Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  14 And yes – steps are being taken. Action is in hand. The first cashier has let himself out of his cage. He is walking all the way back across the bank towards the righthand side. We cross back as well, separated from him by the counter, in parallel, anxious to stay in touch with events. I believe he is carrying the traveller’s cheques and the German banknotes, but he evidently doesn’t have everything with him, because after he has spoken to the clerk on the righthand side she leaves her position, and we all walk back again to the lefthand side.

  15 I’m not sure that it’s the correctness of the mathematics that are at issue now – the calculator has been left to one side. I have the impression that they have moved on to more general questions. After all, not two but three different currencies are involved in this transaction, and there may be problems of protocol and precedence. Should the Bundesbank or the Bank of England be informed first?

  16 A long time goes by. It is very quiet and still inside the bank, and my attention wanders. I find myself covertly watching some of the other staff. I become fascinated by one particular man. He is recklessly handsome, with a moustache and a three-piece suit, and he has nothing at all to do. The desk in front of him is completely empty. He rubs his hands together and gazes into space, with a look of wistful tenderness. I don’t believe he is thinking about high-interest savings accounts, or even ways of making the bank’s foreign exchange procedures more secure. I believe he is thinking about some member of the opposite sex.

  17 I notice that there is in fact a young woman sitting just in front of him, typing rapidly, until there is nothing more to type, when she, too, leans on her empty desk and gazes into the great spaces of the room. I believe her thoughts have also strayed back to her private life. They do not talk to each other. They do not look at each other. I get the impression that it’s not each other that they are thinking about. Their separate reveries seem strangely deep and poignant in the quiet lofty room.

  18 Just a moment. Something’s happened … I don’t know what it was, but the clerk is walking back to her place on the righthand side of the bank. It’s been settled. Everyone’s anxieties over the transaction have been set to rest.

  19 The clerk fills out a second form to replace the first one.

  20 She walks back to the cashier with the new edition of the form. I have the impression that she is moving a little more slowly than before. Her footwear, I think, is not entirely suitable for active pursuits like currency exchange.

  21 The cashier checks the new figures and the current state of the foreign exchange market. He pays over Fr. 636.27.

  22 We exit through the double security system.

  The sun is still shining. We are in no hurry, and Laon is a delightful place to be. I look at my watch, the whole entertainment has taken twenty-five minutes.

  So what’s going to happen to everyone in the Banque de France in Laon when the ecu comes? How are the rest of us going to fill our time? We’re all going to end up staring into space, thinking about our loved ones.

  (1992)

  The monolithic view of mirrors

  It is with a close and warmly sympathetic interest that all men of good will, whatever their creed, are following the vigorous debate now going on within the Carthaginian Monolithic Church on the vexed question of rear-view mirrors.

  It has long been the teaching of the Church that looking backwards while travelling forwards is categorically and explicitly forbidden by God, since it was for doing this that He visited instant fossilisation upon Lot’s wife.

  In this context ‘looking back’ has always been interpreted as frustrating the natural forward gaze of the traveller, whether by turning the head (visus interruptus), or by the interposition of a mechanical device such as a mirror.

  Carthaginian Monolithic theologians claim that looking back is not only divinely prohibited, but can also be seen by the light of reason to be contrary to natural law, since it is patently interfering with nature to inhibit the inherent tendency of fast-moving objects to collide, and is frustrating the natural consequences of the act of driving.

  Moreover, they argue, there is a strong aesthetic objection to looking back, since it must plainly detract from the spontaneity of the driving act, and they point out how much more insipid life becomes if the spice of the unexpected is removed altogether. It must in all fairness be pointed out that the keen interest of the Monolithic clergy in preserving spontaneity and avoiding insipidity is entirely altruistic, since they do not themselves drive.

  These arguments notwithstanding, the Church has long recognised the need to prevent cars smashing into the back of one another indiscriminately, and Monolithics are permitted to avoid it by abstaining from driving altogether, or by driving only during the so-called ‘safe period,’ between midnight and six a.m., when the chances of being crashed into are greatly reduced.

