Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  Then it’s anybody’s guess. The consequences are incalculable. We could, I think, see a distinct worsening of relations. We might even end up with the King and the Prince not on speaking terms.

  No chance that it could even end in violence?

  Well, we hope it won’t come to that! It’s in everybody’s interest to keep calm and behave sensibly. They’ll probably keep us all on tenterhooks until the last possible moment, but the smart money here is on wedding bells before too long.

  Michael Brunson, thank you. Now, the rest of the news. Fire broke out this evening in Valhalla, home of many of the world’s best-known gods. Local fire chiefs say that the blaze is now under control. And in Spain a wealthy playboy has had the novel idea of inviting a statue to dinner! The statue duly turned up, and by all accounts thoroughly enjoyed its evening out. That’s it for now! Have a good weekend.

  (1994)

  Pas devant les enfants

  It’s not television which is the greatest threat to the art of conversation, in my experience; it’s children.

  The Victorians were certainly a hundred years ahead of their time on this problem, with their doctrine of children being seen and not heard. If the children are heard then any adults present are not; and the Victorians, with their usual sensitive concern for parent-care, realised that the most frightful psychic damage could be inflicted upon adults whose natural drive to communication and self-expression was persistently frustrated.

  What I don’t quite understand, though, is the Victorians’ inexplicable permissiveness in letting children be seen. A child, at any rate a small child, doesn’t need to be heard to disrupt all rational intercourse in the vicinity; its visible presence is quite enough.

  A child is rather like a television set, in fact – and turning the sound down when company comes isn’t enough to prevent all eyes in the room from being irresistibly drawn towards it. How often has one seen a whole roomful of normally artictulate adults sitting bemused around their assembled offspring, bereft of all powers of speech, apart from the sort of desultory facetious comment which is usually reserved for the Westerns? And television sets have the great advantage that they can be switched off.

  Of course, if children are disruptive with the sound turned down, they’re worse still when it’s turned up. Sound and vision tend to be deployed to their fullest communication-destroying effect just when a matter of some delicacy and importance has to be conveyed between husband and wife. Just when Mr Ricardo was trying to explain to Mrs Ricardo about Marginal Utility – that’s when the children would have switched on the jammers: just when the Tsar and Tsarina were discussing whether to invade Poland next season.

  Or take the afternoon that Pythagoras came out of his study looking rather pleased with himself.

  ‘You know this work I’ve been doing recently on hypotenuses?’ he says to his wife, trying to sound casual. ‘Well, a rather interesting point struck me this afternoon – I don’t know whether you think it sounds reasonable – that the square on the hypotenuse must be equal to …’

  But at this point a ringing cry from the lavatory interrupts the exposition.

  ‘Will you wipe my b-o-o-o-t-tom!’

  ‘Sorry,’ says his wife when she gets back. ‘What were you saying? Something about hypotenuses.’

  ‘I was just going to say that the square on the hypotenuse …’

  ‘Mummy!’

  ‘Sh, Jemima! Daddy’s talking.’

  ‘… that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to …’

  ‘But Mummy …’

  ‘Sh, Jemima! You musn’t interrupt when someone’s speaking! How many times have I had to tell you?’

  ‘… equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides!’

  ‘I see. Now, what’s the trouble, Jemima?’

  ‘James is being horrible to me! He’s taken my zoetrope!’

  ‘James, give Jemima back her zoetrope at once! Sorry, Py. What were you saying?’

  ‘I said it.’

  ‘All hypotenuses are equal …?’

  ‘God give me strength! Why do you never listen to what I say? I said the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum …’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The sum… the SUM …! My God. I can’t hear myself speak! Will you SHUT UP, you two! If I hear one more word out of either of you, I’ll throw that damned zoetrope into the Aegean, and that’ll be the end of it! Now, the square on the hypotenuse …’

  ‘Yes, yes, I got that bit … Just a moment – James, what have you been doing to your face …? Well, go and wash it off at once … Sorry – “the square on the hypotenuse” – I am listening … Don’t just rub it on your sleeve, James …! Sorry, Py, but if he’s left to go wandering round in that condition there’ll be shaving cream all over the house … Anyway, the square on the hypotenuse …’

  ‘Will you wipe my b-o-o-o-o-t-tom!’

