The Habit of Art: A Play

  Boy Um, sir, what does ‘pinkie’ mean? Is it rude?

  Britten No. I wouldn’t ask you to sing it if it were. It’s what Americans call the little finger. Happy?

  Boy Sir.

  Britten Let’s try it again and just make the consonants clear.

  Fades.

  Carpenter That afternoon in 1972 I had gone to interview Auden in Oxford at the Brewhouse in Christ Church, an outbuilding of the college converted into lodgings for one of its most distinguished sons. Spool back half an hour and I am waiting outside with my tape recorder ready to interview the great poet. Only he’s not here…just a couple cleaning his rooms.

  Kay And Henry is reading Boyle and I’m reading May.

  Author Why?

  Kay Because Penny and Brian are in the Chekhov matinee.

  Auden’s scout, Mr Boyle, in shirtsleeves and apron, though with collar and tie, is making ritual and ineffectual attempts to tidy the room that is both messy and bleak. Boyle played by Henry, May by Kay.

  Boyle is expressionless, emptying ash from various receptacles into a bucket.

  Boyle Jesus Christ!

  I was in the Western Desert.

  Tobruk.

  Ben-fucking-ghazi.

  Where were you, Mr Auden?

  May, a middle-aged woman, has come on in outdoor coat and shopping bag.

  Boyle picks up a mouldy soup bowl and shows it to May. She picks up a cloth.

  May Dishcloth?

  Boyle His vest…

  Boyle takes the vest, puts it by the sink and retrieves a pair of trousers that are plainly smelly.

  May Canon Claude’s were the same.

  Boyle Canon Claude was eighty-five.

  May (referring to soup bowl) I’ll rinse that out.

  Boyle I wouldn’t. Where do you think he pees?

  She smells the basin as Boyle puts the trousers in the bedroom.

  May The dirty bugger.

  Boyle What I’d like to know is where does he wash his hands after he has washed his hands.

  Not that he makes a secret of it.

  They were all in Common Room last week after Founder’s Dinner, sitting down to their port and Madeira, walnuts and whatnot. There’s the silver out and the candles and the wine’s going round and the chocolates. At which point our friend turns to the Waynflete Professor of Moral Philosophy and asks him if he pees in the basin. And when he says he doesn’t he says, ‘I don’t believe you.’ This is the Waynflete Professor of Moral Philosophy. ‘I don’t believe you.’ He says, ‘Well, I pee in the basin. Everybody does.’ One night – because it’s happened several times – one night it’s the Vice Chancellor he’s asking where he does his wee-wees.

  And he’s got another topic in the same department. Toilet paper.

  May Toilet paper?

  Boyle He’s got it into his head that nobody should use more than one piece of toilet paper.

  May What for? He must be nicely off. One sheet of toilet paper. What must his underpants be like?

  Boyle Mrs Ridsdale. There may not be underpants.

  A knock.

  Boyle doesn’t answer.

  Another knock and then the door cautiously opens.

  Stuart Hello?

  It’s a young man, who comes in tentatively smiling.

  Mr – (He looks at a piece of paper.) Mr Auden? (Which he pronounces Owden.)

  Boyle Auden. Why?

  Stuart I’m supposed to be here at ten past. On the dot.

  Boyle So you’re early.

  Stuart Well, I’m not late. Is it you?

  Boyle Do I look like an ex-Professor of Poetry?

  Fitz You do, actually. That’s just what you do look like.

  Kay Fitz.

  Stuart So he’s not here?

  Boyle Apparently not.

  Stuart I’ll wait then. (He sits down.)

  Boyle You can’t wait here. We’re just going.

  May Are you an undergraduate?

  Stuart No.

  Boyle You could be anybody. He has books. Papers. And there’s a typewriter somewhere.

  May He can’t just leave you, not with a typewriter. What are you, then?

  Stuart Me? I’m freelance.

  Boyle My advice to you would be to go away. Try later. Sit on a seat somewhere.