  Nevertheless, there is a sympathetic – indeed, anguished – realisation among many Monolithic leaders today that self-restraint alone may be inadequate to meet the situation. The question was less crucial in the days when the main effect of the doctrine was to prohibit Monolithics from sitting with their back to the engine in railway carriages. But the increasing popularity of the motor car is putting an intolerable burden upon the accident wards of the world’s hospitals.

  There is intense sympathy, too, for the great strain undergone by Monolithic drivers who have heen run into from behind perhaps thirteen or fourteen times already, and who now scarcely dare drive home to see their wives if it involves turning right, or pulling out to pass a parked car.

  It is to this agonising problem that ‘the box’ may provide an answer. ‘The box’ is a rearward radar scanning device which scientists are still testing. ‘Liberal’ Monolithics believe that a scanning aerial cannot be said to ‘look’ back in the natural sense of looking, and that the radar screen does not deflect the natural forward gaze of the driver, like a mirror, but is a natural part of his natural forward view.

  It is emphasised that even if ‘the box’ were to be accepted, it could never be used for merely selfish purposes, to avoid a crash simply because a crash was not desired, but only where a driver had already had three or four crashes, and there were genuine grounds for believing that another one might have a serious effect upon his health.

  (O. J. SPROUT: I must say, I’m greatly struck by the responsibility and fair-mindedness with which Mr Frayn is treating this thorny subject.

  MRS SPROUT: I agree with you, Sprout. He’s not a Carthaginian Monolithic himself, is he?)

  All the same, some authorities doubt if the box could ever be an acceptable compromise. They believe that the only hope would be to develop a device which would make the safe period principle more reliable – making absolutely sure that the road behind the car was kept clear by scattering perhaps nails or broken glass, perhaps small high explosive bombs.

  (SPROUT: You know, I don’t think he’s a Carthaginian Monolithic at all, Mrs Sprout. That’s the beauty of it. To me the whole article suggests the best tradition of agnostic liberal journalism.)

  Non-Monolithic observers can only look on at this debate with sympathy and understanding. They may be sure that it will be carried through with utter sincerity and a genuine sense of urgency, and that everyone on both sides will do his best, and play the game according to the rules.

  (MRS SPROUT: There were tears in his eyes in the last paragraph, Sprout.

  SPROUT: In mine too, Mrs Sprout. I can only say that the whole inquiry was conducted with the beautiful reverence and respect which the subject demands.)

  (1964)

  My life and loves

  Distinguished civil servants and others, when they realise they are being observed by a journalist, hastily leap up from their armchairs and with rather unexpected quiet passion and rather unexpectedly engaging smiles begin to play badminton, collect seventeenth-century Irish egg-whisks, write the standard work on the lesser celandine, reveal a rather unexpected line in wry humour, take a rather
unexpectedly serious interest in the campaign to preserve the death-watch beetle, and beget ten rather brilliant children; continuing this dazzling simultaneous exhibition until the journalist leaves, when (I should imagine) they slump heavily back into their armchairs rather unexpectedly exhausted.

  The behaviour of distinguished actors and actresses when a journalist or handout writer comes over the horizon is entirely different. They don’t start doing anything at all. They just start believing in and being intensely moved by and being utterly realistic about. They simply come vibrantly, richly, and passively into contact with life.

  Here, for instance, is the throbbing voice of an actress called Yvette Mimieux in a newspaper cutting I have: ‘I like snails and hot chocolate and dancing and tangy cheese and soft lead pencils and thick, strong coffee and tangerines and racing cars.’

  Imagine the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Waste Disposal taking this sort of line. ‘“I adore walking in the rain,” lisped Mr O. R. Strood, the tough-minded éminence grise behind Britain’s newest rubbish tip, “and the smell of new bread and comfortably worn dispatch-boxes and thinking and Ministry cars and mid-morning biscuits and chewing my pencil and – oh – heaps of things.”’ Be rather unexpected, to say the least.

