Ends and Odds (6 page)

A: Baked beans! (
He gets up, puts down fiddle and bowl on the stool and gropes towards
B.) Where are you?

B: Here, dear fellow. (A
lays hold of the chair and starts pushing it blindly
.) Stop!

A (
pushing the chair):
It's a gift! A gift!

B: Stop! (
He strikes behind him with the pole.
A
lets go the chair, recoils. Pause.
A
gropes towards his stool, halts, lost
.) Forgive me! (
Pause
.) Forgive me, Billy!

A: Where am I? (
Pause
.) Where was I?

B: Now I've lost him. He was beginning to like me and I struck him. He'll leave me and I'll never see him again. I'll never see anyone again. We'll never hear the human voice again.

A: Have you not heard it enough? The same old moans and groans from the cradle to the grave.

B (
groaning):
Do something for me, before you go!

A: There! Do you hear it? (
Pause. Groaning
.) I can't go! (
Pause
.) Do you hear it?

B: You can't go?

A: I can't go without my things.

B: What good are they to you?

A: None.

B: And you can't go without them?

A: No. (
He starts groping again, halts
.) I'll find them in the end. (
Pause
.) Or leave them forever behind me.

He starts groping again.

B: Straighten my rug, I feel the cold air on my foot. (A
halts
.) I'd do it myself, but it would take too long. (
Pause
.) Do that for me, Billy. Then I may go back, settle in the old nook again and say, I have seen man for the last time, I struck him and he succoured me. (
Pause
.) Find a few rags of love in my heart and die reconciled, with my species. (
Pause
.) What has you gaping at me like that? (
Pause
.) Have I said something I shouldn't have? (
Pause
.) What does my soul look like?

A
gropes towards him.

A: Make a sound.

B
makes one.
A
gropes towards it, halts.

B: Have you no sense of smell either?

A: It's the same smell everywhere. (
He stretches out his hand
.) Am I within reach of your hand?

He stands motionless with outstretched hand.

B: Wait, you're not going to do me a service for nothing? (
Pause
.) I mean unconditionally? (
Pause
.) Good God!

Pause. He takes A's hand and draws him towards him.

A: Your foot.

B: What?

A: You said your foot.

B: Had I but known! (
Pause
.) Yes, my foot, tuck it in. (A
stoops, groping
.) On your knees, on your knees, you'll be more at your ease. (
He helps him to kneel at the right place
.) There.

A (
irritated):
Let go my hand! You want me to help you and you hold my hand! (B
lets go his hand.
A
fumbles in the rug
.) Have you only one leg?

B: Just the one.

A: And the other?

B: It went bad and was removed.

A
tucks in the foot.

A: Will that do?

B: A little tighter. (A
tucks in tighter
.) What hands you have!

Pause.

A (
groping towards
B's torso): Is all the rest there?

B: You may stand up now and ask me a favour.

A: Is all the rest there?

B: Nothing else has been removed, if that is what you mean.

A'
S hand, groping higher, reaches the face, stays.

A: Is that your face.

B: I confess it is. (
Pause
.) What else could it be? (A'
s fingers stray, stay
.) That? My wen.

A: Red?

B: Purple. (A
withdraws his hand, remains kneeling
.) What hands you have!

Pause.

A: Is it still day?

B: Day? (
Looks at sky
.) If you like. (
Looks
.) There is no other word for it.

A: Will it not soon be evening?

B
stoops to
A,
shakes him.

B: Come, Billy, get up, you're beginning to incommode me.

A: Will it not soon be night?

B
looks at sky.

B: Day … night … (
Looks
.) It seems to me sometimes the earth must have got stuck, one sunless day, in the heart of winter, in the grey of evening. (
Stoops to
A,
shakes him
.) Come on, Billy, up, you're beginning to embarrass me.

A: Is there grass anywhere?

B: I see none.

A (
vehement):
Is there no green anywhere?

B: There's a little moss. (
Pause
. A
clasps his hands on the rug and rests his head on them
.) Good God! Don't tell me you're going to pray?

A: No.

B: Or weep?

A: No. (
Pause
.) I could stay like that for ever, with my head on an old man's knees.

B: Knee. (
Shaking him roughly
.) Get up, can't you!

A (
settling himself more comfortably):
What peace! (B
pushes him roughly away, A falls to his hands and knees
.) Dora used to say, the days I hadn't earned enough, You and your harp! You'd do better crawling on all fours, with your father's medals pinned to your arse and a money box round your neck. You and your harp! Who do you think you are? And she made me sleep on the floor. (
Pause
.) Who I thought I was … (
Pause
.) Ah that … I never could … (
Pause. He gets up
.) Never could … (
He starts groping again for his stool, halts, listens
.) If I listened long enough I'd hear it, a string would give.

B: Your harp? (
Pause
.) What's all this about a harp?

A: I once had a little harp. Be still and let me listen.

Pause.

B: How long are you going to stay like that?

A: I can stay for hours listening to all the sounds.

They listen.

B: What sounds?

A: I don't know what they are.

They listen.

B: I can see it. (
Pause
.) I can—

A (
imploring):
Will you not be still?

B: No! (A
takes his head in his hands
.) I can see it clearly, over there on the stool. (
Pause
.) What if I took it, Billy, and made off with it? (
Pause
.) Eh Billy, what would you say to that? (
Pause
.) There might be another old man, some day, would come out of his hole and find you playing the mouth-organ. And you'd tell him of the little fiddle you once had. (
Pause
.) Eh Billy? (
Pause
.) Or singing. (
Pause
.) Eh Billy, what would you say to that? (
Pause
.) There croaking to the winter wind (
rime with unkind
), having lost his little mouth-organ. (
He pokes him in the back with the pole
.) Eh Billy?

