the view, but it makes me feel ugly this summer for some
reason or other: - bitchy, a female devil. Chris: You'd like the view to be ugly to make you superior
to it? Mrs goforth [turning to him]: Why don't we sing that old
church hymn,
' From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral isle Everything is beautiful'... Chris: 'Man alone is vile.'
I98 THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE
mrs goforth: - Hmm. - Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand or a mouth on a mouth. Because, like Alex said once, 'Evil isn't a person: evil is a thing that comes sneaky-snaking into the heart of a person, and takes it over: a mean intruder, a squatter' Chris [crossing to her]: May I touch your hand, please? mrs goforth [as be does]: Your hand's turned cold, I've
shocked the warm blood out of it. Let me rub it back in. Chris: Your hand's cold, too, Mrs Goforth. mrs goforth: Oh, that's just-nervous tension, never mind that. - I'll tell you something, Chris, you came here at a time unusually favourable to you. Now we're going to talk turkey, at least, I'm going to talk turkey, you can talk ducks and geese but I am going to talk turkey, cold turkey. You've come here at a time when I'm restless, bored and shocked by the news of deaths of three friends in the States, one, two, three, like fire-crackers going off, right together almost, like rat-a-tat-tat blindfolded against the wall. -Well, you see I - [She moves down to the lower terrace.] - I had a bad scare last winter. I was visiting relatives I'd set up on a grand estate on Long Island when some little psychosomatic symptom gave me a scare. They made a big deal of it, had me removed by a seaplane to the East River where they had an ambulance waiting for me, and whisked me off to a - Know what I said when I was advised to go under the knife the next day? Ha, I'll tell you, ha ha! - Called my law firm and dictated a letter cutting them off with one dollar apiece in my will.... Chris [who has come down to her]: Mrs Goforth, are you still
afraid of- [He hesitates.] mrs goforth: Death - never even think of it.
[She takes his arm and they move down to a bench and sit.] chris: Death is one moment and life is so many of them. mrs goforth: A million billion of them if you think in
terms of a lifetime as rich as mine's been, Chris. chris: Yes, life is something, death's nothing. ... mrs goforth: Nothing, nothing, but nothing - I've had to refer to many deaths in my memoirs, - Oh, I don't think I'm immortal. I still go to sleep every night wondering if I'll
SCENE FIVE
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- wake up the next day ... [Coughs: gasps for breath.] - face that angry old lion.
chris: Angry old - ?
mrs goforth: - Lion!
chris: The sun? You think it's angry?
mrs goforth: Naturally, of course; looking down on - ?
- well, you know what it looks down on....
chris: It seems to accept and understand things today....
MRS goforth: It's just a big fire-ball that toughens the skin, including the skin of the heart.
chris: - How lovely the evenings must be here - when the fishing boats go out on the Gulf of Salerno with their little lamps shining.
mrs goforth: Well, they call this coast the Divina Costiera that means the divine coast, you know.
chris: Yes, I know - I suppose ...
mrs goforth: You suppose what?
chris: I suppose you dine on the terrace about the time the fishing boats go out with their little lamps and the stars come out of the -
mrs goforth: Firmament, call it the firmament, not the sky, it's much more classy to call it the firmament, baby. How about spring? You write about spring and live in it, you write about love in the spring, haven't you written love-poems for susceptible - patrons ? - Well! How many books of poems have you come out with?
chris: Just the one that I brought you.
mrs goforth: You mean you burnt out as a poet?
chris: - Pardon?
Mrs goforth: You mean you burnt out as a poet?
[chris laughs uncomfortably.] Why're you laughing ? I didn't say anything funny.
chris: I didn't know I was laughing. Excuse me, Mrs Goforth. But you are very - direct.
Mrs goforth: Is that shocking?
chris: No. - No, not really. In fact I like that about you.
Mrs goforth: Each time you give that little embarrassed laugh like I'd made you uncomfortable.
Chris: My nerves are -
2OO THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE
MRS goforth: Gone through like your list of suckers.
[mrs goforth sneezes and crosses away for another tissue.] Chris [standing]: Mrs Goforth - if you want me to go -mrs goforth: That depends. chris: - What does it depend on? mrs goforth: - Frankly, I'm very lonely up here this
summer.
Chris: - I can understand that.
