Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  *

  Bernard and Jean –

  Wishing you a Very

  Merry Christmas and the

  Happiest of New Years

  – from Charles

  Congratulations on your marriage – saw it in The Times air-mail edition. Nice work if you can get it. Meant to write on the spot. Anyway, cheers to you both.

  *

  Bernard, Jean and Baby Flora(!) –

  All Best Wishes for

  Xmas and the New Year

  –from Charles and Kitty(!)

  Charles took the plunge at last, as you can see! Many congrats on the Flora effort – saw it in The Times – meant to write. You must come out and see us some time.

  *

  Bernard, Jean, Flora, and Polly(!) –

  To Wish you a

  Joyous Christmas

  –from Charles, Kitty, Gareth(!),

  and Luke(!!)

  Yes, you did hear right – twins! Identical – fair, with Charles’s nose and mouth. Born 14 July – same day as Fall of Bastille! Charles had to be revived with brandy. Gareth ate earring last month, otherwise everything OK. Tremendous congrats on Polly – meant to write.

  *

  Jean, Flora, and Polly –

  The mail coach dashes thru’ the snowy ways

  To bring good cheer and news of happy days!

  –from Charles, Kitty, Gareth,

  Luke, Lionel(!), and Mother.

  Dreadfully sorry about you and Bernard, but I’m sure you’re usually better off apart in these cases. Great shock when we got your last year’s card, meant to write at once, but you know how it is, particularly with Lionel and all the rest of it. Lionel was a slight mistake, of course! Mother’s moved in to help out.

  *

  Bernard, Jean, Flora, Polly, and Daisy(!) –

  Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men

  –from Kitty and Walter

  (CRAIGIE!), not to mention

  Gareth, Luke, Lionel, Mother,

  Victoria and Georgina!

  Heartiest congrats on you and Bernard getting together again – further hearty congrats on weighing in so smartly with Daisy! Meant to write as soon as your last Xmas card arrived. Walter and I were married in Auckland on 9 June, reception for 120, two days’ honeymoon at Rotorua while Mother looked after children. Victoria and Georgina are Walter’s children by first marriage, of course(!). Walter is engineer – low temperature. Poor Charles is coming over to England in New Year, told him to look you up.

  *

  Bernard, Jean, Flora, Polly, Daisy, and James(!) –

  Hearty Good Wishes for

  a Merry Xmas and a

  Prosperous New Year!

  –from Kitty, Walter, Gareth,

  Luke, Lionel, Mother,

  Victoria, Georgina, Murray,

  Lester and Baby Linda.

  Congrats on James – my word you keep at it! Victoria and Georgina had lovely joint wedding at St Margaret’s, Wanganui, in Feb. Vicky married Murray West (his father’s in agricultural machinery down near Christchurch), Georgie married Lester Dewie – nice young man, went to school in England (Thorpehurst – know it?), now learning hotel business. Georgie’s baby Linda born (prematurely!) 3 Aug. Did poor Charles ever show up in UK?

  *

  Charles(!), Jean, Flora, Polly, Daisy, and James –

  When the Yule log brightly burns

  And brings its Christmas cheer,

  To days gone by fond Mem’ry turns,

  And old friends far and near!

  – from Kitty, Walter, Gareth,

  Luke, Lionel, Victoria, Murray,

  Georgina, Lester, Linda,

  Sukie, and Simon.

  Heartiest congrats from all of us on you and Charles! V. best wishes – all tickled pink. Shameful of me not to write in summer when I heard news but Vicky was just producing Simon, and then Georgie was having Sukie while I looked after Linda, then Mother passed quietly away.

  *

  Charles, Jean, Flora, Polly, Daisy, James, Dinah(!), Gareth, Luke, and Lionel –

  Yuletide Greetings!

  –from Kitty, Walter, Victoria,

  Murray, Georgina, Lester,

  Linda, Sukie, Simon, and

  Gabriel.

  Congratulations on Dinah! Don’t know how you do it! Gabriel (Simon’s brother) born 7 Oct. in flood. Hope Gareth, Luke, and Lionel are settling down all right with their father for Xmas, seems very quiet here without them, though Lester’s mother is coming for Xmas Day (she’s just lost her husband, sadly) plus his two sisters Charmian and Henrietta, so house will be quite full. Walter has ulcer.

  *

  Charles, Jean, Flora, Polly, Daisy, James, Dinah, Gareth, Luke, Lionel, Georgina, Lester, Linda, Sukie, and Jane –

  Christmas Comes But Once a Year

  and When it Comes it Brings Good Cheer!

  –from Kitty, Walter, Victoria,

  Murray, Simon, Gabriel,

  Nicholas, Charmian, Henrietta,

  Bernard(!), Cecilia and Timothy.

  Hope the boys are enjoying their Xmas jaunt as usual and behaving themselves. So good of you to have Georgie and Lester and the girls for Xmas while they’re over in England, hope Charles will be up and about again soon. Guess what, Bernard’s here! Coming for Xmas Day with his new wife Cecilia and their baby Timothy (three months). Sends his love – says he doesn’t send Xmas cards any more. I know what he means – once you start it never ends.

