Read The Habit of Art: A Play Online
Authors: Alan Bennett
The Habit of Art: A Play (6 page)
The Chorus is a…well, the Chorus
is
a device.
Kay
(
going to Donald
) Oh, darling. You should have said. A device! No.
Kay is holding Donald’s hand. It should be
Hay Fever
melodramatic.
Donald
Because you see, in life he wasn’t a device, Humphrey Carpenter. He was a really interesting, talented guy. I’ve been reading up about him and all the other things he did besides writing. He had a jazz band. He used to like to dress up and perform. And he practically started Radio 3. Anyway, I just wondered if there’s a way of using some of that to muffle the fact that I’m a device – No, darling, I am. And I don’t mind being a device if I can somehow use some of the other sides to him to disguise it.
Author
(
suspiciously
) Using what? What sort of thing?
Carpenter
His music, for instance. Could I just try something out later on, something I’ve been working on that might help?
Kay
I’m sure you can, darling.
And with a look she defies both the Author and Fitz to contradict her.
Something musical, darling. Lovely. I’m sure we’ll love it. Going to spend a penny, darling? Love you.
Donald goes off.
Author
What fucking music?
Kay raises her hands, disclaiming all responsibility.
Of course he’s a fucking device. And what’s more, he should be grateful. Actors. Why can’t they just say the words? Why does a play always have to be such a performance?
Kay
Will you please settle down, Neil! On we go.
ASM
(
giving cue
) ‘And do you like your job…?’
Auden
And do you like your job as a rent boy?
Stuart
I hope it won’t be my life’s work. You get to meet unexpected people…like your good self.
If you don’t mind, though, I’d prefer you not to call me a rent boy.
Auden
Why not? That’s what you are. You are a rent boy. I am a poet. Over the wall lives the Dean of Christ Church. We all have our parts to play.
Stuart
I won’t always be, though. I do it, but it’s not what I am.
Auden
No. Though I am condemned to be a poet. (
He gets up.
) I may say that in the unlikely event of your being my neighbour at Christ Church High Table we wouldn’t be able to have a conversation like this and for two reasons. Firstly, and obviously, decorum. It would not be thought proper. Secondly and to my mind much more irksomely – because for you at any rate, who are what I believe some well-meaning persons nowadays call a sex worker – a conversation about dicks is in fact shop…and on Christ Church High Table we are not, absurdly in my view, supposed to talk shop.
The phone rings.
Yes? Yes, I see. What time did he say?
What
time? Thank you.
He puts the phone down.
What time is seven-ish?
Stuart
Just after seven. Or just before.
Auden
Exactly. Not a time at all. Seven-ish!
Stuart
Why?
Auden
Someone is going to call. An old friend.
He starts ineffectually to tidy up.
You must go.
Stuart nods.
Stuart
Can I ask you something? Something personal. Has your face always been like that? The lines and that.
Auden
No. When I was a young man – when I was your age, for instance – I was smooth-skinned. I was said once to look like a Swedish deckhand. I still may of course. Who knows what Swedish deckhands look like in the evening of their lives? It’s been said that nowadays my face resembles a scrotum.
Stuart
N-no. It’s what I’d call a lived-in face. You could be quite distinguished.
Auden
Thank you.
Britten is finishing his auditions. Donald and Ralph the dresser enter quietly. Ralph carries a box containing the mask.
Britten
Thank you. Thank you very much. You still sound rather early morningish, much too late in the day for that. So, why don’t we finish off by singing something a bit more jolly and really have a good time?
The Boy sings Britten’s arrangement of “Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son.”
Don’t hold back. That’s right, it’s meant to sound horrid, it’s modern music. Smashing!
Auden is now dozing.
Carpenter
Film this moment and with the poet alone the camera creeps in to sneak a close-up of the famously fissured face and its congregation of wrinkles.
Kay
(
to Author
) I’m not privy to Stephen’s thoughts on this one. He’s talked about it though.
Ralph
(
beckoning Fitz upstage to put on mask
) Fitz, it’s here!
ASM brings out a large blown-up photograph of Auden from behind the set.
Author
Perhaps he’ll get some inspiration in Leeds. If not, when in doubt take it out. It’s only a play.
Kay
Yes. Well, I think we’ll just do it, darling. Tom!
The Wrinkles are played by Stage Management.
Wrinkle One
(
played by Kay
) I am one of the creases on the face of the poet. Taken together, my colleagues and I constitute the Touraine-Solente-Golé Syndrome. In a fairy story, solve the riddle of its name and you would be its master, but not alas in medicine, and call it Touraine-Solente-Golé or what you will, there is no cure and it goes with him to the grave.
Wrinkle Two
(
played by ASM
) On the bright side, though, were his face made of the beloved limestone that it resembles our crevices in the cove that is Auden would, like Malham, be host to the hart’s-tongue fern, the purple saxifrage and other such botanical rarities. As it is, though, the crud in our cracks goes uncolonised and uncleansed and all we represent is a Q-tip’s missed opportunity and a challenge to Botox.
Fitz appears in the Auden mask.
Donald
Jesus!
Kay
Oh my goodness!
Fitz
I’m rather impressed. (
His voice is indistinct.
) What’s it look like?
