Summer.
Night.
SPOONER stands in the centre of the room.
He is dressed in a very old and shabby suit, dark faded shirt, creased spotted tie.
HIRST is pouring whisky at the cabinet.
He is precisely dressed. Sports jacket. Well cut trousers.
HIRST
As it is?
SPOONER
As it is, yes please, absolutely as it is.
HIRST brings him the glass.
SPOONER
Thank you. How very kind of you. How very kind.
HIRST pours himself a vodka.
HIRST
Cheers.
SPOONER
Your health.
They drink. SPOONER sips, HIRST drinks the vodka in one gulp. He refills his glass, moves to his chair and sits. SPOONER empties his glass.
HIRST
Please help yourself.
SPOONER
Terribly kind of you.
SPOONER goes to cabinet, pours. He turns.
SPOONER
Your good health.
He drinks.
SPOONER
What was it I was saying, as we arrived at your door?
HIRST
Ah… let me see.
SPOONER
Yes! I was talking about strength. Do you recall?
HIRST
Strength. Yes.
SPOONER
Yes. I was about to say, you see, that there are some people who appear to be strong, whose idea of what strength consists of is persuasive, but who inhabit the idea and not the fact. What they possess is not strength but expertise. They have nurtured and maintain what is in fact a calculated posture. Half the time it works. It takes a man of intelligence and perception to stick a needle through that posture and discern the essential flabbiness of the stance. I am such a man.
HIRST
You mean one of the latter?
SPOONER
One of the latter, yes, a man of intelligence and perception. Not one of the former, oh no, not at all. By no means.
Pause.
May I say how very kind it was of you to ask me in? In fact, you are kindness itself, probably always are kindness itself, now and in England and in Hampstead and for all eternity.
He looks about the room.
What a remarkably pleasant room. I feel at peace here. Safe from all danger. But please don't be alarmed.
I shan't stay long. I never stay long, with others. They do not wish it. And that, for me, is a happy state of affairs. My only security, you see, my true comfort and solace, rests in the confirmation that I elicit from people of all kinds a common and constant level of indifference. It assures me that I am as I think myself to be, that I am fixed, concrete. To show interest in me or, good gracious, anything tending towards a positive liking of me, would cause in me a condition of the acutest alarm. Fortunately, the danger is remote.
Pause.
I speak to you with this startling candour because you are clearly a reticent man, which appeals, and because you are a stranger to me, and because you are clearly kindness itself.
Pause.
Do you often hang about Hampstead Heath?
HIRST
No.
SPOONER
But on your excursions… however rare… on your rare excursions… you hardly expect to run into the likes of me? I take it?
HIRST
Hardly.
SPOONER
I often hang about Hampstead Heath myself, expecting nothing. I'm too old for any kind of expectation. Don't you agree?
HIRST
Yes.
SPOONER
A pitfall and snare, if ever there was one. But of course I observe a good deal, on my peeps through twigs. A wit once entitled me a betwixt-twig peeper. A most clumsy construction, I thought.
HIRST
Infelicitous.
SPOONER
My Christ you're right.
Pause.
HIRST
What a wit.
SPOONER
You're most acutely right. All we have left is the English language. Can it be salvaged? That is my question.
HIRST
You mean in what rests its salvation?
SPOONER
More or less.
HIRST
Its salvation must rest in you.
SPOONER
It's uncommonly kind of you to say so. In you too, perhaps, although I haven't sufficient evidence to go on, as yet.
Pause.
HIRST
You mean because I've said little?
SPOONER
You're a quiet one. It's a great relief. Can you imagine two of us gabbling away like me? It would be intolerable.
Pause.
By the way, with reference to peeping, I do feel it incumbent upon me to make one thing clear. I don't peep on sex. That's gone forever. You follow me? When my twigs happen to shall I say rest their peep on sexual conjugations, however periphrastic, I see only whites of eyes, so close, they glut me, no distance possible, and when you can't keep the proper distance between yourself and others, when you can no longer maintain an objective relation to matter, the game's not worth the candle, so forget it and remember that what is obligatory to keep in your vision is space, space in moonlight particularly, and lots of it.
HIRST
You speak with the weight of experience behind you.
SPOONER
And beneath me. Experience is a paltry thing. Everyone has it and will tell his tale of it. I leave experience to psychological interpreters, the wetdream world. I myself can do any graph of experience you wish, to suit your taste or mine. Child's play. The present will not be distorted. I am a poet. I am interested in where I am eternally present and active.