A
whirls round, seizes the end of the pole and wrenches it from
B's grasp.

(
Translated by the author
.)

Upstage centre high double window open on bright night-sky. Moon invisible.

Downstage audience left, equidistant from wall and axis of window, small table and chair. On table an extinguished reading-lamp and a briefcase crammed with documents.

Downstage right, forming symmetry, identical table and chair. Extinguished lamp only.

Downstage left door.

Standing motionless before left half of window with his back to stage
, C.

Long pause.

Enter
A.
He closes door, goes to table on right and sits with his back to right wall. Pause. He switches on lamp, takes out his watch, consults it and lays it on the table. Pause. He switches off.

Long pause.

Enter
B.
He closes door, goes to table on left and sits with his back to left wall. Pause. He switches on lamp, opens briefcase and empties contents on table. He looks round, sees
A.

B: Well!

A: Hsst Switch off. (B
switches off. Long pause. Low
.) What
a night! (
Long pause. Musing
.) I still don't understand. (
Pause
.) Why he needs our services. (
Pause
.) A man like him. (
Pause
.) And why we give them free. (
Pause
.) Men like us. (
Pause
.) Mystery. (
Pause
.) Ah well … (
Pause. He switches on
.) Shall we go? (B
switches on, rummages in his papers
.) The crux. (B
rummages
.) We sum up and clear out. (B
rummages
.) Set to go?

B: Rearing.

A: We attend.

B: Let him jump.

A: When?

B: Now.

A: From where?

B: From here will do. Three to three and a half metres per floor, say twenty-five in all.

Pause.

A: I could have sworn we were only on the sixth. (
Pause
.) He runs no risk?

B: He has only to land on his arse, the way he lived. The spine snaps and the tripes explode.

Pause.
A
gets up, goes to the window, leans out, looks down. He straightens up, looks at the sky. Pause. He goes back to his seat.

A: Full moon.

B: Not quite. Tomorrow.

A
takes a little diary from his pocket.

A: What's the date?

B: Twenty-fourth. Twenty-fifth tomorrow.

A (
turning pages):
Nineteen … twenty-two …twenty-four. (
Reads
.) “Our Lady of Succour. Full moon.” (
He puts back the diary in his pocket
.) We were saying then … what was it … let him jump. Our conclusion. Right?

B: Work, family, third fatherland, cunt, finances, art and nature, heart and conscience, health, housing conditions, God and man, so many disasters.

Pause.

A (
meditative):
Does it follow? (
Pause
.) Does it follow? (
Pause
.) And his sense of humour? Of proportion?

B: Swamped.

Pause.

A: May we not be mistaken?

B (
indignant):
We have been to the best sources. All weighed and weighed again, checked and verified. Not a word here (
brandishing sheaf of papers
) that is not cast iron. Tied together like a cathedral. (
He flings down the papers on the table. They scatter on the floor
.) Shit!

He picks them up.
A
raises his lamp and shines it about him.

A: Seen worse dumps. (
Turning towards window
.) Worse outlooks. (
Pause
.) Is that Jupiter we see?

Pause.

B: Where?

A: Switch off. (
They switch off
.) It must be.

B (
irritated):
Where?

A (
irritated):
There. (B
cranes
.) There, on the right, in the corner.

Pause.

B: No. It twinkles.

A: What is it then?

B (
indifferent):
No idea. Sirius. (
He switches on
.) Well? Do we work or play? (A
switches on
.) You forget this is not his home. He's only here to take care of the cat. At the end of the month shoosh back to the barge. (
Pause. Louder
.) You forget this is not his home.

A (
irritated):
I forget, I forget! And he, does he not forget? (
With passion
.) But that's what saves us!

B (
searching through his papers):
Memory … memory … (
He takes up a sheet
.) I quote: “An elephant's for the eating cares, a sparrow's for the Lydian airs.” Testimony of Mr. Swell, organist at Seaton Sluice and lifelong friend.

Pause.

A (
glum):
Tsstss!

B: I quote: “Questioned on this occasion”—open brackets—“(judicial separation)”—close brackets—“regarding the deterioration of our relations, all he could adduce was the five or six miscarriages which clouded”—open brackets
“(oh through no act of mine!)”—close brackets—“the early days of our union and the veto which in consequence I had finally to oppose”—open brackets—“(oh not for want of inclination!)”—close brackets—“to anything remotely resembling the work of love. But on the subject of our happiness”—open brackets—”(for it too came our way, unavoidably, and here my mind goes back to the first vows exchanged at Wooton Bassett under the bastard acacias, or again to the first fifteen minutes of our wedding night at Littlestone-on-Sea, or yet again to those first long studious evenings in our nest on Commercial Road East)”—close brackets—“on the subject of our happiness not a word, Sir, not one word.” Testimony of Mrs. Aspasia Budd-Croker, button designer in residence, Commercial Road East.

A (
glum):
Tsstss!

B: I quote again: “Of our national epos he remembered only the calamities, which did not prevent him from winning a minor scholarship in the subject.” Testimony of Mr. Peaberry, market-gardener in the Deeping Fens and lifelong friend. (
Pause
.) “Not a tear was known to fall in our family, and God knows they did in torrents, that was not caught up and piously preserved in that inexhaustible reservoir of sorrow, with the date, the hour and the occasion, and not a joy, fortunately they were few, that was not on the contrary irrevocably dissolved, as by a corrosive. In that he took after me.” Testimony of the late Mrs. Darcy-Croker, woman of letters. (
Pause
.) Care for more?

A: Enough.

B: I quote: “To hear him talk about his life, after a glass or two, you would have thought he had never set foot outside
hell. He had us in stitches. I worked it up into a skit that went down well.” Testimony of Mr. Moore, light comedian, c/o Widow Merry weather-Moore, All Saints on the Wash, and lifelong friend.