The Retreat from Moscow

by William Nicholson

  W I L L I A M N I C H O L S O N

  The Retreat from Moscow

  William Nicholson is the author of the play Shadowlands, which was made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. He received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for Shadowlands and has written numerous other screenplays as well as a forthcoming novel, The Society of Others, and a trilogy of children’s fantasy adventure novels. He lives in London.

  ALSO BY WILLIAM NICHOLSON

  PLAYS

  Shadowlands

  Map of the Heart

  Katherine Howard

  NOVEL

  The Society of Others

  FOR CHILDREN

  The Wind Singer

  (Book One in the Wind on Fire Trilogy)

  Slaves of the Mastery

  (Book Two in the Wind on Fire Trilogy)

  Firesong

  (Book Three in the Wind on Fire Trilogy)

  PREFACE

  Many years ago, when I was nineteen years old and in my first term at college, I fell in love. It took me most of that first term to pluck up the courage to reveal my love, but when at last I did, I found to my astonishment that I was loved in return. I realised then that I had found the one person in all the world who could make my unfinished life complete. I marvelled at my good fortune. As a lover, I was faithful and devoted. I wanted her happiness more than my own, because so long as I made her happy she would go on loving me, and so long as she went on loving me, I had all I wanted in life.

  She left me in the summer term. I know now that the demand I made of her—that she make my life complete—was illegitimate, and tiresome. The love that left me as a gift landed on her as a burden. She fled.

  I was devastated. The pain was so intense I could barely move, and certainly had no desire to speak. I flinched from the sight of anything that brought her back to me: places I had been with her, clothes I had worn with her, music I had played with her. Since this added up to just about everything, I entered a kind of blank of my own making.

  In those days, my home was still my parents’ house, and there I hid myself away. My mother saw my unhappiness and wanted to help me, so she reached out to me in the only way she knew: through poetry. My mother has loved poetry all her life, and has a remarkable memory for poems. She gathered together all the poems she knew on the subject of lost love, and made me an anthology to show me that others before me had suffered as I suffered. She typed out the poems and clipped them into a ring binder and gave them to me. I was not grateful. I didn’t even read them. In the isolation of my pain, I refused consolation.

  Time passed. I moved on to other relationships, other mistakes. And my parents’ marriage began to disintegrate. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I was watching helplessly as my good and gentle father found out that he could no longer live with my strong and loving mother. Caught between them, only wanting the pain to stop, I witnessed the devastation of two lives rending after thirty years of union. Good people in the pursuit of good lives can inflict torment too. How could I blame either of them? I understood too much.

  My father left home. My mother was broken in half. A common enough occurrence, not the stuff of tragedy. Meanwhile, I was becoming a writer.

  Writing is an odd enterprise. Why take the fragments of lived experience and rearrange them in some new pattern? Why tell stories at all? For a while I supposed the urge came from a need to tidy up the mess of life, to impose meaning on the meaningless. More recently I have come to see that I am in the grip of a greater drive, which I name with some hesitation, because it seems too grand. I am trying, clumsily, to reach the truth of my life. This is hard. Like everyone else, I tell lies all the time, most of all to myself. I lie about who I am and what I want and how much I hurt. I lie to survive. I tell a story of myself that I hope will make others love and admire me. But more and more, I write to strip away these lies, and say, Look, this is how it really is. What then? I look. I recognise the truth. That’s all. No moral. No lesson. No consolation. And yet it’s profoundly satisfying. This is the experience the great writers give me. It’s what I’m trying to do in my own work.

  One day I came upon the anthology my mother had made for me all those years ago, and read it, and was overwhelmed. Of course now I found in it the dreams and echoes of her own life, not my own callow affair. So I decided to write about the failure of my parents’ marriage. This play is the result. It’s not a documentary. I don’t really know what happened inside their hearts and minds. But I know what’s been going on inside my own heart and mind, so I know about the characters of my play, Alice and Edward and Jamie, because they’re all me. I’m trying to tell the truth about the pain of loving badly, because I too have loved badly.