HIRST stands, goes to cabinet, pours vodka.
I have gone too far, you think?
HIRST
I'm expecting you to go very much further.
SPOONER
Really? That doesn't mean I interest you, I hope?
HIRST
Not in the least.
SPOONER
Thank goodness for that. For a moment my heart sank.
HIRST draws the curtains aside, looks out briefly, lets curtain fall, remains standing.
But nevertheless you're right. Your instinct is sound. I could go further, in more ways than one. I could advance, reserve my defences, throw on a substitute, call up the cavalry, or throw everything forward out of the knowledge that when joy overfloweth there can be no holding of joy. The point I'm trying to make, in case you've missed it, is that I am a free man.
HIRST pours himself another vodka and drinks it. He puts the glass down, moves carefully to his chair, sits.
HIRST
It's a long time since we had a free man in this house.
SPOONER
We?
HIRST
I.
SPOONER
Is there another?
HIRST
Another what?
SPOONER
People. Person.
HIRST
What other?
SPOONER
There are two mugs on that shelf.
HIRST
The second is for you.
SPOONER
And the first?
HIRST
Would you like to use it? Would you like some hot refreshment?
SPOONER
That would be dangerous. I'll stick to your scotch, if I may.
HIRST
Help yourself.
SPOONER
Thank you.
He goes to cabinet.
HIRST
I'll take a whisky with you, if you would be so kind.
SPOONER
With pleasure. Weren't you drinking vodka?
HIRST
I'll be happy to join you in a whisky.
SPOONER pours.
SPOONER
You'll take it as it is, as it comes?
HIRST
Oh, absolutely as it comes.
SPOONER brings HIRST his glass.
SPOONER
Your very good health.
HIRST
Yours.
They drink.
Tell me… do you often hang about Jack Straw's Castle?
SPOONER
I knew it as a boy.
HIRST
Do you find it as beguiling a public house now as it was in the days of the highwaymen, when it was frequented by highwaymen? Notably Jack Straw. The great Jack Straw. Do you find it much changed?
SPOONER
It changed my life.
HIRST
Good Lord. Did it really?
SPOONER
I refer to a midsummer night, when I shared a drink with a Hungarian émigré, lately retired from Paris.
HIRST
The same drink?
SPOONER
By no means. You've guessed, I would imagine, that he was an erstwhile member of the Hungarian aristocracy?
HIRST
I did guess, yes.
SPOONER
On that summer evening, led by him, I first appreciated how quiet life can be, in the midst of yahoos and hullabaloos. He exerted on me a quite uniquely… calming influence, without exertion, without any… desire to influence. He was so much older than me. My expectations in those days, and I confess I had expectations in those days, did not include him in their frame of reference. I'd meandered over to Hampstead Heath, a captive to memories of a more than usually pronounced grisliness, and found myself, not much to my surprise, ordering a pint at the bar of Jack Straw's Castle. This achieved, and having negotiated a path through a particularly repellent lick-spittling herd of literati, I stumbled, unseeing, with my pint, to his bald, tanned, unmoving table. How bald he was.
Pause.
I think, after quite half my pint had descended, never to be savoured again, that I spoke, suddenly, suddenly spoke, and received… a response, no other word will do, a response, the like of which –
HIRST
What was he drinking?
SPOONER
What?
HIRST
What was he drinking?
SPOONER
Pernod.
Pause.
I was impressed, more or less at that point, by an intuition that he possessed a measure of serenity the like of which I had never encountered.
HIRST
What did he say?
SPOONER stares at him.
SPOONER
You expect me to remember what he said?
HIRST
No.
Pause.
SPOONER
What he said… all those years ago… is neither here nor there. It was not what he said but possibly the way he sat which has remained with me all my life and has, I am quite sure, made me what I am.
Pause.
And I met you at the same pub tonight, although at a different table.
Pause.
And I wonder at you, now, as once I wondered at him. But will I wonder at you tomorrow, I wonder, as I still wonder at him today?
HIRST
I cannot say.
SPOONER
It cannot be said.
Pause.
I'll ask you another question. Have you any idea from what I derive my strength?
HIRST
Strength? No.
SPOONER
I have never been loved. From this I derive my strength. Have you? Ever? Been loved?
HIRST
Oh, I don't suppose so.
SPOONER
I looked up once into my mother's face. What I saw there was nothing less than pure malevolence. I was fortunate to escape with my life. You will want to know what I had done to provoke such hatred in my own mother.
