Tom Stoppard Plays 2

by Tom Stoppard

  HOGBIN: He was going to take his lodger. She was most disappointed that the invitation was not transferable.

  BLAIR: The belly dancer?

  HOGBIN: Exactly. I said there was something funny about Purvis’s letter. And that’s what it was—it’s all true.

  BLAIR: Well, of course.

  (Door opens.)

  PAMELA: Giles—

  BLAIR: Darling, this is Mr Hogbin, a policeman. My wife, Pamela …

  HOGBIN: (Overcome with embarrassment) Oh … how do you do … Mrs Blair …

  PAMELA: How do you do, Mr Hogbin—please sit down.

  HOGBIN: Thank you—oh! Sorry! I’m terribly sorry! I sat on your parrot.

  PAMELA: It’s not as bad as it looks, he was already dead. Giles, do remove him. I’ve given up on lunch. I’m off to see Don Juan—he hasn’t been getting his oats. See you later perhaps, Mr Hogbin.

  (She leaves, closing the door.)

  BLAIR: You were saying.

  HOGBIN: Yes. I’m awfully sorry.

  BLAIR: What about? Oh, I see, yes. Would you like to give me the parrot? Thank you.

  HOGBIN: Look, sir, if everything in Purvis’s letter is true …

  BLAIR: Oh, it’s true all right.

  HOGBIN: It’s a situation. A bit of a bombshell.

  BLAIR: Oh, come now. What sort of fool do you take me for?

  HOGBIN: You mean you knew it was true?

  BLAIR: Of course. One mustn’t get over-dramatic about these things. One must try to be civilized about them. Keep them in the family.

  HOGBIN: But surely, sir … the head of Q6 … an opium den in his own house …

  BLAIR: Oh, that. That’s a different matter. On that subject I would be inclined to say … that one mustn’t get over-dramatic about these things.

  HOGBIN: Over-dramatic? I don’t see how one can be over-dramatic. You asked me a few days ago who might want Purvis out of the way. It looks as if the answer is your Chief.

  BLAIR: Why? I don’t follow.

  HOGBIN: An opium den in Eaton Square?!

  BLAIR: Hogbin, you’re in danger of making yourself look foolish. Too many tuppenny dreadfuls in your childhood reading. You and Purvis. A shiver of delicious horror runs right through your Farnham Royal morality. Opium den! The quintessence of moral depravity combined with dubious foreign habits. The Chief stoned to the eyeballs in a brocade dressing-gown, beating a gong when he is ready for the other half. Look, I’ve been in his den. TV, hi-fi, books, writing desk, dead animals poking their heads out of the wall, Axminster on the floor. It’s not an opium den, it’s a den. And to him, enjoying an occasional pipe would be simply a souvenir of a Far Eastern posting. Something brought home in the baggage like a carved ivory elephant. It isn’t some ghastly secret for which you drive all the way to Cromer in order to tamper with the brakes of a wheelchair. You really are absurd, Hogbin.

  HOGBIN: Are you trying to tell me to forget all about it?

  BLAIR: Certainly not. You must make your report and give it to your Chief.

  HOGBIN: That’s what I intend to do. Mr Wren may have a different attitude.

  BLAIR: I doubt it. In any case, if I were you I wouldn’t bother Mr Wren with your murder theory.

  HOGBIN: Why?

  BLAIR: Because I had another farewell letter from Purvis.

  SCENE 12

  Purvis letter.

  PURVIS: Dear Blair. Well, goodbye again, assuming that I don’t fall into a fishing boat. Please don’t feel badly. Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar. You may like to know that whether or not I left the fold all those years ago when my intellect aspired to rule my actions, I found at the end that my remaining affinity was with the English character, a curious bloom which at Clifftops merely appears in its overblown form. Looking around at the people I’ve rubbed up against, I see that with the significant exception of my friend in Highgate they all inhabit a sort of Clifftops catchment area; if we lowered our entry qualifications we would be inundated. I find this reassuring. I realize I am where I belong, at last, even though, in common with all the other inmates, I have the impression that I am here by mistake while understanding perfectly why everybody else should be here. In this respect Clifftops has an effect precisely opposite to being in a Marxist discussion group. I’m grateful to you for our chat. It led me to think about Gell and the way he used to wear hunting pink to the office in the season, and the way he used to complain about not being able to eat asparagus without dripping the butter after the first time he broke his neck, and I thought I couldn’t have lied to Gell, not to Gell, not for a mere conviction. The man was so much himself that one would have been betraying him instead of the system. I hope I’m right, though I would settle for knowing that I’m wrong. Oddly enough, my friend from Highgate came to visit me, or rather to meet me at the boundary of the fence, and he tells me that the reason Rashnikov disappeared was that he had been recalled under suspicion of having been duped by Gell and me. Rashnikov said there was a logical reason why this should have been the impression given, but unfortunately he died of a brainstorm while trying to work it out. You might say that the same happened to me. My regards to your good lady. Yours sincerely, Rupert Purvis.

