by Tom Stoppard
BLAIR: Sorry.
PURVIS: Don’t worry, this thing has got brakes. I don’t come down this far if I’m on my own.
BLAIR: It is rather dangerous.
PURVIS: Not that. It’s just a question of getting back up. You need strong wrists. There’s a little flat bit to the side here, you could sit on that stump.
BLAIR: Fine. This is very pleasant. Do you mind if I pollute the atmosphere?
(BLAIR lights his pipe and sucks on it.)
Which way are we looking?
PURVIS: About north-east. That’s the Dogger Bank out there, over the horizon a bit … the scene of the last occasion on which the Russian battle fleet engaged the British.
BLAIR: Really? When was that?
PURVIS: Ages ago. The Russian navy fired on some British trawlers.
BLAIR: Why?
PURVIS: It was a mistake. They thought the trawlers were Japanese torpedo boats.
BLAIR: In the North Sea?
PURVIS: As I said it was a mistake. I think it was a bit foggy, too.
BLAIR: It must have been.
PURVIS: It damned nearly led to war.
BLAIR: I should think it did.
PURVIS: The Tsar had to apologize to the King.
BLAIR: Oh …
PURVIS: Different Russia, of course.
BLAIR: (Regretfully) Yes, indeed.
PURVIS: They’re getting there slowly.
BLAIR: Sorry?
PURVIS: Two steps forward, one and a halfback. Narrowing the gap between rich and poor. That’s what it’s all about.
BLAIR: What?
PURVIS: Money, wealth.
BLAIR: I thought it was about freedom.
PURVIS: That’s a luxury which has to be paid for. That’s why the rich have always had it.
BLAIR: There’s nothing in English law about what a man is worth.
PURVIS: There doesn’t have to be. People only desire the freedom that is within their imagination. When you limit their horizon economically you limit their imagination. That’s why the proletariat need the intellectuals—the failure of the masses to act is a failure of the mass imagination.
BLAIR: Purvis, what are you doing?
PURVIS: Just trying it out. How does it sound?
BLAIR: Like balderdash.
PURVIS: Really?
BLAIR: Doesn’t it sound like balderdash to you?
PURVIS: Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s my problem.
BLAIR: Well, we knew you had a problem, Purvis. What exactly is it?
PURVIS: Blair … you know how it is when you telephone someone and say, shall we meet at the Savoy Grill or Simpson’s, and he says, I don’t mind, make it Simpson’s if you like, or do you prefer the Savoy, and you say no, that’s fine, eight thirty suit you?, and he says fine, eight thirty, and you hang up—and suddenly you think—did he say Simpson’s or the Savoy? It’s gone, you know. You’ve lost it. Well, that’s what’s happened to me.
BLAIR: The Savoy or Simpson’s?
PURVIS: No, it isn’t really like that, except that when you try to remember back, both ways sound equally right. I’m going back thirty-five years now, when I was still being run by Gell, or Rashnikov. Now Gell is dead and Rashnikov is probably dead too. They set me going between them like one of those canisters in a department store, and they disappeared leaving me to go back and forth, back and forth, a canister between us and you, or us and them.
BLAIR: I didn’t quite follow that last bit.
PURVIS: I remember some of it, no problem. I remember striking up a conversation with Rashnikov in one of the stacks in the Westminster Library—political economy. Or perhaps he struck up a conversation with me. I remember having a few dinners with him, meeting some of his friends, arguing long into the night about politics, and I remember finally being asked to look something up for him in our back-numbers room in Whitehall … You remember that basement we used to have before we had microfilm? The thing he wanted was perfectly innocuous, but by that time, of course, I knew he was supposedly on the staff of the Soviet Commercial Attaché, so the next time he asked me to look something up, something which wasn’t quite so innocuous, I of course reported the whole thing to Gell who was my superior.
BLAIR: Of course.
PURVIS: Sure enough, Gell told me to pretend to swallow the bait and to await instructions.
BLAIR: Straightforward enough.
PURVIS: It wasn’t. Rashnikov was playing a subtle game. He had told me to tell Gell.
BLAIR: To tell him what?
PURVIS: To tell Gell that I was being recruited by Rashnikov. So that Gell would be fooled into thinking that I was pretending to be Rashnikov’s man while I was really Gell’s man.