  It’s Pythagoras’s turn this time. ‘Where were we?’ he asks wearily when he returns. ‘Oh, yes, the square on the hypotenuse. Well, all I was going to say was that it’s equal to the sum of the squares … Now what are you doing? What the hell do you keep turning round for?’

  ‘Sorry – I was just trying to see why Jemima was so quiet all of a sudden.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Go on about the square on the hypotenuse.’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘It wasn’t of the slightest importance … Well, I was merely going to say that it was equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. That’s all.’

  ‘But, Py, that’s absolutely fascinating! I’d never have guessed it! Marvellous …! What is Jemima up to, by the way? Is she sulking? Can you see? She’s not sucking her thumb, is she?’

  ‘Yes … No … I don’t know! She’s not there … Look, are you interested in my work on the hypotenuse or aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I am. I think it’s tremendously important … I’d better just make sure she hasn’t wandered out into the street …’

  ‘I mean, I don’t care whether you are or not. I just thought you were, that’s all. It’s just that once upon a time you used to ask me …’

  ‘Will you wipe my b-o-o-o-o-t-tom!’

  It’s the trailing clouds of glory which Wordsworth observed hanging about children – that’s what really disrupts communication. Glorious-looking clouds, certainly; but when you’re in amongst them, like most clouds, pretty well indistinguishable from dense fog.

  (1967)

  Plain speaking on S’Agaro

  Having just come back from a holiday in Spain I can tell you one thing about that part of the world; they speak a pretty peculiar sort of language down there. I was given a trilingual guidebook to the Costa Brava – or, rather, to what it insisted on calling the ‘main accidents’ of the area – which has tied several reef-knots and a running bowline in my powers of communication. The accident the author cares most about is a town called S’Agaro. Well, it’s a non-town. I mean, it’s a happy conjuncture. I mean – well, let him explain it:

  S’AGARO TODAY

  S’Agaro is neither a town nor a history: S’Agaro is a happy conjuncture, an inquietude felt since few years – 25 – and in its boundaries, everthing except the Nature is recent. This is why S’Agaro becomes unistakable.

  Besides being a personal discovery (it is known to be the work of the sole man) it is a harmony become possible where heretofore was not anything else than savage rocks, rough, full with thick woods and wild vegetation, where the beach of San Pol, belonging to San Feliu de Guixols, ended. Mr Ensesa felt once the calling of S’Agaro. that landscape, hostile and rejected, was keenly studied with the collaboration of the architect Mr Santiago Maso Valenti. After four years they gave rise to this light and wonderful reality of the S’Agaro of today, abridgement of beauty, harmony, good taste, and selectness.

  The general plann, ruled to the least details, has become his miracle of synchronis
m in the style and the ambient. The buildings in their totality the same as the wonderful gardens and works to embellish the whole urbinisation have followed the same rule and have not deserted the collective soul. There is not in S’Agaro a single eccentricity for the edge of those architectonic monsters with which another urbinisations are so full … In S’Agaro the tourist finds that ‘it’ he missed. This ‘it’ so social, and elegant, so subtle and poetic. Within its district the whole ‘grand monde’ collects in formal parties, international sport contests, all this gives it the fame that enjoys everywhere in the world.

  After this, the author apparently felt too confused and exhausted to go on to ‘S’Agaro, Tomorrow.’ But here, for those who care, is a play entitled S’Agaro, Yesterday, an unhappy conjuncture of inquietudes I shall be putting on out there before the grand monde next season. All cheques for tickets should be made payable to the English-Speaking Union.

  (Scene: S’Agaro heretofore. Not anything else is there than savage rocks, rough, full with wild orange peel. On that savage rock sits Mr Ensesa and Mr Valenti, neither towns nor histories, but a felicitous condoublement of humane beings.)

  Mr Ensesa (jumping upwards): I felt the calling of S’Agaro!