  SCENE 13

  Interior.

  A cosy atmosphere. All three men, the CHIEF, WREN and BLAIR are smoking pipes.

  BLAIR: There is something else, sir.

  CHIEF: Yes. This dog. Now let’s be reasonable about this, Wren. Quite unexpectedly the bargee has sent in a bill for three hundred pounds, claiming that his wretched dog was a member of the Kennel Club and runner up in his class in the South of England Show. Is that correct, Blair?

  BLAIR: Quite correct, sir, but …

  WREN: I don’t dispute any of that. I’m only saying that the dog was killed, in effect, by Q6, not by Q9.

  CHIEF: We killed him but your man Hogbin filed the report confirming the dog’s death as an incident during his own case. All the paper work is Q9, and, crucially, the bill for the dog was sent to Q9.

  WREN: Look, I’m good for fifty if it helps. I’ll put it in under dog-handling. I suppose Hogbin must have handled the dog.

  CHIEF: Let’s go halves. One-fifty each.

  BLAIR: Excuse me, sir. Why can’t we use Purvis’s money? After all, he killed the dog.

  CHIEF: Purvis’s money?

  BLAIR: Highgate kept giving him odd sums for film and bus fares, which we made him accept to preserve his credibility, and which Highgate made him declare for the same reason. There must be several hundred pounds by now, lying in some account somewhere.

  CHIEF: Excellent. Well thought, Blair. Would you care for a pipe?

  BLAIR: No thank you, sir. I’ll stick to the old briar.

  CHIEF: How is your pipe, Wren? Ready for another?

  WREN: No thanks, it’s bubbling along very nicely.

  CHIEF: Jolly good. Well, that’s that.

  BLAIR: Actually it wasn’t about the dog. It was about the opium. And your … your private life generally. Purvis said it was all over Highgate. I’d like to know how it got there.

  CHIEF: Purvis took it up there. I put it into his Highgate package a couple of months ago. He was coming up for retirement and I thought that if they thought they had something on me I might get a tickle as his replacement … Nothing doing so far. Perhaps it’s just as well. These double and triple bluffs can get to be a bit of a headache. It got to be a bit of a headache for Purvis.

  WREN: How did it work?

  (The CHIEF speaks, slowly, deliberately, reflectively. The pauses filled with the gentle bubbling of his pipe.)

  CHIEF: Well, in the beginning the idea was that if they thought that we knew that they thought Purvis was their man … they would assume that the information we gave Purvis to give to them … would be information designed to mislead … so they would take that into account … and, thus, if we told Purvis to tell them that we were going to do something … they would draw the conclusion that we were not going to do it … but
as we were on to that, we naturally were giving Purvis genuine information to give to them, knowing that they would be drawing the wrong conclusions from it … This is where it gets tricky … because if they kept drawing these wrong conclusions while the other thing kept happening … they would realize that we had got to Purvis first after all … So to keep Purvis in the game we would have to not do some of the things which Purvis told them we would be doing, even though our first reason for telling Purvis was that we did intend to do them … In other words … in order to keep fooling the Russians, we had to keep doing the opposite of what we really wanted to do … Now this is where it gets extremely tricky … Obviously we couldn’t keep doing the opposite of what we wished to do simply to keep Purvis in the game … so we frequently had to give Purvis the wrong information from which the Russians would draw the right conclusion, which enabled us to do what we wished to do, although the Russians, thanks to Purvis, knew we were going to do it … In other words, Purvis was acting, in effect, as a genuine Russian spy in order to maintain his usefulness as a bogus Russian spy … The only reason why this wasn’t entirely disastrous for us was that, of course, during the whole of this time, the Russians, believing us to believe that Purvis was in their confidence, had been giving Purvis information designed to mislead us… and in order to maintain Purvis’s credibility they have been forced to do some of the things which they told Purvis they would do, although their first reason for telling him was that they didn’t wish to do them.

