HAROLD PINTER
Plays Four
Betrayal
Monologue
One for the Road
Mountain Language
Family Voices
A Kind of Alaska
Victoria Station
Precisely
The New World Order
Party Time
Moonlight
Ashes to Ashes
Celebration
Three Sketches
UMBRELLAS, GOD’S DISTRICT, APART FROM THAT
Contents
Title Page
Introduction
BETRAYAL
First Presentation
1977. Scene One
1977 Later. Scene Two
1975. Scene Three
1974. Scene Four
1973. Scene Five
1973 Later. Scene Six
1973 Later. Scene Seven
1971. Scene Eight
1968. Scene Nine
MONOLOGUE
First Presentation
Monologue
FAMILY VOICES
First Presentation
Family Voices
A KIND OF ALASKA
Note
First Presentation
A Kind of Alaska
VICTORIA STATION
First Presentation
Victoria Station
PRECISELY
First Presentation
Precisely
ONE FOR THE ROAD
First Presentation
One for the Road
MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE
First Presentation
1. A Prison Wall
2. Visitors Room
3. Voice in the Darkness
4. Visitors Room
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
First Presentation
The New World Order
PARTY TIME
First Presentation
Party Time
MOONLIGHT
Characters
First Presentation
Moonlight
ASHES TO ASHES
Characters
First Presentation
Set
Ashes to Ashes
CELEBRATION
Characters
First Presentation
Celebration
THREE SKETCHES
Umbrellas
Characters
First Presentation
Umbrellas
God’s District
First Presentation
God’s District
Apart from That
Characters
First Presentation
Apart from That
About the Author
By the Same Author
Introduction
Harold Pinter’s speech of thanks on receiving the David Cohen British Literature Prize for 1995. The Prize is awarded every two years in recognition of a lifetime’s achievement by a living British writer.
This is a great honour. Thank you very much.
I can’t say that there was a very strong literary tradition in my family. My mother enjoyed reading the novels of A. J. Cronin and Arnold Bennett and my father (who left the house at 7.00 am and returned at 7.00 pm, working as a jobbing tailor) liked Westerns but there were very few books about the house. This was of course also due to the fact that we depended entirely upon libraries. Nobody could afford to buy books.
However, when I first had a poem published in a magazine called Poetry London my parents were quite pleased. I published the poem with my name spelt PINTA, as one of my aunts was convinced that we came from a distinguished Portuguese family, the Da Pintas. This has never been confirmed, nor do I know whether such a family ever existed. The whole thing seemed to be in quite violent conflict with my understanding that all four of my grandparents came from Odessa, or at least Hungary or perhaps even Poland.
There was tentative speculation that PINTA became PINTER in the course of flight from the Spanish Inquisition but whether they had a Spanish Inquisition in Portugal no one quite seemed to know, at least in Hackney, where we lived. Anyway I found the PINTA spelling quite attractive, although I didn’t go as far as the ‘DA’. And I dropped the whole idea shortly afterwards.
There was only one member of my family who appeared to be at all well-off, my great-uncle, Uncle Coleman, who was ‘in business’. He always wore felt carpet-slippers and a skull cap at home and was a very courteous man. My father proposed that I show Uncle Coleman my poem in Poetry London when we next went to tea. I agreed, with some misgivings. My poem was called ‘New Year in the Midlands’ and was to do with a young actor’s vagabond life in rep. It was heavily influenced by Dylan Thomas. It contained the following lines:
‘This is the shine, the powder and blood and here am I, Straddled, exile always in one Whitbread Ale town, Or such.
My father and I sat in the room in silence, while Uncle Coleman read this poem. When he reached those lines he stopped, looked over the magazine at us and said: ‘Whitbread shares are doing very well at the moment. Take my tip.’
That was in 1950, when I was 20.
My early reading was rather shapeless and disjointed, mainly, I believe, to do with the dislocation of a childhood in wartime. I was evacuated twice (once to Cornwall, where I more or less saw the sea for the first time) went to a number of schools and kept returning to London to more bombs, flying bombs and rockets. It wasn’t a very conducive atmosphere for reading. But I finally settled in Hackney Downs Grammar School in late 1944 and made up for lost time. Hackney also had a great Public Library and there I discovered Joyce, Lawrence, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Rimbaud, Yeats etc.
Some years later, in I think 1951, having read an extract from Beckett’s Watt in a magazine called Irish Writing‚ I looked for books by Beckett in library after library – with no success. Eventually I unearthed one – his first novel Murphy. It had been hanging about Bermondsey Public Reserve Library since 1938. I concluded that interest in Beckett was low and decided to keep it – on an extended loan, as it were. I still have it.