  Mr Valenti: Make no attention, Mr Ensesa. It is probably just an inquietude felt since eating bad paella for lunch.

  S’Agaro (calling): Mr Ensesa!

  Mr Ensesa (excitedly): The calling is now a two-timing re-duplicature!

  (They keenly study that landscape, hostile and rejected.)

  Mr Ensesa: I am missing ‘it’, Mr Valenti. In all that wild waste of broken sun-tan-lotion bottles is not ‘it’.

  Mr Valenti: You mean that ‘it’ so explicative, so deliquescent, so uneccentric, Mr Ensesa?

  Mr Ensesa: It is unistakable. We are missing the ‘big world’

  (I translate, of course) collecting in formal parties to play clock-golf and international deck-quoits contests. We are missing – how we say it in Spanish – the ‘pesetas’.

  Mr Valenti: Permit me to urbanise this unfelicitous inquietude, Mr Ensesa. I am architect, well known for urbanising without a single eccentricity for the edge of those architectonic monsters with which some urbinisations I could mention are so full.

  Mr Ensesa: If your plans are as harmonious as your words, Mr Valenti, S’Agaro will indeed be a dish for the dogs. Can you give rise to abridgments?

  Mr Valenti: Abridgments, atunnelments, ahousements, anything.

  Mr Ensesa: Then give rise to an abridgment of beauty, harmony, good taste and selectness.

  (While Mr Valenti savagely abridges these, reducing them to mere shadows of their former selves, a kind of prophetic radiance plays about Mr Ensesa’s head.)

  Mr Ensesa (rhapsodically): In years to come, all the peoples will be regarding our happy inquietude and calling it ‘a miracle of synchronism in the style and the ambient.’ Or maybe ‘a stylistic synchro-mesh in ambulating mirror-cells.’ Or perhaps even ‘an ambidextrous cyclotron called Mirabelle Stylites.’

  (He stops to consider the point, but by this time, so thoroughly has Mr Valenti abridged everything, the curtain has come down and the band is playing ‘God Save Our Gracious Dictator.’ Oh, well, I’ve just realised what the guidebook is getting at when it calls S’Agaro an inquietude and happy conjuncture – it means it’s a noisy but cheerful joint. Let’s dance.)

  (1960)

  Please be seated

  Breakfast in bed – there’s nothing like it! Nothing like it for making you realise what wonderful inventions the table and chair are.

  The position forced upon you by having breakfast in bed is a torment in itself. Making prisoners sit up with their legs straight out in front of them and their back unsupported is (I hope) outlawed under United Nations conventions on torture. But now here you are, not detained without charge in the jails of a Third World dictatorship, but on a well-earned holiday in a rather expensive hotel covered by the protocols of the European Community, and your wife has said that she would like breakfast in bed, so the humanitarian efforts of the United Nations do not apply.

  But, as the meal proceeds, your position deteriorates still further. You have of course been eating with extreme circumspection so as not to get toast-crumbs into the bed. You have stomach-cramp from leaning forwards over the tray, and in fact you haven’t even touched the toast, because you’re not such a fool as to think you can eat toast in bed in any way at all, even with a bag over your head, without getting the crumbs into the bed with you. You have eaten nothing so far but the grapefruit – and you haven’t even eaten the grapefruit, because trying to prise the segments free shook the tray, and made the coffeepot rock wildly from side to side. In spite of all this care, however, crumbs have mysteriously begun to break off the toast of their own accord, and creep surreptitiously off the tray and down into the sheets. These toast-crumbs, by the feel of it, are now enjoying breakfast in bed themselves. The breakfast they are enjoying is you.

  With extreme circumspection, since you have this complex array of uneaten toast and brimming hot liquids balanced across your knees, you shift your bottom away from the crumbs. So now you are no longer quite sitting up. You are sustaining yourself at a slight angle to the vertical, in even more flagrant contravention of international law. Gradually the angle increases, and you begin to slide down the bed. The strain becomes unbearable. But, since you don’t wish to share the bed with half-a-litre of scalding coffee as well as the toast-crumbs, you do not make any of the sudden or convulsive movements that you long to make. You put your hands on the bed and gently … gently … ease yourself … together with the tray on top of you … into a better position.

