can I do anything if I can’t trust you—I beg you, if you’re here, tell me. What do you want? Are you just going to watch me?—standing quietly in the room—sitting on the bed—on the edge of the tub—Watch me move about the room, grieving, talking to myself, sleeping, washing, dressing, undressing, crying?—Oh no, there is no way now—I won’t—I won’t—I won’t—no, I won’t …!

  (Glass panes and wood smash violently. Silence. In the silence, hoofbeats in the street, then her body hitting, a horse neighing.)

  End of Flashback

  MARTELLO: She would have killed you, Donner. I mean if she’d fallen a yard to the right. Brained you or broken your back, as you waved us good-bye. I remember I heard the glass go and looked up, but my mind seized and I shouted ‘Look out’ after she hit. I wouldn’t have saved you. Beauchamp said she fell, an accident; otherwise why didn’t she open the window, he said. I don’t know, though. Why should she have behaved rationally to fulfil an irrational impulse? ‘This tragic defenestration,’ the coroner said. I remember that. Pompous fool, I thought. But I suppose he looked on it as a rare chance to use the word. It’s an odd word to exist, defenestration, isn’t it? I mean when you consider the comparatively few people who have jumped or been thrown from windows to account for it. By the way, I’m still missing one of her teeth, can you see it anywhere?—a pearl, it could have rolled under the cupboard … Yes, why isn’t there a word, in that case, for people being pushed downstairs or stuffed up chimneys …? De-escalate is a word, I believe, but they don’t use it for that. And, of course, influence. He was bodily in-fluenced. That’s a good idea; let’s cheer ourselves up by inventing verbs for various kinds of fatality——

  DONNER: Martello, will you please stop it.

  (Pause.)

  MARTELLO: Oh, there it is.

  DONNER: Her teeth were broken too, smashed, scattered …

  MARTELLO: Donner! If there is anything to be said it’s not that. Fifty years ago we knew a nice girl who was due for a sad life, and she jumped out of a window, which was a great shock and certainly tragic, and here we are, having seen much pain and many deaths, none of them happy, and no doubt due for our own one way or another, and then we will have caught up on Sophie’s fall, all much of a muchness after a brief delay between the fall of one body and another——

  DONNER: No, no, each one is vital and every moment counts—what other reason is there for trying to work well and live well and choose well? I think it was a good life lost—she would have been happy with me.

  MARTELLO: Well, Beauchamp thought the same, but they were only happy for a year or two. How can you tell? A blind mistress is a difficult proposition.

  DONNER: I would have married her without question.

  MARTELLO: Well, yes, perhaps one made the wrong choice.

  DONNER: There was no choice. She fell in love with him at first sight. As I did with her, I think. After that, even when life was at its best there was a small part missing and I knew that I was going to die without ever feeling that my life was complete.

  MARTELLO: Is it still important, Donner? Would it comfort you if you thought, even now, that Sophie loved you?

  DONNER: I can never think that, but I wish I could be sure that she had some similar feeling for me.

  MARTELLO: Did you ever wonder whether it was you she loved?

  DONNER: No, of course not. It was Beauchamp.

  MARTELLO: To us it was Beauchamp, but which of us did she see in her mind’s eye …?

  DONNER: But it was Beauchamp—she remembered his painting, the snow scene.

  MARTELLO: Yes. She asked me whether I had painted it within five minutes of meeting me in the garden that day; she described it briefly, and I had an image of black vertical railings, like park railings, right across the canvas, as though one were looking at a field of snow through the bars of a cage; not like Beauchamp’s snow scene at all.

  DONNER: But it was the only snow scene.

  MARTELLO: Yes, it was, but—I promise you, Donner, it was a long time afterwards when this occurred to me, when she was already living with Beauchamp——

  DONNER: What occurred to you, Martello?

  MARTELLO: Well, your painting of the white fence——

  DONNER: White fence?

  MARTELLO: Thick white posts, top to bottom across the whole canvas, an inch or two apart, black in the gaps——

  DONNER: Yes, I remember it. Oh God.

