Alan Bennett: Plays, Volume 1

by Alan Bennett

  MRS SWABB: But this is a doctor’s. Doctors can touch anybody, because they don’t have the feelings to go with it. That’s what they go to medical school for.

  LADY RUMPERS: Rubbish. Doctors are as bad as anyone else. I could tell you of a doctor who once touched me and I will never forget it.

  MRS SWABB: There’s no need to tell me, I know.

  MRS WICKSTEED: You know? How do you know?

  MRS SWABB: Because I am Fate. I cut the string.

  I know all goings out and comings in.

  Naught escapes me in a month of Sundays:

  I know if they change their undies.

  Hoover, hoover, hoover.

  Hoover, hoover, hoover.

  Now a scene setting scene to set the scene and see the set, set the scene up and see the set up.

  WICKSTEED: A thorough examination? Are you ill?

  THROBBING: Never felt better. Your sister, Connie, and I are about to get married.

  WICKSTEED: She hasn’t told me.

  THROBBING: Probably because I haven’t told her. But this is her last chance. Ten years of courtship is carrying celibacy to extremes.

  WICKSTEED: Poor girl.

  THROBBING: And I thought before I embarked on the choppy waters of the vita coniugalis I’d better have the vessel overhauled. If I can stretch my metaphor.

  WICKSTEED: Ah well, drop your trousers.

  THROBBING: What for?

  WICKSTEED: The longer I practise medicine the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t. I’m waiting.

  THROBBING: I’m a bit shy.

  WICKSTEED: Why? No one will come in.

  (MRS SWABB instantly does so, as the CANON drops his trousers. And pulls them up again.)

  MRS SWABB: Hoover, hoover, hoover.

  WICKSTEED: Get out.

  MRS SWABB: Hoover, hoover, hoover.

  THROBBING: Couldn’t I go behind a screen?

  WICKSTEED: In the course of thirty-odd years in pursuit of the profession of medicine, Canon Throbbing, a profession to which I unwittingly yoked myself in my callow youth, people have been taking their trousers off in front of me at the average rate of five times a day, five days a week, fifty-two weeks in the year. This means that at a conservative estimate and allowing for some duplication I have seen twenty-five thousand sets of private parts. The most conscientious whore could not have seen more. In the light of such statistics you are displaying not so much modesty as arrogance. TAKE THEM OFF.

  (THROBBING goes off.)

  WICKSTEED: We were taught many things at medical school, padre, but seeing through several thick layers of winceyette was not one of them.

  Off?

  Yes.

  Turn round.

  Bend over.

  Get any feelings of nausea at all?

  THROBBING: No.

  WICKSTEED: Well God knows I do. It’s all guesswork you know. I delve in their ears, I peer up their noses. I am glued to every orifice of the body like a parlour-maid at a keyhole.

  THROBBING: May I get up now?

  WICKSTEED: Shut up. And so it goes on. Day after day. Week after week. They troop in with their sore throats and their varicose veins. They parade before me bodies the colour of tripe and the texture of junket. Is this the image of God, this sagging parcel of vanilla blancmange hoisted day after day on to the consulting-room table? Is this the precious envelope of the soul? Is this. …

  THROBBING: Is this on the National Health?

  WICKSTEED: No. Why do you want to get married, anyway?

  THROBBING: Because … because I look up girls’ legs.

  WICKSTEED: Marriage won’t stop that.

  THROBBING: Won’t it?

  WICKSTEED: I’m afraid not.

  THROBBING: You mean, you still do?

  WICKSTEED: Me? No. I’m a doctor.

  THROBBING: Well, I do, and I’m a clergyman.

  WICKSTEED: My poor sister. Because she’s flat-chested he thinks she’s religious.

  (THROBBING climbs on his bicycle and exits.)

  CONNIE: I don’t love him.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Love? You look on the shelf and you’ll find it cluttered with dozens of spinsters gathering dust and all of them labelled ‘I was waiting for love’. I married Arthur for love and what did I get? The mucky end of the stick. I could kick myself.

  WICKSTEED: Do you know who I could have married?

  MRS WICKSTEED: Do you know who I could have married?

  WICKSTEED: Sir Percy Shorter.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Sir Percy Shorter.

  WICKSTEED: Twice the man Arthur ever was.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Twice the man Arthur ever was.

