In the Time of Greenbloom

by Gabriel Fielding

  Their way smoothed by Greenbloom’s lavish tips, in the space of what seemed to be at the most only five or ten minutes, they found themselves sitting in the stalls of the Haymarket watching the unfolding of the story of Musical Chairs.

  From the programme it appeared that the setting was an oilfield in the Middle East staffed by two very English married men and from the outset it was obvious that the action was to be concerned primarily with the intimacies and emotional stresses engendered in their relative isolation between these two men and their sharp discontented wives. The dialogue was very modern and seemed to John to be even smarter shallower and more brutally insincere than that of Noel Coward who until this moment had been his idol among contemporary playwrights. The effect of the short lines and cold sentiments so neatly and carelessly expressed by these four people as they played out their tragedy in front of a single stark pylon glimpsed through a cardboard window in the back-cloth was to make him feel that at last he had an object in growing-up. This, he felt, was the real world whose language it should be the object of everyone to speak wittily and with merciless precision. These people were not in confusion, they knew what they were doing and what they ought to say as they did it; they were never dull or incomplete in their sentences and though they suffered, they underwent their pain so modishly that it was impossible to feel that they felt any real discomfort so long as they found an epigram ready to their lips at the crucial moment.

  Beside John, at infrequent intervals, Greenbloom uttered a harsh cry of pain which, until Rachel explained that it was his laughter and that he was enjoying himself, seriously worried him; but far more often he writhed about in his seat bending and flexing his good leg and snapping the springs of his artificial one while a spatter of angry comments and expletives enlivened the darkness about him.

  At the first interval, even before the curtain had descended behind the footlights, he uncoiled himself from his seat beside the gangway and drew them out after him as he led the way to the bar where he insisted on their splitting a bottle of whisky in order, as he put it, to make some attempt to ‘save the play’. Occupying the whole of one end of the small counter on which he leaned with his back to the two middle-aged women serving the drinks, he addressed the filling room furiously, glaring over his guests’ heads at the open door through which other later arrivals were entering.

  “Why doesn’t something happen?” he demanded loudly. “Why don’t they get on with it? It is quite obvious that the man with tuberculosis who plays the piano so badly is going to seduce the Manager’s wife and that his own wife will ultimately drown herself in the storage tank. Well why don’t they do it and let us get on with the action? We cannot continue to waste time sitting out there between the intervals with nothing to anticipate in the way of meaning. Wittgenstein, had he been so foolish as to book seats in the first place would already by this time have demanded his money back. The cast would be playing to an empty theatre, and that is more than they deserve when they can give us nothing more rewarding than an artifice of this sort. Some of us came here in order to be entertained, others, and I claim that we are among them, came here in order to be made to think and so far no least effort has been made to satisfy either category.”

  “I think you’re being a little unfair Horab,” said Michael seriously, “after all a play has got to have a plot and although your solution may prove to be the correct one I think there are alternatives.”

  “Of course there are! I do not deny it. The tuberculous fellow, Geoffrey or whatever he’s called, might stop playing the piano for a moment and go and drown himself when his own wife goes to bed with the man who’s always worrying about their failure to strike sufficient oil. But what difference does it make? Tell me that!” His eyes suddenly swivelled away from Michael and his attention became fixed on a short man with a bald head who was trying to order a drink.

  “You, sir!” said Greenbloom, raising his voice even higher. “I can see from you attitude that you are a critic. You appear to have overheard my remarks about this farce we are suffering. Well, tell me, am I not right? Are any of us going to leave this theatre feeling either purged or entertained as a result of the patience and attention we have accorded the play?”

  The smaller man retreated a step and upset somebody’s drink. He looked as embarrassed as a passer-by suddenly singled out by a Hyde Park orator to support a cause which he had always found offensive. Hoping to escape quietly in the confusion occasioned by the spilling of the drink, he turned his back on Greenbloom and started to apologise volubly to the lady with the wet dress. But it was no good; proffering a large silk handkerchief, Greenbloom stepped forward and continued his remarks as though nothing had happened.

  “It’s ridiculous! They get us here under false pretences take our time and our money and then present us with a series of contrived situations which are not only entirely without point but are also predictable to the meanest intelligence from the moment the curtain goes up.” He put a hand on to the shorter man’s shoulder. “I haven’t the advantage of knowing which paper you represent, but I am sure, sir, that as a responsible critic you must agree with me?”

  “Take your hands off me at once!” said his victim colouring up with the easy rage of the obese. “I am not a critic and I am when permitted greatly enjoying the play I have paid to see.” He turned his back with finality and taking his wife by the arm piloted her away towards a different corner of the bar.

  “Of course!” exclaimed Greenbloom, “one should expect no more from a public which will submit to drama of this sort. London is dead, England is dead, and when I have finished my book I shall refuse to allow a single edition to be distributed in the United Kingdom.”

  Rachel tucked her hand into his arm:

  “You ssilly darling, that poor man has been sitting just in front of us and you do not realise what a penance it is to be near you when you are not enjoying a play.”