  Both my parents are still alive, now well into their eighties. My father has found the life he wanted. My mother remains gallant and wise, and alone. She finds life difficult, but she endures. Both my parents have read my play, and wish it every success, but feel remote from it. As for me: I was forty before I married, and more honest than I used to be. My marriage has made me deeply happy. We have three children, now growing up. We do our best to keep telling each other the truth about what we want. My wife says she has my parents to thank for our happiness. So maybe some lessons can be learned.

  William Nicholson

  October 24, 2003

  The Retreat from Moscow was first produced at the Chichester Festival Theatre in October 1999.

  It was first produced for the New York stage on October 23, 2003, at the Booth Theatre by Susan Quint Gallin, Stuart Thompson, Ron Kastner, True Love Productions, Mary Lu Roffe, and Jam Theatricals.

  The cast was as follows:

  EDWARD John Lithgow

  JAMIE Ben Chaplin

  ALICE Eileen Atkins

  Directed by Daniel Sullivan

  Set design by John Lee Beatty

  Costume design by Jane Greenwood

  Lighting design by Brian MacDevitt

  Original music and sound design by John Gromada

  Production stage managed by Roy Harris

  ACT ONE

  The stage in darkness.

  Two armchairs. A table with three upright chairs. A sink, cooker, fridge, and cupboard.

  Three people sit motionless in the darkness. EDWARD, a schoolteacher in his late fifties, in one armchair. His wife, ALICE, about the same age, in the other. Their son, JAMIE, in his early thirties, at the table.

  All three actors remain onstage throughout. When one character is no longer present in a scene, he becomes still, and the lights go down on him. The audience can still see him, but the other characters cannot. The shadowed actor sits or stands, suspended in time, and does not react to what takes place around him, until the lights return him to the action.

  Lights come up on EDWARD. He reads from a book.

  EDWARD: “As men dropped in the intense cold, their bodies were stripped of clothing by their own comrades, and left naked in the snow, still alive.”

  (Lights come up on JAMIE, sipping at a mug of coffee, listening.)

  “Others, having lost or burned their shoes, were marching with bare feet and legs. The frozen skin and muscles were exfoliating themselves, like successive layers of wax statues. The bones were exposed, but being frozen, were completely insensitive to pain. Some officers, suffering from diarrhoea, found themselves unable to do their trousers up. I myself helped one of these unfortunates to put his asterisk-asterisk-asterisk back, and button himself up. He was crying like a child.”

  JAMIE: I wonder what word he used.

  EDWARD: Who knows? Something French.

  JAMIE: Yes. I suppose it would be.

  EDWARD: A surprisingly large number of the officers kept di
aries. Over a hundred and fifty have survived. Remarkable, really, given the conditions on the retreat.

  JAMIE: How many died?

  EDWARD: Napoleon marched four hundred fifty thousand men across the Niémen. Less than twenty thousand came back. How was the drive down?

  JAMIE: Not bad. I left just after five.

  (Both check their watches, making the same movement.)

  EDWARD: An hour and three-quarters. I wouldn’t have thought there was that much traffic on a Saturday evening.

  JAMIE: It took twenty minutes just getting through Tunbridge Wells.

  EDWARD: Tunbridge Wells is slow.

  JAMIE: I think I might have a bath.

  EDWARD: Yes. Do.

  JAMIE: Wash off the London grime.

  (He rises, and takes his coffee mug to the sink.)

  So everything’s alright, then?

  EDWARD: Much as ever. And you?

  JAMIE: Busy.

  EDWARD: Let’s see if we can find a moment. Before you go back.

  JAMIE: Sure.

  (EDWARD returns to his book. Lights go down on him.)

  (Lights come up on ALICE. JAMIE walks across to stand behind her chair.)