  WICKSTEED: Or will be.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Or will be. I get to look more and more like the Queen Mother every day.

  DENNIS: Mother.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Yes?

  DENNIS: I’ve got some bad news.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Yes?

  DENNIS: I’ve only got three months to live.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Three months? Two months ago you only had ten days.

  DENNIS: I made a mistake.

  MRS WICKSTEED: And what’s happened to the galloping consumption you had last Thursday? Slowed down to a trot I suppose. What is it this time?

  DENNIS: I’ve got a very rare disease.

  MRS WICKSTEED: You’ve got an extremely common disease. You’ve got a dose of the can’t help its. You’d better ask your father.

  DENNIS: He doesn’t care.

  WICKSTEED: That’s true enough.

  DENNIS: It’s called Brett’s Palsy.

  (He shows her a medical book.)

  MRS WICKSTEED: Tiredness, irritability, spots, yes. And generally confined to the Caucasus. If this germ is confined to the Caucasus what’s it doing in Hove?

  WICKSTEED: Over here for the hols, I suppose.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Tragic. And he came through puberty with such flying colours.

  CONNIE: Every day and in every way they’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

  DENNIS: I’m going to die, Connie.

  CONNIE: Every day and in every way they’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

  DENNIS: I’m dying and no one will believe me.

  MRS SWABB: Listen to this. ‘Lucille is from Sydenham. Her hobbies are water-skiing and world peace.’

  DENNIS: That’s my magazine.

  MRS SWABB: Someone hid it on top of the wardrobe.

  CONNIE: If I had those I wouldn’t need hobbies.

  MRS SWABB: No dear. Look. ‘Send off this postcard and a beautiful bust can be yours this summer for only £5.’

  DENNIS: Two fifty each.

  CONNIE: False ones. Do you think so?

  DENNIS: I would, Connie, if it were me.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Connie? Connie? Who’s Connie? I’ve told you before, Dennis. Connie has a title. She’s your Aunt Connie.

  CONNIE: Aunt isn’t a title.

  MRS WICKSTEED: It’s the nearest you’ll ever get to one. Calling your aunt by her Christian name. I knew a girl once who called her parents by their Christian names. She had a baby before she was seventeen. And what was the father called? She hadn’t even bothered to ask. So much for names.

  (Exits.

  MRS SWABB fills in the postcard.)

  CONNIE: It’s no use. Look at my legs.

  MRS SWABB: Very nice legs, if you ask me. There are people running about with no legs at all, who’d be more than happy to have yours.

  CONNIE: By rights with me it ought to be all lemon tea and neutered cats. But it isn’t. I look like this on the outside but inside I feel like Jan Masefield.

  MRS SWABB: No, dear, Jayne Mansfield.

  CONNIE: No. Jan Masefield. She was a girl in the front row at my school. Actually it was the second row but it looked like the front row.

  MRS SWABB: I’ll post this postcard personally

  I’m sure it’s for the best

  You wa
it she’ll be a different girl

  With the Cairngorms on her chest.

  DENNIS: Is that a lump there?

  CONNIE: Yes.

  DENNIS: Oh God.

  CONNIE: Your fountain-pen. You want to say: look, this body doesn’t really suit me. Could I move into something different? But you can’t. The body’s a tied cottage. At birth you’re kitted out with mousey hair, bad legs, and no tits …

  MRS SWABB: That’s right dear. You get it off your chest. Look out, it’s the priest with five fingers.

  THROBBING: Precious. Dr Wicksteed’s given me a clean bill of health. Isn’t it wonderful?

  DENNIS: I’ve got Brett’s Palsy.

  THROBBING: How interesting.

  DENNIS: Three months to live.

  THROBBING: As long as that? It’s the green light, Connie.

  DENNIS: She hasn’t said yes yet.

  THROBBING: With you sitting there she hasn’t had much chance. Haven’t you anything to do?

  DENNIS: No.

  THROBBING: If I had only three months to live I’d have a hundred and one things to do.

  DENNIS: Like what?

  THROBBING: Take my library books back, stop the papers, warn the milkman –

  DENNIS: Death isn’t like going away on holiday, you know.

  THROBBING: Oh yes it is. It’s going away for a long, long holiday to a place by all accounts every bit as nice as Matlock. For some of us anyway.

  CONNIE: Dennis doesn’t believe in heaven, do you Dennis?