In 1944 I met Joseph Brearley, who came to the school to teach English. Joe Brearley was a tall Yorkshireman who suffered from malaria, had been torpedoed at sea in the war and possessed a passionate enthusiasm for English poetry and dramatic literature. There had been no drama in the school when he arrived in 1945 but before we knew where we were he announced that he would do a production of Macbeth and pointing at me in class said: ‘And you, Pinter, will play Macbeth.’ ‘Me, sir?’ I said. ‘Yes. You.’ he said. I was 15 and I did play Macbeth, in modern dress, wearing the uniform of a major-general. I was so pleased with this uniform that I wore it on the 38 bus to go home to tea after the dress rehearsal. Old ladies smiled at me. The bus conductor looked at me and said: ‘Well, I don’t know what to charge you.’ My parents gave me the Collected Plays of Shakespeare to mark the occasion. I also managed to save up to buy a copy of Ulysses which I placed on the bookshelf in the living room. My father told me to take it off the shelf. He said he wouldn’t have a book like that in the room where my mother served dinner.
Joe Brearley and I became close friends. We embarked on a series of long walks, which continued for years, starting from Hackney Downs, up to Springfield Park, along the River Lea, back up Lea Bridge Road, past Clapton Pond, through Mare Street to Bethnal Green. Shakespeare dominated our lives at that time (I mean the lives of my friends and me) but the revelation which Joe Brearley brought with him was John Webster. On our walks, we would declare into the wind, at the passing trolley-buses or indeed to the passers-by, nuggets of Webster, such as:
What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered
With Cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits: and tis found
They go on such strange geometric hinges
You may open them both ways: anyway, for heaven’s sake,
So I were out of your whispering.
(The Duchess of Malfi)
or:
O I smell soot,
Most stinking soot, the chimney’s a-fire,
My liver’s purboiled like scotch holly-bread,
There’s a plumber laying pipes in my guts.
(The White Devil)
or:
My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,
Is driven I know not whither.
(The White Devil)
or:
I have caught
An everlasting cold. I have lost my voice
Most irrecoverably.
(The White Devil)
or:
Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.
(The Duchess of Malfi)
That language made me dizzy.
Joe Brearley fired my imagination. I can never forget him.
I started writing plays in 1957 and in 1958 The Birthday Party opened at the Lyric, Hammersmith, was massacred by the critics (with the exception of Harold Hobson) and was taken off after eight performances. I decided to pop in to the Thursday matinee. I was a few minutes late and the curtain had gone up. I ran up the stairs to the dress circle. An usherette stopped me. ‘Where are you going?’ she said. ‘To the dress circle,’ I said, ‘I’m the author.’ Her eyes, as I recall, misted over. ‘Oh are you?’ she said, ‘Oh you poor chap. Listen, the dress circle’s closed, but why don’t you go in, go in and sit down, darling, if you like, go on.’ I went into the empty dress circle and looked down into the stalls. Six people were watching the performance which, I must say, didn’t seem to be generating very much electricity. I still have the box-office returns for the week. The Thursday matinee brought in two pounds six shillings.
In a career attended by a great deal of dramatic criticism one of the most interesting – and indeed acute – critical questions I’ve ever heard was when I was introduced to a young woman and her six-year-old son. The woman looked down at her son and said: ‘This man is a very good writer.’ The little boy looked at me and then at his mother and said: ‘Can he do a “W”?’
I’m well aware that I have been described in some quarters as being ‘enigmatic, taciturn, terse, prickly, explosive and forbidding’. Well, I do have my moods like anyone else, I won’t deny it. But my writing life, which has gone on for roughly 45 years and isn’t over yet, has been informed by a quite different set of characteristics which have nothing whatsoever to do with those descriptions. Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement. Those words are almost, perhaps, truisms. But in fact they are true. Whether it be a poem, a play or a screenplay – if the relish, challenge and excitement in the language and through that language to character isn’t there then nothing’s there and nothing can exist.
So while I’m sure I am ‘enigmatic, taciturn, terse, prickly, explosive and forbidding’ I’ve also enjoyed my writing life – and indeed my life – to the hilt and I am deeply gratified to have been awarded this prize.
BETRAYAL
Betrayal was first presented by the National Theatre, London, on 15 November 1978 with the following cast:
EMMA Penelope Wilton
JERRY Michael Gambon
ROBERT Daniel Massey
Directed by Peter Hall
Designed by John Bury
In 1977 Emma is 38, Jerry and Robert are 40.