  (Pause.)

  In other words, if Purvis’s mother had got kicked by a horse things would be more or less exactly as they are now.

  (Pause.)

  If I were Purvis I’d drown myself.

  PURVIS: PS—Incidentally, Dr Seddon thinks that you ought to be in here yourself, but I’ll leave you to field that one.

  IN THE NATIVE STATE

  CHARACTERS

  FLORA CREWE, aged thirty-five

  NIRAD DAS, aged thirty-three

  MRS SWAN, aged eighty-three

  ANISH DAS, aged forty

  DAVID DURANCE, about thirty, officer class

  NAZRUL, young or middle-aged, a Muslim, speaks no English

  PIKE, age not crucial (thirty-five to fifty-five), educated American, Southern accent

  COOMARASWAMI, middle-aged, fat, cheerful; Indian accent

  RESIDENT, aged forty-plus, Winchester and Cambridge

  RAJAH, aged late fifties, educated at Harrow

  NELL (Mrs Swan), aged twenty-three; middle-class bluestocking

  FRANCIS, say thirty-three, Indian Civil Service

  EMILY EDEN (a real person), was forty-two in 1839

  In addition

  Indian QUESTIONER

  Club SERVANT

  English MAN and WOMAN at the Club

  In the Native State was first transmitted on BBC Radio 3 on 21 April 1991. The cast was as follows:

  FLORA CREWE Felicity Kendal

  NIRAD DAS Sam Dastor

  MRS SWAN Peggy Ashcroft

  ANISH DAS Lyndam Gregory

  NELL Emma Gregory

  DAVID DURANCE Simon Treves

  NAZRUL Amerjit Deu

  PIKE William Hootkins

  COOMARASWAMI Renu Setnar

  RESIDENT Brett Usher

  RAJAH Saeed Jaffrey

  FRANCIS/Englishman Mark Straker

  EMILY EDEN/Englishwoman Auriol Smith

  Directed by John Tydeman

  The play is set in two places and periods: India in 1930, and England in the present day.

  We come to learn that Nirad Das was educated initially at a ‘vernacular school’, unlike Anish Das, who went to a ‘convent school’. The significance of this is that Nirad speaks English with a stronger Indian accent than Anish.

  SCENE ONE: INDIA

  The verandah of a guesthouse. Jummapur would be a considerable town, but the guesthouse is conceived as being set somewhat on its own; the ambient sound would not be urban. There are references to monkeys, parrots, dogs, chickens. The surround would be sandy, not metalled.

  FLORA: (Interior voice)

  ‘Yes, I am in heat like a bride in a bath,

  without secrets, soaked in heated air

  that liquifies to the touch and floods,

  shortening the breath, yes,

  I am discovered, heat has found me out,

  a stain that stops at nothing,

  not the squeezed gates or soft gutters,

  it brims as I shift,

  it webs my fingers round my pen,

  yes, think of a woman in a blue dress

  sat on a straight-backed chair at a plain table

  on the verandah of a guesthouse,

  writing about the weather.

  Or think, if you prefer, of bitches,

  cats, goats, monkeys at it like knives

  in the jacaranda –’

  NIRAD DAS: Do you want me to stop, Miss Crewe?

  FLORA: What?

  DAS: Would you like to rest?

  FLORA: No, I don’t want to rest. Do you?

  DAS: Not at all, but you crossed your legs, and I thought perhaps –

  FLORA: Oh! I’m so sorry! So I did. There. Is that how I was?

  DAS: You are patient with me. I think your nature is very kind.

  FLORA: Do you think so, Mr Das?

  DAS: I am sure of it. May I ask you a personal question?

  FLORA: That is a personal question.

  DAS: Oh, my goodness, is it?

  FLORA: I always think so. It always feels like one. Carte blanche is what you’re asking, Mr Das. Am I to lay myself bare before you?