  May There are seats in the Meadows. I often sit there.

  Stuart If he comes can you tell him I’ve been?

  May There are more seats in Broad Walk. Then there’s the Botanic Gardens. Nice seats there.

  Boyle We can’t tell him. We’re going in a minute.

  May Or Corpus. You could sit in Corpus. Some lovely seats in Corpus.

  Stuart is baffled, but goes.

  He looked a nice enough boy.

  Boyle Yes. They often do. I’ve seen him before. Two or three times. Round Gloucester Green.

  May Waiting for a bus?

  Boyle Waiting for something.

  May At five o’clock in the afternoon?

  Boyle What has time got to do with it?

  May But Mr Auden’s been Professor of Poetry.

  Boyle He’s been professor of putting his knob in people’s gobs for longer than that.

  May You’re a man of the world, Mr Boyle.

  They are going.

  Boyle In this college? You have to be.

  Carpenter When Auden left his New York apartment for the last time someone in his building was practising ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’ on the saxophone. An omen, one might think, but not really; as the Brewhouse is not home and never will be. It’s a room that has never made it into literature and one on which its celebrated tenant never wasted any words. Still, poets give voice to the inarticulate universe so it should not seem strange if in the absence of the poet his furniture should take this opportunity to compare notes.

  Kay Only Stephen hasn’t worked out quite how to do this yet. It’s usually Penny and Brian, so bear with us.

  Fitz No chance, author, of my coming in on ‘it’s a room that has never made it into literature’?

  Author And cutting the rest, you mean. Why?

  Fitz Do we need the talking furniture? I know I’m old-fashioned, but why does the furniture talk?

  Author This is a poet. The world talks and everything in it.

  Fitz Yes, I can see the idea. And I love the idea. But the bed talking, for instance. It’s barmy.

  ASM (brightly) I know, there could be video!

  Which is not well received.

  Kay Yes, thank you. Anyway, preciouses, this is what we’re doing at the moment. Tom, darling.

  Flourish at the piano.

  The Furniture is played by Stage Management, standing in for Penny and Brian.

  Mirror

  I am a mirror where his squalid reflection

  He, shaving, subjects to indifferent inspection.

  Morning by morning I see that face,

  Dustily return its gaze.

  Clint-divided, crumpled, crazed

  Like the limestone he elsewhere praised.

  The razor’s journey like a polar trek

  Over crevice and chasm and bleeding neck.

  Painfully scraping the soapy blizzard,

  That shaking hand on his withered gizzard.

  Chair

  I am a mirror where his squalid reflection

  He, shaving, subjects to indifferent inspection.

  Morning by morning I see that face,

  Dustily return its gaze.

  Clint-divided, crumpled, crazed

  Like the limestone he elsewhere praised.

  The razor’s journey like a polar trek

  Over crevice and chasm and bleeding neck.

  Painfully scraping the soapy blizzard,

  That shaking hand on his withered gizzard.

  Bed

  I am the bed that he does not share.

  Does anything happen, it happens elsewhere.

  A creature of habit, he sleeps on his right,

  The one time he doesn?
??t he dies in the night.

  But mine are not the sheets of that distinction.

  Here is not the place of his extinction.

  Auden (off) Come up.

  Door

  He comes, he comes, we’ve had our lease.

  This inanimate colloquy must now cease.

  Clock

  Not yet, you fools with your fatuous rhyme,

  I rule here. I am the time.

  Metre, rhythm, scansion, verse.

  His life is ruled by verse’s curse.

  All

  Time. Time. Time.

  Auden, in slippers and carrying a plastic bag, comes in, leaving the door open. He picks up the telephone.

  Auden It’s Mr Auden. Should anyone call for me send them straight through. (He calls out.) Come up.

  He then goes to the washbasin, pees. A young man comes in.

  Did we speak on the phone? Stuart?

  Carpenter Humphrey.

  Fitz Were the slippers round-the-clock?

  Author They were. He had corns.

  Fitz It’s not important.