MRS goforth: Now you're not stupid. You're attractive to me. You know that you are. You've deliberately set out to be attractive to me and you are. So don't be a free-loader.
[Pause.] chris: Mrs Goforth, I think you've been exposed to the
wrong kind of people and -
MRS goforth [cutting in]: I'm sick of moral blackmail! You know what that is. People imposing on you by the old, old trick of making you feel it would be unkind of you not to permit them to do it. In their hearts they despise you. So much they can't quite hide it. It pops out in sudden little remarks and looks they give you. Busting with malice -Because you have what they haven't. You know what some writer called it? 'A robust conscience, and the Viking spirit in life!'
Chris [crossing back on terrace]: Oh ? Is that what he called it? MRS GOFORTH [following]: He called it that, and I have it! I give away nothing, I sell and I buy in my life, and I've always wound up with a profit, one way or another. You came up that hill from the highway with an old book of poems that you got published ten years ago, by playing on the terrible, desperate loneliness of a rich old broken-hipped woman, who, all she could do, was pretend that someone still loved her.
chris: You're talking about Mrs Ferguson. MRS goforth: Yes, I am. chris [moving up away from her]: I made her walk again. She
published my poems.
mrs goforth: How long after she published your poems did you let go of her arm so she fell on the deck of a steamship and her hip broke again?
SCENE FIVE
201
chris: - I didn't let her go. She broke away from me,
[MRS goforth laughs uproariously.]
if you'll allow me to make a minor correction in the story. We were walking very slowly about the promenade deck of the Queen Mary, eight summers ago, more than a year after my poems were published. A young man called to her from a deck-chair that we'd just passed, and she wheeled around and broke away from my hand, and slipped and fell and her hip was broken again. Of course some malicious 'friends' blamed me, but - I wouldn't leave her.
mrs goforth: No? She was still your meal-ticket?
chris: Not at all.
mrs goforth: Who was?
chris [sitting]: - I was fashionable, then.
mrs goforth: Do you sit down while a lady is standing?
chris [springs up with a rather ferocious smile]: Sorry, won't you sit down 1
[His tone is so commanding, abruptly, that she does sit down in the chair he jerks out for her.]
- May I tell you something about yourself? It may seem presumptuous of me to tell you this but I'm going to tell you this: you're suffering more than you need to.
mrs goforth: I am -
Chris [cutting through her protest]: You're suffering from the worst of all human maladies, all afflictions, and I don't mean one of the body, I mean the thing people feel when they go from room to room for no reason, and then they go back from room to room for no reason, and then they go out for no reason and come back in for no reason -
mrs goforth: You mean I'm alone here, don't you? [chris takes hold of her hand.]
mrs goforth [snatching her hand away from him]: I'm working up here thi
s summer, working! ever heard of it? [A stage assistant appears in the wings as if she had shouted for him. He hands her a letter.]
This morning's mail brought me this! My London publisher's letter! 'Darling Flora: Your book of memoirs, Facts and a Figure ? will, in my opinion, rank with and possibly ? [Squints in the glare, unable to decipher the letter further.
2O2 THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE
He removes it from her trembling,jewelled hand, and completes the reading.]
Chris: '- rank with and possibly even out-rank the great Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past as a social documentation of two continents in three decades....' mrs goforth: Well?
chris: A letter like this should fall on a higher mountain. mrs goforth: Huh?
Chris: A letter like this should be delivered above the snowline of an Alpine peak because it's snow, a snow-job.
[She snatches it back from him.]
mrs goforth [raging]: For you, a blond beatnik, coming from Naples on foot up a goddam goat-path, wearing at this table a Japanese robe because dogs tore your britches, I think your presumption is not excusable, Mister. It lacks the excuse of much youth, you're not young enough for your moxey. This publisher's not a lover, a lover might snow me but this man's a business associate and they don't snow you, not me, not SISSY GOFORTH! They don't snow me - snow me! They don't get up that early in the morning -
[Her agitation somehow touches him: His smile turns warm again.] ? that they could - [laughs.] ? snow me.... [The stage assistants lean whispering together as they retire from the stage.] chris: Of course without having your publisher's advantage
of knowing Facts and a Figure ? mrs goforth: Nothing, not a word of it! Chris: No, not a word, but what I was going to say was that I think you need companionship: not just employees about you, up here, but - how often do you see old friends or new friends this summer, Mrs Goforth? Often or not so often? mrs goforth: Hell, all I have to do is pick up a phone to
crowd this mountain with -
chris: crowds? Is it that easy this summer? You're proud. You don't want to ask people up here that might not come, because they're pleasure-seekers, frantic choosers of silly little distractions, and - and -mrs goforth: 'and and' what?