  ALICE: It seems to me as I grow older that people become ruder. They say nobody’s taught manners any more, but I don’t think it’s that. I think middle-aged women have become invisible. You have to be young, or rich, or beautiful, to be noticed at all. I don’t quite know how to cope with it, except by getting angry, which I do more or less all the time these days. I’ve been having trouble with my printer. Did I tell you?

  JAMIE: No. What’s the problem?

  ALICE: I dropped it.

  JAMIE: Ah. They don’t like that.

  ALICE; Sudden and swift and light as that

  The ties gave,

  And he learned of finalities

  Besides the grave.

  JAMIE: Auden?

  ALICE: Robert Frost. A strange little poem called “The Impulse.” I’m putting it in my anthology under Lost Love.

  JAMIE: How’s the anthology coming along?

  ALICE: Well, it isn’t, really, until I can get the printer fixed. Did you come down alone?

  JAMIE: Yes. Have you got someone to look at it?

  ALICE: Darling, there isn’t anyone. People don’t fix things any more, they throw them away.

  I rang every shop in the Yellow Pages, but all they wanted to do was sell me a new one. I found a man at last who said, rather grudgingly, “Bring it in,” so I drove all the way to this hellish industrial estate, where there was this hellish computer warehouse, and I lugged the damned machine in through one of those ferocious doors that try to crush you, and there was one little man, all alone in this vast space, sitting at a keyboard, going tick-tick-tick. No attempt to help me as I struggled in. Not a word. Not a look. After a while I said, “I’m a customer. Aren’t you supposed to serve me?” He looked up and said, “Well?” Just, “Well?” I said, “My printer’s not working.” I showed him the page I’d brought in to explain the problem. I’d been trying to print out a Browning poem, the one that ends—

  Just when I seemed about to learn!

  Where is the thread now? Off again!

  The old trick! Only I discern—

  Infinite passion, and the pain

  Of finite hearts that yearn.

  That’s going into Lost Love, too. It’s turning out to be by far the largest section in the anthology. Anyway, the printer had left off the first two words or so of every line, which made the poem rather modern, but not as good. The man in the warehouse said, “That’s not a printer problem. The printer’s fine. It’s what you’re doing that’s wrong. You’re the problem.” He actually said it, in those very words. “You’re the problem.” “How do you know?” I said. “You haven’t looked at the printer. You haven’t even switched it on.” “I know,” he said, “because if a printer prints wrong, it’s not the printer’s fault.” “Are you the printer’s mother?” I asked him. “Are you telling me that printers never go wrong?” “I’m telling you,” he said, “that if the printer’s printing, then the printer’s fine.” “But it’s not fine,” I said. “It’s not printing right. Well, actually, it is printing right, but it’s not printing left.” He didn’t have an answer to that. He went back to going tick-tick-tick. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m not finished. I want you to look at my printer.” He paid me no attention whatsoever. So I picked up my printer, to take it over to where he sat, and I dropped it.

  It made a kind of tinkling noise. He looked up when he heard that, and smiled a cruel little smile, and said, “Would you like me to sell you a new printer?” I was so angry I wanted to hit him. So I said to him, “You’re the kind of man who doesn’t love anybody and nobody loves you. You’ve got no friends, and your wife hates you, and your children never talk to you.” He looked quite surprised for a moment or two. Then he said, “Do you know me from somewhere?”

  JAMIE: Oh, Ma.

  ALICE: What do you think I should do?

  JAMIE: Buy another printer.

  ALICE: I feel such a fool.

  JAMIE: Is it alright if I have a bath?

  ALICE: Yes, of course, darling. When are you going back?

  JAMIE: After lunch tomorrow.

  ALICE: Thank you for coming. I know how busy you are.

  JAMIE: Don’t be silly.

  (Lights fade on JAMIE, and come up on EDWARD. He looks up from his book.)

  EDWARD: They found Moscow empty, so they plundered it, which meant they were followed on the retreat by an enormous baggage train. This in turn was followed by raiding parties of Cossacks. When men were wounded, or frostbitten, and could no longer walk, orders were given to carry them on the baggage wagons. This slowed the wagons down, of course, and reduced the chances that the baggage train would make it to Smolensk.

