by David Hare
Brock What did you do?
Susan I was a courier. I was never caught.
She looks straight at Brock.
I wasn’t his wife.
Brock No.
Susan Had you realized that?
Brock I’d thought it possible.
Pause.
Susan What about Darwin, did he realize?
Brock Lord, no, it would never occur to him.
Susan Motoring together it was easier to say we were man and wife. In fact I was barely even his mistress. He simply rang me a few weeks ago and asked if I’d like a holiday abroad. I was amazed. People in our organization really didn’t know each other all that well. You made it your business to know as little as possible, it was a point of principle. Even now you don’t know who most of your colleagues were. Perhaps you were in it. Perhaps I met you. I don’t know.
Pause.
Tony I knew a bit better, not much, but I was glad when he rang. Those of us who went through this kind of war, I think we do have something in common. It’s a kind of impatience, we’re rather intolerant, we don’t suffer fools. And so we get rather restless back in England, the people who stayed behind seem childish and a little silly. I think that’s why Tony needed to get away. If you haven’t suffered … well. And so driving through Europe with Tony I knew that at least I’d be able to act as I pleased for a while. That’s all.
Pause.
It’s kind of you not to have told the ambassador.
Brock Perhaps I will. (He smiles.) May I ask a question?
Susan Yes.
Brock If you’re not his wife, did he have one?
Susan Yes.
Brock I see.
Susan And three children. I had to lie about those, I couldn’t claim them somehow. She lives in Crediton in Devon. She believes that Tony was travelling alone. He’d told her he needed two weeks by himself. That’s what I was hoping you could do for me.
Brock Ah.
Susan Phone her. I’ve written the number down. I’m afraid I did it before I came.
Susan opens her handbag and hands across a card. Brock takes it.
Brock And lie?
Susan Yes. I’d prefer it if you lied. But it’s up to you.
She looks at Brock. He makes a nervous half-laugh.
All right, doesn’t matter …
Brock That’s not what I said.
Susan Please, it doesn’t matter.
Pause.
Brock When did you choose me?
Susan What?
Brock For the job. You didn’t choose Darwin.
Susan I might have done.
Pause.
Brock You don’t think you wear your suffering a little heavily? This smart club of people you belong to who had a very bad war …
Susan All right.
Brock I mean I know it must have put you on a different level from the rest of us …
Susan You won’t shame me, you know. There’s no point.
Pause.
It was an innocent relationship. That doesn’t mean unphysical. Unphysical isn’t innocent. Unphysical in my view is repressed. It just means there was no guilt. I wasn’t particularly fond of Tony, he was very slow-moving and egg-stained if you know what I mean, but we’d known some sorrow together and I came with him. And so it seemed a shocking injustice when he fell in the lobby, unjust for him of course, but also unjust for me, alone, a long way from home, and worst of all for his wife, bitterly unfair if she had to have the news from me. Unfair for life. And so I approached the embassy.
Pause.
Obviously I shouldn’t even have mentioned the war. Tony used to say don’t talk about it. He had a dread of being trapped in small rooms with big Jewesses, I know exactly what he meant. I should have just come here this evening and sat with my legs apart, pretended to be a scarlet woman, then at least you would have been able to place me. It makes no difference. Lie or don’t lie. It’s a matter of indifference.
Brock gets up and moves uncertainly around the room. Susan stays where she is.
Brock Would you … perhaps I could ask you to dinner? Just so we could talk …
Susan No. I refuse to tell you anything now. If I told you anything about myself you would just think I was pleading, that I was trying to get round you. So I tell you nothing. I just say look at me – don’t creep round the furniture – look at me and make a judgement.
Brock Well.
Darwin reappears. He picks up his drink and sits at his desk as if to clear up. There is in fact nothing to clear up, so mostly he just moves his watch round. He talks the while.
Darwin That’s done. First flight tomorrow without a hitch.
Brock stands as if unaware Darwin has come back.
Susan Thank you very much.
Darwin If there’s anything else. There is a small chapel in the embassy if you’d like to use it before you go.
Susan Thank you.
Brock turns and walks abruptly out of the room. Susan smiles a moment. Darwin puts on his watch.
Have you been posted here long?
Darwin No, not at all. Just a few months. Before that, Djakarta. We were hoping for something sunny but Brussels came along. Not that we’re complaining. They’ve certainly got something going here.
Susan Really?
Darwin Oh yes. New Europe. Yes yes.
Pause.
Reconstruction. Massive. Massive work of reconstruction. Jobs. Ideals. Marvellous. Marvellous time to be alive in Europe. No end of it. Roads to be built. People to be educated. Land to be tilled. Lots to get on with.
Pause.
Have another gin.
Susan No thanks.
Darwin The diplomat’s eye is the clearest in the world. Seen from Djakarta this continent looks so old, so beautiful. We don’t realize what we have in our hands.
Susan No.
Brock reappears at the door.
Brock Your wife is asking if you’re ready for dinner, sir.
Darwin Right.
Brock And she wants your advice on her face.
Darwin gets up.
I’ll lock up after you, sir.
Darwin You’ll see Mrs Radley to her hotel?
Brock Of course.
