Complete Poems and Plays (45 page)

We must carry on as if nothing had happened,

And have the cake and presents.

G
ERALD
.
                                          But
I
’m worried about Arthur:

He’s much more apt than John to get into trouble.

C
HARLES
.
Oh, but Arthur’s a brilliant driver.

After all the experience he’s had at Brooklands,

He
’s
not likely to get into trouble.

G
ERALD
.
A brilliant driver, but more reckless.

I
VY
.
Yet I remember, when they were boys,

Arthur was always the more adventurous

But John was the one that had the accidents,

Somehow, just because he
was
the slow one.

He was always the one to fall off the pony,

Or out of a tree — and always on his head.

V
IOLET
.
But a year ago, Arthur took me out in his car,

And I told him I would never go out with him again.

Not that I wanted to go with him at all —

Though of course he meant well — but I think an open car

Is so undignified: you’re blown about so,

And you feel so conspicuous, lolling back

And so near the street, and everyone staring;

And the pace he went at was simply terrifying.

I said I would rather walk: and I did.

G
ERALD.
Walk? where to?

V
IOLET
.
He started out to take me to Cheltenham;

But I stopped him somewhere in Chiswick, I think.

Anyway, the district was unfamiliar

And I had the greatest trouble in getting home.

I am sure he meant well. But I do think he is reckless.

G
ERALD
.
I wonder how much Amy knows about Arthur?

C
HARLES
.
More than she cares to mention, I imagine.

[
Enter
H
ARRY
]

H
ARRY
.
Mother is asleep, I think: it’s strange how the old

Can drop off to sleep in the middle of calamity

Like children, or like hardened campaigners. She looked

Very much as she must have looked when she was a child.

You’ve been holding a meeting — the usual family inquest

On the characters of all the junior members?

Or engaged in predicting the minor event,

Engaged in foreseeing the minor disaster?

You go on trying to think of each thing separately,

Making small things important, so that everything

May be unimportant, a slight deviation

From some imaginary course that life ought to take,

That you call normal. What you call the normal

Is merely the unreal and the unimportant.

I was like that in a way, so long as I could think

Even of my own life as an isolated ruin,

A casual bit of waste in an orderly universe.

But it begins to seem just part of some huge disaster,

Some monstrous mistake and aberration

Of all men, of the world, which I cannot put in order.

If you only knew the years that I have had to live

Since I came home, a few hours ago, to Wishwood.

V
IOLET
.
I will make no observations on what you say, Harry;

My comments are not always welcome in this family.

[
Enter
D
ENMAN
]

D
ENMAN
.
Excuse me, Miss Ivy. There’s a trunk call for you.

I
VY
.
A trunk call? for me? why, who can want me?

D
ENMAN
.
He wouldn’t give his name, Miss; but it’s Mr. Arthur.

I
VY
.
Arthur! Oh dear, I’m afraid
he’s
had an accident.

[
Exeunt
I
VY
and
D
ENMAN
]

V
IOLET
.
When it’s Ivy that he’s asking for, I expect the worst.

A
GATHA.
Whatever you have learned, Harry, you must remember

That there is always more: we cannot rest in being

The impatient spectators of malice or stupidity.

We must try to penetrate the other private worlds

Of make-believe and fear. To rest in our own suffering

Is evasion of suffering. We must learn to suffer more.

V
IOLET
.
Agatha’s remarks are invariably pointed.

H
ARRY
.
Do you think that I believe what I said just now?

That was only what I should like to believe.

I was talking in abstractions: and you answered in abstractions.

I have a private puzzle. Were they simply outside,

I might escape somewhere, perhaps. Were they simply inside

I could cheat them perhaps with the aid of Dr. Warburton —

Or any other doctor, who would be another Warburton,

If you decided to set another doctor on me.

But this is too real for your words to alter.

Oh, there
must
be another way of talking

That would get us somewhere. You don’t understand me.

You can’t understand me. It’s not being alone

That is the horror — to be alone with the horror.

What matters is the filthiness. I can clean my skin,

Purify my life, void my mind,

But always the filthiness, that lies a little deeper …

[
Enter
I
VY
]

I
VY
.
Where is there an evening paper?

G
ERALD
.
                                                  Why, what’s the matter.

I
VY
.
Somebody, look for Arthur in the evening paper.

That was Arthur, ringing up from London:

The connection was so bad, I could hardly hear him,

And his voice was very queer. It seems that Arthur too

Has had an accident. I don’t think he’s hurt,

But he says that he hasn’t got the use of his car,

And he missed the last train, so he’s coming up tomorrow;

And he said there was something about it in the paper,

But it’s all a mistake. And not to tell his mother.

V
IOLET
.
What’s the use of asking for an evening paper?

You know as well as I do, at this distance from London

Nobody’s likely to have this evening’s paper.

C
HARLES
.
Stop, I think I bought a lunch edition

Before I left St. Pancras. If I did, it’s in my overcoat.

I’ll see if it’s there. There might be something in that.

[
Exit
]

G
ERALD
.
Well, I said that Arthur was every bit as likely

To have an accident as John. And it wasn’t John’s fault,

I don’t believe. John is unlucky,

But Arthur is definitely reckless.

V
IOLET
.
I think these racing cars ought to be prohibited.

[
Re-enter
C
HARLES
,
with
a
newspaper
]

C
HARLES
.
Yes, there is a paragraph … I’m glad to say

It’s not very conspicuous …

G
ERALD
.
There’ll have been more in the later editions.

You’d better read it to us.

C
HARLES
[
reads
]
.

‘Peer’s Brother in Motor Smash

G
ERALD
.
Where?

C
HARLES
.
In Ebury Street. ‘The police stated that at the time of the accident Mr. Piper was being pursued by a patrol, and was travelling at the rate of 66 miles an hour. When asked why he did not stop when signalled by the police car, he said: “I thought you were having a game with me.”’

G
ERALD
.
This is what the Communists make capital out of.

C
HARLES
.
There’s a little more. ‘The Piper family …’ no, we needn’t read that.

V
IOLET
.
This is just what I expected. But if Agatha

Is going to moralise about it, I shall scream.

G
ERALD
.
It’s going to be awkward, explaining this to Amy.

I
VY
.
Poor Arthur! I’m sure that you’re being much too hard on him.

C
HARLES
.
In my time, these affairs were kept out of the papers;

But nowadays, there’s no such thing as privacy.

C
HORUS
.
In an old house there is always listening, and more is heard than is spoken.

And what is spoken remains in the room, waiting for the future to hear it.

And whatever happens began in the past, and presses hard on the future.

The agony in the curtained bedroom, whether of birth or of dying,

Gathers in to itself all the voices of the past, and projects them into the future.

The treble voices on the lawn

The mowing of hay in summer

The dogs and the old pony

The stumble and the wail of little pain

The chopping of wood in autumn

And the singing in the kitchen

And the steps at night in the corridor

The moment of sudden loathing

And the season of stifled sorrow

The whisper, the transparent deception

The keeping up of appearances

The making the best of a bad job

All twined and tangled together, all are recorded.

There is no avoiding these things

And we know nothing of exorcism