Complete Poems and Plays (74 page)

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
It’s true, you did send me postcards from Zürich;

But you know that I can’t decipher your writing.

I like to have the cards, just to know where you are

By reading the postmark.

L
ADY
E
LIZABETH
.
                  But Claude, I’m glad to find

That you’ve taken my advice.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                                 Your advice? About what?

L
ADY
E
LIZABETH
.
To engage Mr. Colby. I really am distressed!

This is not the first sign that I’ve noticed

Of your memory failing. I must persuade you

To have a course of treatment with Dr. Rebmann —

No, at your stage, I think, with Dr. Leroux.

Don’t you remember, I said before I left:

‘Trust my guidance for once, and engage that young man?’

Well, that was Mr. Colby.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                          Oh, I see.

Yes, now I am beginning to remember.

I must have acted on your guidance.

L
ADY
E
LIZABETH
.
I must explain to you, Mr. Colby,

That I am to share you with my husband.

You shall have tea with me tomorrow,

And then I shall tell you about my committees.

I must go and rest now.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                        Yes, you go and rest.

I’m in the middle of some business with Mr….

L
ADY
E
LIZABETH
.
                                              Colby!

[
Exit
L
ADY
E
LIZABETH
]

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
She actually went and changed her own ticket.

It’s something unheard of.

E
GGERSON
.
                              Amazing, isn’t it!

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
If this is what the doctor in Zürich has done for her,

I give him full marks. Well, Eggerson,

I seem to have brought you up to London for nothing.

E
GGERSON.
Oh, not for nothing! I wouldn’t have missed it.

And besides, as I told you, I’ve done some shopping.

But I’d better be off now. Mr. Simpkins —

If anything
should
turn up unexpected

And you find yourself non-plussed, you must get me on the phone.

If I’m not in the house, I’ll be out in the garden.

And I’ll slip up to town any day, if you want me.

In fact, Mrs. E. said: ‘I wish he’d ring us up!

I’m sure he has a very cultivated voice.’

C
OLBY
.
Thank you very much, I will. It’s reassuring

To know that I have you always at my back

If I get into trouble. But I hope

That I shan’t have to call upon you often.

E
GGERSON
.
Oh, and I forgot … Mrs. E. keeps saying:

‘Why don’t you ask him out to dinner one Sunday?’

But I say: ‘We couldn’t ask him to come

All the way to Joshua Park, at this time of year!’

I said: ‘Let’s think about it in the Spring

When the garden will really be a treat to look at.’

Well, I’ll be going.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                Goodbye, and thank you, Eggerson.

E
GGERSON
.
Good day, Sir Claude. Good day, Mr. Simpkins.

[
Exit
E
GGERSON
]

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
Well, Colby! I’ve been calling you Mr. Simpkins

In public, till now, as a matter of prudence.

As we arranged. But after two months —

And as my wife insists upon your being Mr. Colby —

I shall begin to call you Colby with everyone.

C
OLBY
.
I’m sure that will make it easier for both of us.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
Her sudden arrival was very disconcerting:

As you gather, such a thing never happened before.

So the meeting didn’t go quite the way I’d intended;

And yet I believe that it’s all for the best.

It went off very well. It’s very obvious

That she took to you at once.

C
OLBY
.
                                        Did she really think

That she had seen me before?

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                                 Impossible to tell.

The point is that she’s taken a fancy to you

And so she lays claim to you. That’s very satisfactory.

She’s taken it for granted that you should have the flat —

By tomorrow she’ll be sure it was she who proposed it.

So I feel pretty confident that, before long,

We can put matters onto a permanent basis.

C
OLBY
.
I must confess, that up to this point

I haven’t been able to feel very settled.

And what you’ve had in mind still seems to me

Like building my life upon a deception.

Do you really believe that Lady Elizabeth

Can ever accept me as if I was her son?

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
As if you were her son? If she comes to think of you

As the kind of man that her son would have been —

And I believe she will: though I’m perfectly convinced

That
her
son would have been a different type of person —

Then you
will
become her son, in her eyes. She’s like that.

Why, it wouldn’t surprise me if she came to believe

That you really are her son, instead of being mine.

She has always lived in a world of make-believe,

And the best one can do is to guide her delusions

In the right direction.

C
OLBY
.
                           It doesn’t seem quite honest.

If we all have to live in a world of make-believe,

Is that good for us? Or a kindness to her?

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms

Upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.

But tell me first — I’ve a reason for asking —

How do you like your work? You don’t find it uncongenial?

I’m not changing the subject: I’m coming back to it.

You know I’ve deliberately left you alone,

And so far we’ve discussed only current business,

Thinking that you might find it easier

To start by a rather formal relationship

In adapting yourself to a new situation.

C
OLBY
.
I’m very grateful to you, for that:

It is indeed a new and strange situation,

And nothing about it is real to me yet.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
But now I want it to be different. It’s odd, Colby.

I didn’t realise, till you started with me here,

That we hardly know each other at all.

C
OLBY
.
I suppose there hasn’t been the opportunity.

S
IR
C
LAUDE.
When you were a child, you belonged to your aunt,

Or so she made me feel. I never saw you alone.

And then when I sent you both over to Canada

In the war — that was perhaps a mistake,

Though it seemed to have such obvious advantages

That I had no doubts at the time — that’s five years;

And then your school, and your military service,

And then your absorption in your music …

C
OLBY
.
You started by asking me how I found this work.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
Yes, how do you find it?

C
OLBY
.
                                                    In a way, exhilarating.

To find there is something that I can do

So remote from my previous interests.

It gives me, in a way, a kind of self-confidence

I’ve never had before. Yet at the same time

It’s rather disturbing. I don’t mean the work:

I mean, about myself. As if I was becoming

A different person. Just as, I suppose,

If you learn to speak a foreign language fluently,

So that you can think in it — you feel yourself to be

Rather a different person when you’re talking it.

I’m not at all sure that I like the other person

That I feel myself becoming — though he fascinates me.

And yet from time to time, when I least expect it,

When my mind is cleared and empty, walking in the street

Or waking in the night, then the former person,

The person I used to be, returns to take possession:

And I am again the disappointed organist,

And for a moment the thing I cannot do,

The art that I could never excel in,

Seems the one thing worth doing, the one thing

That I want to do. I have to fight that person.

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
I understand what you are saying

Much better than you think. It’s my own experience

That you are repeating.

C
OLBY
.
                               Your own experience?

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
Yes, I did not want to be a financier.

C
OLBY
.
What did you want to do?

S
IR
C
LAUDE
.
                                     I wanted to be a potter.