Collected Plays and Teleplays (Irish Literature) (33 page)

THE TIME
FREDDIE RETIRED:
A TELEVISION PLAY IN
THREE EPISODES

Players

This is a comedy but in no circumstances should a part be assigned to a known comic. The piece must be played straight.

The scene, which is the same for the three acts, is the Matthews’ sittingroom. It is comfortably furnished and there is a sideboard. It is winter, with a good fire burning. The Hartigans are visiting, and the atmosphere is bright and jolly. Each of the four has a drink, and there is a bottle of whiskey and some stouts on view. The disposal of the characters is left to the producer.

ACT I

JOE HARTIGAN:
(
Cordially, raising glass with whiskey.
) Well, it’s well for your Freddie. A good pension for life and not a bother on you.

NORA:
You’ll be bored, Freddie, with nothing to do.

MAGGIE:
(
Who has glass of stout.
) Nothing to do? I’ve been at him for the last nine months to paint the front gate.

FREDDIE:
(
Beaming.
) Ah Maggie, don’t mind the front gate. Don’t let a thing like that worry you. I’ll take down that gate, re-hang it, oil it, give it two undercoats and a top coat of waterproof vermilion paint that I’ll get specially from Germany.

MAGGIE:
(
Snorting.
) Faith and I hope so.

JOE:
Oh, there’s plenty of odd jobs to be done around any house.

FREDDIE:
Joe, Nora’s remark about me having nothing to do is just a bit funny. Were you codding me, Nora? The truth is that at last I’ll have an opportunity to tackle a hundred and one things I’ve been thinking about all my life.

JOE:
Well, more luck to you, Freddie.

MAGGIE:
What sort of things, Fred?

NORA:
Gardening, I suppose, Maggie.

FREDDIE:
What sort of things? Well, that would take some answering. First of all, I’ll have to do some planning.

NORA:
Planning what, Freddie?

FREDDIE:
I mean, I’ll have to plan each day, divide it up into sections. Hole and corner dabbling at this and that would get me nowhere.

JOE:
But lord, Freddie, isn’t that the very sort of thing you’ve just been released from? I mean, signing the attendance book before half-nine, a strict hour and a quarter for lunch, sending the letters up for signature at half-four, and all that. Slavery!

MAGGIE:
You can call it slavery, Joe, but it was a good, decent job.

FREDDIE:
Planning one’s life day by day, Joe, needn’t mean a system of wooden routine.

NORA:
But what are you going to DO, Freddie? I mean, how are you going to put in the day? I feel somehow that a man who’s been used to regular work all his life will feel lost without it.

MAGGIE:
Well now, Nora, I don’t think my bold Freddie will be too easily lost. He’s as lazy a man as the best of them.

JOE:
Ah now, Maggie. We’re here tonight celebrating Freddie’s liberation.

MAGGIE:
Yes, I know. First thing, he won’t get up till about twelve in the day. . . .

FREDDIE:
Your granny!

MAGGIE:
He’ll want breakfast in bed, and then lie there for hours, smoking and reading the paper.

JOE:
(
Laughing.
) Maggie, I think he managed to do a bit of that in the office – AND GOT PAID FOR IT.

FREDDIE:
All you people have bad, suspicious minds. I am going to have two broad branches of activity.

JOE:
Well, what are they?

FREDDIE:
What I would call pursuits of leisure, and WORK. Yes, I said work. Real work. Not a lot of futile form-filling and totting up figures.

NORA:
Pursuits of leisure, and work? It sounds promising, I’ll say that. I never hear you talking like that, Joe.

JOE:
Me dear Nora, there’s many a thing I do without talking about it.

FREDDIE:
(
Briskly.
) Here now, let’s have another drink. Maggie, will you do the honours like a good girl.

(
MAGGIE
rises and replenishes all glasses. The ladies are drinking stout, the gentlemen whiskey. The talk continues as she does so.
)

JOE:
That’s a very nice drop of malt, Freddie. But come here. Tell us what those two categories mean. What do you mean by leisure and what do you mean by work?

NORA:
Joe here represents the Gestapo.

FREDDIE:
Oh indeed there’s nothing secret or confidential about the things that are going to occupy my time. Take leisure first. My golf handicap is 20, which is disgraceful. That’ll have to come down. And I’ll get plenty of God’s fresh air getting it down.

MAGGIE:
Yes, Freddie. That seems to mean that on most of your trips to that club, it wasn’t to play golf you went there.

FREDDIE:
Oh for goodness sake, Maggie. A club is a club.

JOE:
Well, fair enough, Freddie. What else?

FREDDIE:
Well, I’m going to attend properly to my St. Vincent de Paul conference. That’s leisure. I enjoy that.

NORA:
Bravo! That Society does a lot of good.

JOE:
Anything else?

FREDDIE:
Oh yes. I want to get my eye in again at snooker. I used to be fairly good but I’m out of practice.

MAGGIE:
When I was a girl no respectable person would be seen at games like that. Only cornerboys would go into those low clubs.

JOE:
Ah now, I don’t know about that, Maggie.

NORA:
All I know is my own father played billiards.

FREDDIE:
Of course. It’s a game of skill. It’s training for the hand and eye that comes in handy in other things.

JOE:
Well, is that the lot, Freddie?

FREDDIE:
Ah, I don’t know. Grapes. I’ve always had an idea about growing grapes.

MAGGIE:
What? In this country?

FREDDIE:
Yes, Maggie. I’d need a heated glasshouse, of course.