BLAIR: Looking at it from Rashnikov’s point of view.
PURVIS: Yes.
BLAIR: And did you tell Gell that this was going on, that Rashnikov had told you to tell Gell?
PURVIS: Yes. I did. But …
BLAIR: But …?
PURVIS: Well, I’m pretty sure that when I told Gell that all this was going on, I was also acting on Rashnikov’s instructions.
(Pause.)
BLAIR: But, if that were so, no doubt you told Gell that it was so. No doubt you told Gell that Rashnikov had told you to tell Gell that Rashnikov had told you to tell him that you were being offered the bait.
PURVIS: That’s what I can’t remember. I’ve forgotten who is my primary employer and who my secondary. For years I’ve been feeding stuff in both directions, following my instructions from either side, having been instructed to do so by the other, and since each side wanted the other side to believe that I was working for it, both sides were often giving me genuine stuff to pass on to the other side … so the side I was actually working for became … well, a matter of opinion really … it got lost.
(Pause.)
Blair?
BLAIR: I didn’t speak.
PURVIS: Well, I just carried on doing what I was told … and one day, not very long ago, I started thinking about my retirement. The sherry party with the Chief. The presentation clock. The London Transport senior citizen’s bus pass. The little dacha on the Vistula.
BLAIR: Purvis …?
PURVIS: Exactly. Hang on a sec, I thought—hello!—which—? …? And blow me, I found I had forgotten.
BLAIR: But you worked for Gell. For me.
PURVIS: I worked for Rashnikov too.
BLAIR: Only because we asked you to play along.
PURVIS: He asked me to play along.
BLAIR: Let’s not get into that again. You’re one of us.
PURVIS: Well, I’d have to be, wouldn’t I, to be of any use to him.
BLAIR: You’re a church warden.
PURVIS: I thought about that but if one were covering up would one join a left-wing book club instead, for instance? Obviously not. Well, I suppose one might as a double bluff. Or, then again, one might not, as a triple bluff. I don’t think I’m going to get to the bottom of this, to my infinite regress, I mean regret.
BLAIR: This is nonsense.
PURVIS: Rashnikov said to me once, you’ve got to believe in the lie so strongly that even if you confessed they wouldn’t believe you. Or was that Gell? One of the two.
BLAIR: All you’ve got to do is remember what you believed.
PURVIS: I remember I was very idealistic in those days, a real prig about Western decadence. On the other hand I was very patriotic and really didn’t much care for foreigners. Obviously one scruple overcame the other, but as to whether it was the Savoy or Simpson’s … At some point it must have ceased to matter to me. That’s what I find so depressing. Did they tell you I was depressed? It’s on my file here: Purvis is extremely depressed.
BLAIR: My dear chap …
PURVIS: Well, it is extremely depressing to find that one has turned into a canister. A hollow man. Like one of those Russian dolls—how appropriate! Yes, I’m like one of those sets of wooden dolls which fit into one another as they get smaller. Somewh
ere deep inside is the last doll, the only one which isn’t hollow. At least, I suppose there is. There used to be. Perhaps I’m not even a set of dolls any more, perhaps I’m an onion. My idealism and my patriotism, folded on each other, have been peeled away leaving nothing in the middle except the lingering smell of onion.
BLAIR: Please don’t cry.
PURVIS: I’m sorry. It’s the onion. Oh stuff it, Blair!
BLAIR: That’s the spirit. To the taxidermist with the lot of it.
(Sniffles and pause.)
PURVIS: Did you get the parrot by the way?
BLAIR: Oh yes. I’ll let you have it back, of course.
PURVIS: I’d like you to keep it. Find a place for it in your folly.
BLAIR: Most kind of you. Well, I ought to be getting back.
PURVIS: Thank you for coming.
BLAIR: Let me give you a push up the hill.
PURVIS: No, I’ll stay here for a while. I’ll manage. I like looking at the sea.
BLAIR: As for that other matter … You never told Rashnikov anything which Gell hadn’t told you to tell him, did you?
PURVIS: I never knew anything which Gell hadn’t told me.
BLAIR: Well, there you are.