  Greenbloom refilled his glass and drank it hastily. “Well, unless there are developments in the next act, and by developments I mean action both unforseen and credible, he will shortly be able to indulge his hog-like enjoyment of this nonsense undisturbed by myself. We will give them one more chance, five or ten minutes at the most, and if in that time they cannot succeed in portraying some human situation through which one may discern a vestige of significance we will leave and eat dance or drink somewhere else.”

  The interval bell rang and the room began to empty.

  “Rachel,” he asked. “What’s the cabaret like at the Palm Beach this season?”

  “Good, I think; but really, Horab, you mustn’t be so impatient, must he? He’s behaving like a spoiled child, isn’t he Michael?”

  “If you ask me,” Kate Holly’s voice was as measured as a steam-hammer, “and don’t tell me that nobody did, I should say that Mr Greenbloom’s afraid of missing something.” She turned on him benignly. “What’s up with you? Who’s chasing you? Or is it just that you’ve got too much money?”

  Greenbloom’s abstraction, his air of carrying on a patter of conversation within himself to which no external response was expected, resolved slowly. Then, as his long eyes took in the broad contour of her face and his ears transmitted the sense of her challenge he rounded on her with extraordinary vehemence.

  “You’re enjoying it are you? You are interested in the as yet unrealised sexual designs of the man at the piano on the woman with the flat chest? The fact that somebody’s tie has already been found in the bedroom of somebody else’s wife excites you, does it? You find it significant that they have been drilling now for six months and will certainly not strike oil, either factually or figuratively, until towards the middle of the third act when it will be too late for anyone to raise anyone else from the dead?” He stopped and smiled at her as he might have smiled at a domestic pet.

  “Well—” she began.

  “These situations,” he said distinctly and sibilantly, “so delicately poised on the cracked nib of the dramatist�
�s pen keep you on the crest of an aesthetic expectation so dizzy that you are prepared to sit and wait for a dénouement which cannot fail to plunge you into the abysm of cliché in approximately two hours’ time? Yes?”

  Kate Holly turned to Michael, “He’s off again!”

  Michael grinned. “You know our Horab!” he said. “It’s only his way of—”

  “Don’t worry,” she clapped Greenbloom heavily on the back, “I’m quite capable of taking care of myself with any man—in or out of bed, and if that’s his way of asking me if I’m enjoying myself and finding it a smashing good play, then I’d say yes to all his questions. I do want to know who’s going to go to bed with who and whether Geoffrey’s going to jump into the oil-well or die in a sanatorium; and I do like the way he plays the piano; and if I had the money Mr Greenbloom’s got I’d send them all up a spray of orchids at the end of it.”

  Greenbloom filled her glass, “In that case I am satisfied. I shall abandon my work on Wittgenstein and write three farces a month for production in London, Berlin, and Chicago, and see that you have complimentary tickets to whichever one you care to patronise.”

  “Well, in that case, you’d better send them to us all because we’re all enjoying it except you, that poor little man you frightened included. And what’s more, I don’t think you know what you want. Tell us Mr Greenbloom, what do you want to happen? What would satisfy you?”

  “Yes,” said John speaking for the first time. “I think this is a wonderful evening and I’m really happy. If I’d known it was going to be like this when I set off this morning—meeting such wonderful people, tearing about in Bentleys and aeroplanes, I would have—”

  “Here!” said Kate Holly. “What aeroplane have you been riding in? You didn’t fly down, did you?”

  “Of course he didn’t,” said Michael taking away John’s glass. “This is exactly what I expected. He’s had too much to drink and there’s going to be the very dickens of a row when they get to hear about it tomorrow morning.”

  “I haven’t,” John gazed round at them joyfully, “I’m just happy like you were in the Carpenter’s Arms this morning; in fact, I’m happier! when you drink you only seem to get miserable, solemn as an owl, solemn as an owl, just as Mother says; but I see everything as it should be, and I want to know how Horab would have written it. How would you have written it?” he asked again of the tall wavering figure which represented Greenbloom.

  “Differently!” said Greenbloom as the second bell rang. “Quite differently!” He drained his glass and taking Rachel with him limped off into the stalls leaving the others in the darkened bar.

  They looked at one another with surprise. His sudden going had instantly cast a slight chill on them, breaking the continuity of their gaiety and filling them with an emotion which lay somewhere between guilt and embarrassment.

  Kate Holly was the first to speak. She fluffed up the back of Michael’s dark red hair with a broad hand. “Cheer up Mick! it’s just his way, he’s one of the ones that was born too late! Mind you I’m not saying anything against him; even without his money he’d be a nice feller and he’s not half as potty as he makes himself out to be; in fact he’s downright clever and there’s only one way to treat clever-jacks and that’s to jump on them now and again with both feet.”

  Michael laughed. “You’re a good psychologist, Kate.” His expression changed as he caught John’s eye. “It’s not Horab who’s worrying me, it’s John here. I did my best to get him to go back to Oxford when he was sober and if it hadn’t been for Horab’s intervention I think that even despite John’s obstinacy I’d probably have succeeded. Now of course the whole situation’s made doubly difficult by the fact that he’s half-seas over, and how on earth we’re going to get him back to school in time, I can’t think.”