Betrayal can be performed without an interval, or with an interval after Scene Four.
H.P.
1977
SCENE ONE
Pub. 1977. Spring.
Noon.
EMMA is sitting at a corner table. JERRY approaches with drinks, a pint of bitter for him, a glass of wine for her.
He sits. They smile, toast each other silently, drink.
He sits back and looks at her.
JERRY
Well …
EMMA
How are you?
JERRY
All right.
EMMA
You look well.
JERRY
Well, I’m not all that well, really.
EMMA
Why? What’s the matter?
JERRY
Hangover.
He raises his glass.
Cheers.
He drinks.
How are you?
EMMA
I’m fine.
She looks round the bar, back at him.
Just like old times.
JERRY
Mmm. It’s been a long time.
Yes.
Pause.
I thought of you the other day.
JERRY
Good God. Why?
She laughs.
JERRY
Why?
EMMA
Well, it’s nice, sometimes, to think back. Isn’t it?
JERRY
Absolutely.
Pause.
How’s everything?
EMMA
Oh, not too bad.
Pause.
Do you know how long it is since we met?
JERRY
Well I came to that private view, when was it –?
EMMA
No, I don’t mean that.
JERRY
Oh you mean alone?
EMMA
Yes.
JERRY
Uuh …
EMMA
Two years.
JERRY
Yes, I thought it must be. Mmnn.
Pause.
EMMA
Long time.
JERRY
Yes. It is.
Pause.
How’s it going? The Gallery?
EMMA
How do you think it’s going?
JERRY
Well. Very well, I would say.
EMMA
I’m glad you think so. Well, it is actually. I enjoy it.
JERRY
Funny lot, painters, aren’t they?
EMMA
They’re not at all funny.
JERRY
Aren’t they? What a pity.
Pause.
How’s Robert?
EMMA
When did you last see him?
JERRY
I haven’t seen him for months. Don’t know why. Why?
EMMA
Why what?
JERRY
Why did you ask when I last saw him?
EMMA
I just wondered. How’s Sam?
JERRY
You mean Judith.
EMMA
Do I?
JERRY
You remember the form. I ask about your husband, you ask about my wife.
EMMA
Yes, of course. How is your wife?
JERRY
All right.
Pause.
EMMA
Sam must be … tall.
JERRY
He is tall. Quite tall. Does a lot of running. He’s a long distance runner. He wants to be a zoologist.
EMMA
No, really? Good. And Sarah?
JERRY
She’s ten.
EMMA
God. I suppose she must be.
JERRY
Yes, she must be.
Pause.
Ned’s five, isn’t he?
EMMA
You remember.
JERRY
Well, I would remember that.
Pause.
EMMA
Yes.
Pause.
You’re all right, though?
JERRY
Oh … yes, sure.
Pause.
EMMA
Ever think of me?
JERRY
I don’t need to think of you.
EMMA
Oh?
JERRY
I don’t need to think of you.
Pause.
Anyway I’m all right. How are you?
EMMA
Fine, really. All right.
JERRY
You’re looking very pretty.
EMMA
Really? Thank you. I’m glad to see yo
JERRY
So am I. I mean to see you.
EMMA
You think of me sometimes?
JERRY
I think of you sometimes.
Pause.
I saw Charlotte the other day.
EMMA
No? Where? She didn’t mention it.
JERRY
She didn’t see me. In the street.
EMMA
But you haven’t seen her for years.
JERRY
I recognised her.
EMMA
How could you? How could you know?
JERRY
I did.
EMMA
What did she look like?
JERRY
You.
EMMA
No, what did you think of her, really?
JERRY
I thought she was lovely.
EMMA
Yes. She’s very … She’s smashing. She’s thirteen.
Pause.
Do you remember that time … oh God it was … when you picked her up and threw her up and caught her?
JERRY
She was very light.
EMMA
She remembers that, you know.
JERRY
Really?
EMMA
Mmnn. Being thrown up.
JERRY
What a memory.
Pause.
She doesn’t know … about us, does she?
EMMA
Of course not. She just remembers you, as an old friend.
JERRY
That’s right.
Pause.
Yes, everyone was there that day, standing around, your husband, my wife, all the kids, I remember.
EMMA
What day?
JERRY
When I threw her up. It was in your kitchen.
EMMA
It was in your kitchen.
Silence.
JERRY
Darling.
EMMA