HIRST
You'd pissed yourself.
SPOONER
Quite right. How old do you think I was at the time?
HIRST
Twenty-eight.
SPOONER
Quite right. However, I left home soon after.
Pause.
My mother remains, I have to say, a terribly attractive woman in many ways. Her buns are the best.
HIRST looks at him.
Her currant buns. The best.
HIRST
Would you be so kind as to pour me another drop of whisky?
SPOONER
Certainly.
SPOONER takes the glass, pours whisky into it, gives it to HIRST.
SPOONER
Perhaps it's about time I introduced myself. My name is Spooner.
HIRST
Ah.
SPOONER
I'm a staunch friend of the arts, particularly the art of poetry, and a guide to the young. I keep open house. Young poets come to me. They read me their verses. I comment, give them coffee, make no charge. Women are admitted, some of whom are also poets. Some are not. Some of the men are not. Most of the men are not. But with the windows open to the garden, my wife pouring long glasses of squash, with ice, on a summer evening, young voices occasionally lifted in unaccompanied ballad, young bodies lying in the dying light, my wife moving through the shadows in her long gown, what can ail? I mean who can gainsay us? What quarrel can be found with what is, au fond, a gesture towards the sustenance and preservation of art, and through art to virtue?
HIRST
Through art to virtue. (Raises glass.) To your continued health.
SPOONER sits, for the first time.
SPOONER
When we had our cottage… when we had our cottage… we gave our visitors tea, on the lawn.
HIRST
I did the same.
SPOONER
On the lawn?
HIRST
I did the same.
SPOONER
You had a cottage?
HIRST
Tea on the lawn.
SPOONER
What happened to them? What happened to our cottages? What happened to our lawns?
Pause.
Be frank. Tell me. You've revealed something. You've made an unequivocal reference to your past. Don't go back on it. We share something. A memory of the bucolic life. We're both English.
Pause.
HIRST
In the village church, the beams are hung with garlands, in honour of young women of the parish, reputed to have died virgin.
Pause.
However, the garlands are not bestowed on maidens only, but on all who die unmarried, wearing the white flower of a blameless life.
Pause.
SPOONER
You mean that not only young women of the parish but also young men of the parish are so honoured?
HIRST
I do.
SPOONER
And that old men of the parish who also died maiden are so garlanded?
HIRST
Certainly.
SPOONER
I am enraptured. Tell me more. Tell me more about the quaint little perversions of your life and times. Tell me more, with all the authority and brilliance you can muster, about the socio-politico-economic structure of the environment in which you attained to the age of reason. Tell me more.
Pause.
HIRST
There is no more.
SPOONER
Tell me then about your wife.
HIRST
What wife?
SPOONER
How beautiful she was, how tender and how true. Tell me with what speed she swung in the air, with what velocity she came off the wicket, whether she was responsive to finger spin, whether you could bowl a shooter with her, or an offbreak with a legbreak action. In other words, did she google?
Silence.
You will not say. I will tell you then… that my wife… had everything. Eyes, a mouth, hair, teeth, buttocks, breasts, absolutely everything. And legs.
HIRST
Which carried her away.
SPOONER
Carried who away? Yours or mine?
Pause.
Is she here now, your wife? Cowering in a locked room, perhaps?
Pause.
Was she ever here? Was she ever there, in your cottage? It is my duty to tell you you have failed to convince. I am an honest and intelligent man. You pay me less than my due. Are you, equally, being fair to the lady? I begin to wonder whether truly accurate and therefore essentially poetic definition means anything to you at all. I begin to wonder whether you do in fact truly remember her, whether you truly did love her, truly caressed her, truly did cradle her, truly did husband her, falsely dreamed or did truly adore her. I have seriously questioned these propositions and find them threadbare.
Silence.
Her eyes, I take it, were hazel?
HIRST stands, carefully. He moves, with a slight stagger, to the cabinet, pours whisky, drinks.
HIRST
Hazel shit.
SPOONER
Good lord, good lord, do I detect a touch of the maudlin?
Pause.
Hazel shit. I ask myself: Have I ever seen hazel shit? Or hazel eyes, for that matter?
HIRST throws his glass at him, ineffectually. It bounces on the carpet.
Do I detect a touch of the hostile? Do I detect – with respect – a touch of too many glasses of ale followed by the great malt which wounds? Which wounds?
Silence.
HIRST
Tonight… my friend… you find me in the last lap of a race… I had long forgotten to run.
