Ten. The Epigraph.
‘What draws the reader to the novel is the hope of warming his shivering life with a death he reads about.’
– Walter Benjamin
SIMON lays down the last card, looks up.
SIMON
The rest of the book consists of two hundred and fifty completely blank pages.
Blackout.
Act Two Scene Three. The same evening.
The barn. MAUDE, alone in the sitting-room, is speaking into the telephone.
MAUDE
… so I want you to take Suki immediately to Dr Walters, the number is on the kitchen noticeboard, and ask him to give her a test. There’s no point getting in a flap until we know whether she’s really pregnant or just panicking.
LEO comes in, stops just inside the threshold on realising MAUDE is on the phone.
MAUDE
Call me back as soon as you’ve seen Walters. Goodbye, Henry.
MAUDE puts down phone. LEO sits in armchair.
LEO
You finally reached him?
MAUDE
No, I had to leave a message on our answerphone. Henry is being annoyingly elusive.
MAUDE sits down on sofa. SIMON comes in carrying a full bottle of whisky.
SIMON
One bottle of Johnnie Walker. As promised.
SIMON breaks the seal, goes to the sink unit and pours two drinks.
SIMON
I must say I need this. I always feel the adrenalin seething through my arteries after a reading. (To MAUDE) Say when, Maude.
SIMON pours a little water into MAUDE’s glass.
MAUDE
When.
SIMON goes across to MAUDE with two glasses. He gives one to MAUDE and retains the other.
SIMON (with mock courtesy)
Leo – please help yourself.
LEO goes to sink unit to pour himself a drink. SIMON occupies his seat.
MAUDE
Well, you certainly gave the students something to think about, Simon. They were quite stunned.
SIMON
You didn’t like it.
MAUDE
Oh yes! It was very interesting.
SIMON
Ah, ‘interesting’. The adjective of last resort for the author’s friends.
MAUDE
No, really, it was terribly clever. Was it true?
SIMON
True?
MAUDE
I know it’s true about your going to Westminster and King’s and writing Wormcasts and so on, but the story of Julian and Amanda, and the abortion. Is that true?
SIMON
Really, Maude, what a very improper question to ask a novelist. I’m surprised at you.
MAUDE
Oh, come off it, Simon!
SIMON
It’s like asking a lady her age. Or whether she’s reached the menopause.
MAUDE (startled)
Have you been reading my manuscripts as well?
SIMON
One of the students, a Mr Brigstock, gave me an account of your reading at dinner.
MAUDE
Oh.
SIMON
But where did you get that amusing idea of waiting for a hot flush before walking the dog?
MAUDE
A friend of mine.
SIMON
How is she going to feel when she reads about it in your next novel?
MAUDE
Not half so bad as Amanda will feel when she reads yours.
SIMON
Ah, but I haven’t admitted that there was an Amanda.
SIMON goes to sink unit to fetch bottle. He refills his glass and takes bottle to MAUDE.
MAUDE
I bet there was … Come on, Simon, spill the beans. We’re all writers here.
SIMON
Isn’t the usual phrase, ‘we’re all friends here’?
MAUDE
I mean, we can trust each other.
SIMON
Can we? If I ever have children, which God forbid, I shall tell them: ‘Never speak to strange novelists, and be even more careful with ones you know.’
SIMON tops up MAUDE’s drink and takes bottle to LEO.
SIMON
You’re very quiet, Leo. What did you think of my story?
LEO drains his glass, snatches bottle from SIMON and pours himself a generous measure. He thrusts the bottle back into SIMON’s hand.
LEO
I thought it was horseshit.
SIMON
Ah. You wouldn’t be a teeny-weeny bit biased, would you?
LEO
I admit that it had a certain documentary interest.
SIMON
Yes?
LEO
As a glimpse of the rotting corpse of English literary life.
SIMON
A lurid image. How much do you know about English literary life?
LEO
You only have to go to a few publishers’ parties, read the book pages in the newspapers, to understand how it works. The log-rolling, the back-scratching, the back-biting.
SIMON (ironically)
Of course, you don’t get any of that sort of thing in New York, do you?
LEO
I don’t live in New York. It’s a bigger country – writers are more spread out. The trouble with England is that it’s too damned small. Everybody has his hand in someone else’s pocket and his nose in someone else’s asshole. And another –
SIMON (holds up his hand)
Just a moment! Let me think if that is anatomically possible.
LEO
Life is too easy for people like you, St Clair. You glide effortlessly from prep school to Cambridge, from Cambridge to London, without ever stubbing your toe on reality. Everybody knows everybody else in the charmed circle that runs the literary world. Nowhere is it so easy to get launched as a writer. But there’s a price to be paid.
Pause.
SIMON
I know you’re dying for us to ask you what it is.
MAUDE
What is it, Leo?
LEO
The dreadful thinness of contemporary British writing. It’s glib, lazy, self-satisfied prattle.
MAUDE
You can hardly call Simon’s story self-satisfied.
