Alan Bennett: Plays, Volume 1

  POLLY: … from Geoff.

  GEORGE: Oh, sorry. (POLLY winks at GEOFF behind GEORGE’s back. GEORGE does his shirt up in front of the mirror and puts on his tie– he has cut himself shaving.)

  POLLY: Watch the iron for me, love, will you.

  (GEOFF, with the receiver to his ear, is now watching the iron also.)

  GEORGE: I think I’ve broken off my tooth again. (He examines his mouth in the mirror.) My mouth is beginning to look like the ruins of Hamburg.

  POLLY: I can’t understand you having such bad teeth. Mine are perfect.

  GEOFF: It’s through not having oranges in the war.

  POLLY: Why is it only teeth that decay?

  GEORGE: It isn’t.

  POLLY: You don’t always have to go to the doctors to have holes in your arms stopped up, do you? Or your legs filled. It’s a flaw in the design.

  GEORGE: That’s one thing I envy… no resent … in Andy.

  For all the fact he was brought up on an exclusive diet of baked beans and liquorice allsorts he has perfectly even teeth. Whereas mine are as yellow and pitted as a pub lavatory. I open my mouth and there’s so much gold it’s like a glimpse of the vaults at Fort Knox.

  GEOFF: Hold on. (Hands receiver to GEORGE.)

  GEORGE: Yes. Yes. What? Nearer the time. (To POLLY.) They want us to ring nearer the time.

  POLLY: But it is nearer the time.

  GEORGE: (To receiver) But it is nearer the time. Nearer still. You’re sure there’ll be one? Yes, yes. Goodbye. (The children start making a din upstairs. GEORGE goes to the stairs door and half-way up the stairs.)

  GEORGE: James. You shouldn’t be out of bed. Go back to bed. What? What does she say, James? No, she can’t have her pram in bed. She’s brushed her teeth.

  POLLY: Oh, yes, she can.

  GEORGE: James. You can tell Elizabeth that decision has now been countermanded on higher authority. She can have her pram in bed. Oh God. Trouble with children … they’re so childish. If only they were older.

  POLLY: They’ll get older … in time.

  (POLLY takes off her blouse and puts on the one she’s been ironing.)

  Be a love, Geoff, and tell them a story. (GEOFF goes upstairs.)

  GEORGE: You ought to be a bit more careful, undressing in front of Geoff. You embarrass him.

  POLLY: He doesn’t mind.

  GEORGE: He’ll think you’re doing it on purpose.

  POLLY: You said it embarrasses him. You mean it embarrasses you. You forget I was brought up a member of the middle classes. We are not embarrassed by our bodies.

  GEORGE: You are thirty-two. You are rapidly approaching the age when your body, whether it embarrasses you or not, begins to embarrass other people.

  POLLY: Speak for yourself.

  GEORGE: I do not fart about the house in my underpants.

  POLLY: I’ve seen you in your underpants.

  GEORGE: Of course you’ve seen me in my underpants. You are my wife. Seeing me in my underpants is part of the duties, responsibilities and possibly even the pleasures of marriage. All I am saying is that I do not fart about in the house in them. You have never seen me in this room, for instance, in my underpants. (polly thinks very hard.)

  POLLY: (Triumphantly) Yes, I have.

  GEORGE: When?

  (POLLY crestfallen. She can’t remember.)

  We ought to be making tracks.

  POLLY: No. I know I have.

  GEORGE: I’m sorry we’re late, Prime Minister, but my wife and I were detained in argument, as to when was the last occasion she saw me in the living-room in my underpants.

  POLLY: And saying that about his present.

  GEORGE: I didn’t know it was his. Be honest, you don’t like it …

  POLLY: No, but, I’m trying to encourage him. Educate him a bit.

  GEORGE: What in? The liberal art of accumulating unwanted scrap. I suppose you think by teaching him to line his nice little Notting Hill nest with articles like that is education.

  POLLY: It’s a kind of education. It’s better than nothing.

  GEORGE: It’s corruption. He’d be better off with the usual

  fifteen Penguins and a blow-up of Buster Keaton. (GEORGE is by now more or less kitted out. He puts on his jacket and regards himself in the mirror.) I wish I was a bit more left wing. Then I needn’t wear this thing on grounds of conscience.

  POLLY: You look very good. Really slim. (Pause.) You aren’t going in those socks?

  GEORGE: What socks? I haven’t got any others.

  POLLY: You can’t go to Downing Street in grey socks. What if somebody looks up your legs?