  Do I mime the martinis?

  ASM rushes on with props.

  ASM Sorry.

  Kay (to Fitz) I know, I know.

  ASM Will you want any of the trimmings?

  Fitz Like what?

  ASM Cocktail cherry. Umbrellas?

  Author (anguished) NO.

  Fitz The author says no.

  ASM I thought that was the purpose of martinis.

  Auden I’ve been to a funeral, though nobody warned me that in Oxford the crematorium is practically in High Wycombe. I thought I’d take a bus, only when I gave him my travel card the conductor said I couldn’t use it here. I said, why? He said because this wasn’t New York. I don’t remember bus conductors being such pedants. I’d only mounted the conveyance out of a mistaken sense of economy. I shan’t want the massage.

  Carpenter is mystified.

  Whoever I spoke to on the phone said there was massage. I don’t want it.

  Carpenter I don’t do it.

  Auden What do you do? The funeral service was unspeakable. Barbarous. Whatever happened to ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’? Instead of which there was a lot of twaddle about the deceased having just gone next door.

  Auden has been making martinis during this. He now puts two brimming martinis on the table.

  (As he takes one of the martinis.) Will you want that one?

  Carpenter What is it?

  Auden Martini.

  Carpenter Is it going begging?

  Auden By no means. It’s what you would call ‘spoken for’.

  Carpenter By whom?

  Auden Guess. How much will I be paying you?

  Carpenter Me?

  Auden You sound well-educated.

  Carpenter I suppose.

  Auden And also middle class. As a young man I used to think the lower classes were not fully persons and ought to go to bed when asked.

  Carpenter What did they think?

  Auden I never enquired.

  A clock begins to strike the half-hour.

  Auden Here we go. Take off your trousers.

  Carpenter What for?

  Auden What do you think? Come along, it’s half past.

  Carpenter What am I being asked to do?

  Auden You aren’t being asked to do anything. You’re being paid. This is a transaction. I am going to suck you off.

  Carpenter But I’m with the BBC.

  Auden Really? Well, that can’t be helped. Ideally I would have preferred someone who was more a son of the soil, but it takes all sorts. In New York one of the rent boys worked at the Pierpont Morgan Library.

  Carpenter I am not a rent boy. I was at Keble.

  Auden I see. Not a rent boy. Pity. I should have known. The proprietor of the agency – ‘pimp’ would I suppose be the spade-calling word – described you on the phone as ‘chunky’. He sounded Australian. That is often the case with what might be called the ancillary caring services…dental hygiene, physiotherapy, the minding of old people, the massaging of middle-aged men…These not undistasteful tasks seem to come more naturally to those from Down Under.

  Well, at least you haven’t brought any of your poetry to read…have you?

  Carpenter It can wait. Of course. (Taking out his tape recorder.) I understand now about the drinks, and the time. As you wrote in City without Walls:

  ‘So obsessive a ritualist

  a pleasant surprise

  makes him cross.

  Without a watch

  he would never know when

  to feel hungry or horny.’

  Auden (cutting him off ) Yes, quite.

  Carpenter has taken out a small tape recorder and put it on the table. Auden regards it with distaste.

  Carpenter Mr Auden, how do you feel to be back in Oxford? Is it like coming home?

  Auden The college has been very kind. I have everything I need, but home? No. Still, I feel safer here than in New York. Just before I left the phone rang and a voice said, ‘We are going to castrate you and then kill you.’

  Carpenter So what did you do?

  Auden I said, ‘I think you have the wrong number,’ and put the phone down.

  Carpenter You’ve probably been asked this before. Why…

  Auden…did we go to America in 1939?

  We went to America because England was too cosy. It was family. And though I like my family I don’t want to live with them all the time.

  Carpenter But one does want to be with them when they’re in trouble.

  Auden The thirties were over; now it was war and I didn’t want to be the Laureate of Winston Churchill. Besides, nothing I ever wrote in the thirties saved one Jew from extinction or shortened the war by five seconds.