  MARTELLO: Like looking at the dark through the gaps in a white fence.

  DONNER: Oh my God.

  MARTELLO: Well, one might be wrong, but her sight was not good even then.

  DONNER: Oh my God.

  MARTELLO: When one thinks of the brief happiness she enjoyed … well, we thought she was enjoying it with Beauchamp but she was really enjoying it with you. As it were.

  DONNER: Oh my God.

  MARTELLO: Of course, it was impossible to say so, after she got off on the right foot with Beauchamp—I mean, one couldn’t——

  DONNER: Oh my God!

  MARTELLO: Now, steady on, Donner, or I’ll be sorry I mentioned it——

  DONNER: Oh my God …

  End of flashback

  (Smack!)

  BEAUCHAMP: Missed him again! (Pause.) All right, don’t tell me then.

  (BEAUCHAMP’s TAPE: snap crackle pop …)

  Fascinating, isn’t it? Layer upon layer of what passes for silence, trapped from an empty room—no, trawled—no, like—no matter! I know that in this loop of tape there is some truth about how we live, Donner. These unheard sounds which are our silence stand as a metaphor—a correspondence between the limits of hearing and the limits of all knowledge: and whose silence is our hubbub?

  DONNER: Are you going out, Beauchamp? I’d like to get on.

  BEAUCHAMP: I have nothing to go out for.

  DONNER: Get some fly-killer.

  BEAUCHAMP: All right, if you’ll let me record a clean loop while I’m out. I don’t want you whistling and throwing things about when you can’t get the likeness right.

  DONNER: I am getting it right.

  BEAUCHAMP: Yes, she’s very good. May I make a small suggestion?

  DONNER: No.

  BEAUCHAMP: Her nipples were in fact——

  DONNER: Get out!

 
BEAUCHAMP: Courtesy costs nothing. All right, I’ll see if Martello is in the pub, and I’ll be back in an hour or so.

  (Changing tapes.)

  There. Will you press the switch when I’m out of the door?

  DONNER: Yes.

  BEAUCHAMP: Promise?

  DONNER: I promise, Beauchamp.

  BEAUCHAMP: Poor Sophie. I think you’ve got her, Donner.

  (BEAUCHAMP’s feet down the stairs. Open and close door. The fly starts to buzz. It comes close to the microphone and the sound is distorted slightly into a droning rhythm.)

  End of Flashback

  (The beginning of the DONNER TAPE. It is the same sound as made by the fly.)

  MARTELLO: I don’t want to hear it again.

  (Cut TAPE.)

  BEAUCHAMP: Now then. Let’s try looking at it backwards. Coolly. Fact number one: Donner is lying at the bottom of the stairs, dead, with what looks to my untrained eye like a broken neck. Inference: he fell down the stairs. Fact number two: the balustrade up here is broken. Inference: Donner fell through it, as a result of, er, staggering and possibly slipping on what is undeniably a slippery floor, as a result of … Well, fact number three: the sounds which correspond to these inferences were preceded by Donner crying out, preceded by a sort of thump, preceded by two quick footsteps, preceded by Donner remarking, unalarmed—I can’t believe it of you, Martello!

  (Pause.)

  MARTELLO: Nor I of you, Beauchamp. (Pause.) Well, let’s get him upstairs.

  BEAUCHAMP: Hang on …

  (Fly.)

  That fly has been driving me mad. Where is he?

  MARTELLO: Somewhere over there …

  BEAUCHAMP: Right.

  The original loop of TAPE is hereby reproduced:

  (a) Fly droning.

  (b) Careful footsteps approach. A board creaks.

  (c) The fly settles.

  (d) BEAUCHAMP halts.

  (e) BEAUCHAMP: ‘Ah! There you are.’

  (f) Two more quick steps and then: Thump!

  BEAUCHAMP: Got him!

  (Laughs shortly.)

  ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods:

  they kill us for their sport.’

  Now then.