  GEORGE: As I’m swinging from the chandelier, you mean? If one remembers that the Lord Chancellor wears button boots and football socks, I reckon these are pretty discreet.

  POLLY: I wonder what colour Geoff s socks are? (She makes for the stairs door.)

  GEORGE: I am not wearing Geoff s socks.

  POLLY: Here. I know.

  (She goes to a drawer and takes out a pair of worn black tights.)

  I knew these would come in.

  (She starts cutting off the legs about half-way up.)

  GEORGE: I can’t wear those. They’re yours. They won’t fit me.

  POLLY: They stretch, stupid.

  GEORGE: Anyway, they’re very hot to the feet. I shall sweat.

  POLLY: You’re a Socialist. They expect you to sweat.

  GEORGE: ‘I wonder whether you’d be interested to know, Prime Minister, that beneath this suave Geraldo-like exterior, I am wearing a pair of ladies ‘black tights.’ ‘Really? This is something that transcends politics. Tell me more.’ I’ll feel easier when Andy turns up.

  POLLY: He’s generally very reliable.

  GEORGE: Probably servicing some sixteen-year-old classmate with more abortions than O-levels.

  (GEORGE picks up the telephone to ring a taxi again.)

  He’s on the phone. Andy, where are you? We’re stuck here waiting to go out. You’re supposed to be at home baby-sitting. What?… (To POLLY.) He is at home. He’s upstairs. Sorry. No, no. Carry on. Be my guest. I’m only the subscriber.

  (He puts the receiver down, then picks it up again, and listens.)

  POLLY: George!

  GEORGE: Ssh! (After a while putting it down.) They weren’t even talking about me.

  POLLY: Why should they be?

  GEORGE: I am just curious to know what he is like when I’m not there, that’s all. Anyway, I am ready. (He settles down on the sofa.) Time for a few apoplectic moments with the Daily Express.

  POLLY: Try that taxi again.

  GEORGE: Give it five minutes. Here we are. ‘Pru Venables, niece of Rear-Admiral Sir Murdo Venables. Pru… here seen showing a larger expanse of upper thigh than her work with mentally handicapped children would seem to warrant, though, you will note, with her parts discreetly veiled in shadow, thinks Mr Heath is super.’

  (He gets the scissors and cuts it out and sticks it with the other cuttings on the wall.)

  POLLY: How’s Brian? Did you have lunch yesterday?

  GEORGE: I had lunch with him yesterday. Aren’t you getting ready?

  POLLY: What about?

  GEORGE: Just lunch.

  POLLY: No more postcards? george: Postcards? He didn’t say. Forget about it. It’s not so extraordinary really. Somebody who’s mad. If you ever raise your voice in public you know damn well before you’ve got two words out there’ll be some clown stampeding for the Basildon Bond. ‘Any Answers’, that’s the real voice of the English people. Envious, cruel, angry and complacent. And the Express. It’s nice to know the enemy’s still there. (ANDY appears.)

  What-ho. By salad cream out of fish fingers, my Birds Eye boy.

  ANDY: Light my fire. Is there any food? (ANDY kisses POLLY. And dashes dandruff off GEORGE’s shoulders.)

  GEORGE: Sorry. It must have come off the comb.

  ANDY: There you go, George. Smart.

  GEORGE: I don’t often wear it, it’s …
>
  ANDY: No. No. It suits you.

  POLLY: Doesn’t it?

  ANDY: It’s you, Dad. Very fetching. Quite the Young Conservative.

  GEORGE: What’s happening about school, said he, shifting smartly to the offensive.

  POLLY: Not now, George, there isn’t time.

  GEORGE: You’re the one who hasn’t got any time. Jillo. Come on. Put your skates on. Have you thought what you want to do yet? I mean, eventually.

  ANDY: No.

  GEORGE: No.

  (Pause.)

  Nothing at all?

  ANDY: I’d sort of hoped, you know, I was going to want to become an architect.

  GEORGE: Yes.

  ANDY: But it doesn’t seem to be coming, the urge, so now I think I ought to drift for a bit.

  (GEORGE is silent.)

  I’m easy … I … you know … I … don’t care.

  GEORGE: I know you don’t care … What I don’t see is why you have to care.

  ANDY: But look, then say I don’t care. Which I don’t …

  GEORGE: Andy, care about what?