JOE:
But heavens, Freddie, that would cost a fortune.

FREDDIE:
Certainly not. I would put it up myself.

NORA:
And install the heating?

FREDDIE:
Yes. I’m pretty handy and I’ve got decent tools. Maggie will tell you.

MAGGIE:
I’m sick, sore and tired talking to you about putting up an extra upper shelf in the hot press.

FREDDIE:
I haven’t forgotten that, Maggie. I’m waiting for Larrie to get me the timber.

NORA:
Are you very fond of grapes?

FREDDIE:
Not particularly. But there’s nothing like a decent bottle of wine.

JOE:
Good heavens, Freddie! Irish wine? Mean to say you’re going to make wine from your grapes?

FREDDIE:
Certainly. Why not?

JOE:
Well bedad you’re going to change the whole country.

FREDDIE:
I’ll keep myself occupied anyhow.

NORA:
Well, so much for amusing yourself, Freddie. How about this work you’re going to do? What work?

FREDDIE:
Ah well that would be mostly for the evening time. When there’s a bit of peace and quiet.

JOE:
Yes, but what sort of work?

FREDDIE:
Well, for a start, I’ve got to get down to my book.

MAGGIE:
(
Startled.
) God save us! (
She gazes around.
) Don’t tell me the man is going to start betting and bookmaking? That would be the last.

NORA:
Your book, Freddie?

FREDDIE:
Yes, my book. That’s what I said.

JOE:
Do you mean . . . writing a book?

FREDDIE:
Of course I do.

NORA:
Well, what will you be up to next.

MAGGIE:
Do you remember that for your holidays in 1949 you said you were going to climb the Alps. Instead you spent a fortnight in Skerries.

JOE:
For Pete’s sake, Freddie, a book about what? Will it be a novel or a thriller, or what?

FREDDIE:
No, no. Something important and substantial. It will be in part autobiographical. There will be plain speaking on certain political matters. There are some things that require to be said. And said very bluntly.

JOE:
You mean—you’re going to tell all?

FREDDIE:
I suppose that’s about the size of it. Unmask all our political and business chancers, denounce humbug . . . cheating . . . immoral films . . . suggestive books . . . contempt for marriage in high places.

MAGGIE:
(
Sourly.
) Yes. If you go about that in the right way, you’ll lose your pension and I suppose I’ll have to go out and get work scrubbing floors.

NORA:
Ah now, Maggie, don’ be discouraging Freddie like that. He might also win the Nobel Prize and then be able to afford holidays climbing in the Alps every year.

JOE:
(
Genially.
) Yes faith. And maybe sell the film rights of this book.

MAGGIE:
We don’t even own this house.

FREDDIE:
I’ve enough money in the bank to clear off what’s owing here but it doesn’t suit me to do so because, Maggie, we’ll be moving to a better and a bigger house soon. I want a proper garden where I can grow strawberries and raspberries.

JOE:
Faith, you’re going to be the busy man, Freddie.

FREDDIE:
Creative writing can only be done at night. I’ll have the days to put in in some useful and interesting way. Waste not, want not.

NORA:
Anything else on the programme.

FREDDIE:
Well, not much, Nora. I have a notion that I would like to learn to play the violin. It’s a beautiful instrument. Of course, I’d hardly develop into another Menuhin or Kreisler at my age but I could be as good as a lot of chaps I’ve heard.

MAGGIE:
(
Sternly and loudly.
) Well is that so now? Let me tell you this, Fred. You’ll not start any of that nonsense in this house so long as I’m here. Sawing and screeching and howling to drive a person batty.

NORA:
Haven’t you a piano there that would be simpler to learn?

MAGGIE:
(
Sharply.
) The piano is locked and locked it is going to stay.

JOE:
Your best plan, Freddie, would be to learn to play the organ. You could practice only in churches.

FREDDIE:
(
Smiling.
) Ah, we’ll forget about music for the moment. One thing at a time.

JOE:
Good for you. Use your retirement wisely. Look at me. I’ve no pension to look forward to. People like me have to work till they drop. Isn’t that so, Nora?

NORA:
So you say anyway. The question is . . . will you be LET work till you drop? You could damn well get the sack any day.

MAGGIE:
(
Piously.
) God forbid.

FREDDIE:
They wouldn’ be so mad as to do anything like that. A man of Joe’s experience isn’t to be found in every hole and corner.

NORA:
He was warned twice about drink.

JOE:
Now stop talking nonsense, EVERYBODY. (
He begins to beam, and struggles to feet with glass outstretched.
) I want to propose a toast to Freddie Matthews. . . .

(
The two ladies rise;
FREDDIE
remains seated.
)

JOE:
Here’s to Freddie Matthews . . . may the years ahead of him be many and long . . . and may the many great enterprises, upon which he is intent, flourish!

(
They drink, and sit down again.
)

FREDDIE:
Thanks, Joe. Thanks everybody. I know you mean that. It is very nice of you.

CURTAIN

ACT II

The scene is the same but it is a forenoon, six weeks later. There is a dull flicker of a fire (if any) in the grate.
FREDDIE MATTHEWS
is lolling in an armchair sideways, his legs hanging down over the arm. One slipper has fallen off his foot. He is wearing pyjamas under a nondescript dressing gown. He is smoking and reading a newspaper. After a moment,
MAGGIE
barges in wearing an apron carrying a dust-pan and a stiff hand-brush. Her movements are noisy and fussy, and her voice is bad-tempered, loud.