  (1967)

  He said, she said

  ‘What was that?’ he said suddenly.

  She looked up sharply, frightened by the alarm in his voice.

  ‘I thought I saw …’ he began, then stopped. ‘There they are again!’ he said softly. ‘Yes, and now there’s two more of them!’

  He seemed to be trying to brush something away from around his face, like a man bothered by flies. There were no flies, however. She looked around her uneasily.

  ‘I can’t see anything …’ she began, but then stopped in her turn, because no sooner had she uttered the words than she could. She could see them quite clearly. They were very small, but for an instant their heads and their characteristic curving tails were absolutely distinct.

  ‘You, too?’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied grimly, brushing them away from her hair. ‘Inverted commas. Quotation marks.’

  ‘Right,’ he agreed. ‘And not just the odd couple, here and there. They’re all around us. Swarms and swarms of them.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We both know perfectly well what it means. The fact is, we’re in the middle of a passage of dialogue.’

  ‘Oh God,’ he agonised softly.

  ‘I know,’ she sympathised. She put her hand on his arm for a moment and smiled at him. He managed a smile in return.

  There seemed to be nothing more to say.

  *

  Many long paragraphs of narrative and description followed during which not a word was uttered. Then:

  ‘They’re back,’ he said.

  ‘So I see,’ she replied, trudging on without looking up. ‘But I think the thing is to pay no attention – just to get on with other things at the same time and keep ourselves distracted.’

  She took out a few useful gerunds that she always kept with her, and passed a handful to him.

  ‘You mean, saying what one has to say,’ he said, running his hand reflectively through his thinning hair, ‘and at the same time doing something like running one’s hand reflectively through one’s thinning hair?’

  ‘Yes, or fixing the person you’re talking to with a gaze that goes on and on,’ she suggested, fixing him with a gaze that went on and on.

  ‘I see,’ he said, not seeing at all.

  ‘Or even just thinking something to yourself, or feeling some sort of feeling,’ she went on, thinking to herself that he wouldn’t even know that she was thinking to herself, and feeling rather pleased about it. ‘Though it doesn’t even have to be a, gerun
d.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ he asked, wrinkling his forehead in a puzzled frown.

  ‘You can just put in a full stop and then do something else,’ she replied. She put in a full stop, just like that, with a wonderful insouciance. ‘It doesn’t even have to have anything to do with what you’re saying.’ She began to manufacture a double bass out of a pile of firebricks and a ball of pale blue wool. ‘Anything, just so long as it holds off the inverted commas for a bit.’

  He thought about this in silence. He hated trying to do two different things at once.

  ‘What I’ve noticed,’ he said at last, ‘is that even if one doesn’t do other things while one’s speaking, other things often seem to do themselves.’

  As he spoke, an aircraft appeared in the sky, heavily laden with symbolic reference, and crashed portentously behind the pigsties.

  *

  ‘He said,’ he said, a few pages later.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘She said! There we go again! Didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘Oh, that. Yes. You always get that.’

  ‘So who’s saying it?’ he demanded. ‘Who’s saying all this she said and he demanded?’

  ‘Not me,’ she shrugged.

  ‘She shrugged! Oh, honestly! Before we know where we are we’ll be getting he gritted.’

  There was a slight pause. Then – he expostulated.

  They stopped talking and listened for some moments, waiting to hear what variations they would be reduced to next. But nothing happened. There was silence.

  ‘I can stand the inverted commas …’ he began, and stopped. ‘There it goes again – he began! Every time I open my mouth! It’s getting on my nerves.’

  ‘It’s as if someone was listening in to everything we said,’ she complained.

  ‘It’s so unnecessary, that’s what maddens me.’

  ‘Everyone knows we’re saying things. They don’t have to keep being told.’

  ‘Just a moment, though …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it’s stopped!’

  ‘Has it …? Yes, so it has!’

  ‘They must have realised we could hear them.’

  ‘Well, thank heavens for that!’

  ‘Yes … Only …’

  ‘Only what?’

  ‘Well, this is rather silly, but I’ve forgotten which of us is which.’

  ‘Which of us is which? That’s easy. You just count back to the last he said or she said.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Hold on, then … You, me, you, me … Or, just a moment, was it Me, you …? No, no – I know – You, me, you, me, you, me, you, me … Good God – I’m she!’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Can’t you tell from the kind of thing you’re saying? That’s the way he speaks!’

  ‘Is it? Hold on … You, me, you, me, you, me, you, me, you … Yes! You’re she and I’m you! No …’

  They looked up at the sky, hoping to hear even the faintest he said or she said echoing through the universe. But the sky was very clear and very empty.

  *

  For several pages they vanished altogether. Other people took their place, and said this and said that in their turn, and explained and gasped and riposted, and got murdered in various strikingly horrible ways.

  ‘What I really object to,’ he said, as soon as they were back, but she stopped him.

  ‘You see?’ she said. ‘I knew it was going to turn out to be you and not me when we got our bearings again. Sorry. Go on.’