  So the wagon-drivers looked out for especially rutted ground, and then drove fast over it, so that the wounded would be jolted off the wagons, without anyone noticing. Once left behind on the road, they froze to death. This was understood to be an accident. It was an unspoken conspiracy, by the strong, against the weak. Nobody looked back.

  ALICE: It’s horrible, Edward. Why do you go on reading it?

  EDWARD: It is horrible. But it’s curiously compelling, too. I suppose because it exposes the way human beings behave in extremis. When it’s a matter of survival, people show no mercy.

  ALICE: What utter rot. History is full of people laying down their lives for others. What about Jesus Christ?

  EDWARD: Oh, well. Jesus Christ.

  ALICE: Don’t just sit there and say, “Oh well, Jesus Christ.”

  EDWARD: Yes, but he was God. I mean, he knew he’d rise again.

  ALICE: What difference does that make?

  EDWARD: Well, he would have known it wasn’t the end.

  ALICE: So you think that made it easy for him?

  EDWARD: No, not quite that.

  ALICE: You try being crucified. See how you like it.

  EDWARD: Well, of course, I wouldn’t.

  ALICE: Then stop talking such rot. Honestly, Edward, I hope you don’t talk rot like that in your Religious Studies classes. Has Jamie said anything to you?

  EDWARD: About what?

  ALICE: About anything.

  EDWARD: He told me how long it had taken him to drive down.

  ALICE: He can’t have.

  EDWARD: Why not?

  ALICE: Because it’s such a stupid and pointless thing to talk about. Why would he say anything so ridiculously dull?

  EDWARD: I asked him.

  ALICE: You asked him?

  EDWARD: Yes.

  ALICE: You asked him how long it had taken him to drive down here?

  EDWARD: Something like that.

  ALICE: Why? Do you care?

  EDWARD: People have conversations like that. It has its uses.

  ALICE: Why? What uses?

  EDWARD: Oh, I don’t know. Settling down. That sort of thing.


  ALICE: Edward, Jamie is your son. Your only child. You see him maybe once every three months. And all you can think of to say to him is, “How long did you take to drive down?”

  EDWARD: He’s only just got here. As you say, we haven’t seen him for some time. You have to start somewhere.

  ALICE: Why not ask him if he’s got a girlfriend? When’s he going to get married? What’s happening about grandchildren?

  EDWARD: I can’t ask him that.

  ALICE: All you have to do is give him an opening, and if he’s got something to say, he’ll say it. He’s thirty-two, you know.

  EDWARD: Yes. I know.

  (He puts a bookmark in his book, puts it down, and rises.)

  Cup of tea?

  ALICE: He’s mentioned a girl called Carrie a couple of times. I wonder what happened to her?

  EDWARD: He’s never mentioned her to me.

  ALICE: I can’t help worrying about him. Do you think he’s happy? He used to laugh so much when he was little, and now he doesn’t laugh, really. I think living alone is bad for people.

  EDWARD: I’m not sure that I agree. I think he’s happy in that flat of his.

  ALICE: Do you? All on his own?

  EDWARD: Well, there’s that, of course. But he has it the way he wants it. No washing up to speak of. You use a plate, wash it, and there it is, ready to use again. You don’t run out of milk, because you’re the only one drinking it, so you know just how much there is left in the fridge. You can leave your book open on the table, and never lose your place. Just little things, I know, but they have their value.

  ALICE: You sound as if you envy him.

  EDWARD: Perhaps a part of me does.

  ALICE: Well, it’s a part of you you have to fight. It’s not good for anyone, hiding in a hole and having everything be always the same. That’s why you need me. Think what you would have missed if it wasn’t for me. You’d never have gone to India, for a start.

  EDWARD: That’s true.

  ALICE: You know what we should do? We should go back to India for our golden wedding. I know it’s not for ages. We could save up.

  EDWARD: We’d be far too old. I’d be seventy-five.