Harold Pinter Plays 3

by Harold Pinter

No. I know no one. Except Kate.

  Pause

  DEELEY

  Do you find her changed?

  ANNA

  Oh, just a little, not very much. (To KATE.) You’re still shy, aren’t you?

  KATE stares at her.

  (To DEELEY.) But when I knew her first she was so shy, as shy as a fawn, she really was. When people leaned to speak to her she would fold away from them, so that though she was still standing within their reach she was no longer accessible to them. She folded herself from them, they were no longer able to speak or go through with their touch. I put it down to her upbringing, a parson’s daughter, and indeed there was a good deal of Brontë about her.

  DEELEY

  Was she a parson’s daughter?

  ANNA

  But if I thought Brontë I did not think she was Brontë in passion but only in secrecy, in being so stubbornly private.

  Slight pause

  I remember her first blush.

  DEELEY

  What? What was it? I mean why was it?

  ANNA

  I had borrowed some of her underwear, to go to a party. Later that night I confessed. It was naughty of me. She stared at me, nonplussed, perhaps, is the word. But I told her that in fact I had been punished for my sin, for a man at the party had spent the whole evening looking up my skirt.

  Pause

  DEELEY

  She blushed at that?

  ANNA

  Deeply.

  DEELEY

  Looking up your skirt in her underwear. Mmnn.

  ANNA

  But from that night she insisted, from time to time, that I borrow her underwear – she had more of it than I, and a far greater range – and each time she proposed this she would blush, but propose it she did, nevertheless. And when there was anything to tell her, when I got back, anything of interest to tell her, I told her.

  DEELEY

  Did she blush then?

  ANNA

  I could never see then. I would come in late and find her reading under the lamp, and begin to tell her, but she would say no, turn off the light, and I would tell her in the dark. She preferred to be told in the dark. But of course it was never completely dark, what with the light from the gasfire or the light through the curtains, and what she didn’t know was that, knowing her preference, I would choose a position in the room from which I could see her face, although she could not see mine. She could hear my voice only. And so she listened and I watched her listening.

  DEELEY

  Sounds a perfect marriage.

  ANNA

  We were great friends.

  Pause

  DEELEY

  You say she was Brontë in secrecy but not in passion. What was

  ANNA

  I feel that is your province.

  DEELEY

  You fed it’s my province? Well, you’re damn right. It is my province. I’m glad someone’s showing a bit of taste at last. Of course it’s my bloody province. I’m her husband.

  Pause

  I mean I’d like to ask a question. Am I alone in beginning to find all this distasteful?

  ANNA

  But what can you possibly find distasteful? I’ve flown from Rome to see my oldest friend, after twenty years, and to meet her husband. What is it that worries you?

  DEELEY

  What worries me is the thought of your husband rumbling about alone in his enormous villa living hand to mouth on a few hardboiled eggs and unable to speak a damn word of

  ANNA

  I interpret, when necessary.

  DEELEY

  Yes, but you’re here, with us. He’s there, alone, lurching up and down the terrace, waiting for a speedboat, waiting for a speedboat to spill out beautiful people, at least. Beautiful Mediterranean people. Waiting for all that, a kind of elegance we know nothing about, a slim-bellied Cote d’Azur thing we know absolutely nothing about, a lobster and lobster sauce ideology we know fuck all about, the longest legs in the world, the most phenomenally soft voices. I can hear them now. I mean let’s put it on the table, I have my eye on a number of pulses, pulses all round the globe, deprivations and insults, why should I waste valuable space listening to two –

  KATE

  (Swiftly.) If you don’t like it go.

  Pause

  DEELEY

  Go? Where can I go?

  KATE

  To China. Or Sicily.

  DEELEY

  I haven’t got a speedboat. I haven’t got a white dinner jacket.

  KATE

  China then.

  DEELEY

  You know what they’d do to me in China if they found me in a white dinner jacket. They’d bloodywell kill me. You know what they’re like over there.