  But it looked perfectly natural when Mr Nicol Williamson, actor, listed his loves to Mr Marshall Pugh, journalist, in the Daily Mail last week. Mr Williamson, it appears, loves old wooden houses, Bach, good stew and ale, pubs, belting tennis balls about, and diving into the sea and coming back and scattering his records all over the room.

  How he stands on hot chocolate and tangy cheese and soft lead pencils he doesn’t say. But he did come out for humility – ‘I’m humble in some ways,’ he told Mr Pugh, ‘much humbler than you think’ – and faith. ‘Faith bothered him constantly,’ reported Mr Pugh. ‘It was so bloody personal, such bloody agony.’

  Yes! Oh God, yes! Oh God, I absolutely bloody agree! The smell of coffee roasting, sunlight falling on hair, the clouds coming down on the mountains – I love them all, too. I may not have mentioned it before, but I’m involved in life up to my bloody eyebrows. Gregorian plainsong, hot, strong cheese and tangy snails – I’m deeply committed to every corny, wonderful, bloody experience in the book. I’ve never tried diving in the sea and coming back and scattering my records all over the room, but oh God, it sounds marvellous! I’ll give it a whirl at the very first opportunity I have.

  And there’s the snag – opportunity. As Mr Williamson says: ‘I want to live intensively, 101 per cent. But how can I do it in this job?’

  God, I know the feeling! How can I do it, either, in my job, or you in yours? And if it’s not the job stopping us living it’s something else. Just as you’re about to start living, really 101 per cent living, it’s lunchtime. Or some damned person rings up. You get inside some lovable pub and you never have a chance to really experience it, because you have to spend all the time either trying to break into your friends’ conversation to ask them what they want to drink, or trying to catch the barmaid’s eye.

  And the hot chocolate – that turns up just when you feel like the thick, strong coffee, and the thick, strong coffee is wheeled on just about bedtime, when the only thing you want is hot chocolate. Nor is it possible to listen to the Bach properly when you’re hunting high and low for something to write with, because all you can find is some damned joky soft lead pencil.

  No, if you want to live – really live – you’ve got to get away from life. You’ve got to find somewhere where you can be completely idle, so that if you want to spend all morning walking in the rain you can, for the simple reason that there’s nothing else to do. And if you happen to come across a smell of coffee roasting you can stop and inhale it – and go on inhaling it until you’re fed up with it. Then you can sit down in a café somewhere and have a hot chocolate. Have two hot chocolates if you feel like it – there’s nothing else to do. Go on guzzling hot chocolate until you’re chocolate-coloured in the face. Then you can start walking about in the rain again, trying to get up an appetite for that lunch of stew and ale.

  After lunch you could go and look at some wooden houses. Look at them from the front, look at them from the back. Really get an eyeful of them – there’s no earthly hurry. Then perhaps you could stroll along and smell the coffee roasting again. Have another hot chocolate. If the weather’s cleared up you might go and take a dive in the sea, then go up to your room and chuck the records about. After that you might go out and take another dive, and chuck the records about all over again – you’ve probably still got about four hours left before dinner …

  No, if you’re really going to live – really 101 per cent live – you need some purpose in life. You need to work. Oh God, think of that bloody marvellous little pub you used to slip out to after a hard day’s work! And the Goldberg Variations tinkling quietly away in the background as you worked with the soft lead pencil! Oh God, how bloody wonderful such moments are – in recollection, if you didn’t think about them when they happened!

  (1965)

  My nature diary

  JANUARY: Out and about, as usual, striding across the local public recreation ground, observing Nature and the slow turning of the seasons. Brace of children gambolling and snapping at heel, ready for anything, particularly a sudden encounter with a bag of sweets or a television programme. Can’t help noticing the grass – blade after blade of it, with a fine display of common brown mud (terra fusca vulgaris) coming through.

