Complete Works, Volume IV (19 page)

EMMA
Mmnn.

Pause.

JERRY
It’s impossible.

Pause.

EMMA
Do you think she’s being unfaithful to you?

JERRY
No. I don’t know.

EMMA
When you were in America, just now, for instance?

JERRY
No.

EMMA
Have you ever been unfaithful?

JERRY
To whom?

EMMA
To me, of course.

JERRY
No.

Pause.

Have you . . . to me?

EMMA
No.

Pause.

If she was, what would you do?

JERRY
She isn’t. She’s busy. She’s got lots to do. She’s a very good doctor. She likes her life. She loves the kids.

EMMA
Ah.

JERRY
She loves me.

Pause.

EMMA
Ah.

Silence.

JERRY
All that means something.

EMMA
It certainly does.

JERRY
But I adore you.

Pause.

I adore you.

Emma takes his hand.

EMMA
Yes.

Pause.

Listen. There’s something I have to tell you.

JERRY
What?

EMMA
I’m pregnant. It was when you were in America.

Pause.

It wasn’t anyone else. It was my husband.

Pause.

JERRY
Yes. Yes, of course.

Pause.

I’m very happy for you.

1968

SCENE NINE

Robert and Emma’s House. Bedroom. 1968. Winter.

The room is dimly lit. Jerry is sitting in the shadows. Faint music through the door.

The door opens. Light. Music. Emma comes in, closes the door. She goes towards the mirror, sees Jerry.

EMMA
Good God.

JERRY
I’ve been waiting for you.

EMMA
What do you mean?

JERRY
I knew you’d come.

He drinks.

EMMA
I’ve just come in to comb my hair.

He stands.

JERRY
I knew you’d have to. I knew you’d have to comb your hair. I knew you’d have to get away from the party.

She goes to the mirror, combs her hair.

He watches her.

You’re a beautiful hostess.

EMMA
Aren’t you enjoying the party?

JERRY
You’re beautiful.

He goes to her.

Listen. I’ve been watching you all night. I must tell you, I want to tell you, I have to tell you—

EMMA
Please—

JERRY
You’re incredible.

EMMA
You’re drunk.

JERRY
Nevertheless.

He holds her.

EMMA
Jerry.

JERRY
I was best man at your wedding. I saw you in white. I watched you glide by in white.

EMMA
I wasn’t in white.

JERRY
You know what should have happened?

EMMA
What?

JERRY
I should have had you, in your white, before the wedding. I should have blackened you, in your white wedding dress, blackened you in your bridal dress, before ushering you into your wedding, as your best man.

EMMA
My husband’s best man. Your best friend’s best man.

JERRY
No. Your best man.

EMMA
I must get back.

JERRY
You’re lovely. I’m crazy about you. All these words I’m using, don’t you see, they’ve never been said before. Can’t you see? I’m crazy about you. It’s a whirlwind. Have you ever been to the Sahara desert? Listen to me. It’s true. Listen. You overwhelm me. You’re so lovely.

EMMA
I’m not.

JERRY
You’re so beautiful. Look at the way you look at me.

EMMA
I’m not . . . looking at you.

JERRY
Look at the way you’re looking at me. I can’t wait for you, I’m bowled over, I’m totally knocked out, you dazzle me, you jewel, my jewel, I can’t ever sleep again, no, listen, it’s the truth, I won’t walk, I’ll be a cripple, I’ll descend, I’ll diminish, into total paralysis, my life is in your hands, that’s what you’re banishing me to, a state of catatonia, do you know the state of catatonia? Do you? Do you? The state of . . . where the reigning prince is the prince of emptiness, the prince of absence, the prince of desolation. I love you.

EMMA
My husband is at the other side of that door.

JERRY
Everyone knows. The world knows. It knows. But they’ll never know, they’ll never know, they’re in a different world. I adore you. I’m madly in love with you. I can’t believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has ever happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. This is the only thing that has ever happened. Your eyes kill me. I’m lost. You’re wonderful.

EMMA
No.

JERRY
Yes.

He kisses her.

She breaks away.

He kisses her.

Laughter off.

She breaks away.

Door opens. Robert.

EMMA
Your best friend is drunk.

JERRY
As you are my best and oldest friend and, in the present instance, my host, I decided to take this opportunity to tell your wife how beautiful she was.

ROBERT
Quite right.

JERRY
It is quite right, to . . . to face up to the facts . . . and to offer a token, without blush, a token of one’s unalloyed appreciation, no holds barred.

ROBERT
Absolutely.

JERRY
And how wonderful for you that this is so, that this is the case, that her beauty is the case.

ROBERT
Quite right.

Jerry moves to Robert and take hold of his elbow.

JERRY
I speak as your oldest friend. Your best man.

ROBERT
You are, actually.

He clasps Jerry’s shoulder, briefly, turns, leaves the room.

Emma moves towards the door. Jerry grasps her arm. She stops still.

They stand still, looking at each other.

Monologue

Monologue
was first shown on BBC Television on 13 April 1973.

MAN
Henry Woolf

Directed by
Christopher Morahan

Man alone in a chair.

He refers to another chair, which is empty.

MAN
I think I’ll nip down to the games room. Stretch my legs. Have a game of ping pong. What about you? Fancy a game? How would you like a categorical thrashing? I’m willing to accept any challenge, any stakes, any gauntlet you’d care to fling down. What have you done with your gauntlets, by the way? In fact,
while we’re at it,
what happened to your motorbike?

Pause.