  DAS: (Panicking slightly) My question was only about your poem!

  FLORA: At least you knew it was personal.

  DAS: I will not ask it now, of course.

  FLORA: On that understanding I will answer it. My poem is about heat.

  DAS: Oh. Thank you.

  FLORA: I resume my pose. Pen to paper. Legs uncrossed. You know, you are the first man to paint my toenails.

  DAS: Actually, I am occupied in the folds of your skirt.

  FLORA: Ah. In that you are not the first.

  DAS: You have been painted before? But of course you have! Many times, I expect!

  FLORA: You know, Mr Das, your nature is much kinder than mine.

  SCENE TWO: ENGLAND

  Interior. We come to learn that Mrs Swan is serving tea (on a brass table-top) in a bungalow in Shepperton, a garden’s length from the (quiet) road.

  MRS SWAN: Do you think you take after your father?

  ANISH: I don’t know. I would like to think so. But my father was a man who suffered for his beliefs, and I have never had to do that, so …

  MRS SWAN: I meant being a painter. You are a painter like your father.

  ANISH: Oh … yes. Yes, I am a painter like my father. Though not at all like my father, of course.

  MRS SWAN: Your father was an Indian painter, you mean?

  ANISH: An Indian painter? Well, I’m as Indian as he was. But yes. I suppose I am not a particularly Indian painter … not an Indian painter particularly, or rather …

  MRS SWAN: Not particularly an Indian painter.

  ANISH: Yes. But then, nor was he. Apart from being Indian.

  MRS SWAN: As you are.

  ANISH: Yes.

  MRS SWAN: (Pouring tea) Though you are not at all like him.

  ANISH: No. Yes. Perhaps if you had seen my work …

  (Accepting the teacup.) Oh, thank you.

  MRS SWAN: Of course, you are a successful painter.

  ANISH: I didn’t mean that, Mrs Swan … only that my father was a quite different kind of artist, a portrait painter, as you know …

  MRS SWAN: I can’t say I do, Mr Das. Until I received your letter your father was unknown to me. In fact, the attribution ‘unknown Indian artist’ summed up the situation exactly, if indeed it was your father who made the portrait of my sister.

  ANISH: Oh, the portrait is certainly my father’s work, Mr
s Swan! And I have brought the evidence to show you! I have been in such a state! I have done no work for a week! You simply cannot imagine my feelings when I saw the book in the shop window – my excitement! You see, I carry my copy everywhere.

  MRS SWAN: Well, I hope there’ll be lots like you, Mr Das.

  ANISH: There will be no one like me, Mrs Swan! It was not the book, of course, but the painting on the jacket and the same on the frontispiece inside! My father was not ‘unknown’ in Jummapur. Surely the publishers or somebody …

  MRS SWAN: They made inquiries by letter, but it was all sixty years ago.

  ANISH: Yes. If only my father could have known that one day his portrait of Flora Crewe would …

  MRS SWAN: By the way, what were your father’s beliefs?

  ANISH: (Surprised) Why … we are Hindu …

  MRS SWAN: You said he had suffered for his beliefs.

  ANISH: Oh. I meant his opinions. For which he suffered imprisonment.

  MRS SWAN: Who put him in prison?

  ANISH: You did.

  MRS SWAN: I did?

  ANISH: I mean, the British.

  MRS SWAN: Oh, I see. We did. But how did we know what his opinions were?

  ANISH: Well … (Uncertainly.) I suppose he took part in various actions …

  MRS SWAN: Then he was imprisoned for his actions not his opinions, Mr Das, and obviously deserved what he got. Will you have a slice of cake?

  ANISH: Thank you.

  MRS SWAN: Victoria sponge or Battenberg?

  ANISH: Oh …

  MRS SWAN: The sponge is my own, the raspberry jam too.

  ANISH: I would love some.

  (A clock chimes in the room.)

  MRS SWAN: Ignore it. The clock has decided to be merely decorative. It chimes at random. There we are, then …

  ANISH: Thank you.

  MRS SWAN: But all that must have been before you were born … Independence …

  ANISH: Oh, yes, long before. I was the child of my father’s second marriage. I was born in ’49, and these events took place in Jummapur in 1930.

  MRS SWAN: 1930! But that was when Flora was in Jummapur!