LEO
It is, it is! He luxuriates in his own obnoxiousness. He has orgasms of self-loathing. Don’t let the metafictional tricks fool you. That piece is nothing but bad faith jerking itself off.
SIMON
Oh, I like it! ‘Bad faith jerking itself off.’ I shouldn’t be surprised if I stole that from you one day, Leo.
MAUDE
What does ‘metafictional’ mean?
SIMON
It’s a bit of American academic jargon, Maude. Remember, Leo works in a university English Department. He can’t open his mouth to breathe without inhaling a lungful of words like metafiction, intertextuality, deconstruction. They dance like dustmotes in the air of American classrooms.
MAUDE
But what does it mean?
LEO
It means fiction which draws attention to its own status as a text.
MAUDE (bored recognition)
Oh, that.
Pause.
MAUDE
Could we do something other than talk shop for a bit?
SIMON
Like what, Maude? Do you want to play cards?
MAUDE
Of course not.
SIMON
Scrabble? Charades?
LEO
I thought you were already playing charades.
MAUDE
I mean talk about something other than writing.
SIMON
Ah. The trouble is that writing is the only conversational topic the three of us have got in common.
MAUDE
It would help if we had some music. I must speak to Jeremy about getting a radio or a gramophone in here.
SIMON
Music?
&
nbsp; MAUDE
Not your kind of music, Simon.
SIMON
What kind?
MAUDE
At this time of night, with whisky … Frank Sinatra.
SIMON
Sinatra? You surprise me, Maude. I would have guessed baroque chamber music.
MAUDE smiles her Mona Lisa smile. The alcohol is beginning to work on her.
MAUDE
Ah, I’m a woman of many surprises. Aren’t I, Leo?
LEO doesn’t know how to react to this. SIMON glances quickly from one to the other, sensing some subtext. He goes across to the telephone and dials, without lifting the receiver.
MAUDE
What are you doing, Simon?
SIMON
I can’t guarantee Frank Sinatra, and it won’t be the highest of fi, but there is a London number you can call to hear the Golden Oldie of the week.
MAUDE gets up and goes over to phone to listen. SIMON turns up the volume of the answerphone. Sound of Phil Collins singing ‘One More Night’.
MAUDE
Simon! You’re a genius.
SIMON
Poor Phil Collins – a Golden Oldie already. He only recorded that in 1985.
MAUDE (sways her hips)
It’s nice. Smoochy night-club music.
LEO turns his back on the others as he refills his glass.
SIMON (to MAUDE)
Why not?
SIMON, with a gesture unobserved by LEO, invites MAUDE to dance. She slides into his arms.
LEO
I heard Sinatra in Vegas once.
MAUDE
Did you?
LEO
For a man with no voice he was a pretty good singer.
LEO turns, stares in astonishment and with jealousy at MAUDE and SIMON dancing almost cheek to cheek.
SIMON
You know, the reason Leo is so hysterically critical of the English literary world –
MAUDE
Leave Leo alone, Simon.
SIMON
No, listen. If we’re talking about bad faith, let’s consider the typical American writer. Nine out of ten work at a university. An entirely bogus academic subject, called creative writing, has been invented to provide jobs for them. Fat salaries, pensions, grants. My God, the grants! I bet he’s on one now.
LEO is silent.
MAUDE
You are, Leo, admit it. (To SIMON) He has a Guggenheim.
SIMON
Ah!
MAUDE
He’s writing a novel about the end of the Second World War.
SIMON
Still? (To LEO) You were working on that when I interviewed you, what, five years ago.
LEO visibly struggles to control his temper.
LEO
It’s a long book.
SIMON
The War and Peace of our time? Do you think that’s really your métier, Leo?
LEO strides across to the answerphone and turns off the music.
MAUDE (disappointed)
Oh!
LEO (to SIMON)
What d’you mean by that?
MAUDE and SIMON separate. MAUDE picks up her drink and takes up a position centre stage: in the struggle that follows she is spectator, umpire and prize.
SIMON
I’ve always thought of you as an essentially anecdotal writer, Leo. What do you know about war?
MAUDE
Leo was in the paratroops, Simon.
LEO (quickly)
I never said that.
MAUDE
Oh, I thought you did.
SIMON
No, he spent his military service teaching illiterate army cooks how to read, didn’t you, Leo?
LEO
Don’t push your luck, St Clair.
MAUDE (to SIMON)
How did you know that?
SIMON
I always do my homework before an interview. That’s why my subjects usually take offence afterwards.
LEO
What about you, St Clair? You win any combat medals?
SIMON
Oh, National Service was before my time, I’m glad to say.
LEO
But then you don’t need much experience to fill two hundred and fifty blank pages.
SIMON
No, only courage.
LEO (laughs scornfully)
Courage?
SIMON
Yes, courage to ditch all the obsolete machinery of traditional realist fiction. All that laboriously contrived suspense and dutifully disguised peripeteia.
MAUDE
What’s that?