Darwin Goodbye, Mrs Radley. I’m sorry it hasn’t been a happier day.
Darwin goes out. Brock closes the door. He looks at Susan.
Brock I’ve put in a call to England. There’s an hour’s delay.
Pause.
I’ve decided to lie.
Brock and Susan stare at each other. Silence.
Will you be going back with the body?
Susan No.
Brock goes to the door and listens. Then turns back and removes the buttonhole. He looks for somewhere to put it. He finds his undrunk gin and tonic and puts it in there. Then he takes his jacket off and drops it somewhat deliberately on the floor. He takes a couple of paces towards Susan.
Brock Will you remind me to cancel your seat?
SCENE FOUR
Pimlico. September 1947.
From the dark the sound of a string quartet. It comes to an end. Then a voice.
Announcer This is the BBC Third Programme. Vorichef wrote Les Ossifiés in the year of the Paris Commune, but his struggle with Parkinson’s disease during the writing of the score has hitherto made it a peculiarly difficult manuscript for musicologists to interpret. However the leader of the Bremen Ensemble has recently done a magnificent work of reclamation. Vorichef died in an extreme state of senile dementia in 1878. This performance of his last work will be followed by a short talk in our series ‘Musicians and Disease’.
A bed-sitter with some wooden chairs, a bed and a canvas bed with a suitcase set beside it. A small room, well maintained but cheerless. Alice sits on the floor in a chalk-striped men’s suit and white tie. She smokes a hookah. Susan is on the edge of the bed drinking cocoa. She is wearing a blue striped shirt. Her revolver lies beside her. Brock is laid out fast asleep across two chairs in his pinst
ripes. Next to him is a large pink parcel, an odd item of luxury in the dismal surroundings. By the way they talk you know it’s late.
Susan I want to move on. I do desperately want to feel I’m moving on.
Alice With him?
Susan Well that’s the problem, isn’t it?
Pause. Alice smiles.
Alice You are Strange.
Susan Well, what would you do?
Alice I’d trade him in.
Susan Would you?
Alice I’d choose someone else off the street.
Susan And what chance would you have tonight, within a mile, say, within a mile of here?
Alice Let me think. Does that take in Victoria Coach Station?
Susan No.
Alice Then pretty slim.
Susan Is that right?
They smile. The hookah smokes.
That thing is disgusting.
Alice I know. It was better when the dung was fresh.
Susan I don’t know why you bother …
Alice The writer must experience everything, every kind of degradation. Nothing is closed to him. It’s really the degradation that attracted me to the job.
Susan I thought you were going to work tonight …
Alice I can’t write all the time. You have to live it before you can write it. What other way is there? Besides nicking it.
Susan Is that done?
Alice Apparently. Once you start looking it seems most books are copied out of other books. Only it’s called tribute. Tribute to Hemingway. Means it’s nicked. Mine’s going to be tribute to Scott Fitzgerald. Have you read him?
Susan No.
Alice Last Tycoon. Mine’s going to be like that. Not quite the same of course. Something of a bitch to make Ealing Broadway hum like Hollywood Boulevard but otherwise it’s in the bag.
Brock grunts.
He snores.
Susan You should get a job.
Alice I’ve had a job, I know what jobs are like. Had a job in your office.
Susan For three days.
Alice It was enough.
Susan How are you going to live?
Alice Off you mostly. (She smiles.) Susan …
Susan I want to move on. I do desperately want to feel I’m moving on.
Pause.
I work so hard I have no time to think. The office is worse. Those brown invoices go back and forth, import, export …
Alice I remember.
Susan They get heavier and heavier as the day goes on, I can barely stagger across the room for the weight of a single piece of paper, by the end of the day if you dropped one on the floor, you would smash your foot. The silence is worse. Dust gathering. Water lapping beyond the wall. It seems unreal. You can’t believe that because of the work you do ships pass and sail across the world. (She stares a moment.) Mr Medlicott has moved into my office.
Alice Frightful Mr Medlicott?
Susan Yes.
Alice The boss?
Susan He has moved in. Or rather, more sinister still he has removed the frosted glass between our two offices.
Alice Really?
Susan I came in one morning and found the partition had gone. I interpret it as the first step in a mating dance. I believe Medlicott stayed behind one night, set his ledger aside, ripped off his tweed suit and his high collar, stripped naked, took up an axe, swung it at the partition, dropped to the floor, rolled over in the broken glass till he bled, till his whole body streamed blood, then he cleared up, slipped home, came back next morning and waited to see if anything would be said. But I have said nothing. And neither has he. He puts his head down and does not lift it till lunch. I have to look across at his few strands of hair, like seaweed across his skull. And I am frightened of what the next step will be.
Alice I can imagine.
Susan The sexual pressure is becoming intolerable.
They smile.
One day there was a condom in his turn-up. Used or unused I couldn’t say. But planted without a doubt. Again, nothing said. I tried to laugh it off to myself, pretended he’d been off with some whore in Limehouse and not bothered to take his trousers off, so that after the event the condom had just absent-mindedly fallen from its place and lodged alongside all the bus tickets and the tobacco and the Smarties and the paper-clips and all the rest of it. But I know the truth. It was step two. And the dance has barely begun.