  Slight pause

  ANNA

  You are welcome to come to Sicily at any time, both of you, and be my guests.

  Silence

  KATE and DEELEY stare at her.

  ANNA

  (To DEELEY, quietly.) I would like you to understand that I came here not to disrupt but to celebrate.

  Pause

  To celebrate a very old and treasured friendship, something that was forged between us long before you knew of our existence.

  Pause

  I found her. She grew to know wonderful people, through my introduction. I took her to cafés, almost private ones, where artists and writers and sometimes actors collected, and others with dancers, and we sat hardly breathing with our coffee, listening to the life around us. All I wanted for her was her happiness. That is all I want for her still.

  Pause

  DEELEY

  (To KATE.) We’ve met before, you know. Anna and I.

  KATE looks at him.

  Yes, we met in the Wayfarers Tavern. In the corner. She took a fancy to me. Of course I was slimhipped in those days. Pretty nifty. A bit squinky, quite honestly. Curly hair. The lot. We had a scene together. She freaked out. She didn’t have any bread, so I bought her a drink. She looked at me with big eyes, shy, all that bit. She was pretending to be you at the time. Did it pretty well. Wearing your underwear she was too, at the time. Amiably allowed me a gander. Trueblue generosity. Admirable in a woman. We went to a party. Given by philosophers. Not a bad bunch. Edgware road gang. Nice lot. Haven’t seen any of them for years. Old friends. Always thinking. Spoke their thoughts. Those are the people I miss. They’re all dead, anyway I’ve never seen them again. The Maida Vale group. Big Eric and little Tony. They lived somewhere near Paddington library. On the way to the party I took her into a café, bought her a cup of coffee, beards with faces. She thought she was you, said little, so little. Maybe she was you. Maybe it was you, having coffee with me, saying little, so little.

  Pause

  KATE

  What do you think attracted her to you?

  DEELEY

  I don’t know. What?

  KATE

  She found your face very sensitive, vulnerable.

  DEELEY

  Did she?

  KATE

  She wanted to comfort it, in the way only a woman can.

  DEELEY

  Did she?

  KATE

  Oh yes.

  DEELEY

  She wanted to comfort my face, in the way only a woman can?

  KATE

  She was prepared to extend herself to you.

  DEELEY

  I beg your pardon?

  KATE

  She fell in love with you.

  DEELEY

  With me?

  KATE

  You were so unlike the others. We knew men who were brutish, crass.

  DEELEY

  There really are such men, then? Crass men?

  KATE

  Quite crass.

  DEELEY

  But I was crass, wasn’t I, looking up her skirt?

  KATE

  That’s not crass.

  DEELEY

  If it was her skirt. If it was her.

  ANNA

  (Coldly.) Oh,
it was my skirt. It was me. I remember your look … very well. I remember you well.

  KATE

  (To ANNA.) But I remember you. I remember you dead.

  Pause

  I remember you lying dead. You didn’t know I was watching you. I leaned over you. Your face was dirty. You lay dead, your face scrawled with dirt, all kinds of earnest inscriptions, but unblotted, so that they had run, all over your face, down to your throat. Your sheets were immaculate. I was glad. I would have been unhappy if your corpse had lain in an unwholesome sheet. It would have been graceless. I mean as far as I was concerned. As far as my room was concerned. After all, you were dead in my room. When you woke my eyes were above you, staring down at you, You tried to do my little trick, one of my tricks you had borrowed, my little slow smile, my little slow shy smile, my bend of the head, my half closing of the eyes, that we knew so well, but it didn’t work, the grin only split the dirt at the sides of your mouth and stuck. You stuck in your grin. I looked for tears but could see none. Your pupils weren’t in your eyes. Your bones ware breaking through your face. But all was serene. There was no suffering. It had all happened elsewhere. Last rites I did not feel necessary. Or any celebration. I felt the time and season appropriate and that by dying alone and dirty you had acted with proper decorum. It was time for my bath. I had quite a lengthy bath, got out, walked about the room, glistening, drew up a chair, sat naked beside you and watched you.