  “Does it matter? When I was at school I was always playing truant and I always seemed to get away with it.”

  “Of course it matters. Even under ordinary circumstances he’d probably be expelled for a thing like this; but when one remembers that he’s obviously already persona non grata at Beowulf’s as a result of that appalling case, then it’s quite on the cards that when he eventually rolls up tomorrow morning with an obvious hangover they will either refuse him a reference for any other school or what’s worse plead mental imbalance and start taking refuge in medical opinion.”

  “Rot!” said John unpleasantly, “I’m not mad. Greenbloom doesn’t think I’m mad! He understands me, he knows that it’s the world which is mad. All these fools in this play, all these fat scented people sitting on their bottoms watching a lot of other cardboard men and women pretending to be smart about situations which don’t exist and then trooping in here to drink whisky brandy and gin-and-lime and then going back to clap something they don’t understand, it’s they who are mad and Greenbloom is right. He’s right!”

  Michael shrugged his shoulders and appealed hopelessly to Kate Holly.

  “You see?”

  “He’s only a little over-excited, aren’t you Johnny?” She put both her arms over his shoulders and stood comfortably behind him swinging him backwards and forwards as though he were a child and she his mother. “He’s a good lad really and given a chance he’ll soon get over all this.”

  “That’s just what he won’t be given, unless we get him back to the school tonight.”

  “Well in that case we will get him back, won’t we John? And you’ll be a good boy and help us as much as you can, won’t you?”

  With his eyes half-closed John rocked contentedly backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, against her round soft stomach.

  “Yes I will,” he said. “It’ll all come right in the end. It’s like the play, it’ll be a disappointment but it will all come right in the end.”

  “How?” asked Michael.

  “Easy!” said Kate. “Tell old Greenbloom we’d like a night-drive to Oxford. Tell him we think he’s the best driver in England and that we’ll bet him a fiver he can’t make Oxford in under an hour and a half. That’ll fetch him, and what’s more it’ll fetch his girl friend too, she’s the sort that wouldn’t trust him with anything under fifty on a dark night and I’d be a match for her anywhere,” she minced out the words, “in Cannes, Venice, or Le Touquet! Come on let’s try it!”

  “You mean you’ll spend the night in Oxford?” Michael sounded scandalised.

  “Oh no,” she said, rocking John more rhythmically than ever, “I’ll just spread my little wings and fly straight home like Mother told me.”

  Michael avoided John’s eyes. “I don’t really know that you ought to, Kate.”

  “Go on! Johnny won’t tell, will you John?” She paused. “What’s up? Am I losing my looks or something? Or have you been getting too much sun?”

  Michael turned abruptly. “It’s not a bad idea,” he said over his shoulder. “There’s just a chance he’ll fall for it, but for Heaven’s sake don’t over-act about the play.”

  “How do you mean?” asked John.

  “Well don’t pretend that it’s boring you or he’ll at once decide to see it through. Try and give the impression that you’re enjoying it as much as ever and take your cues from me—particularly you, John; I’m only doing this for your sake you know and if you’d taken my advice in the first place—”

  “In other words,” said Kate as they followed him into the theatre, “your big brother’s a martyr and he’s going to—”

  Michael turned round angrily. “Shut up!” he said.

  Half an hour later they were shuttling their way out of London at a furious pace somewhere in the suburbs of Uxbridge.

  It was now apparent to John that Greenbloom had a quite unique attitude towards driving a motor-car. On the way into London he had noticed that he evidently believed the whole process to require aggression from the man at the wheel as though he were threatened by some vast and silent enemy standing between him and his destination. Now, as the experience was repeated even more forcibly in the windy da
rkness of the night, it occurred to him that Greenbloom must be like certain Indians from remote provinces who were so unused to mechanical travel that they viewed the trains in which they sat as stationary boxes past which successive towns and villages moved until their particular station itself arrived. In Greenbloom’s case the only difference was that since he was himself the driver and in control of the speed at which the landscape passed him he was evidently quite unable to assume the purely passive role of his oriental counterpart.

  In addition to this, his short-sight combined with his violent temperament tended to set him at odds not only with the landscape at large but also with any passengers he might be carrying. He waged a ceaseless battle with the road hurling itself against his front wheels while at the same time he loudly demanded information from everyone present. With amazing agility, like a person playing a one-man band, he managed to steer change gear brake accelerate and simultaneously question and curse anyone whose information he considered to have been either inaccurate or tardy.

  Now, as they left Uxbridge behind them and roared out into the dark countryside beyond Denham, he subjected Michael to a barrage of questions and comments: “Steady!”

  “What do you mean, ‘steady’?” Michael, although he had driven many hundreds of miles beside Greenbloom, had never become accustomed to the experience. “You’re driving, not me!”

  “Don’t interrupt! Keep your attention on the road.”

  “I am keeping my attention on the road—look out!”

  They described a swooping curve round a cyclist. Greenbloom turned fully on Michael. “I think I need say no more. You would have seen that fellow’s light minutes ago if you hadn’t been dispersing your attention by arguing with me.”