Pause.
Alice. I must get out.
Alice Then do. Just go. Have you never done that? I do it all the time.
Susan They do need me in that place.
Alice So much the better, gives it much more point. That’s always the disappointment when I leave, I always go before people even notice I’ve come. But you … you could really make a splash.
Brock stirs.
He stirs.
Susan I’d like to change everything but I don’t know how.
She leans under her bed, pulls out a shoebox, starts to oil and clean her gun.
Alice Are you really fond of him?
Susan You don’t see him at his best. We had a week in Brussels which we both enjoyed. Now he comes over for the weekend whenever he can. But he tends to be rather sick on the boat.
Alice You should meet someone younger.
Susan That’s not what I mean. And I don’t really like young men. You’re through and out the other side in no time at all.
Alice I can introduce you …
Susan I’m sure. I’ve only known you three weeks, but I’ve got the idea. Your flair for agonized young men. I think you get them in bulk from tuberculosis wards.
Alice I’m just catching up, that’s all.
Susan Of course.
Alice I was a late starter.
Susan Oh yes, what are you, eighteen?
Alice I started late. Out of guilt. I had a protected childhood. Till I ran away. And very bad guilt. I was frightened to masturbate more than once a week, I thought my clitoris was like a torch battery, you know, use it too much and it runs out.
Brock wakes.
He wakes.
They watch as he comes round.
Brock What time is it?
Alice Raymond, can you give us your view? I was just comparing the efficiency of a well-known household object with …
Susan Alice, leave him alone.
Alice It’s getting on for five.
Brock I feel terrible.
Susan (kissing his head) I’ll get you something to eat. Omelette all right? It’s only powder, I’m afraid …
Brock Well …
Susan Two spoons or three? And I’ll sprinkle it with Milk of Magnesia. (She goes out into the kitchen.)
Brock It seems a bit pointless. It’s only twelve hours till I’m back on the boat. (He picks up the gun.) Did I miss something?
Alice No. She’s just fondling it.
Brock Ah.
He looks round. Alice is watching him all the time.
I can’t remember what …
Alice Music. On the wireless. You had us listening to some music.
Brock Ah that’s right.
Alice Some composer who shook.
Brock I thought you’d have gone. Don’t you have a flat?
Alice I did. But it had bad associations. I was disappointed in love.
Brock I see.
Alice And Susan said I could sleep here.
Brock (absently admiring her suit) I must say I do think your clothes are very smart.
Alice Well I tell you he looks very good in mine. (She nods at the parcel.) Do you always bring her one of those?
Brock I certainly try to bring a gift if I can.
Alice You must have lots of money.
Brock Well, I suppose. I find it immoderately easy to acquire. I seem to have a sort of mathematical gift. The stock exchange. Money sticks to my fingers I find. I triple my income. What can I do?
Alice It must be very tiresome.
Brock Oh … I’m acclimatizing, you know. (Smiles.) I think everyo
ne’s going to be rich very soon. Once we’ve got over the effects of war. It’s going to be coming out of everyone’s ears.
Alice Is that what you think?
Brock I’m absolutely sure. (Pause.) I do enjoy these weekends you know. Susan leads such an interesting life. Books. Conversation. People like you. The Foreign Office can make you feel pretty isolated – also, to be honest, make you feel pretty small, as if you’re living on sufferance, you can imagine …
Alice Yes.
Brock Till I met Susan. The very day I met her, she showed me you must always do what you want. If you want something you must get it. I think that’s a wonderful way to live don’t you?
Alice I do. (Pause. She smiles.) Shall I tell you how my book begins?
Brock Well …
Alice There’s a woman in a rape trial. And the story is true. The book begins at the moment where she has to tell the court what the accused has said to her on the night of the rape. And she finds she can’t bring herself to say the words out loud. And so the judge suggests she writes them down on a piece of paper and it be handed round the court. Which she does. And it says, ‘I want to have you. I must have you now.’ (She smiles again.) So they pass it round the jury who all read it and pass it on. At the end of the second row there’s a woman jurist who’s fallen asleep at the boredom of the trial. So the man next to her has to nudge her awake and hand her the slip of paper. She wakes up, looks at it, then at him, smiles and puts it in her handbag. (She laughs.) That woman is my heroine.
Brock Well, yes.
Susan returns, sets food on Brock’s knee. Then returns to cleaning her gun. Alice tries to re-light her hookah.
Susan Cheese omelette. What were you talking about?
Alice The rape trial.
Susan Did you tell Raymond who the woman was?
Brock What do you mean?
Susan I’m only joking, dear.
Alice and Susan laugh.
Brock I’m not sure it’s the sort of …
Alice Oh sod this stuff.
Susan I said it was dung.
Alice I was promised visions.
Brock Well …
Alice It’s because I’m the only Bohemian in London. People exploit me. Because there are no standards, you see. In Paris or New York, there are plenty of Bohemians, so the kief is rich and sweet and plentiful but here … you’d be better off to lick the gum from your ration card.
Susan Perhaps Raymond will be posted to Morocco, bring some back in his bag …