  Pause

  When I brought him into the room your body of course had gone. What a relief it was to have a different body in my room, a male body behaving quite differently, doing all those things they do and which they think are good, like sitting with one leg over the arm of an armchair. We had a choice of two beds. Your bed or my bed. To lie in, or on. To grind noses together, in or on. He liked your bed, and thought he was different in it because he was a man. But one night I said let me do some thing, a little thing, a little trick. He lay there in your bed. He looked up at me with great expectation. He was gratified. He thought I had profited from his teaching. He thought I was going to be sexually forthcoming, that I was about to take a long promised initiative. I dug about in the windowbox, where you had planted our pretty pansies, scooped, filled the bowl, and plastered his face with dirt. He was bemused, aghast, resisted, resisted with force. He would not let me dirty his face, or smudge it, he wouldn’t let me. He suggested a wedding instead, and a change of environment.

  Slight pause

  Neither mattered.

  Pause

  He asked me once, at about that time, who had slept in that bed before him. I told him no one. No one at all.

  Long silence

  ANNA stands, walks towards the door, stops, her back to them.

  Silence

  DEELEY starts to sob, very quietly.

  ANNA stands still.

  ANNA turns, switches off the lamps, sits on her divan, and lies down.

  The sobbing stops

  Silence

  DEELEY stands. He walks a few paces, looks at both divans.

  He goes to ANNA’S divan, looks down at her. She is still.

  Silence

  DEELEY moves towards the door, stops, his back to them.

  Silence

  DEELEY turns. He goes towards KATE’S divan. He sits on her divan, lies across her lap.

  Long silence

  DEELEY very slowly sits up.

  He gets off the divan.

  He walks slowly to the armchair.

  He sits, slumped.

  Silence

  Lights up full sharply. Very bright.

  DEELEY in armchair.

  ANNA lying on divan.

  KATE sitting on divan.

  NO MAN’S LAND

  No Man’s Land was first presented by the National Theatre at the Old Vic, Waterloo, London, on 23rd April, 1975, with the following cast:

  HIRST, a man in his sixties Ralph Richardson

  SPOONER, a man in his sixties John Gielgud

  FOSTER, a man in his thirties Michael Feast

  BRIGGS, a man in his forties Terence Rigby

  Designed by John Bury

  Directed by Peter Hall

  The play was subsequently presented at Wyndham’s Theatre, London, from 15 July, 1975, with the same cast.

  A large room in a house in North West London.

  Well but sparely furnished. A strong and comfortable

  straight-backed chair, in which HIRST sits.

  A wall of bookshelves, with various items of pottery acting

  as bookstands, including two large mugs.

  Heavy curtains across the window.

  The central feature of the room is an antique cabinet, with marble top, brass gallery and open shelves, on which stands a great variety of bottles: spirits, aperitifs, beers, etc.

  ACT ONE

  Summer.

  Night.

  SPOONER stands in the centre of the room. He is dressed in a very old and shabby suit, dark faded skirt. creased spotted tie.

  HIRST is pouring whisky at the cabinet. He is precisely dressed. Sports jacket. Well cut trousers.

  HIRST

  As it is?

  SPOONER

  As it is, yes please, absolutely as it is.

  HIRST brings him the glass.

  SPOONER

  Thank you. How very kind of you. How very kind.

  HIRST pours himself a vodka.

  HIRST

  Cheers.

  SPOONER

  Your health.

  They drink. SPOONER sips. HIRST drinks the vodka in one gulp. He refills his glass, moves to his chair and sits. SPOONER empties his glass.

  HIRST

  Please help yourself.

  SPOONER

  Terribly kind of you.

  SPOONER goes to cabinet, pours. He turns.