PURVIS: And I never knew anything to tell Gell which Rashnikov hadn’t told me.
BLAIR: So the whole thing is rather academic, isn’t it?
PURVIS: Thank you for understanding, Blair.
BLAIR: Cheerio, then.
PURVIS: Goodbye, Blair.
SCENE 8
Interior. Funeral service.
A choir. Then BLAIR and HOGBIN conversing under the singing.
BLAIR: I thought I might find you here, Hogbin. Still worrying?
HOGBIN: Yes, sir.
BLAIR: Too late to worry now.
HOGBIN: Too late for Purvis, you mean.
BLAIR: Yes, poor Purvis. We were all at fault, especially me.
HOGBIN: Why?
BLAIR: Well, one asks oneself … with the benefit of hindsight, was Clifftops the ideal place to put a man who had a tendency to fling himself from a great height into a watery grave. Of course, one didn’t realize it was a tendency, one thought it was a one-off, but even so …
HOGBIN: You think he jumped?
BLAIR: (Sighs.) What now?
HOGBIN: Just asking.
BLAIR: He wheeled. He rolled.
HOGBIN: Has anyone thought of checking the brakes on that wheelchair, sir?
BLAIR: The wheelchair has not surfaced, Hogbin. Can you think of anyone who required Purvis’s death, or even stood to gain by it?
HOGBIN: He had friends in High …
(The organ drowns him momentarily.)
BLAIR: High places?
HOGBIN: Highgate. But then one would need to know more about that than I’m allowed to know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I’m doing here.
BLAIR: You’re checking out the mourners. That’s what you’re doing here, Hogbin. You smell a mystery. You’re looking for a lead. And as is often the case after sudden death, a good place to start looking is the funeral. Any interesting mourners? Anybody unusual? Unexpected? Anybody who looks wrong? Too aloof? Too engaged? Too glamorous?
HOGBIN: I spotted her. Any idea who she is?
BLAIR: None. Have you spotted Hoskins?
HOGBIN: Hoskins?
BLAIR: Third from the end with the eyelashes.
SCENE 9
Exterior. Churchyard.
The VICAR is saying goodbye to the mourners.
VICAR: Goodbye … goodbye … sad occasion … would have been so pleased … goodbye … goodbye …
HOGBIN: Thank you, reverend. A beautiful service. The choristers in glorious voice …
VICAR: Thank you … Mr …?
HOGBIN: Hogbin.
VICAR: I noticed you at the back of the church, with the other gentleman. Were you colleagues of Mr Purvis’s?
HOGBIN: Mr Blair is representing the firm. I was following in Purvis’s footsteps. Perhaps I could walk along with you for a moment?
VICAR: I’m only going to the vicarage. We can take the side gate. We weren’t quite sure what exactly Mr Purvis was doing.
HOGBIN: Quite. Incidentally, that lady in the red dress with the fingernails …
VICAR: She lodged with Mr Purvis in Church Street. Quite innocently, of course. One has to make the point nowadays, on the rare occasions when one is able to make it. I only met her once, a Turkish lady. She’s a ballet dancer.
HOGBIN: Did you say ballet dancer or belly dancer?
VICAR: Ballet dancer. At least, I assumed she said ballet dancer. But now I come to think of it she does seem rather the wrong shape, and when I asked her where she danced she said Rotherhithe. Do you think she might possibly be a belly dancer?
HOGBIN: I’d put money on it. Let me hold the gate for you.
VICAR: Would you care for a spot of cheese?
HOGBIN: Thank you very much.
SCENE 10
Interior.
VICAR: Try this one, Mr Hogbin. This is a Caerphilly.
HOGBIN: (With mouth full) Welsh? I was going to ask you—
VICAR: Hardly any Caerphilly made in Wales any more—mostly in Somerset. A hundred years ago every farmhouse in that part of South Wales made its own cheese. A hundred and fifty years ago—what do you think?
HOGBIN: I don’t know.
VICAR: It wasn’t made at all! It’s a newcomer, invented for the miners, makes an ideal meal underground, doesn’t dry up, very digestible, and you can make it in two or three hours using hardly more than its own weight in milk. A Cheddar needs ten times its own weight in milk.