You looked bold in black. The only thing I didn’t like was your face, too white, the face, stuck between your black helmet and your black hair and your black motoring jacket, kind of aghast, blatantly vulnerable, veering towards pitiful. Of course, you weren’t cut out to be a motorbikist, it went against your nature, I never understood what you were getting at. What is certain is that it didn’t work, it never convinced me, it never got you onto any top shelf with me. You should have been black, you should have had a black face, then you’d be getting somewhere, really making a go of it.

Pause.

I often had the impression . . . often . . . that you two were actually brother and sister, some kind of link-up, some kind of identical shimmer, deep down in your characters, an inkling, no more, that at one time you had shared the same pot. But of course she was black. Black as the Ace of Spades. And a life-lover, to boot.

Pause.

All the same, you and I, even then, never mind the weather, weren’t we, we were always available for net practice, at the drop of a hat, or a game of fives, or a walk and talk through the park, or a couple of rounds of putting before lunch, given fair to moderate conditions, and no burdensome commitments.

Pause.

The thing I like, I mean quite immeasurably, is this kind of conversation, this kind of exchange, this class of mutual reminiscence.

Pause.

Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten the black girl, the ebony one. Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten me.

Pause.

You haven’t forgotten
me.
Who was your best mate, who was your truest mate? You introduced me to Webster and Tourneur, admitted, but who got you going on Tristan Tzara, Breton, Giacometti and all that lot? Not to mention Louis-Ferdinand Céline, now out of favour. And John Dos. Who bought you both all those custard tins cut price? I say both. I was the best friend either of you ever had and I’m still prepared to prove it, I’m still prepared to wrap my braces round anyone’s neck, in your defence.

Pause.

Now you’re going to say you loved her soul and I loved her body. You’re going to trot that old one out. I know you were much more beautiful than me, much more
aquiline,
I know
that,
that I’ll give you, more
ethereal,
more thoughtful,
slyer,
while I had both feet firmly planted on the deck. But I’ll tell you one thing you don’t know. She loved my soul. It was my soul she loved.

Pause.

You never say what you’re ready for now. You’re not even ready for a game of ping pong. You’re incapable of saying of what it is you’re capable, where your relish lies, where you’re sharp, excited, why you never are capable . . . never are . . . capable of exercising a crisp and full-bodied appraisal of the buzzing possibilities of your buzzing brain cells. You often, I’ll be frank, act as if you’re dead, as if the Balls Pond Road and the lovely ebony lady never existed, as if the rain in the light on the pavements in the twilight never existed, as if our sporting and intellectual life never was.

Pause.

She was tired. She sat down. She was tired. The journey. The rush hour. The weather, so unpredictable. She’d put on a woollen dress because the morning was chilly, but the day had changed, totally, totally changed. She cried. You jumped up like a . . . those things, forgot the name, monkey on a box,
jack in a box,
held her hand, made her tea, a rare burst. Perhaps the change in the weather had gone to your head.

Pause.

I loved her body. Not that, between ourselves, it’s one way or another a thing of any importance. My spasms could be your spasms. Who’s to tell or care?

Pause.

Well . . . she did . . . can . . . could . . .

Pause.

We all walked, arm in arm, through the long grass, over the bridge, sat outside the pub in the sun by the river, the pub was shut.

Pause.

Did anyone notice us? Did you see anyone looking at us?

Pause.

Touch my body, she said to you. You did. Of course you did. You’d be a bloody fool if you didn’t. You’d have been a bloody fool if you hadn’t. It was perfectly
normal.

Pause.

That was behind the partition.

Pause.

I brought her to see you, after you’d pissed off to live in Notting Hill Gate. Naturally. They all end up there. I’ll never end up there. I’ll never end up on that side of the Park.

Pause.

Sitting there with your record player, growing bald, Beethoven, cocoa, cats. That really dates it. The cocoa dates it. It was your detachment was dangerous. I knew it of course like the back of my hand. That was the web my darling black darling hovered in, wavered in, my black moth. She stuttered in that light, your slightly sullen, non-committal, deadly dangerous light. But it’s a fact of life. The ones that keep silent are the best off.

Pause.

As for me, I’ve always liked simple love scenes, the classic setups, the sweet . . . the sweet . . . the sweet farewell at Paddington Station. My collar turned up. Her soft cheeks. Standing close to me, legs under her raincoat, the platform, her cheeks, her hands, nothing like the sound of steam to keep love warm, to keep it moist, to bring it to the throat, my ebony love, she smiles at me, I touched her.

Pause.

I feel for you. Even if you feel nothing . . . for me. I feel for you, old chap.

Pause.

I keep busy in the
mind,
and that’s why I’m still sparking, get it? I’ve got a hundred per cent more energy in me now than when I was twenty-two. When I was twenty-two I slept twenty-four hours a day. And twenty-two hours a day at twenty-four. Work it out for yourself. But now I’m sparking, at my peak,
up here,
two thousand revolutions a second, every living hour of the day and night. I’m a front runner. My watchword is vigilance. I’m way past mythologies, left them all behind, cocoa, sleep, Beethoven, cats, rain, black girls, bosom pals, literature, custard. You’ll say I’ve been talking about nothing else all night, but can’t you see, you bloody fool, that I can
afford
to do it, can’t you appreciate the irony? Even if you’re too dim to catch the irony in the words themselves, the words I have chosen myself, quite scrupulously, and with intent, you can’t miss the irony in the tone of
voice
!

Pause.

What you are in fact witnessing is freedom. I no longer participate in holy ceremony. The crap is cut.

Silence.

You should have had a black face, that was your mistake. You could have made a going concern out of it, you could have chalked it up in the book, you could have had two black kids.

Pause.

I’d have died for them.

Pause.

I’d have been their uncle.

Pause.

I am their uncle.

Pause.

I’m your children’s uncle.

Pause.

I’ll take them out, tell them jokes.

Pause.

I love your children.