  ANDY: About the work, you know, what I’m doing, I, you know, well, I go along with it, right. I get my Α -levels, say. I don’t care. I get a degree, maybe say … I don’t care. I get a job. I don’t care. I mean, George. When does it happen? When do I start to come into it? Me. Not until I’ve got this sodding great jingling ring of qualifications to unlock the doors I’m not particular to go into. So why not stuff it right now? I was trying to see the point of it. And that if I went to university it would be a waste of time. It’s three years of my life. (Here or elsewhere POLLY should interrupt the scene, without speaking, by rushing in looking for things, e.g. toilet roll, or searching in cupboards, finding what she wants and going out again.)

  GEORGE: Three years! Look, how old are you? Eighteen.

  ANDY: Seventeen.

  GEORGE: Seventeen. I didn’t even get to university till I was twenty-two. I was stuck on some deserted aerodrome in the twilight of Empire for two years first. You’ll be finished when you’re twenty-two. And you talk about time. Time is the one thing you have got. If there’s one thing I envy you for, it’s not your cool and your easy birds and an arse like a split grapefruit, it’s time. You’ve got all the time in the world. You’ve still got the option. And this time, the drifting, what will you do with it, now that you’ve got it?

  ANDY: Travel, social work. I hadn’t thought.

  GEORGE: No, I seem to be the only one doing any thinking. What sort of social work?

  ANDY: Stop trying to pin me down.

  GEORGE: All work is social work if you do it right.

  ANDY: He said.

  GEORGE: And if society’s organized right.

  ANDY: But it isn’t, is it? You can’t see it, because you’re involved in the system.

  GEORGE: System. The phrases are so worn I wonder you’ve the face to use them. System. What system? The system that makes me thirty years older than you are. The system of me not being willing, or indeed able to pour myself into a pair of turquoise matador pants and grow ringlets down to my shoulders. The system of clinging to plain hard logical thought instead of being at the whim of vague gusts of feeling and fellowship. Yes, I am part of that system.

  ANDY: No. It’s, like, sharing. You know. Being kind to one another. The system feeds you palliatives. The whole meaning of life is lost.

  GEORGE: So. What does it mean? You say we’re losing it – you must know what it is.

  ANDY: It’s not saying that’s mine, that’s yours. Not caring about colour, race…

  GEORGE: Do I care about colour?

  ANDY: I didn’t say you did.

  GEORGE: Well then… (POLLY comes in and out quickly.)

  POLLY: Have you got that taxi? (GEORGE goes on with his conversation with ANDY as he telephones.)

  ANDY: You see, George, you’ve only got to read Marx to see …

  GEORGE: I have only to… No. You have only got to read Marx. I already have. What do you think I was doing stuck on my bed in the RAF for two years? Anyway, where’ve you been doing Marx?

  ANDY: We do it in Religious Instruction.

  GEORGE: Ah.

  ANDY: Dave says …

  GEORGE: Who says?

  ANDY: Dave. He’s taking us for teaching practice.

  GEORGE: Dave. Dave.

  ANDY: He says …

  GEORGE: There’s no need to tell me what Dave says. I know what the Daves of this world say.

  ANDY: But you don’t, George. You never listen. It’s just your disillusion. You lump people together, goodies and baddies. You don’t differentiate between …

  (GEORGE holds up his hand to stop him.)

  GEORGE: Hallo. I want a taxi to 17 Passfield Gardens, Highgate. Yes … yes, I did ring before if you remem … My number is Dick … sorry 342 0310. Yes … yes … I’ll hold on …. Love is all you need. That’s your philosophy, isn’t it? Come to me at forty trailing your wife and kids and your whole communal family when any number of joints won’t disguise the fact you’re fat and cross and tired and tell me then that love is all you need. Try getting that together. Yes … yes … Passfield Gardens.

  ANDY: George. I have said, you know, nothing.

  GEORGE: That’s ‘you know’ right. You have said ‘you know’ bugger all. Love is not all you need.

  ANDY: I never said it was.

  GEORGE: No. That’s how subtle you are. But you bloody well think it.

  ANDY: I’ve said nothing. I’ve made no charges. What I think you don’t know. You’ve not the faintest idea. You’re not even interested. It’s shadow boxing.

  GEORGE: Knowledge and subtlety and understanding and law …. I am holding on, madam, like grim death … law, that’s what you need. Grubbing away on committees and nagging at officials and teasing away at the law; taking it in and letting it out until it fits even approximately the people who have to wear it.

  ANDY: And talk, George. You forget talk. Lots and lots of talk. Witty talk. Clever talk. Dirty talk. Parliamentary talk. You’re a killer, Dad, you really are.