SCENE FIVE
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chris: Your condition, the terrible strain of your work, makes you seem - eccentric, disturbing! ? To those sea-level, those lower than sea-level people....
mrs goforth: get to whatever you're leading
UP TO, WILL YOU!
chris: I notice you have trouble reading. I've been told I
have a good reading voice. MRS goforth: Most human voices are very monotonous to
me. Besides, I'm more interested in producing literature this
summer than having it read to me.
chris: Mmm, but you do need some agreeable companionship. mrs goforth: Right you are about that, but how do I know
your idea of agreeable companionship is the same as mine?
You purr at me like a cat, now, but a cat will purr at you
one minute and scratch your eyes out the next. [He leans back, smiling, working the sword up and down in its scabbard.]
I think you'd better take off that old sword-belt. chris: There's no buttons on the robe so without the belt on
it-
mrs goforth: Take it off you! chris: The robe? mrs goforth: The sword-belt. You grin and fiddle with the
hilt - the sword like you had - evil - intentions. chris: Oh. You suspect I'm a possible assassin? mrs goforth: Take it off, give it here! chris: All right: formal surrender, unconditional ... nearly.
[Takes the sword-belt off and hands it to her.] mrs goforth: OK. Robert E. Lee!: At Appomatox ...
[Hurls the sword-belt to the terrace tiles behind her.]
[A stage assistant darts out of the wings to remove it: the
other assistant laughs off stage.]
chris: Now what can I use for a sash to keep things proper? Mrs goforth: See if this goes around you, if being proper's
so important to you. [Hands him a brilliant scarf she wore about
her throat.]
[He turns upstage to tie the scarf about him. A phone is heard ringing, off.
2O4 THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE
blackie appears from behind the library screen.] mrs goforth: Who's calling, my broker again, with the
closing quotations ? blackie: The call's for Mr Flanders. chris: Me, for me? But who could know I'm up here! mrs goforth: Cut the bull, you got a call up here last night;
business is picking up for you. Chris: This is - mystifying! blackie: The phone's in the library. chris: Excuse me. [Crosses quickly behind the library screen.]
[mrs goforth crosses toward it but remains, listening, outside it.]
Chris's voice [behindscreen]: Pronto, sonopronto. - Madelyn! -How are you, how's your dear mother? - Oh, my God! - I meant to come straight down there but - was it, uh, what they call peaceful? Oh, I'm so glad, I prayed so hard that it would be! And I'm so relieved that it was. I did so long to be with you but had to stop on the way. And you? Will you be all right? - Yes, I know, expected, but still I could be some use in making the necessary arrangements? I'm at Flora Goforth's place, but if you could send a car to pick me up I could - Oh? - Well, Madelyn, all I can say is accept it. - Bless you, goodbye: accept it.
[mrs goforth is shaken: she moves back to the table as if she had received a personal shock.
chris comes back out: at the same moment, church-bells ring in a village below the mountain.] chris: - Church-bells? In the village? mrs goforth: Yes, appropriate, aren't they? Ringing right
on a dead cue....
chris: - I just received news that's - shocked me. ... mrs goforth: Another name you have to scratch off the
list? chris: - Did you say 'list'?
[mrs goforth smiles at him cunningly, fiercely.]
mrs goforth: - I went to a spiritualist once. She said to
me, 'I hear many dead voices calling, Flora, Flora.' I knew
she was a fake, then, since all my close friends call me Sissy.
I said, 'Tell them to mind their own business, play their
SCENE FIVE
205
gold harps and mind their own harp-playing, Sissy Goforth's not ready to go forth yet and won't go forth till she's
ready----'
[The bell stops ringing.
chris extends a hand to her.]