  DENNIS: No. I don’t know what it means.

  THROBBING: Nor did I till I met you, dearest. You’d better not sit near me. I’ve just been visiting the sick.

  CONNIE: Dennis!

  (Exit DENNIS hurriedly.)

  THROBBING: Alone at last.

  CONNIE: Yes.

  THROBBING: Just you and me.

  CONNIE: Yes.

  THROBBING: The two of us.

  CONNIE: Yes.

  THROBBING: How old are you, Connie?

  CONNIE: Thirty-three.

  THROBBING: What a coincidence.

  CONNIE: You’re not thirty-three.

  THROBBING: No, but my inside leg is! Oh, Connie.

  CONNIE: Canon, please.

  THROBBING: Forgive me: I was carried away. Connie. Will you marry me? Will you marry me?

  MRS SWABB: Right now it’s make up your mind time for thirty-three-year-old ‘I keep myself to myself Connie Wicksteed, a spinster from Brighton’s Hove. Does she accept the hand of slim, balding ‘Just pop this in your offertory box’ Canon Throbbing, no dish it’s true, but with a brilliant future on both sides of the grave

  or

  does she give him the (buzzer) on the off-chance of something more fetching coming along once her appliance arrives?

  CONNIE: Oh, Mr Right, where are you? Just give me a few more days. Until Thursday.

  THROBBING: Very well. After all, what is two more days in Purgatory if it’s followed by a lifetime in Paradise?

  WICKSTEED: You silly man. You silly woman. Handcuffing yourselves together. Don’t do it. What for? I’d rather have a decent glass of sherry any day. Of course, I despise the body. Despise it. Stroking faces, holding hands, oh it all looks very nice on the surface, but look inside: the pipes are beginning to fur and the lungs to stiffen. We’re all pigs, pigs; little trotters, little tails. Offal. Show me a human body and I will show you a cesspit.

  (FELICITY enters in a pool of rosy light and to shimmering music.)

  I eat every word.

  FELICITY: I was passing the door and I came over rather faint.

  WICKSTEED: I feel just the same. Is there anything I could offer you?

  FELICITY: If I could just sit down.

  WICKSTEED: Perhaps you would like some tea – or would you prefer me to clap my moist lips over yours and plunge my tongue again and again into your mouth sending you mad with desire-or would you prefer coffee?

  FELICITY: Anything.

  WICKSTEED: What is your name?

  FELICITY: Felicity.

  WICKSTEED: Felicity what?

  FELICITY: The Hon. Felicity Rumpers.

  WICKSTEED: Indeed? Connie, fetch in the delphiniums will you: I think we have a private patient.

  FELICITY: I’m feeling much better now.

  WICKSTEED: Are you?

  FELICITY: I like it here.

  WICKSTEED: Yes?

  FELICITY: The atmosphere. The feel of the place.

  WICKSTEED: I’m glad. It’s … it’s a bit untidy. It could do with smartening up a bit. Old, I suppose, without being old-fashioned. Carpets a bit thin … Plumbing’s a bit noisy sometimes too. Bit smelly, even. Tobacco. Drink. But I tell you: it’s a good deal better than a lot of these cheap gimcrack things you could pick up these days, even if it is a bit run down.

  FELICITY: Yes?

  WICKSTEED: Yes.

  (The telephone rings.)

  Excuse me, Miss Rumpers, one moment. Hello. Dr Wicksteed’s surgery. Wicksteed speaking. Ah. Mr Purdue. Yes. One moment. This is an interesting call, Miss Rumpers, and one that illustrates how vital a part we doctors play in the community. I have always made a point of making myself available for anyone who cares to call, anyone in trouble, in despair, anyone in particular who is contemplating suicide.

  FELICITY: Suicide!

  WICKSTEED: This patient, Mr Purdue, is on the brink of self-destruction. But before he actually attempts to take his own life, he calls me, his family doctor knowing I will be here.

  FELICITY: The poor man.

  WICKSTEED: A kind voice, a friendly word will often just tip that delicate balance between life and death, will turn back the patient from embarking on that journey to that far country from whose bourne, as Shakespeare so well put it, no traveller returns. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just have a word with him … strictly speaking of course I shouldn’t, as you’re a private patient and he isn’t. …

  FELICITY: No, no, not at all.

  WICKSTEED: That’s most magnanimous of you.

