The Habit of Art: A Play (9 page)

Carpenter
And to Britten winning was important.

Silenced earlier, now I should speak, since as biographer to you both I am your passport to posterity.

Auden
The cheek. Our passport is what we have written.

Britten
Quite. Those who love and admire us. I am sure of that.

Carpenter
Are you? Would it not surprise you to learn that there is a growing number of your devotees who would in the nicest possible way be happy to see you dead?

Britten
Dead? Me?

Auden
Not in Milwaukee. They loved me in Milwaukee.

Carpenter
Not another opera, not more poems: a funeral.

Britten
I’ve still got so much to do.

Auden
I want to write this libretto.

Carpenter
There’s no malice in it. It’s just an entirely human desire for completion…the mild satisfaction of drawing a line under you. Death shapes a life.

Dead, you see, you belong to your admirers in your entirety. They own you. They can even quote you to your face – only it will be a dead face – at your memorial service perhaps, or when they unveil the stone in Westminster Abbey. Over and done with: W. H. Auden. Benjamin Britten. Next.

Fitz
Not the same with actors, though, is it?

Author
Why?

Fitz
They’re not waiting for us to go?

Author
Yes, but actors aren’t always breaking new ground the way writers or composers are supposed to do. Actors can just be more of the same.

Fitz
With me?

Kay
Yes, with you, darling, and it is more of the same with actors most of the time. As you’d know if you were in the corner every night. They all have their little canteens of histrionic cutlery – Larry’s sudden fortissimos, John G.’s tremolo…

Fitz
It’s known as style.

Kay
I was in the corner for something Alec did.

Tim
Alec who?

Kay
On one particular line he used to do a little flick of his leg. Cut to five years later when I worked with him again…different play, same flick. Fool that I was, I made the mistake of mentioning it to the director, and fool that he was, he made the mistake of mentioning it to Alec. Result was he didn’t speak for four days. But they all do it. Great acting is a toolbox.

Fitz
Lucky not to get the sack.

Kay
Which we will if we don’t get on.

(
Giving cue.
) ‘Why do you do this?’

Britten
Why do you do this? Write biography? Why not make your own way in the world instead of hitching a lift on the life of someone else?

Auden
I would find it intolerable myself if only because of the degree of self-relegation involved. A biographer is invariably second-rank even when he or she is first-rate.

Britten
That said, whose life will make the better read? Wystan’s, I imagine. Berlin. New York. Ischia. What have I got? Aldeburgh.

Carpenter
And the boys.

Britten
I must go.

Henry
The question is, is he asleep as Fitz or is he asleep as Auden?

Author
Auden could go to sleep here, actually. It’s quite plausible.

Kay
Don’t suggest it. It would be the thin end of a very long wedge.

Fitz
I’m not asleep.

Kay
Yes, you were, darling.

Fitz
I’m smoking tomorrow, that will help.

Britten
I must go.

Auden
Will you call me? They put calls through from the Lodge. I could start any time.

Britten
I’ll talk to Peter.

Auden
Give him my love. Tell him how I’ve changed.

Britten
We’ve both changed.

Stuart
Oh, sorry.

Auden
This is a friend of mine…What was your name again?

Stuart
Stuart.

Auden
This is Mr Britten.

Stuart
Why I came back…I’m not interrupting anything?

Auden
Is he? Is he interrupting anything, Benjie?

Britten
No. We’re…we’re finished.

Stuart
Why I came back was that the old guy I go to in Norham Road. I told him where I’d been – which I wouldn’t normally do because I don’t talk about clients – and he said I should come back, that you were famous and it would be something to tell my grandchildren about.

Auden
That depends on whether you’re going to have any grandchildren.

Stuart
Oh yes. This is just a phase.

Auden
And on how enlightened these putative grandchildren turn out to be. ‘Your grandpa was once a rent boy’ is hardly a bedtime story.

Stuart
I told you. That’s not a job description I answer to. Only, the thing I don’t understand is this…The guy I go and see, he’ll open the door and there are books everywhere, books in the hall, books on the landing, books and pictures…proper pictures, not prints. And he’s sitting there under the lamp in front of the fire and the clock’s ticking and the sherry’s poured. And he’s playing classical music on what he calls his radiogram…It’s just lovely.

Auden
In which case, you should go and see Mr Britten.

Stuart
Only then he tells me to come back here because you’re the great man…and look at it. Look at you. It’s a shit heap. Of course, however cosy it all is, he still wants me to take it out. Only I feel that pollutes it. I thought it was either/or. I never thought guys like him even did it. He doesn’t look as if he does. I thought he was respectable.

Auden
Then you’re very old-fashioned.

Stuart
You asked me, earlier on, what did I know? One thing I’ve learned is that given the chance everybody does it, one way or another. It’s not much of a lesson, though, is it?

Fitz
You don’t feel, author, that you’re glamorising this young man? Sorry, Tim. Would someone as sensitive – as potentially refined even – as you’re making him out to be, would he go on the game?

Author
It’s possible.