Various Asides
‘You look just like him.’ ‘It’s like Marlon Brando.’ (
Etc.
)
Fitz
You wouldn’t know it was me, would you? Hides me completely.
Donald
Yes, you’re invisible. Save hours in makeup.
Kay
Can you talk in it?
Fitz
Yes.
Henry
Can he remember in it? That’s the question.
Charlie, the singer, comes over and stares at Auden, indifferent as ever but at least not looking at his Nintendo. Fitz shakes his masked head to startle the child, which it doesn’t, Charlie just giving him another indifferent stare before being taken out of the rehearsal room by his chaperone.
Author
Kay, whose idea was this?
Kay rolls her eyes in the direction of Fitz. Author is in despair.
Kay
You have to let them try, dear.
Author
(
who has his head in his hands
) It looks like what it is, a mask. And if one was wearing a Britten mask and the other a Humphrey Carpenter mask, fine. But…it’s turning into
Spitting Image
.
Kay
We’ll see what Stephen says.
Fitz
Well, I’m pleased.
Kay
You going to wear it now?
Fitz
(
taking off mask
) Actually I’ll take it off for a minute. It’s quite hot, I’ll need to practise.
Ralph takes mask from Fitz and puts it in box.
Kay
Moving on. Ready?
Auden
(
playing and singing at piano
)
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.
Somewhere in the middle of this, Britten slips into the room.
Auden
(
without turning round or apparently having seen him
) I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.
Britten
It’s only just seven.
Auden
No. It’s after seven.
Britten
When we haven’t seen each other for twenty years five minutes doesn’t make much difference. Does it?
Auden
(
with an heroic effect
) No. And it
is
nice to see you.
They both consider whether they should embrace but it turns into an awkward handshake.
Britten
Should I sit down?
Auden
Please.
Auden moves something from a chair before Britten sits down.
Britten
I was told you were ill.
Auden
I was told
you
were ill. Are you?
Britten
Perhaps. Are you?
Auden
And so we begin as old friends do, comparing our respective degrees of decrepitude. They say I have a weak heart, whatever that means.
Britten
I have a bad heart, too. Sometimes I can’t lift my arm to conduct.
Auden
Oh, I can do that. (
He does so.
) Though I can’t conduct, of course.
Britten
Still, I’ve got a tip-top nurse.
Auden
Oh, I haven’t. Though there’s Chester.
Britten
He’s not here?
Auden
Athens. Peter?
Britten
Toronto.
Awkward pause.
Auden
Have you seen anybody?
Britten
Not especially. Have you?
Auden
One or two. Cyril Connolly.
Britten
No.
Auden
Isaiah Berlin.
Britten
No.
Auden
Leslie Rowse.
Britten shakes his head.
The Spenders.
Britten
Oh yes.
Auden
Well, everyone knows the Spenders.
Small pause.
Oh Benjie, I’m sorry. I am so pleased to see you.
He tries to lift Britten’s hand to kiss it, but Britten yelps.
Britten
My bad arm.
So Auden bends and kisses it and smiles happily. They sit.
I’ve been auditioning. Looking for a boy. So I thought I’d call.
Auden
And did you find one? A boy.
Britten shakes his head.
Britten
They were all too perfect. Ideally I want a voice that is just on the edge of breaking.
Auden
You want a voice before it gets the mannish crack.
Britten
Is that you?
Auden
‘Mannish crack’? No, alas,
Cymbeline
, I think.
I knew you were here. I saw you this afternoon outside Magdalen. I was getting off the bus. You were getting out of a large car. A very large car. And though it was scarcely raining someone was waiting with an umbrella and there was another person to carry your briefcase. I’m not sure he didn’t bow before holding back the indifferent passers-by and ushering you into the lodge. Stravinsky used to be treated like that of course. Do they call you Maestro?
Britten
On occasion. Not in Aldeburgh.
Auden
Ha! One is struck by the imbalance, the disparity of respect accorded to music over the other arts. Music is a mystery of course, words are not. The deference accorded (which I don’t want).
Britten
Nor do I.
Auden
No, but the space given. The entourage. An upholstered life. Though what I really envy is that you are still working.
Britten’s frailty is occasionally noticeable. Auden’s a different kind of frailty.
Britten
Do you not work?
Auden
Every day, but I do nothing. I have the habit of art. I write poems of a cosy domesticity trying to catch the few charred emotions that scuttle across my lunefied landscape. Still, writing is apparently therapeutic. That’s what they say these days, isn’t it? It is
therapeutic
. When I was young I envied Hardy’s hawk-like vision…his way of looking at life from a great height. I tried to do that, only now I suppose I have come down to earth. He has taken the words out of my mouth.
Britten
Who?
Auden
Whoever put them there in the first place. But I have to work, or else who am I? What I fear is that on Judgement Day one’s punishment will be to hear God reciting by heart the poems I would have written had my life been good.
Britten
I have not been alone with you in thirty years, but five minutes and I slide effortlessly back into the same groove, as tongue-tied as ever I was. I tell myself I am not the twenty-three-year-old prodigy mixing the music and doing the sound effects with tin cans in the studios of the GPO Film Unit. I am Benjamin Britten, OM.
Auden
OM! I do the occasional reading, mostly in America, where they always love me. The English are more…wary.