  FELICITY: No. I’m quite happy.

  WICKSTEED: Well I only wish Mr Purdue was. Hello, Mr Purdue. Mr Purdue, hello … He seems to have … hung up. I am wondering whether I ought to give you a little examination.

  MRS WICKSTEED: (Off) Arthur!

  WICKSTEED: Though now would not appear to be the best time.

  Excuse me one moment.

  FELICITY: It used to be so flat. Can you tell?

  (To the tune of ‘On the Isle of Capri’.)

  ’Twas on the A43 that I met him.

  We just had a day by the sea.

  Now he’s gone, and he’s left me expecting.

  Will somebody, please, marry me.

  DENNIS: I didn’t know anyone was here.

  FELICITY: Hello.

  DENNIS: I’ve got a disease called Brett’s Palsy. I’ve only got three months to live.

  FELICITY: Really?

  DENNIS: Yes. At the outside.

  FELICITY: But that’s tragic.

  DENNIS: I’m glad somebody thinks so.

  FELICITY: You’re so young.

  DENNIS: Don’t touch me. You’re sure you haven’t got any disease?

  FELICITY: No, you have.

  DENNIS: Yes, but I don’t want any complications, do I?

  FELICITY: You poor boy. Poor frightened boy.

  DENNIS: Don’t tell my father. He’s a doctor.

  FELICITY: Perhaps he could heal you.

  DENNIS: Him? He couldn’t heal a shoe.

  FELICITY: This disease: you say there’s no cure?

  DENNIS: None.

  FELICITY: And in three months you’ll be dead?

  DENNIS: I’m certain.

  FELICITY: Look, I’d like to see you again. Can I?

  DENNIS: Me? You must be peculiar.

  FELICITY: I would, I would really.

  DENNIS: When? I don’t have much time.

  FELICITY: Thursday 2.30. Where?

  DENNIS: Here.

  FELI
CITY: My name’s Felicity. What’s yours?

  DENNIS: Dennis.

  WICKSTEED: Trevor, what are you doing here. You’ve no business in the consulting room.

  DENNIS: Goodbye, Penelope.

  FELICITY: Felicity.

  DENNIS: Yes.

  WICKSTEED: My son, I’m afraid. Trevor.

  FELICITY: He said his name was Dennis.

  WICKSTEED: Did he? Then it probably is. Look. he doctor-patient relationship is such an important one, one of mutual trust and respect. And here are you such a young, shy innocent creature and I’m … somewhat older. It would be helpful, I think, it would help me, if we could break the ice a bit and maybe perhaps sometime go for a spin in the car sometime, anytime, say Thursday at 2.30?

  FELICITY: My mother’s very strict. I. …

  WICKSTEED: Splendid, I’ll meet you at the end of the West Pier.

  MRS WICKSTEED: (Off) Arthur!

  WICKSTEED: You won’t be late?

  FELICITY: I’m never late.

  WICKSTEED: Coming, my love.

  No. Not too old at fifty-three.

  A worn defeated fool like me.

  Still the tickling lust devours.

  Long stretches of my waking hours.

  Busty girls in flowered scanties

  Hitching down St Michael panties.

  Easing off their wet-look boots,

  To step into their birthday suits.

  No! I am abusing my position

  As their trusty old physician.

  Virtue be mine, I will not do it

  Just to pacify this lump of suet.

  MRS SWABB: I see it all. His ruse I rumble: That spotless girl he means to tumble.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Who was that?

  WICKSTEED: Only a patient.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Man or woman.

  WICKSTEED: They’re all the same to me.

  MRS WICKSTEED: How old are we, Arthur?

  WICKSTEED: You are fifty-one and I am. …

  MRS WICKSTEED: Fifty-three.

  WICKSTEED: Fifty-three. And it doesn’t seem five minutes since I was sixteen.

  MRS WICKSTEED: When did the fire go out, Arthur?

  WICKSTEED: What?

  MRS WICKSTEED: Nothing. It isn’t as if he’s attractive. I’m much more attractive than he is. If he would only stretch out his hand and say my name.

  WICKSTEED: Muriel.

  MRS WICKSTEED: Yes.

  WICKSTEED: It is your cake-decorating class on Thursday?

  MRS WICKSTEED: Yes. Why?

  WICKSTEED: Then you won’t be wanting the car.

  MRS WICKSTEED: No. Why?