MRS goforth: What are you reaching out for?
chris: Your hand, if I may, Mrs Goforth. [He has taken hold of it.]
mrs goforth: Hold it but don't squeeze it, the rings cut my fingers.
chris: I'm glad we've talked so frankly, so quickly today. The conversation we had at the ball at the Waldorf in 1950 was a long conversation but not as deep as this one.
mrs goforth: Who said anything deep? I don't say anything deep in a conversation, not this summer, I save it for my memoirs. Did you say anything deep, in your opinion? If you did, it escaped me, escaped my notice completely. Oh, you've known Swanees. Excuse me: Swamis. You've been exposed to the - the intellectual scene and it's rubbed off on you a little, but only skin-deep, as deep as your little blond beard....
chris: Perhaps I used the wrong word.
[She places a cigarette in her mouth and waits for him to light it. He turns deliberately away from her and places afoot on the low balustrade, facing seaward.] ~ This 'wine-dark sea', it's the oldest sea in the world....
mrs goforth: What deep remark was that?
chris: Only the sea down there has said anything deep: boom! ? that's deep. Looking down there, do you know what I see?
mrs goforth: The sea.
Chris: Yes, and a fleet of Roman triremes, those galleys with three banks of oars, rowed by slaves, commanded by commanders headed for conquests. Out for loot. Boom! Out for conquering, pillaging and collecting more slaves. Boom! Here's where the whole show started, it's the oldest sea in the Western
world, Mrs Goforth, this sea called the Mediterranean Sea, which means the middle of earth, was the cradle of life, not the grave but the cradle of pagan and
2O6 THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE
Christian - civilizations, this sea, and its connecting river, that old water-snake, the Nile.
MRS goforth: I've been on the Nile. No message. Couple of winters ago I stayed at the Mena House, that hotel under the pyramids. I could see the pyramids, those big - big calcified fools-caps from my breakfast balcony. No message. Rode up to 'em on a camel so I could say I'd done the whole bit. Chris: No message?
mrs goforth: No message except you can get seasick on a camel, yep, you can get mighty seasick on the hump of a camel. Went inside those old king-size tombstones. Chris: No message inside them, either? MRS goforth: No message except the Pharaohs and families had the idiotic idea they were going to wake up hungry and thirsty and had provided themselves with breakfasts which had gone very stale and dry and the Pharaohs and families were still sound asleep, ho ho....
[He still had his back to her: she is obviously annoyed by his lost attention to her.]
And if you look this way you'll 'notice I've got a cigarette in my mouth and I'm waiting for you to light it. Didn't that old Sally Ferguson bitch teach you to light a cigarette for a lady?
Chris [facing her]: She wasn't a bitch unless all old dying ladies are bitches. She was dying, and scared to death of dying, which made her a little - eccentric.... [He has picked up mrs goforth's diamond-studded lighter. He lights her cigarette but doesn't return the lighter to the table: tosses it in the palm of his hand.] mrs goforth: Thanks. Now put it down.
[He sits down, smiling, on the low balustrade: there has been a marked change in his surface attitude toward her: the deferential air has gone completely] I meant my Bulgari lighter, not your - backside !
[He studies the lighter as if to calculate its value. Pause.] - If you don't put that lighter back down on the table I'm going to call for Rudy! You know Rudy, you've made his acquaintance, I think. Chris: If I don't put it down on the table but in my pocket
SCENE FIVE
2O7
and if I ran down the goat-path with it - how fast can Rudy run?
MRS goforth: How fast can you run? Could you out-run the dogs. Yesterday you didn't out-run the dogs.
chris: That was - up-hill, on the other side of your mountain. I think I could get down this side, yes, by the -funicular, I could operate it.
MRS goforth: Can you out-run a bullet?
chris: Oh, would you have Rudy shoot at me for this lighter?
mrs goforth: You bet I would. That's a very valuable lighter.
[chris laughs and tosses the lighter on the table]
chris: - Hmmm. - On a parapet over the Western world's oldest sea, the lady that owns it had a gangster -
mrs goforth: The bodyguard of a syndicate gangster 1
chris: Yes, the lady that owns it had her bodyguard shoot down a - what? - burnt-out poet who had confiscated a diamond-studded lighter because he was unfed and hungry, he'd been on a five-day fast for - non-secular reasons and it had upset his reason.
[mrs goforth rings the bell on the table.
chris seizes her hand and wrests the bell away from it. She rises from the table and shouts: 'RUDY!']
chris [louder]: RUDY!
mrs goforth: You couldn't get away with it!
chris: Oh, yes, I could: if I wanted. [He tosses the lighter back on the table with a mockinggrin.]