Such Men Are Dangerous
Page 31
WILLIAM
Our present government?
TREVOR
Same answer.
WILLIAM
People with dark compulsions?
TREVOR
They need sympathy and treatment—obviously.
WILLIAM
Sex before marriage?
TREVOR
Oh, for God’s sake! Is that what all this was leading up to? Why didn’t you ask me outright, if you so much wanted to know?
WILLIAM
I didn’t. I don’t. But do you realize that you swore? You actually swore. So why won’t you carry it one step further? Be like Tom, tell me to fuck off. We would all respect you enormously for that.
TREVOR
Because I was brought up in a home which wasn’t like this one!…For better or worse.
WILLIAM
For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health…I’m sorry: I just keep on needling you, don’t I? I don’t mean to do it. Well, yes, I do. Well, no, I don’t. No I don’t, more than yes I do. Or vice versa. You see, in some former existence I must have been a lemming—and bits of it still stick, no matter how I try to put them to flight…Now that would make a good title, wouldn’t it? The Flight of the Lemming. Or do I mean The Fight of the Lemming? Have you ever heard of that Hitchcock film, Strangers on a Train? Well, as a child of about ten I was intrigued by the way they advertised it. They made it look as if a letter had been left out. Strangers became stranglers. Now flight becomes fight—well, in reverse, if you see what I mean. Where was I? Oh, yes. Apologizing for needling you. My whole life has been a constant battle against lemming-like instincts.
TREVOR
In fact—if it will ease your mind at all—I might as well tell you we haven’t. Not yet.
WILLIAM
Enormously. Haven’t what, though?
TREVOR
Had sex.
WILLIAM
No, I promise you, I should have noticed.
TREVOR
(Tolerant) Linda and I haven’t. I mean, we’ve talked about it and Linda understands—agrees it would be better to wait. Not that it’s any business of yours. But, still, if you’re going to find it of the least comfort…
WILLIAM
Comfort? Comfort? No, I find it of no bloody comfort at all.
TREVOR
In this house—it seems to me—you just can’t win.
WILLIAM
Oh, brother, you have said a mouthful. (Pause) Brother, can you spare a dime? No, not brother. Buddy.
TREVOR
I wish you wouldn’t drink any more.
WILLIAM
Oh, but you’re not your buddy’s keeper. And it’s of no bloody comfort at all.
TREVOR
I’m sorry
WILLIAM
If you really want to know, I’d rather think you’d had it off a hundred times already. Two hundred…You know, one gets so tired. I don’t think I’d want to live to be ninety. I really don’t. I mean, of course, if I wasn’t so shit scared of dying, and of my being on my own, and of nothing coming after…No. I would rather think it was all over. In the past. The wonder of it—well, the reported wonder of it—well and truly gone.
TREVOR
William, you’re wrong. I know there’s something that comes after. That’s what it’s all about. That’s when the wonder begins.
WILLIAM
I’ve always felt more comfortable in the past. Even when I was quite young—at school—on Mondays I would look back at the weekend as if at some halcyon time; regretfully; knowing that I really hadn’t made the most of it. That’s why I’m grounded in the Forties. Or the Fifties. Or even last week. The past is all soft—and secure—and I know that I got through it. But the future…well, that’s a completely different matter. Although she covers it up quite well—as I myself do, regarding my equal lack of basic contentment—I sometimes feel that Norah only barely tolerates me. You can’t blame her. In her place, I wouldn’t do that much. I’m mean and small-minded and devoid of charity. No love—no wisdom—no charity. What shall I do?
TREVOR
No love, no wisdom? That’s not what The Swimmer shows.
WILLIAM
The Swimmer is only a novel.
TREVOR
But based on experience. Without charity in your heart, you simply couldn’t have written it.
LINDA re-enters with a tray. As she does so TREVOR moves—almost guiltily—from his position on the arm of WILLIAM’S chair; and forgets to take the tray from her.
LINDA
Trevor, would you please move those magazines? Also the ashtray.
TREVOR
Oh, yes, of course. Sorry.
LINDA
Have you two been getting to know each other?
TREVOR
Yes, we’ve been…talking of this and that.
LINDA
Me, I hope, principally.
TREVOR
Of course.
LINDA
What else?
TREVOR
Oh, I don’t know. A bit about God. A bit about the Bomb. A bit about Eton.
LINDA
Has Dad been going all pretentious on you? What’s he been saying about Eton? He can be such a snob.
WILLIAM
It may be true I’m a snob but is it only snobbery? I used to be so envious of the kind who went to Eton, or Roedean. I always felt their lives must be such wholly charmed affairs, so civilized, smooth-running, so filled with pleasure and content. I still do…emotionally. Emotionally I feel there are millions of people who drift serenely on from one occasion to the next, exquisite in their top hats, always saying the wise and witty thing. No hang-ups, no migraines…no piles.