  SPOONER

  Your good health.

  He drinks.

  SPOONER

  What was it I was saying, as we arrived at your door?

  HIRST

  Ah … let me see.

  SPOONER

  Yes! I was talking about strength. Do you recall?

  HIRST

  Strength. Yes.

  SPOONER

  Yes. I was about to say, you see, that there are some people who appear to be strong, whose idea of what strength consists of is persuasive, but who inhabit the idea and not the fact. What they possess is not strength but expertise. They have nurtured and maintain what is in fact a calculated posture. Half the time it works. It takes a man of intelligence and perception to stick a needle through that posture and discern the essential flabbiness of the stance. I am such a man.

  HIRST

  You mean one of the latter?

  SPOONER

  One of the latter, yes, a man of intelligence and perception. Not one of the former, oh no, not at all. By no means.

  Pause

  May I say how very kind it was of you to ask me in? In fact, you are kindness itself, probably always are kindness itself, now and in England and in Hampstead and for all eternity.

  He looks about the room.

  What a remarkably pleasant room. I feel at peace here. Safe from all danger. But please don’t be alarmed. I shan’t stay long. I never stay long, with others. They do not wish it. And that, for me, is a happy state of affairs. My only security, you see, my true comfort and solace, rests in the confirmation that I elicit from people of all kinds a common and constant level of indifference. It assures me that I am as I think myself to be, that I am fixed, concrete. To show interest in me or, good gracious, anything tending towards a positive liking of me, would cause in me a condition of the acutest alarm. Fortunately, the danger is remote.

  Pause

  I speak to you with this startling candour because you are clearly a reticent man, which appeals, and because you are a stranger to me, and because you are clearly kindness itself.

  Pause

  Do you often hang about Hampstead Heath?

  HIRST


  No.

  SPOONER

  But on your excursions .. however rare .. on your rare excursions .. you hardly expect to run into the likes of me? I take it?

  HIRST

  Hardly.

  SPOONER

  I often hang about Hampstead Heath myself, expecting nothing. I’m too old for any kind of expectation. Don’t you agree?

  HIRST

  Yes.

  SPOONER

  A pitfall and snare, if ever there was one. But of course I observe a good deal, on my peeps through twigs. A wit once entitled me a betwixt twig peeper. A most clumsy construction, I thought.

  HIRST

  Infelicitous.

  SPOONER

  My Christ you’re right.

  Pause

  HIRST

  What a wit.

  SPOONER

  You’re most acutely right. All we have left is the English language. Can it be salvaged? That is my question.

  HIRST

  You mean in what rests its salvation?

  SPOONER

  More or less.

  HIRST

  Its salvation must rest in you.

  SPOONER

  It’s uncommonly kind of you to say so. In you too, perhaps, although I haven’t sufficient evidence to go on, as yet.

  Pause

  HIRST

  You mean because I’ve said little?

  SPOONER

  You’re a quiet one. It’s a great relief. Can you imagine two of us gabbling away like me? It would be intolerable.

  Pause

  By the way, with reference to peeping, I do feel it incumbent upon me to make one thing clear. I don’t peep on sex. That’s gone forever. You follow me? When my twigs happen to shall I say rest their peep on sexual conjugations, however periphrastic, I see only whites of eyes, so close, they glut me, no distance possible, and when you can’t keep the proper distance between yourself and others, when you can no longer maintain an objective relation to matter, the game’s not worth the candle, so forget it and remember that what is obligatory to keep in your vision is space, space in moonlight particularly, and lots of it.

  HIRST

  You speak with the weight of experience behind you.

  SPOONER

  And beneath me. Experience is a paltry thing. Everyone has it and will tell his tale of it I leave experience to psychological interpreters, the wetdream world. I myself can do any graph of experience you wish, to suit your taste or mine. Child’s play. The present will not be distorted. I am a poet. I am interested in where I am eternally present and active.