Pause.
SPOONER
A metaphor. Things are looking up.
Pause.
I would say, albeit on a brief acquaintance, that you lack the essential quality of manliness, which is to put your money where your mouth is, to pick up a pintpot and know it to be a pintpot, and knowing it to be a pintpot, to declare it as a pintpot, and to stay faithful to that pintpot as though you had given birth to it out of your own arse. You lack that capability, in my view.
Pause.
Do forgive me my candour. It is not method but madness.
He stands.
Heed me. I am a relevant witness. And could be a friend.
HIRST grips the cabinet, rigid.
You need a friend, You have a long hike, my lad, up which, presently, you slog unfriended. Let me perhaps be your boatman. For if and when we talk of a river we talk of a deep and dank architecture. In other words, never disdain a helping hand, especially one of such rare quality. And it is not only the quality of my offer which is rare, it is the act itself, the offer itself – quite without precedent. I offer myself to you as a friend. Think before you speak.
HIRST attempts to move, stops, grips the cabinet.
Remember this. You've lost your wife of hazel hue, you've lost her and what can you do, she will no more come back to you, with a tillifola tillifola tillifoladi-foladi-foloo.
HIRST
No.
Pause.
No man's land… does not move… or change… or grow old… remains… forever… icy… silent.
HIRST loosens his grip on the cabinet, staggers across the room, holds on to a chair.
He waits, moves, falls.
He waits, gets to his feet, moves, falls.
SPOONER watches.
HIRST crawls towards the door, manages to open it, crawls out of the door.
SPOONER remains still.
SPOONER
I have known this before. The exit through the door, by way of belly and floor.
He looks at the room, walks about it, looking at each object closely, stops, hands behind his back, surveying the room.
A door, somewhere in the house, closes.
Silence.
The front door opens, and slams sharply. SPOONER stiffens, is still.
FOSTER enters the room. He is casually dressed.
He stops still upon seeing SPOONER. He stands, looking at SPOONER.
Silence.
FOSTER
What are you drinking? Christ I'm thirsty. How are you? I'm parched.
He goes to cabinet, opens a bottle of beer, pours.
What are you drinking? It's bloody late. I'm worn to a frazzle. This is what I want. (He drinks.) Taxi? No chance. Taxi drivers are against me. Something about me. Some unknown factor. My gait, perhaps. Or perhaps because I travel incognito. Oh, that's better. Works wonders. How are you? What are you drinking? Who are you? I thought I'd never make it. What a hike. And not only that. I'm defenceless. I don't carry a gun in London. But I'm not bothered. Once you've done the East you've done it all. I've done the East. But I still like a nice lighthouse like this one. Have you met your host? He's my father. It was our night off tonight, you see. He was going to stay at home, listen to some lieder. I hope he had a quiet and pleasant evening. Who are you, by the way? What are you drinking?
SPOONER
I'm a friend of his.
FOSTER
You're not typical.
BRIGGS comes into the room, stops. He is casually dressed, stocky.
BRIGGS
Who's this?
FOSTER
His name's Friend. This is Mr Briggs. Mr Friend – Mr Briggs. I'm Mr Foster. Old English stock. John Foster. Jack. Jack Foster. Old English name. Foster. John Foster. Jack Foster. Foster. This man's name is Briggs.
Pause.
BRIGGS
I've seen Mr Friend before.
FOSTER
Seen him before?
BRIGGS
I know him.
FOSTER
Do you really?
BRIGGS
I've seen you before.
SPOONER
Possibly, possibly.
BRIGGS
Yes. You collect the beermugs from the tables in a pub in Chalk Farm.
SPOONER
The landlord's a friend of mine. When he's shorthanded, I give him a helping hand.
BRIGGS
Who says the landlord's a friend of yours?
FOSTER
He does.
BRIGGS
I'm talking about The Bull's Head in Chalk Farm.
SPOONER
Yes, yes. So am I.
BRIGGS
So am I.
FOSTER
I know The Bull's Head. The landlord's a friend of mine.
BRIGGS
He collects the mugs.
FOSTER
A firstclass pub. I've known the landlord for years.
BRIGGS
He says he's a friend of the landlord.
FOSTER
He says he's a friend of our friend too.
BRIGGS
What friend?
FOSTER
Our host.
BRIGGS
He's a bloody friend of everyone then.
FOSTER
He's everybody's bloody friend. How many friends have you got altogether, Mr Friend?
BRIGGS
He probably couldn't count them.