Tim
I can understand why he doesn’t want to be called a rent boy.

Fitz
Oh yes, dear boy. But would he
be
a rent boy?

Kay
That’s not really for you to ask, is it?

Fitz
I have to play the scene.

Tim
Am I doing it wrong?

Kay
No. Absolutely not. Fitz. (
And she shakes her head in disapproval.
)

Henry
When I was at RADA in the seventies someone I knew – a friend – was very hard up. And he went on the game.

Donald
Poor sod.

Tim
Why? It might be quite enjoyable. That was pretty well pre-everything then, wasn’t it? No risk and that.

Kay
How did it work? Did he hang around in Piccadilly?

Henry
No, no. It was classier than that. It’s like everything else in life. You get yourself an agent. The clients rang the agency, the agency rang him and he went round like he does in the play.

Kay
What were the others…the other boys? Were they full-time?

Henry
All sorts, one was a waiter, another worked at the Air Ministry. One was a porter at Sotheby’s.

Tim
What did your friend say they were like, the clients? Did he feel badly about it?

Henry
Who?

Tim
Your friend.

Henry
No, he didn’t feel badly about it at all. Only one evening he went round to a new client…and it was one of the teachers from RADA.

Fitz
Did they do it?

Henry
The teacher offered to help him with his fees, so he more or less stopped doing it after that.

Fitz
More or less? Did he still have to sleep with the teacher?

Henry
Now and again.

Kay
Life.

Henry
Yes.

Kay
Come on. Last lap.

Henry
What I was meaning is – it can be quite ordinary most of the time. A job. Not degradation.

ASM
(
giving cue
) ‘I’d better be going.’

Britten
I’d better be going.

Auden
No, we haven’t finished.

Britten
Wystan, we have.

Auden
Besides, you can tell your grandchildren about this gentleman, too.

Stuart
Yeah? Are you somebody, then?

Britten
No, I’m just a friend of Mr Auden’s.

Auden
A friend from way back.

Stuart
Everybody knows everybody.

Auden
Well, having brought you two together, I think I might spend a tactful penny…though I’ll pay you both the compliment of doing it in the bathroom.

Stuart
Are you more famous or less famous? One to ten.

Britten
Both about eight.

Stuart
You’re more normal. You don’t smell, for a start. So should I remember you when I’m old?

Britten
Ask your man in Norham Road. You’d be better playing the music. And with Wystan, reading the poetry.

Stuart
So was he sexy?

Britten
Looking, you mean? No. But you didn’t ever want to be with anyone else.

And talking always. People went to bed with him to stop him talking…though it didn’t.

Young men aped the way he talked, aped how he dressed. And wrote how he wrote, or tried to. He was…

Stuart
A star.

Britten
Yes, I suppose. Are you…musical at all?

Stuart
No.

Are you?

Britten
I am, yes, a little.

Stuart
Great. What sort of thing?

Britten
Oh, highbrow stuff mainly. Orchestras. Singing. Opera.

Stuart
Great. Great.

(
To the audience.
) This is when I wish I was round the back of the bus station. Then, there’s no talk. If I met this guy round Gloucester Green, we wouldn’t have to go through all this…

I’ve never seen an opera.

Britten
That’s good. I wrote an opera for boys like you who’d never seen one.

Stuart
Yeah?

Britten
It was quite jolly. Some of them couldn’t play or sing but they did the music with drums and teacups.

Stuart
Teacups?

Britten
Yes. And the audience sang, too.

Stuart
Did you have to pay them?

Britten
The audience? No. No. They did it for…well, for love, I suppose. I live in Suffolk. People…people like me there. Perhaps you could come there one day.

Stuart
Suffolk? Yeah. I’d like that.

Carpenter
Britten’s boys generally had more to offer than this. Their voices, for a start; they could read music; some of them could play music, even compose it. They were accomplished young men. All this boy has to offer is his dick.

Stuart
So? Do you think I don’t know that?

Britten
Do you think I don’t?

Auden
Are you going, Benjie? Hold my hand for a second.

And remember, Ben. Fuck Aldeburgh. And while you’re at it, fuck Glyndebourne! But Ben.
Go on
. Ah, Boyle.

Boyle
Not disturbing you, am I, sir? You missed dinner. That’s not like you. The Dean was worried. He thought you might have died.

Auden
No such luck. And…a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself utter: I forgot the time.

(
To Stuart.
) Have you had anything to eat?

Boyle
Oh, come along, sir.

Auden
It’s too late for me.

Stuart
Are you sure?

Auden
Please.

Boyle
Professor Tolkien was dining in hall, sir.

Auden
That’s a shame. I like him.

Boyle
Written another book, apparently.

Auden
Really? More fucking elves, I suppose.

Boyle
That was Mr Britten, wasn’t it? Big car. Chauffeur. Probably writes commercials. Jingles. It’s how they all make their money nowadays, musicians.

Nothing else you want? I’ll say goodnight.

Stuart
(
maybe toasting him
) Goodnight.