  The truth is, I stayed in America and did not come back when war was declared, not to save my own skin, but because I had fallen in love with Chester Kallman.

  Carpenter Why did you not say that at the time?

  Auden That I had fallen in love? I would have been put in prison.

  Carpenter Are you writing?

  Auden Am I dead?

  I work.

  I have the habit of art.

  Carpenter Anything in the pipeline?

  Auden Hardy would be the model. An old tree, battered, hollow, some of the branches dead…(As Fitz.) Yes?

  ASM (prompting) ‘But come the spring…’

  Auden But come the spring still on the farthest twigs putting out leaves. (As Fitz, to Kay.) I think I might be reading through much of this.

  Kay (shrugs) Of course, darling.

  Auden Poetry to me is as much a craft as an art and I have always prided myself on being able to turn my hand to anything – a wedding hymn, a requiem, a loyal toast…No job too small. I would have been happy to have hung up a shingle in the street:

  ‘W. H. Auden. Poet.’

  Carpenter Which is as good a time as any to say that though Auden does not know it, and nor indeed do I, in ten years or so’s time I will write his biography.

  Auden The trouble is that nowadays nobody asks me to write anything. I’m asked to pronounce, but that’s different. I’m too distinguished.

  Carpenter My father said you’d said the same to him.

  Auden Your father?

  Carpenter You sat next to him at High Table. He’s the Bishop of Oxford.

  There is a knock at the door.

  Auden Ah! My gentleman caller.

  He goes to the door.

  Bishop of Oxford. Well, of course if I’d taken Holy Orders I’d have been a bishop myself by now.

  Stuart comes in.

  Stuart I’m Stuart. I came before. I was on time. In fact I was early, only the other guy sent me away.

  Auden Quite so. Your appointment, though not your function, has been usurped by Mr…

  Carpenter Carpenter.

  Auden He is not going to be long. You’re not from Australia?

  Stuart No. Cowley.

/>   Henry A little bag.

  Fitz What?

  Henry He would have a little bag. The boy. They all had little bags, call boys.

  Tim What for?

  Henry A towel. Baby oil. Stuff like that. Accessories. You could almost pick them out by the bag.

  Author I’ve never read that.

  Henry I’ve never read it either.

  Kay So. A little bag. Thank you, Henry.

  Henry Thank you.

  Kay On we go.

  Carpenter Does he keep in touch? Benjamin Britten?

  Auden And if he did why should I tell you? I don’t know you. You say you’re the son of the Bishop of Oxford, but that’s no recommendation. I saw a bishop with a moustache the other day.

  Carpenter I did actually write to you.

  Auden Did I reply?

  Carpenter No. I wrote to Mr Britten.

  Auden I’ve never heard him called Mr Britten before. Mr Britten. Makes him sound like a bodybuilder. Did he reply?

  Carpenter No.

  Auden Take the hint. It’s a long time ago.

  Carpenter You were both young.

  Auden I was never young, not until I was older. Britten was always young. He’ll be young now.

  Carpenter Whereas you are dead.

  Auden Excuse me?

  Carpenter As far as Britten is concerned. When he falls out with someone the ex-friend becomes a corpse. Never spoken of again. Still, he’s an artist.

  Auden Rubbish. Art is never an excuse for cruelty.

  Carpenter So will you talk to me?

  Auden I am talking to you.

  Carpenter Properly.

  Auden No. A lot of what is passed off as biography is idle curiosity, no different from reading someone’s private correspondence when they’re out of the room…and it doesn’t make it morally better when someone’s out of the room because they’re in the grave. If your father’s a bishop you ought to know that.

  Carpenter (to the audience) Writers in particular perceive biography as a threat, something I had still to learn. Poets are particularly vulnerable to biography because readers naturally assume they are sincere, that their verses are dispatches from the heart, the self at its most honest. When the biographer reveals the self is sometimes quite different, the poet is thought a hypocrite. I’m thinking of Robert Frost.