  ‘What I object to,’ he pursued, ‘is being pushed back into the past all the time. When I say something – when I say what I’m saying now, for instance – I feel as if I’m saying it, well, now, in the present. But as soon as I’ve finished – wham! – he said – and I realise it was way back in the past. I feel I’m being robbed of my life.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said hesitantly. ‘But I think one just has to have faith. One has to believe that one day we’ll … catch up.’

  ‘Catch up?’ he queried.

  ‘Get right through the book, to the very last page.’ Her eyes were shining. Her eyes were shining because it was an interestingly different way of indicating that she was the one who had been doing the speaking.

  ‘And then at last it will be all he says and she grinds out?’ His ears reddened, for much the same reason as her eyes had been shining.

  She shook her head, meaning no, but meaning also that she was the next one to speak.

  ‘No,’ she said, just to make it doubly clear. ‘But if we can get to the last page we might just get a glimpse of the back of the jacket. Because that’s where he lives, this person who keeps saying he said and she said.’

  He looked at her. ‘You mean, we might talk to him? Might even shout he said every time he opens his mouth?’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t think we’ll ever get ahead of him. He’s too clever for that. But we might, just for a moment, catch a glimpse of his photograph. We might find out where he went to school, and whether he’s married or not.’

  And so on they went. Though neither of them knew it yet, they had another 359 pages to go, including 2,769 more he and she saids, and no less than 4,833 pairs of inverted commas.

  So, by the time they got there, the photograph on the back of the jacket would be as out of date as everything else.

  (1994)

  Head to head

  … gives me very great pleasure to be here – to see your beautiful and historic country for myself, and to bring greetings from my people across the sea to the people of Fandangia.

  And here I must say what especial pleasure it gives me to be in Fandangia as the guest of President Goizi (Applause). In the hearts and in the affections of my countrymen, President Goizi will always hold a special place. We know how faithfully he served Fandangia. We have watched him at the helm through times that have not always been easy, amidst the perilous shoals of our world today.

  I may say that I had the privilege and good fortune to meet the previous President, President Fasces. It seems only yesterday that I was paying tribute to him at a not entirely dissimilar occasion. But it was in fact the day before yesterday, and since his tragic death early this morning President Goizi has shown himself in every way a worthy successor.

  But we, in our country, have a special reason for the affection in which we hold President Goizi. For we know that the warm and friendly relations that exist between our two nations today are due in no small measure to his interest and to his unremitting efforts. It is perhaps not out of place to recall that President Goizi has visited us. He has seen us at work and play. He has tasted a sample of our national cooking (Laughter)– and, I am assured, pronounced it not greatly inferior to Fandangian cooking (Laughter). He has watched our national game (Laughter) –and, I believe, declared himself mystified by it (Loud laughter). In short, we know that he has seen us at first hand, in times that have not always been easy, and observed how we have faced the perils that confront every nation in the world today. It is bonds like these that unite our two peoples (Applause).

  But we must not let our sense of history make us unaware of the changing world in which we live. We must not let our regard for tradition, and for the preservation of what is best in our way of life – important as these things are – blind us to the events which are taking place about us. And at this point it is perhaps not inappropriate that I should say how particularly pleased I am to find myself in Fandangia as the guest of President Bombardos (Applause).

  In terms of the time in which these things are measured, it might perhaps be said that President Bombardos has not been responsible for guiding Fandangia’s destinies for very long. But already, since he took over the duties which were so unexpectedly thrust upon him after the sudden retirement for health reasons of his predecessor, President Goizi, this evening, he has proved himself to be a worthy successor.

  He has brought Fandangia through times which for all of us have not been without their difficulties. It is perhaps scarc
ely an exaggeration to say that he has made this nation what it is at the moment. And in the hearts and minds of my countrymen, President Bombardos will always be assured of a special place. Already we have come to learn that in President Bombardos we have a true friend. I believe that it is not entirely inappropriate to recollect that he has spent some time among our people. One of his special concerns was to study our police forces – which he was kind enough to say were ‘wonderful’ (Laughter). I believe he also had a taste of our weather (Laughter), though there is no record of his saying the same thing about that (Loud laughter).

  In other words, President Bombardos has seen us as we are, looked at the best and worst in our nation, and, as we like to think, come to understand us. For us, President Bombardos is Fandangia (Prolonged applause).

  But I should not like you to think that this close and friendly interest in every latest development is not fully reciprocated. I cannot therefore finish without paying personal tribute to the President of the Fandangian Republic, President Goizi, who, with the exception of a brief interregnum very recently, has guided your destinies for so long …

  (1962)

  Heart-cry from beautiful Yvonne Romaine

  It was pure chivalry which stayed my hand in the act of consigning to the waste-paper basket a publicity handout entitled The Curse of the Werewolf, News Sheet No. 3. My eye, usually afflicted by temporary blindness at the sight of a handout, had caught the headline ‘Heart-Cry From Beautiful Yvonne Romaine’. Whipping out my Boy Scout penknife, which has an attachment for helping maidens in distress, I quickly read on. The piteous complaint welling up from the tortured depths of Miss Romaine’s heart turned out to be: ‘I Always Seem To Be More Corpse Than Cutie!’