No. I know no one. Except Kate.
Pause
DEELEY
Do you find her changed?
ANNA
Oh, just a little, not very much. (To KATE.) You’re still shy, aren’t you?
KATE stares at her.
(To DEELEY.) But when I knew her first she was so shy, as shy as a fawn, she really was. When people leaned to speak to her she would fold away from them, so that though she was still standing within their reach she was no longer accessible to them. She folded herself from them, they were no longer able to speak or go through with their touch. I put it down to her upbringing, a parson’s daughter, and indeed there was a good deal of Brontë about her.
DEELEY
Was she a parson’s daughter?
ANNA
But if I thought Brontë I did not think she was Brontë in passion but only in secrecy, in being so stubbornly private.
Slight pause
I remember her first blush.
DEELEY
What? What was it? I mean why was it?
ANNA
I had borrowed some of her underwear, to go to a party. Later that night I confessed. It was naughty of me. She stared at me, nonplussed, perhaps, is the word. But I told her that in fact I had been punished for my sin, for a man at the party had spent the whole evening looking up my skirt.
Pause
DEELEY
She blushed at that?
ANNA
Deeply.
DEELEY
Looking up your skirt in her underwear. Mmnn.
ANNA
But from that night she insisted, from time to time, that I borrow her underwear – she had more of it than I, and a far greater range – and each time she proposed this she would blush, but propose it she did, nevertheless. And when there was anything to tell her, when I got back, anything of interest to tell her, I told her.
DEELEY
Did she blush then?
ANNA
I could never see then. I would come in late and find her reading under the lamp, and begin to tell her, but she would say no, turn off the light, and I would tell her in the dark. She preferred to be told in the dark. But of course it was never completely dark, what with the light from the gasfire or the light through the curtains, and what she didn’t know was that, knowing her preference, I would choose a position in the room from which I could see her face, although she could not see mine. She could hear my voice only. And so she listened and I watched her listening.
DEELEY
Sounds a perfect marriage.
ANNA
We were great friends.
Pause
DEELEY
You say she was Brontë in secrecy but not in passion. What was
ANNA
I feel that is your province.
DEELEY
You fed it’s my province? Well, you’re damn right. It is my province. I’m glad someone’s showing a bit of taste at last. Of course it’s my bloody province. I’m her husband.
Pause
I mean I’d like to ask a question. Am I alone in beginning to find all this distasteful?
ANNA
But what can you possibly find distasteful? I’ve flown from Rome to see my oldest friend, after twenty years, and to meet her husband. What is it that worries you?
DEELEY
What worries me is the thought of your husband rumbling about alone in his enormous villa living hand to mouth on a few hardboiled eggs and unable to speak a damn word of
ANNA
I interpret, when necessary.
DEELEY
Yes, but you’re here, with us. He’s there, alone, lurching up and down the terrace, waiting for a speedboat, waiting for a speedboat to spill out beautiful people, at least. Beautiful Mediterranean people. Waiting for all that, a kind of elegance we know nothing about, a slim-bellied Cote d’Azur thing we know absolutely nothing about, a lobster and lobster sauce ideology we know fuck all about, the longest legs in the world, the most phenomenally soft voices. I can hear them now. I mean let’s put it on the table, I have my eye on a number of pulses, pulses all round the globe, deprivations and insults, why should I waste valuable space listening to two –
KATE
(Swiftly.) If you don’t like it go.
Pause
DEELEY
Go? Where can I go?
KATE
To China. Or Sicily.
DEELEY
I haven’t got a speedboat. I haven’t got a white dinner jacket.
KATE
China then.
DEELEY
You know what they’d do to me in China if they found me in a white dinner jacket. They’d bloodywell kill me. You know what they’re like over there.
Slight pause
ANNA
You are welcome to come to Sicily at any time, both of you, and be my guests.
Silence
KATE and DEELEY stare at her.
ANNA
(To DEELEY, quietly.) I would like you to understand that I came here not to disrupt but to celebrate.
Pause
To celebrate a very old and treasured friendship, something that was forged between us long before you knew of our existence.
Pause
I found her. She grew to know wonderful people, through my introduction. I took her to cafés, almost private ones, where artists and writers and sometimes actors collected, and others with dancers, and we sat hardly breathing with our coffee, listening to the life around us. All I wanted for her was her happiness. That is all I want for her still.
Pause
DEELEY
(To KATE.) We’ve met before, you know. Anna and I.
KATE looks at him.
Yes, we met in the Wayfarers Tavern. In the corner. She took a fancy to me. Of course I was slimhipped in those days. Pretty nifty. A bit squinky, quite honestly. Curly hair. The lot. We had a scene together. She freaked out. She didn’t have any bread, so I bought her a drink. She looked at me with big eyes, shy, all that bit. She was pretending to be you at the time. Did it pretty well. Wearing your underwear she was too, at the time. Amiably allowed me a gander. Trueblue generosity. Admirable in a woman. We went to a party. Given by philosophers. Not a bad bunch. Edgware road gang. Nice lot. Haven’t seen any of them for years. Old friends. Always thinking. Spoke their thoughts. Those are the people I miss. They’re all dead, anyway I’ve never seen them again. The Maida Vale group. Big Eric and little Tony. They lived somewhere near Paddington library. On the way to the party I took her into a café, bought her a cup of coffee, beards with faces. She thought she was you, said little, so little. Maybe she was you. Maybe it was you, having coffee with me, saying little, so little.