SIMON
Reversal. Usually combined with anagnorisis, or discovery, as everyone who took the Cambridge Tragedy paper knows.
MAUDE
Well, I didn’t take it. Give me an example.
SIMON
For example, Zimmerman’s moment of truth at Auschwitz, in Leo’s story. Aristotle was very hot on reversal and discovery. But they’ve rather lost their cutting edge, now that every TV commercial has them.
LEO
So what’s the new literary technology? The do-it-yourself postmodernist novel? Two hundred and fifty blank pages for the reader to write his own book in?
SIMON
Why not?
LEO
Those cheap tricks only work once.
SIMON
Another reason why they require courage. Experimental fiction burns its bridges behind it, while the realistic novel goes trudging up and down the same safe, boring old highway.
MAUDE
Well, I’m a realistic novelist, and not ashamed to say so.
SIMON
Ah, there’s a special dispensation for women novelists of wit and sensibility, Maude. It comes down from the sainted Jane. (To LEO) Austen, not Fonda.
MAUDE
Oh, well, I do adore Jane Austen.
SIMON
You remember what Sir Walter Scott said about her? ‘The big Bow-wow strain I can do like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, is denied to me.’ Now you, Maude, have the exquisite touch, but I greatly fear that Leo is going for the big Bow-wow strain in his war novel, about a hundred and fifty years too late.
LEO
What the fuck do you know about my novel, St Clair?
SIMON
Only that it’s taking you an awfully long time. You aren’t blocked, are you?
LEO
SIMON
If you are, I’d advise putting in a few sex scenes. They seem to come easily to you. Or have you got too many already, for a novel that’s supposed to be about the Second World War?
LEO
You really are an asshole.
SIMON
Another little-known fact about Leo, Maude, is that he used to write jerk-off stories for skin magazines under another name.
LEO
Who the hell told you that?
SIMON
As I was saying, I do my homework.
LEO
I’m not ashamed of it. I was working my way through graduate school. I had a wife and a young kid to support.
SIMON
How touching. Like a Victorian mother going on the streets to feed her starving family.
LEO
I’m warning you, St Clair …
MAUDE
Simon, stop it.
SIMON
It left its mark, though, on your style, didn’t it, writing porn? How did that passage in your story go? ‘He felt her nipples spring to life under his fingers … she moaned with unsimulated pleasure …’ I mean, really!
LEO
That’s it.
Enraged, LEO strips off his jacket.
MAUDE (warningly)
Simon!
LEO squares up to SIMON, who makes no move to defend himself.
LEO
Fight, you sonofabitch!
SIMON
&n
bsp; I wouldn’t dream of it.
MAUDE
For God’s sake, Leo!
LEO makes a sparring motion with his left fist and pokes SIMON in the face. SIMON gives a moan and crumples to his knees, covering his face with his hands. MAUDE hurries over to him.
MAUDE (to LEO)
I hope you’re proud of yourself.
LEO
I hardly touched him.
MAUDE
His nose is bleeding.
SIMON straightens up, holding a handkerchief to his nose. The handkerchief and his shirt are stained red. He gets slowly to his feet, helped by MAUDE.
MAUDE
Are you all right?
SIMON (indistinctly)
I bleed rather easily, I’m afraid. I was known as Bleeder St Clair at school.
MAUDE
Poor Simon. Come into the bathroom.
SIMON
No, I must lie down with my head back.
MAUDE guides SIMON to the sofa. He lies down with his feet up and his head back, one arm trailing to the floor, and the bloody handkerchief held to his face. There is a knock at the door. All freeze, uncertain what to do. The knock is repeated, and the door opens. PENNY appears on the threshold. She has a pink folder in her hand.
PENNY
Oh, excuse me. I just wanted to give something … (she sees SIMON, pauses) … to Leo.
MAUDE (hostess voice)
Do come in.
PENNY enters, looking between LEO, MAUDE and SIMON.
MAUDE
Simon has had a nosebleed.
PENNY
Oh dear … Is there anything I can do?
MAUDE
I don’t think so.
LEO
What did you want to give me, Penny?
PENNY
This. (Hands him the folder) It’s something I just finished writing.
LEO (does not look inside)
Oh, right.
PENNY
It’s something new. Not exactly what you suggested, but similar.
LEO
I’ll try and have a look at it. (He puts it down) Come by in the morning, okay?
PENNY
What time?
LEO
Oh, uh, ten-thirty.
PENNY
Right. See you at ten-thirty. Goodnight, then. (She looks in SIMON’S direction) I hope your nosebleed heals up, Mr St Clair.
SIMON grunts an acknowledgement. PENNY turns to leave.
LEO (to PENNY)
What did you think of Mr St Clair’s reading?
PENNY
Oh, it was very … interesting.
A groan from SIMON. PENNY goes out, closing the door behind her. SIMON slowly sits up, then stands up, feeling his nose in a gingerly fashion.
SIMON
It seems to have stopped. I need to wash.