LINDA
(Pouring coffee) Dad, please don’t feel you have to entertain us.
WILLIAM
(Sings—from Gypsy) “Let me entertain you, let me make you smile…” I’m sorry. I was merely making small talk.
LINDA
Then concentrate on drinking this, instead.
WILLIAM
It’s a little sad if you don’t appreciate my conversation. There was another point I was hoping to make, sort of arising out of the last, if I wasn’t boring you too terrifically. I was going to say it’s exactly the same with sex. I always think that sex will be magical for other people—I mean, of course, so long as they’re young, or youngish, and physically attractive. No lack of responsiveness, passion or invention. And no problems whatever about staying the course. Lasting a good fifty minutes.
LINDA
Oh my God! Have you ever heard anything like it?
TREVOR
Well…In places, some of our vicar’s sermons get a trifle spicy.
LINDA
But why does he pick on fifty? I’d have thought sixty would have been a much rounder figure. And forty would have been more biblical. In the Bible they were always doing things for forty days and forty nights.
WILLIAM
They had staying power in those days. Trevor, can you last a good fifty minutes?
LINDA
Dad…
WILLIAM
But at least you can do fifty press-ups. You can do fifty press-ups?
TREVOR
I’ll tell you one thing: I certainly couldn’t do two-hundred-and-fifty.
WILLIAM
You know, Tom didn’t believe that. The young whatsit called me a liar.
LINDA
No, he didn’t.
WILLIAM
As good as.
TREVOR
Well…between father and son…It’s natural he should feel this need to belittle you.
WILLIAM
And vice versa?
TREVOR
Perhaps. But I suppose that depends on the father.
WILLIAM
You’re absolutely right—yes, I’m a rotten father. But why am I drinking this? I want another whisky. Trevor, old fellow, will you join me in another whisky? Keep me company? Please?
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TREVOR
All right, I will. Thank you.
WILLIAM
Lindy?
LINDA
A very small one—in my coffee.
TREVOR
By the way, you know, I didn’t say you were a rotten father.
WILLIAM
Shall I tell you something pathetic? Twenty years ago I wanted to be the very best father and the very best husband. Believe it or not, there was even a time when I wanted to be the very best human being. But that came earlier: I must have been somewhere near your own age. I went through a phase when I used to distribute largesse to old people on street benches if they looked as though they needed it: two or three pounds: I must have been insufferable.
TREVOR
Loving.
WILLIAM
Smug. Then something put an end to it. An old man stopped me in Baker Street and started some hard-luck story; he wanted the price of a cup of tea. I was delighted; this was almost what I lived for. I gave him everything I had. It was only about thirty shillings but he thought he’d won the jackpot. He could hardly speak. I remember his eyes, his old rheumy eyes. “God bless you,” he said, “I swear you’ll go to ’eaven.” It was a lovely moment for the pair of us. And then he stepped off the pavement—and was knocked down by a bus.
LINDA
Killed?
WILLIAM
Smashed and squashed and bloody. There was a ten-bob note that looked like crêpe paper at Christmas. I had nightmares about it for weeks. Occasionally still do.
TREVOR
At least he died a happy man. Perhaps there couldn’t have been a better moment for him to go.
WILLIAM
There was a child that I remember screaming. A woman threw up just behind me. I don’t know whether the vomit I found on my trousers was hers or mine. I was responsible for all of that.
LINDA
Nobody could possibly—ever—have said it was your fault.
WILLIAM
I saw it as a message straight from God; a punishment for my complacency. And then I was so disgusted—disgusted that I could seriously view the death of a human being, not to mention what it could have done to everyone who saw it, as just another step in my own education.
LINDA
Daddy, why have you never told us this?
WILLIAM
What does anyone ever tell anyone about the things which have helped shape him?
LINDA
The big things? Normally a lot.
WILLIAM
I suppose I didn’t want to pretend to a goodness I no longer possessed—even if I’d ever got close to it in the first place. And I didn’t want to lay myself open to the kind of sympathetic banalities for which I might have seemed to be asking. In fact, I just can’t think why I’m telling you tonight. Oh, yes, I can. (Holds up his whisky glass) But I don’t mean you to pass it on to your mother—or to Tom—or indeed to anyone.
LINDA
Obviously your…your parents knew?
WILLIAM
My mother had been dead for almost precisely a year. And I hadn’t seen my father for about ten.