Pause
KATE
What do you think attracted her to you?
DEELEY
I don’t know. What?
KATE
She found your face very sensitive, vulnerable.
DEELEY
Did she?
KATE
She wanted to comfort it, in the way only a woman can.
DEELEY
Did she?
KATE
Oh yes.
DEELEY
She wanted to comfort my face, in the way only a woman can?
KATE
She was prepared to extend herself to you.
DEELEY
I beg your pardon?
KATE
She fell in love with you.
DEELEY
With me?
KATE
You were so unlike the others. We knew men who were brutish, crass.
DEELEY
There really are such men, then? Crass men?
KATE
Quite crass.
DEELEY
But I was crass, wasn’t I, looking up her skirt?
KATE
That’s not crass.
DEELEY
If it was her skirt. If it was her.
ANNA
(Coldly.) Oh,
it was my skirt. It was me. I remember your look … very well. I remember you well.
KATE
(To ANNA.) But I remember you. I remember you dead.
Pause
I remember you lying dead. You didn’t know I was watching you. I leaned over you. Your face was dirty. You lay dead, your face scrawled with dirt, all kinds of earnest inscriptions, but unblotted, so that they had run, all over your face, down to your throat. Your sheets were immaculate. I was glad. I would have been unhappy if your corpse had lain in an unwholesome sheet. It would have been graceless. I mean as far as I was concerned. As far as my room was concerned. After all, you were dead in my room. When you woke my eyes were above you, staring down at you, You tried to do my little trick, one of my tricks you had borrowed, my little slow smile, my little slow shy smile, my bend of the head, my half closing of the eyes, that we knew so well, but it didn’t work, the grin only split the dirt at the sides of your mouth and stuck. You stuck in your grin. I looked for tears but could see none. Your pupils weren’t in your eyes. Your bones ware breaking through your face. But all was serene. There was no suffering. It had all happened elsewhere. Last rites I did not feel necessary. Or any celebration. I felt the time and season appropriate and that by dying alone and dirty you had acted with proper decorum. It was time for my bath. I had quite a lengthy bath, got out, walked about the room, glistening, drew up a chair, sat naked beside you and watched you.
Pause
When I brought him into the room your body of course had gone. What a relief it was to have a different body in my room, a male body behaving quite differently, doing all those things they do and which they think are good, like sitting with one leg over the arm of an armchair. We had a choice of two beds. Your bed or my bed. To lie in, or on. To grind noses together, in or on. He liked your bed, and thought he was different in it because he was a man. But one night I said let me do some thing, a little thing, a little trick. He lay there in your bed. He looked up at me with great expectation. He was gratified. He thought I had profited from his teaching. He thought I was going to be sexually forthcoming, that I was about to take a long promised initiative. I dug about in the windowbox, where you had planted our pretty pansies, scooped, filled the bowl, and plastered his face with dirt. He was bemused, aghast, resisted, resisted with force. He would not let me dirty his face, or smudge it, he wouldn’t let me. He suggested a wedding instead, and a change of environment.
Slight pause
Neither mattered.
Pause
He asked me once, at about that time, who had slept in that bed before him. I told him no one. No one at all.
ANNA stands, walks towards the door, stops, her back to them.
Silence
DEELEY starts to sob, very quietly.
ANNA stands still.
ANNA turns, switches off the lamps, sits on her divan, and lies down.
The sobbing stops
Silence
DEELEY stands. He walks a few paces, looks at both divans.
He goes to ANNA’S divan, looks down at her. She is still.
Silence
DEELEY moves towards the door, stops, his back to them.
Silence
DEELEY turns. He goes towards KATE’S divan. He sits on her divan, lies across her lap.
Long silence
DEELEY very slowly sits up.
He gets off the divan.
He walks slowly to the armchair.
He sits, slumped.
Silence
Lights up full sharply. Very bright.
DEELEY in armchair.
ANNA lying on divan.
KATE sitting on divan.
NO MAN’S LAND
No Man’s Land was first presented by the National Theatre at the Old Vic, Waterloo, London, on 23rd April, 1975, with the following cast:
HIRST, a man in his sixties Ralph Richardson
SPOONER, a man in his sixties John Gielgud
FOSTER, a man in his thirties Michael Feast
BRIGGS, a man in his forties Terence Rigby
Designed by John Bury
Directed by Peter Hall
The play was subsequently presented at Wyndham’s Theatre, London, from 15 July, 1975, with the same cast.
A large room in a house in North West London.
Well but sparely furnished. A strong and comfortable
straight-backed chair, in which HIRST sits.
A wall of bookshelves, with various items of pottery acting
as bookstands, including two large mugs.
Heavy curtains across the window.
The central feature of the room is an antique cabinet, with marble top, brass gallery and open shelves, on which stands a great variety of bottles: spirits, aperitifs, beers, etc.
ACT ONE
Summer.
Night.
SPOONER stands in the centre of the room. He is dressed in a very old and shabby suit, dark faded skirt. 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.
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.