  GEORGE: Listen. Shocking though it may seem to your mawkish Maoist mentality, ninety per cent of the people in this world are thick. Stupid.

  ANDY: Who, Dad? You, me? Not you, me. The others.

  GEORGE: That’s right. The others. People who with pushing and planning, welfare and incentives can just about be brought to see their own nose end … And by that nose end they are led. By me. And in due course by you.

  ANDY: You’re wrong, George. You are wrong. Look, each person is special …

  GEORGE: Special. On the Kingston by-pass on a Sunday afternoon show me how special.

  ANDY: Not if you like them … if you try and …

  GEORGE: Liking them doesn’t feed them, and liking doesn’t house them. Liking them doesn’t stop them turning the place into a midden or turning out in their stinking, fuming tin boxes, Sunday by Sunday, perambulating their boredom, about the countryside.

  (Pause.)

  So what are you going to do?

  ANDY: I’ve told you. I don’t know.

  GEORGE: Of course you could go into Oxfam, or War on Want.

  The amount of stuff we contribute they’re practically family firms. I don’t know, Andy. The only thing that matters in life is work. W-O-R-K.

  ANDY: Come on.

  GEORGE: No.

  ANDY: Look, I believe you …

  GEORGE: No, really. I tell you there are times when family and kids are … yes, I am holding… all the things that are supposed to make life worth living are marginal and nothing compared with work.

  ANDY: But …

  GEORGE: No, wait.

  ANDY: Work. You talk about work. Parliament? You? You never stop sounding off about it… threatening to go back to Oxford…

  GEORGE: I know, I know…

  ANDY: The worst thing you ever did, you said, what dregs there are in it. Come on. I reckon it’s pretty irrelevant nowadays. Esso, ICI, Shell. That?
??s where the power is. The Conglomerates.

  GEORGE: The what?

  ANDY: The Conglomerates … Esso, ICI … Shell …

  GEORGE: The Conglomerates. I bet that’s Dave!

  ANDY: Well, what did Parliament ever do? It never did much for me, anyway.

  GEORGE: It never did much for you… it brought you into the bloody world. You were born in 1953 in Charing Cross Hospital under the auspices of the National Health Service. The National Health Service, a phrase still capable of bringing a sly smile to people’s faces. You shrug it off, the Welfare State, another sneering phrase. It’s nothing to you. You’ve grown up with it, you were born under it. You take it for granted now. You don’t remember the years when it was put together, at the desks of little men with bad teeth and terrible haircuts, runtish little civil servants born during the Depression, smoking too much in their cold government green offices in Nissen huts on bomb sites shivering through that winter of 1947 that went on until June. Hammering it out clause by clause, section by irrelevant section. Food rationed, clothes rationed, coal rationed, working by candlelight in power cuts, left standing in the tube by the hour together. Battering it out and forcing it through in the teeth of the Conservative Party, in the teeth of the medical profession, in the rotten nicotine-stained teeth of half the nation, they got it through and laid the corner-stone of a civilized life. And I glory in that. Snobbish, sceptical sneering socialist that I am, I glory in it.

  ANDY: Great days, Dad. Those were the days, Dad.

  GEORGE: Socialist that I am I glory in it. And it was done, please note, not by kindness and benevolence, not by moist good fellowship and rattling beads and tuning into the universe. But by grit and thought and work. Back-breaking, life-destroying, ill-tempered work …. Work that comes out of guilt and fear and want and all those phantoms your generation is very happy to be without. And you sit there with that stupid transcendental grin on your face and say it’s irrelevant.

  ANDY: Save it, Dad. Save it for some other stupid sod. One of the ninety-nine per cent. No point in wasting it on me. I’m one of the chosen. That’s right, isn’t it? Anyway, it’s all relative.

  GEORGE: What?

  ANDY: It’s all relative.

  GEORGE: Which particular revolutionary handbook did you pick that one up from? Or is that Dave? It isn’t all relative. Some things are absolute. Humbug is absolute. Rubbish is absolute. Sloppy, sentimental and worthless. And waste. And it is a bloody waste. You’ll end up like our friend, upstairs stripping wardrobes for a living. (To receiver.) What? Yes. But I’ve been holding on for the last ten minutes. I did ring earlier. Half an hour ago. What? How do you mean too late? When I rang before you said it was too early. Now you say it’s too late. How do… well, whose fault is it? Of course it’s your fault. Oh… get stuffed. (GEORGE’s indignation is spread between the operator and ANDY.) Words fail me. They always do in the end. Worst method of communicating with anybody. Sorry.