HOGBIN: I like toasted cheese. Welsh rarebit. Incidentally, Purvis mentioned—
vicar: Now your cheese for Welsh rarebit is red Leicester. It’ll never be so fine as a Cheshire because it doesn’t go on maturing the same way, it’s ready at three months, good for nine, finished at a year. But it’s the best English cheese for melting. The orange colour is a tint, of course—carrot juice originally, but since the eighteenth century tinted with annatto, an extract from the Bixa orellana tree from the West Indies. You need one dram to every two and a half gallons of milk.
HOGBIN: Amazing.
VICAR: I’m always glad to meet a man who appreciates cheese.
HOGBIN: Did Purvis appreciate cheese … on toast perhaps?
VICAR: One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead, but I tell you now that Purvis may have liked the odd piece of cheese but he knew nothing about it, nothing at all. Purvis was a man who would melt an Epoisses on a slice of Mother’s Pride as soon as look at you.
HOGBIN: An Epoisses?
VICAR: Purvis blamed the choir, but I’m not convinced. You would have really liked my Epoisses. I brought it back from Dijon. I chose one which had been renneted with fennel. The curd is milled, salted and then refined on rye straw. As soon as the mould starts forming the cheese is soaked in Marc de Bourgogne, an eau-de-vie distilled from local grape pulp. A beautiful thing, brick red on the outside, of course.
HOGBIN: Of course.
VICAR: I put it in the vestry because it can’t abide central heating. That was a Wednesday.
HOGBIN: Don’t tell me Purvis …?
VICAR: Cut a great wedge out of it. The electric grill was still warm. I held up Matins for ten minutes while I searched the vestry for evidence.
HOGBIN: Did you find any?
VICAR: A half-eaten rarebit in Purvis’s hymn book.
HOGBIN: An unsavoury business.
SCENE 11
Interior.
BLAIR’s chiming and striking clocks signal one o’clock. They require a spread of several seconds between them.
PAMELA: Come and sit down, Giles. Soup’s getting cold.
(BLAIR grunts.)
Are you going back to the office after lunch?
BLAIR: I suppose so.
PAMELA: Your funeral seems to have got you down.
BLAIR: It wasn’t exactly my funeral.
PAMELA: Well, don’t stand there brooding and looking out at the rain. What’s worrying you?
BLAIR: Just thinking … I could have had a rustic pagoda.
(A late clock strikes the hour.)
The Graham bracket isn’t itself, it’s sickening for something. I’m pretty sure I know what it is. I’ll have a look at it at the weekend. I think I’ve run out of copper sheeting … if I write down what I need could you pick some up for me from that place in Pimlico?
PAMELA: Must I?
BLAIR: It would be quite convenient for you, if you are in the vicinity, it’s practically next door to Eaton Square.
PAMELA: Proximity and convenience aren’t necessarily the same thing. Well, I’ll try to fit it in.
(Doorbell.)
Are you expecting someone?
BLAIR: Half expecting. I’ll go and see.
(He goes through a door.)
Don’t worry Mrs Ryan, I’ll get it!
(He opens the front door.)
Come in, Hogbin.
HOGBIN: I’m sorry to …
BLAIR: It’s all right, I was half expecting you.
HOGBIN: Only half?
BLAIR: I was half expecting you to come here and half expecting you to telephone me to meet you in the park.
(He closes the door.)
Come in.
HOGBIN: Thank you, sir.
(BLAIR closes a second door.)
BLAIR: An interesting little funeral.
HOGBIN: Yes. I hardly know where to begin.
BLAIR: You talked to the vicar, of course.
HOGBIN: Yes.
BLAIR: A parochial scandal, as scandals go. I don’t think for a moment that Purvis was guilty.
HOGBIN: Of what, exactly, Mr Blair?
BLAIR: Purvis wasn’t your left-wing book-club type who would do down his vicar.
HOGBIN: What type was Purvis?
BLAIR: I would say he was loyal.
HOGBIN: Did you know he had an invitation to Buckingham Palace? To a garden party?
BLAIR: Yes. As a matter of fact I rather put it his way. The Department was due for one and, speaking for myself, I don’t get much of a thrill any more from queueing up for a cup of tea and a fancy cake.