  How one longs for February, the real fag-end month of winter, with its raw, murky, desolate afternoons expiring in sodden fields! Plan richly gloomy afternoon trips throughout February to the Fens and the dank industrial landscapes of the Thames Estuary.

  FEBRUARY: Out and about on the public recreation ground. Grass still doing well. Children put up an old cock Smarties packet, its brilliant colouring showing up vividly against the mud. Order them to put it down again.

  Weather oddly unsuitable for fens or marshes. Sudden warm, bright days occur, making one unable to think of anything except those sudden warm, bright days which will occur in March and touch one’s heart with the first advance publicity for spring. Swear that for once I will be ready to make the most of them by dashing out to Kentish oast-houses surrounded by blossom, to the crocuses on King’s Backs.

  MARCH: Neat green and brown of native recreation ground spoiled by disgusting litter of old almond blossom. These blossom-louts should be prosecuted.

  Too busy thinking about April to go anywhere. Ah, April! When the first brilliant greenery softens the gnarled timber of this ancient winter world! And we shall see it happen along the Quai d’Anjou and in the gardens of the Hotel Biron. Because in April we shall be in Paris! Or in Amsterdam. Or possibly in Venice, still fresh and cool and sparkling!

  APRIL: I mean, of course, that we shall be there in May. Always expect the spring to happen in April, and realise only when April arrives that it happens in May. Meanwhile, observe the immutable march of Nature’s timetable on the recreation ground, as the local dogs are brought out each day to move their bowels.

  MAY: May somehow goes by before I have time to notice what Nature’s doing on the recreation ground, let alone get tickets to fail to notice it elsewhere. June’s the month, of course. Midsummer; full leaf; the fresh prime of the year. To hell with the tawdry pleasures of foreign cities – in June I will take a knapsack and a stout stick and stride through the heartlands of England. Through Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire; through old towns full of bells and strong ale; through ancient green forests where temporarily dispossessed dukes wander with their courts, hunting the deer and communing in blank verse as fresh as spring-water.

  JUNE: Take up my stout umbrella and stride through the heartlands of the recreation ground, now gaily bedecked with the Lesser and Greater Paper Bag, the Common Orangeskin, and the shyly peeping Lolly Stick.

  How half-hearted, wishy-washy June makes one long for the great heats of July! Th
ey’ll find me and my family in the simmering uplands of the Aveyron – no, in the sweltering, dusty plains of Emilia – no, no, in the burnt brown hills of Umbria! Solid iron heat will enclose us! Pulsating, suffocating heat! Ah!

  JULY: While waiting for the great heats to arrive, walk about the recreation ground with my old 12-bore umbrella in the crook of my arm, unable to see anything but a vision of August. August is water, of course. Sunlit blue water, creaming surf. Have now saved such an enormous amount of money by not going to Paris or Amsterdam or Emilia or Umbria, and not buying a stout stick, that we could surely afford to spend August in Cyrenaica, or on the wild coast of Maine.

  AUGUST: Funny – we couldn’t. Spend August at home, thinking about September. My God, in September we’ll go anywhere.

  SEPTEMBER: And, indeed, in the ghastly little resort of N’Importe-Où we end up. Exercise our children by walking them on the local terrain de récréation. The yellowing leaves are being brought down by the rains and the equinoctial gales. Makes one deeply nostalgic for the golden-red autumn melancholy of England in October.

  OCTOBER: Observe, on my rambles across the home recreation ground, that grass and mud do not in fact turn golden-red in autumn. The month we’re all waiting for is November, when London really comes into its own, and the afternoon sun goes down blood-red into the foggy mercantile exhalations of the city. You’ll find me in November mooning among the cranes and warehouses of Bankside, and calling at tea-and-crumpet time on friends with houses in Queen’s Gate and Onslow Square and the Boltons, as the nannies dawdle home from the smoky Park with children in leggings.