  But now you realise with dismay that the butter and marmalade which have somehow got on your fingers, in spite of your never having touched them, have transferred themselves to the sheets. The entire bed is becoming a toast and marmalade sandwich. You look for the napkin to clean things up. It has withdrawn in a cowardly manner to the relative safety of the floor. You lean with infinite precaution sideways over the edge of the bed to reach it … The napkin seems be withdrawing still further as your fingers approach. For one brief moment you take your eye off the tray to see what’s going on … And at that moment the tray moves quietly and decisively out of the horizontal.

  I see why bed-bugs like having breakfast in bed. Why women do I find rather more obscure.

  It scarcely bears thinking about, but there must have been a time, before civilisation began, when people had to have breakfast in bed every morning, because there wasn’t anywhere else to have it – neither the table nor the chair had yet been invented. In fact people must have had lunch in bed as well. And tea, and dinner. In fact, sitting, in the sense that we know it, with knees bent, and feet stored on a lower level, had not been discovered! Apart from sitting up in a right-angle with a tray across your knees, there were only two known positions that the human body could take up – vertical and horizontal. The only alternative to sitting up in bed to eat was to do it lying down, and choking to death. Or else to go to someone’s party, and eat standing up.

  This last alternative was so awful that it’s almost certainly what inspired the crucial advance to the table and chair. Archaeologists believe that it occurred during the Sumerian civilisation, some time after the invention of the wheel, around 2100 BC. King Ur-Nammu, the founder of the third dynasty of Ur, is thought to have held a particularly important banquet at about this time, where the guests would have been required to remain vertical all the way from cocktails at 7.00 p.m. until the brandy and cigars, somewhere around midnight.

  For five hours they would have been holding massive gold plates, with huge silver goblets of wine clipped to them by the newly-invented wineglass-holder (in lightweight plastic, it’s true, but encrusted with large uncut chalcedonies), transferring the knife from the right hand to the left after cutting up each mouthful of meat, and simultaneously transferring the fork from the left to the right in order to eat it, then transferring
the entire plate from one hand to the other before the wrist finally gave way under the strain, and in so doing dropping the knife or the fork, or both, and then, in recovering the knife and fork, tipping gravy down the front of some great court official’s shirt, then searching for the napkin to wipe him down, and finding it … not on the floor, where you would expect a napkin to be, but clenched underneath the plate in fingers which had by now become so paralysed that the napkin could not be prised free without dropping the plate.

  Alcohol had already been invented, specifically in order to offer some hope of escape from this situation into the horizontal and the unconscious. But how to get at the alcohol with one’s hands tied up like this?

  And then, somewhere around midnight at this particular banquet, it is believed, Ur-Nammu himself suddenly buckled at the knees. By chance he was standing in front of the radiogram (as the audio system was then called). The sound of Carroll Gibbons and his Savoy Orpheans ended in a noise like a sword ripping through chainmail, and in the terrible silence that followed everyone looked round to see that the king was no longer vertical.

  But then neither was he horizontal. He was caught in a curious position hallway between the two, his bottom resting on the radiogram, folded at the waist and again at the knees, so that he formed a kind of zigzag. It was a profoundly comic sight, but no one dared to laugh. Then Ur-Nammu smiled. ‘This is delightful,’ he said, so far as can be made out from the hieroglyphs in the society columns next morning. ‘It is a huge advance upon standing up. I shall call this sitting down.’

  Sitting down became all the rage. Everyone in Ur, Kish, Ahkshak, Hamazi, and the other cities of Mesopotamia sat. Some sat on record-players or television-sets, some (agonisingly) on radiators, some on ashtrays and umbrella stands, some on discarded sandwiches. Very soon the first purpose-built chairs began to appear (though of course their full potential couldn’t be realised until the invention of leaning back). It may be a coincidence, but life-expectancy in the Sumerian world rose by forty-seven per cent about this time.