TREVOR
Of course! There was that episode in The Swimmer, wasn’t there? Where Mark causes the neighbour’s death—Mrs Wolfit’s death—because he doesn’t do anything about the fault in the wiring; he’s dog-tired and intends to take care of it the following day. And then that spoilt and sulky six-year-old sees her mother being electrocuted and runs out of the house gibbering…
WILLIAM
(Almost accusingly) You’re very perceptive, aren’t you?
TREVOR
I loved that book. If I had written it, I think that whatever else I had done or had not done with my life…
WILLIAM
No. That’s the sort of thing I used to think: one book I could feel really proud of…! But of course it never stops there. How could it? You always want more.
TREVOR
Like what?
WILLIAM
Like recognition. Fame. Money. Friendship. The next book to be something more than ‘just a played-out repetition’.
TREVOR
Nonsense. I know that both the others also had very favourable reviews. Mainly.
WILLIAM
Mainly. But it’s always the one cruelly negative review you pay attention to. And—besides. There weren’t any film offers.
TREVOR
(Laughs) Oh, I’m sure those will turn up—in time! But to get back to The Swimmer, if I may…although I don’t want to become a bore on the subject…
WILLIAM
Possibly Lindy could find you boring. I assure you I never could.
TREVOR
Well, I so identified with Mark. There was that theme of friendship in the book. I remember the two quotes—both from Byron, weren’t they?—‘Friendship is Love without his wings!’ and that other one—wait a moment, on the surface not at all connected—yes!—‘A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry of some strong swimmer in his agony.’ I know that I’m repeating myself but I found it almost unbearably moving. That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it too soon after I got here. I wanted the moment to be absolutely right. It was a marvellous piece of writing. Horribly disturbing. The whole book was disturbing…but as for the electrocution of poor Mrs Wolfit…! I didn’t realize, though, that it was quite so central.
WILLIAM
Central? I don’t know that it was. I almost didn’t put it in. But I wasn’t strong enough to leave it out—not when it came to it.
TREVOR
Leave it out? But why should you have wanted to?
WILLIAM
I felt badly about it. I felt shifty.
TREVOR
I don’t understand.
WILLIAM
Because you write about things—transmute them—and almost they become all right, as though they’ve now fulfilled some higher purpose, justified their awfulness, through being developed into ‘art’. No tragedy that can’t be utilized! I can respect a lemming. But no one can respect a leech.
LINDA
Oh! You! You could manage to feel guilty over anything.
TREVOR
Couldn’t you say it was a form of exorcism?
WILLIAM
Is purging yourself more important than profiteering?
TREVOR
You were alive; the old man was dead. He wasn’t going to care. (WILLIAM gives a shrug) Did you yourself ever have ambitions of entering the Olympics as a swimmer?
WILLIAM
You mean, as opposed to the old man?
TREVOR
Stop it! You’re needling me!
WILLIAM
(Laughs) Lindy, I like this golden boy you’ve brought home. I really do like him.
LINDA
Needling? Is there something here I’m missing?
TREVOR
(To WILLIAM) Did you have such ambitions?
WILLIAM
Of course. I do a pretty mean dog paddle.
TREVOR
No, be serious.
WILLIAM
Yes, I had ambitions. I used to love swimming. But it was only a dream. In reality, I was far too lazy. All that training…Also, I used to love writing. And for that—well, between friends—you never had to leave your armchair.
TREVOR
‘Between friends’. And returning to that theme of friendship, I always hate it, too, that these days one man can’t show any deep affection for another without everybody instantly supposing…Even my mother, who’s normally one of the least cynical of people. I think that was the thing that really drew me to Mark in the first place: his constant hope that somehow, someday, there would materialize from somewhere this fellow who would turn out to be the sort of friend he’d always been longing for; the only proper friend he’d ever need. Somebody with whom he could make natural physical contact which wasn’t all tied up with…oh, I don’t know…
LINDA
All tied up with what?
TREVOR
Does one really have to spell it out?,,, Anyway, enough of being so earnest! Shall I go and fetch my bag out of the car?
WILLIAM
I’ll come with you. Give you a hand.
TREVOR
Thanks. Although it’s not that large a bag.
WILLIAM and TREVOR go. LINDA gathers up the coffee things and takes them out. NORAH enters, surprised to find the room empty. Sees the whisky and the soda water and goes to put them away. While doing so, suddenly breaks down. LINDA returns.
LINDA
Mum! What’s the matter?
NORAH
Oh, nothing. Nothing, darling. I’m just so very happy. Where is everybody?
LINDA
Getting Trevor’s not-very-large bag out of the car. How’s Tom?
NORAH
A bit better. A good night’s sleep should do the trick.
LINDA
Anyway, at the moment it’s not Tom I’m worried about…Is that really on the level: tears of joy?